001good evening i am a williamson county teacher and parent of children in our district teachers have spent a considerable amount of time reviewing and ultimately recommending a curriculum that we still believe provides the high quality rich and meaningful learning experiences for our students a curriculum you all approved it is disheartening that there are groups of people who offer complaints with no real solutions and are exploiting our schools as their political playgrounds their tactics have pit parents against teachers and caused extra hardships for our schools when teachers made our decisions on curriculum we had one agenda in mind to provide the best quality resources for our students please acknowledge and trust the efforts of our teachers district leadership and all those who worked hard to go into this comprehensive curriculum review and vote to approve the
002committee's recommendations i'm asking you to listen to reason and govern with wisdom so our schools can continue the important work of providing a quality education for our whole community thank you our next speaker is molly volcker hi my name is molly voelker and i am a senior at franklin high school and the president of the franklin high school young democrats i'm here today to speak about the recent efforts across our state to remove certain literary works from school curriculums and libraries since i was a little girl i have loved reading from non-fiction to high fantasy reading relieved the claustrophobia of my narrow perspective opening up my mind to the greater world and allowing me to understand my place in it reading allowed me to understand that my experience was not the only one and this
003understanding allowed me to grow into a person who cares about those with experiences different from mine a person who is aware of the ways in which our world is not a fair place and the ways in which i have the power to use my voice in my actions to hopefully make it a fairer one shielding today's youth from certain perspectives or injustices is not going to make the problems go away or prepare anyone to face them in the real world it is my hope that this preparation can come through education that we can create a world where we all look at one another with empathy where we are cognizant of the injustice that exists and face it united but censoring certain perspectives or shielding our youth from reality our next speakers are alana truss mira
004scinapizio and elliott atwood hi i'm alana truss i'm here representing juan wilco i'm both a wcs parent and also a clinical psychologist serving many families in this community and i'm deeply concerned about the current book banning efforts which some believe serve to protect our children from discomfort unfortunately the discomfort that book painting reduces is the very discomfort that serves to deepen students understanding of our past and present and inspires them to make our community a better place one that is supportive of all of its members in protecting children from this discomfort we're greatly underestimating their ability to channel this discomfort into positive change these book bans guarantee a different kind of discomfort for many of our students a discomfort about being oneself be that black jewish gay the child of two dads or any number
005of other non-commutable factors i choose to believe that the majority of our county desires a curriculum that promotes a safe and healthy environment for all the results of the extremely thorough complaint review process support this belief please vote to approve the committee's recommendations this evening thank you mira hi my name is mira escana piaco i'm a junior at franklin high school i'm here today to discuss the growing interest in removing works of literature with sensitive topics from williamson county schools i grew up in williamson county and have experienced firsthand the importance of diverse and controversial literature in our schools from an early age i was introduced to real world concepts including those surrounding diversity mental health human rights science and politics learning about these topics in school gave me a broader perspective as well as
006gave me the ability to formulate my own views and opinions sheltering today's youth from these important issues doesn't make them disappear if anything we are opening the door to a generation of ignorant and oblivious individuals who are unable to face the realities of today after all would you rather your children learn about sensitive topics in a safe classroom environment or from tomorrow's next viral tick tock thank you elliot atwood my name is elliot atwood and i'm a junior at franklin high school i've been in the school district since kindergarten and overall my experience here has been one of encouragement of an openness to learning unfortunately i now fear that the students who follow me may not have the same experience throughout my time in williamson county if there was ever a subject i wanted to
007learn about all i had to do was ask i was surrounded by information from countless sources and if i ever needed help finding anything specific there was always someone to help this has been the case for students of the past few generations it's been the case for my grandparents it's been the case for my parents and now it was the case for me and in order to maintain this ideal of education it is vital that we protect the plethora of information we offer to students when we restrict learning materials we are such as when we ban books we are restricting learning as a whole no longer students able to think for themselves and no longer students able to learn how to think at all if we're if we're restricting information we're restricting learning and so
008as such i ask you as educators as parents as members of our beautiful community i hope that you consider the potential outcome as we make decisions for our future students thank you for your time thank you speakers our next speakers are angie colvin jennifer cortez and bryn sierra excuse me just a minute speakers avery did i skip you avery okay would you want to go ahead and come up i'm sorry i didn't intend to skip you thank you folks hello my name is avery cloud i'm a sophomore at franklin high school and i'm a member of the glsen shine team i'm here to speak about the recent bannings of books and censorship of education in our schools i've always loved to learn from random facts to how machines work learning has always helped me understand
009the way the world works if we take away education on things such as racism anti-semitism the experiences of women and the lgbtqi community students lose understanding and comfort censorship and education is harmful to students who need to learn information about their history and it is not worth losing and it is not worth losing just because it makes certain groups feel more comfortable sheltering students from history because it is intense isolates and effect affected students and their experiences studies have shown that students who have higher access to more inclusive curriculum have higher academic achievement educational aspirations lower levels of depression and anxiety and higher levels of self-esteem in the words of laurie halse anderson the author of speak censorship is a child of fear and the father of ignorance banning time our next speaker is angie
010colvin i'm angie colvin i'm a parent of three in williamson county schools just to clarify i am here about the whitten wisdom curriculum i'm not interested in banning books i'm not interested in my kids never learning these topics i'm interested in my kids learning these topics at an age appropriate time in their life which this curriculum does not fulfill that at all just to kind of reiterate we've had children who've had negative consequences because of participating in this curriculum we've had parents that have complained i've talked to numerous teachers and administrators that have a problem with the curriculum but are too afraid to speak up so just to give you a better picture of this is a excerpt from an email the wcs second grade teacher sent to dave allen she said my class went
011remote this past year during module three on one of these days we were scheduled for a socratic seminar i almost changed the plan for the day as i was not only worried about how a socratic seminar would run on zoom but i was also worried about the content being listened to by the families while the students were at home i don't care if you like the curriculum or not if we have teachers that are afraid for the families to hear what their parent their kids are learning that is a problem this curriculum has not been appropriately vetted before it was adopted the reconsideration committee didn't consider all of it jennifer cortez hi i'm jennifer cortez here with one wilco it's hard for me to understand how anyone who claims to love our country and our
012community could continually and persistently undermine the efforts of our local public schools and all the effort that goes into making them excellent the word public means of concerning the whole the people as a whole done perceived or existing in open view both of these things apply to our schools here in williamson county our schools concern our whole community the policies and processes exist in open view this whole process of book reviews has been done in the open and painstakingly just because someone doesn't get their way doesn't mean the process doesn't work or that all viewpoints haven't been considered please acknowledge that complaints have been considered heard and acted on and vote to approve the review committee's recommendation to keep discussions about american heroes like ruby bridges in our second grade classrooms thank you bryn sierra
013hi brent sierra with one will coat i'm a former williamson county fourth grade teacher with graduate degrees in curriculum and instructional design as well as information science certified as a school library media specialist access to a variety of books and the thoughtful curriculum surrounding them are fundamental to our education system in a district of tens of thousands of parents a very small few have submitted complaints those complaints have been exhaustively considered and addressed thank you let's not forget the other tens of thousands of parents in support of this curriculum furthermore you have an opportunity an important opportunity here to lead the way and amplifying the marginalized voices of those whose stories are constantly erased you don't have to like the review but neither do you nor the complainants get to strong-arm this process claiming it's
014been unfair or ill-informed overriding long-standing policies just because you want a different outcome is an egregious abuse of power families of colors and their of color and their allies we are all watching to see how williamson county lives up to its stated mission to provide all students with a quality education thank you our next three speakers are aaron crawford kimberly calicote and michael miller hi i'm erin crawford i'm mother of two boys in the page community i'm also a first-time candidate for williamson county commission i'm standing in front of you today out from behind the anonymity of my regular emails because i find it hard to believe that we're discussing book bans right now in the year 2022 and books by and about our collective american civil rights heroes when my company relocated us to
015the area in 2015 i researched visited and chose beautiful and welcoming williamson county to buy a home and raise my boys and like many families largely because of these excellent public schools and never even considered that their curriculum and libraries could be restricted in a way that prevents them from learning the fundamental building blocks of our true american history including their own black heritage i never even considered that their curriculum and libraries could be restricted in a way that prevents them from learning about entire faith communities and other identity groups and never even considered that their curriculum in libraries could be restricted in a way that prevents them from being informed kind-hearted and modern citizens when they graduate and leave our williamson county bubble please support our local experts value them and vote to approve
016the review committee's recommendation and keep historically accurate and meaningful discussions in our classrooms time thank you our next speaker is kim kimberly calcott i'm at a loss at this point to understand how it took the reconsideration committee seven months of review and hours of parent testimony and they still couldn't grasp our concerns these committee members looked at the curriculum as a peer review study failing to understand its impact on our children you had teachers before we even began with whitman wisdom in 2020 telling the administration they wouldn't teach certain portions of this curriculum as parents concerns came in via email and there were many despite what the administration told you teachers echoed the sentiments of parents concerns one book was removed in 2020 another book is being removed according to the recommendation multiple books are
017recommended to have counselors on standby or classes for parents to understand how to deal with the emotional fallout pages are recommended to be skipped and you are removing books from children's hands for an ela curriculum i'm asking you to do what the reconsider reconsideration committee wouldn't do make a motion to utilize the alternative so that all of our children can learn together and the integrity of the curriculum can be restored as much as possible for our children so that i as a parent am not put between a rock and a hard place deciding between an inappropriate curriculum and the well-being of my child with an iep who needs to learn with his peers michael miller we could please go ahead sir thank you thank you to the superintendent the teachers and staff of wcs we
018appreciate you out of over 20 000 elementary students only four appeals were received from wcs parents in the 15 days after the review committee released their findings the policy was clear all parents had the same ample time to respond effectively none of us took issue with the committee's recommendations it's time to listen to your constituents stop the delays and vote to accept the unbiased recommendations the discomfort of few does not warrant taking away the education of my children books welcome the reader into a new perspective and afford precious moments of real connection between parents and their children just as we celebrate children's joys with smiles we must welcome their more painful emotions in response to the books they read be it discussed for a cruel historical event or empathy for a character enduring a hardship
019parents need to validate and celebrate these emotions and provide context and guidance to help process them life doesn't have an opt out clause rise to the challenge and guide your children as they experience these beautiful range of complex emotions time thank you next speaker sharon kidder kurt cosack and bonnie young hello i'm shannon kidder i have four kids and i do not represent an organization and none of my complaints have to do with crt the recommendations from the committee were a great start and i appreciate them but it's not nearly enough i'm rightfully concerned about the amount of death violence and graphic material my youngest children will be forced to take in thanks to witten wisdom williamson county schools clearly agrees with many of the issues brought forward so i can't be too far off
020base what goes in will come out and i don't believe the extent of negative material recommended to remain is healthy for our children for our youngest children i'm thankful for the opt out but that has left my fifth grader without a teacher and classmates in ela for six weeks for just one book this year if i were to let her miss more than five days you'll be sending me a letter to meet with a truancy officer we've always tailored education to the ages of our children why are we stopping now i challenge you to be transparent and take every excerpt that is left send it to every parent and let ask them if they object most parents don't know what their children are reading or learning about and then you'll get an unbiased data of
021how many parents actually are concerned about this thank you i apologize for the misrepresentation of your name kurt kosak please hello kurt kosak i live in brent haven i'm not here to talk about books but i love to read i am introducing myself to the board because i'm going to be running for house district 61 house seat district 61. i've been a high school teacher for 17 years in summit high school for the last four years sarah lamb knows me very well i've lived in brentwood since 1998 my sons went to brentwood schools they're doing great now thank you williamson county for an excellent education i've left miss glenn several of my flyers my platform is on there three six and seven are my educational planks my campaign slogan is defending our constitution so if
022you hear that slogan between now and november that's me thank you our next speaker is bonnie young hi i'm bonnie young i'm a southern baptist preacher's daughter i have a master's degree in education and i have two children in these schools point zero two percent of elementary kids parents shouldn't be allowed to censor basic biology and history books including an age-appropriate book about sea horses that my daughter was excited to read about all because of how they feel the way science and history should be rather than how they actually are what happened to facts not feelings if you allow these parents to overrule the majority of parents like me who trust the highly educated and trained professionals that have given us some of the best schools in the state then you will create a slippery
023slope for us all to lose our freedoms i mean what's next flat earth no pledge of allegiance i leave you with these verses proverbs 18 2-3 proverbs 29 8-9 and ecclesiastes 10 1-3 thank you so much good night our next speakers are sarah lapping i'm in ojawang and ashley webster can we'll get we'll get our tech folks to assist please thank you hi good evening sarah lapping thank you all so much when my daughter my eldest who graduated from franklin high school in 2020 came home and mentioned to me that she had come across mein kampf in her school library i as a jew who grew up with half the grandparents in my community you know having tattooed numbers on their arms could have you know just lost it but actually i felt more thankful
024than dismayed because i told her and i responded to her i told her the same thing that i had said when she mentioned how much she was bothered by damaging messaging and advertising i told her this is free speech and this is both the challenge and the privilege of living in a society that values it horace mann who was the father you know generally recognized as the father of american education and really instituted public education in our country is time time yes our next speaker is amman oshawong i don't i'm on okay ashley webster please when parents send their children to a public school they're entrusting their children's formal school-based education to a publicly funded system that serves the general public not a vocal minority williamson county's public schools are among the very best in
025the state that's why my family moved from east nashville to franklin in 1998. our kids attended the schools my husband attended these schools they were excellent then and they're excellent now there are 48 000 students in wcs but a vocal minority of 37 people is underestimating the children who grew up grow up in one of the most privileged counties in the state not only are these children capable of reading and understanding the books in wit and wisdom there also already have real world knowledge of concepts like unequal and unfair last year these 37 complainants asked for a review of the curriculum they were granted a thorough review by a committee of professionals and now nine of them are back here today with the same complaints because they don't like the answer they got i would
026ask you to use this line from a popular parenting program called one two three magic you simply say ask our next speaker is i'm sorry was someone speaking out pardon me oh okay okay thanks i couldn't hear all right next is again please silence your cell phones they're they're disruptive as we're trying to manage both the speakers and the audience amy welty is our next speaker and let me call up the next three speakers amy welty benton mcdonough and lori wagner thank you my name is amy welty and i'm the parent of a wcs student i'm here to register my support for our teachers and curriculum i'm here to ask the board to invest more in public schools not less recruit and retain and reward good teachers before it's too late do not sabotage our
027public schools in favor of buildings vouchers or charter schools please put teachers and students first the vast majority of parents are tired of this ridiculousness that we're hearing tonight tired of the amount of time already spent on a small but vocal minority for context under 50 parents filed the initial challenge to the curriculum in a school district with over 40 000 students most of us are within the 40 yard lines and are tired of the extremism in every facet of life but especially our schools our schools are an integral part of our community and the foundation of our children's educational future we want them to learn more not less we value the teachers and staff and administrators who devote themselves every day to the education and safety of our children we appreciate you serving on
028the board and trust that you'll make decisions that protect and enrich our school district and represent the majority of parents not the minority our next speaker is benton mcdonough thank you members of the board my name is benton mcdonough and i'm the father of a first grader at kenrose elementary someone recently suggested that we update the cliche to say those who can teach while those who can't meddle this seems like an appropriate theme for tonight's discussion on wit and wisdom it was just three months ago that this very board was here discussing the rescinding of the mass mandate causing one board member to say that fewer than 100 infections was statistically zero yet here we are tonight discussing and devoting many resources and time to discussing the concerns of four elementary age parents these these
029complaints have all been addressed through the process and policy adopted by the board as is evident the report that was provided to the board members tonight our families teachers staff and students all deserve better and please approve the committee's recommendation tonight thank you very much our next speakers are lori okay go ahead and i'll call up the next group thank you thank you my name is lori wagner regarding the reconsideration committee the concerns were not regarding just books but also the teacher's manual telling them how to teach and at what age these materials are taught the committee's review of the concerning material took seven months to complete and resulted in not much ironically one of the committee's evaluation criteria was does it support the curriculum the curriculum we have concerns with the curriculum that failed
030tennessee standards twice but was still implemented you're asking the wrong questions solving the wrong problems we need leaders who will listen to their constituents and will lead by example parents are upset and frustrated we don't feel like our concerns matter maybe because there was no urgency in the reconsideration project process and kids are three-fourths of the way through the year maybe because parents come here to express frustration and are buried under procedure and then told to go to teachers and principals who in turn tell us they can't do anything without school board permission what i've learned so far through my personal experience is that there is an agenda an agenda that you all don't want disrupted please look at the full picture and vote to reject the results thank you our next speakers are jeff
031bork hunter brown and jennifer haley mr bart i'm sorry there you go okay thanks microphone's on yeah i'm jeff burke i'm the father of three kids in our county and i'm coming because like you i'm concerned i'm a little off topic tonight but i'm concerned about our teachers thank you so much last month for passing the raise for our teachers thank you again on thursday night for continuing to consider raising pay for staff and for teachers but what i also want to ask tonight is that we are concerned about the protection of our teachers as well retaining them financially you know with me with those means is one thing the other side of it is as i saw on your slide from thursday night they're feeling scrutinized by our community they're not feeling community support
032and so whatever you can do in the future in any decisions that you make i ask that you consider the impact that it will make on our teachers first they're exhausted i can't imagine if i'm exhausted after two years of this pandemic i can't imagine what the teaching i'm feeling so thank you hunter brown my name is hunter brown i speak as an individual and a taxpayer father of four boys and four grandchildren i have a document that i'd like to submit my comments in poll 50 seconds isn't going to cut it but i think one of the problems that 4403 is specifically designed to address individual issues and it never contemplated a large-scale revolt such as we've seen so i think there's a policy issue there i also think that there was a fundamental
033flaw of method despite the the policy is designed to be particularized and it is it is at a granular level but that doesn't work when the problem is generalized and i guess despite hours of parent testimony the committee for the 403 committee failed to understand the larger context of the curriculum the curriculum rife with negative emotion dark imagery heavy subject matter age inappropriate topics and in order to understand these objections mr brown do you have something to leave with us okay you can leave it at this table here thank you i'm sorry mr mr tim right there our next speaker is jennifer halle haley i don't believe she's here we'll move to the next three speakers jen baker marissa diplock and robin steenman hi sorry i am the short one okay so it may have
034been a while but i would guess all of you have done a dot-to-dot picture that's what this review of white and wisdom was each of the complaints from the parents that had a child that were upset by these books and the accompanying lesson is a dot as parents and teachers expressed concern to their principals admin and school board members each of those is a dot other concerned citizens have reviewed the books and lesson plans come to similar conclusions and reached out some of them were brave enough to step forward and present their concerns to the 4403 committee more dots the fact that this curriculum was never approved by the state was only available because of a waiver is a dot or at least it should have been the recommendation of the committee to keep problematic
035books in use but to put a counselor on standby is a dot each of these dots were connected to reveal a picture of a curriculum that is not fit to be used in williamson county schools yet it remains in a time that we know that more students than ever are struggling mentally how does it make sense to utilize books and talking points that would cause them further distress so much so that counselors are required in order to teach these time marissa diplock hi marissa i'm sorry let me restart hi my name is marisa i'm what some people presume to be a small minority but i'm also a small minority that spent hours upon hours reading 500 page plus teachers manuals not just books teachers manuals and i can tell you that it's not all what
036you think it is and i'm i'm presuming that you'll have read my appeal already so i'll just highlight a couple of things i want to stress that to every god-fearing person listening to this that there are dire consequences for turning a blind eye to this curriculum this module that refers to sorry messenger in the third grade is all about how people learn about space that's what it's supposed to be about the author's main purpose of the book that is used in this curriculum is how to question tradition it's not about space the teacher's manual quotes it you have children going in and hearing day after day about how the catholic church was bad to galileo now i admit you cannot tell galileo's story without time our next speaker is robin steenman robin steeman not here
037mr glenn did she check in okay thank you our next three speakers i'll call everybody up we've got four more speakers fred wilhelm natalie showalter patricia lucente and emily grimsley hi i'm fred wilhelm and i have two children attending williamson county schools i'm here speaking to you tonight in support of our school administrators and teachers and of their current curriculum my boys have taken wit wisdom and are thriving we're happy with the schools most of us moved here for the schools and we trust the professionals at the school with developing programs and curriculum the only agenda that i can see of the school is to help our kids achieve that's their expertise and the incredible success our students have tell us that they know what they're doing so please let them do it learning may
038make you uncomfortable sometimes that's true at any age in fact i would say if you're not a little uncomfortable and your thinking is not being challenged you're probably not learning i can think of no situation where hiding truth denying facts or limiting access to books and educational materials benefit our student body or our society thank you our next speaker is natalie showalter i'm natalie showalter i want to recognize the time that has been given by this board the school system and the parts and the parents in the community to a wisdom curriculum this reconciliation process seemed problematic from the start the parents were not informed as to why the parent had expressed concerns about the curriculum was not placed on the reconciliation committee there had been an expressed concern about having controversial material being taught
039in the 21-22 school year yet it took the committee from the end of june until january to review the concerns with that schedule there was not time to change out aspects of the third module which is the most controversial module with that drawn out review it did not give adequate time adequate time to conduct an open appeal process in the work session it was implied that the appeal applicants had an opportunity to discuss their appeal to the reconciliation committee i know at least three of the nine appeal applicants were not asked to discuss their concerns there was not a rationale given to us why the reconciliation members felt that the context was appropriate that included cognitive development appropriateness terminology concerns text emphasize etc we the parents are left again feeling as if we time patricia
040lucente hi trisha lucente williamson county parent the witten wisdom curriculum is a failed curriculum lacking key fundamentals to teach reading and writing and is riddled with age-inappropriate material history should be taught in a non-biased way at an age-appropriate manner and in history not in english language arts books don't need to be banned but under no circumstances should a school counselor need to be notified before a book is read in a classroom five six seven-year-olds don't need to feel uncomfortable this board budgeted almost eight hundred thousand dollars for mental health intervention and i'd like to ask you if you're actually planning to solve a problem or with those funds or if you're simply mitigating a problem that you participated in creating also there is a code of ethics and we are watching you as you run
041for reelection or watching your social media please try to stick to that thank you our final speaker for this evening is emily grimsley good evening my name is emily grimsley and i have two kids in the williamson county school district in light of the recent efforts across our state to restrict access to information and stories i wanted to share my experience with my second great son his class recently studied the civil rights movement he was so engaged with the stories of the heroes of the movement dr martin luther king jr rosa parks and ruby bridges among others he asked questions full of compassion that led to important conversations at one point i mentioned to him that there were people who thought kids his age shouldn't study these things he stopped looked at me and responded
042what why it happened simple as that he's right kids deserve to know what happened so they can continue to make sense of the world as they work to make it a better place i'm not trying to imply that these conversations are easy but since when has easy been the goal of education easy doesn't ask anyone to learn or grow we need to continue to share these difficult stories and conversations so we can learn about each other and our world the world we all share our kids deserve it they can handle it thank you ma'am may i ask you to approach the podium may i talk to you for a second if it was robin robin needs to be here that was actually our next to last speaker we have one additional speaker and one minute
043please hi thank you i want to say i appreciate all the concerns that are being ma'am ma'am excuse me please state your name and then we'll start ground and then with moms for liberty i want to say i appreciate all the concerns being expressed by the community clearly we all want the same thing which is to encourage learning for our kids in the work session the board was surprised to hear that teachers are not feeling appreciated by the community a board member asked if moving removing written wisdom would help deescalate the atmosphere dr golden said no there is tension throughout the nation and it has nothing to do with the actions taken with williamson county school system well i acknowledge that the pair of people are frustrated there's a lack of transparency no dialogue and
044it's a very authoritative approach that's being taken concerning different people's differing opinions the board meeting in and of itself set up it was is set up to prevent dialogue i have gone to other meetings where there's an exchange of information where the public learns the constraints that face time folks that concludes our public comment portion of this meeting and we're going to take a five-minute break here so that people who want to leave can leave at this time so we will reconvene at 7 26. wait i we're ready to restart our meeting if everyone would please be seated board members our next item on the agenda is the mo the approval of tonight's agenda motion to approve by mr welch is there a second by mr mitchell any discussion i see no one wanting to
045proceed with discussion board members please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members the next item is approval of the consent agenda is there a motion to approve mr mitchell makes the motion is there a second mr wimberley seconds is there any discussion if there's no discussion board members please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members with that vote you have approved the following items you've approved the january 18 2022 school board meeting minutes you've approved the acceptable use and internet safety agreement for students and staff and that is an annual agenda item and you've also approved the recommendation for field trip requests field trip fee requests thank you our next item is communications to the board and we'll open that with
046the superintendent's report mr golden thank you madam chair and thank you board members for your work and as as we often say just every time we go through this process it just reminds us reminds us of how important it is for the work you're doing and the work that individuals do in running for public office in our country as a quick reminder of what we talked about at the board work session a month ago we talked about library books and we had some presentations from our from our library professionals about the process they go through and we committed to you at that time that we would talk about human resources at this past work session and we did that and vicki hall our assistant superintendent for human resources gave you a very detailed description of
047a lot of data related to our staffing both with teachers and with support staff we talked about staffing we talked about payroll and we of course mentioned the county government decision through the county commission to approve a mid-year pay raise which in my experience a little over 15 years here with wcs is unprecedented and i want to thank you all for the work you did last month with that and especially for the county commission this month in approving that and i want to specifically mention that county government approved the pay increase mid-year for our staff plus a pay increase for county government staff recognizing the substantial change in market conditions in our community in the middle of the year and what made that possible on the fiscal side was an increase in sales tax revenues
048in the first part of the year beyond what we had budgeted back during our budget time last year so this was a community effort it was not simply the county commission it was our entire community supporting our community that made this possible to give this pay raise in the middle of the of the budget year i do strongly encourage you to go back and look at that powerpoint presentation from ms hall we have it posted on our website with our work session meeting from from this from this month there's a lot of detail that we could not really delve into the granular elements of it during during the work session even though we had a discussion that was that was if i'm not mistaken well over an hour long so i really do think there's
049a lot of wisdom in double checking that we are working on some aspects of that presentation to prepare for next month when we will be presenting our budget to you as part of that we showed you a draft pay chart for our teachers that we are discussing with the williams county education association as part of our state process for for for proposing pay issues to you and all our working condition discussions with with our wcea leadership so be prepared for that as it comes next month we also discussed at our work session the possibility of surveying our teachers to get an idea of some some data points on some of the discussion we had in the latter portion of that human resources presentation to find out how we can help our teachers as a community
050grow it's been a tough couple of years it's been a national issue it's been a state issue it has been a local issue it covers the gamut and we hear from our teachers through the williamson county education association through individual teachers but based on the discussion that you all had we are working on finding a way to get good objective information and data from our individual teachers and staff members so that we can grow and how we serve them as they are serving our students and we are proud of the work we do oh wow we are proud of the work we do one particular data point that we're excited about is that we have 71 national merit scholars this year we mentioned a couple of months ago that we had 72 national merit semi-finalists
05171 finalists now and statistically speaking across the nation about 90 or so of the semi-finalists become finalists and so we're so proud of our folks one key point i want to mention is if we've done our review correctly we exceed our highest number ever of national merit finalists by 19 this year this is madam chair i know we don't allow applause but but thank you for that i have to thank you for that the national merit process is a national competition there are limited numbers every year of students who receive the award it is an indicator of how we compete nationally i am convinced based on the data we've seen that one of the reasons we had such a significant jump this year is because we found ways to stay in school even through this
052process and i want to thank our leadership staff principals teachers parents everyone for finding ways to fight through those months that we've put behind us hopefully as we remain cautiously optimistic on on where we are so proud of those students that's money in the pocket for parents because that means scholarships for them for their for their children as they move on to the next level within our within our goals our board goals related to our strategic plan we focus on the gamut serve students with disabilities find opportunities for students to to engage in in a lot of career college and career technical programs ap classes we really do work hard on finding ways to provide a supportive environment to challenge all our students and that vision statement is something we live by so thank you
053for that i mentioned the 71 national merit finalist because one of our traditions during the superintendent's report is that we do share those national awards for our students and faculty and staff state championships etc for our students and faculty and staff and carol birdsong is waiting to share a large number of celebrations for this month carol mr golden you set that up just perfectly thank you at first i thought you were stealing my thunder but i think it's just a nice lead-in so it is the fourth consecutive year that we have had more than 50 national merit finalists this year we have 71 a district record and as you like to say mr golden it starts at the elementary grades and those teachers build that foundation and it we just keep building on it so
054this is really a celebration for all of the teachers and of all of these students and these students so let's get started we are going to start at brentwood high school max alino frankie bailey luke biddle sally cho edith corey seth creech will dawson jack hudson andrew lee campbell mclinden marin mckean zoe oldham russell overton alice chew haranesh sathu siena shepard noah true alexander wilson reena shoe eric youngberg and jason jung all from brentwood high school now let's go to centennial high school abeena dixit preston ketzelmanny jackson peppercorn rayan syed and samuel zachary and franklin high school lots of names here tonight james annessy lenning qui emma edwards grace fagan anthony mendoza lisa messer william poff ellen sanders kathleen smalley emily taylor russell warzetsky abby webb looks familiar to me and james williams from franklin
055high school and independence high school hunter basila sierra beck jacob daymood alexandria hasmere sarratsev namani laini wanarski ella wyckoff from independence nolensville alex campbell tyler hummel and joseph ribble page high school charit ahmed jack peltier cooper spain and monica vazquez ravenwood high school antagonic kaylee bay ella bullock papa daniel chin and jackson dab oh and reagan anderly amanda wong ryan jordan matthew lu harishan marpali ria mitra melin muthea also from ravenwood zingdao naredis jackson stone and brooks taylor from renaissance high school mason adams and chase speatherling and from summit high school george aikid sanchez now we're going to move to some perfect acts we have six of those students who earned a perfect act composite or better from brentwood high school reagan nelson from page high school cynthia lange from ravenwood high school archdissai from
056ravenwood high school andrew kim from ravenwood high school sophie mcatee and from ravenwood high school shiv majetta now folks we are going to move to some theater wards and these are fairly new for the actors but we are so excited to share with you that the tennessee theater education educators association has named many of our students to the to all-state musical theater matter of fact we have 21 students named to these theater allstate these are from centennial high school nasim akbari merritt heyman bella carissa and abigail levy celeste phillips kyle berenkamp and nicole barron camp bailey mann is their theater instructor over at franklin high school all state musical theater owen minor and logan plowman torrey capps is their theater director becky williams is the theater director at independence high school and this is emily
057banks ebank sorry natalie gleaton emily kitsch abram knott zoe phillips and tristan valdez nolansville high school is not left out laura lindsay is their theater director and for all state musical theater jamie estes emerson hutcherson calista tyre elect b negis whitney riemer and isabel wickham now we're moving to allstate acting from centennial high school valencia acosta nissan akbari verona collins bella carlson eva mutzerball celeste phillips and nicole varenkamp baileyman again their director also in all-state acting ella holt from frank whoops ella holt from franklin and emily ebanks from independence and also in allstate acting from nolensville high school isabella wickham and mckenna wiebeck laura lindsay again their instructor their drama director all state acting from summit high school under the guidance of the fabulous annie rice sarah bencher crystal caroso emily dalberry rebecca dunlap logan
058masik josefina northcutt kendall bower and emily standridge and in the tech side of things there's an all-state design and tech category from centennial high school g del conte savannah costa botta abigail mcclure hunter hennessey and zach rackley and from nolensville high school this is alice beatty that's a lot of students to honor tonight but congratulations to all of our students their teachers and their directors madam chair if i may i want to it's my final comment thank those who came and spoke at public comment i know not everyone stayed but i do appreciate the what they shared and the excellent way that they presented tonight thank you mr golden with that we'll move on to the board chair report and my report will be brief board members as i mentioned on thursday night the tennessee
059school board association election guides are they were supposed to be available on friday but they're actually going to be available this week so i'll make sure that those get to you if we don't get a mass mailing about that and i also want to commend those who participate in public comment and not just for their participation speaking but for their participation listening as well one other thing that i always try to mention this year is just if you are a tier three volunteer in the system there is a place for you to volunteer and board members again issue the challenge to you to get out and volunteer and serve some lunch or do something else at our at our schools and also the same issue the same challenge to the community there's some great opportunities
060out there to be in our schools and to really get to talk to our teachers and students so thank you with that we'll move on to new business and the first group of items pertain to the 2021-22 school board budget the first item on the agenda tonight is the approval of the education capital projects fund amendment 2.22 inner category addition to wilkes lane mr golden thank you madam chair this project for the new elementary school on wilkes lane in spring hill went to bid and the 7.2 million represents the amount of the bid that was over the current funding especially based on market changes you all may recall that we have actually built this model nine ten times or so and have found a way to to do it inexpensively significant changes in the in
061the market right now this is coming if you all approve this from our contingency fund for rural projects plus interest earnings do recommend your approval do we have a motion to approve ms durham makes the motion to approve is there a second mr mitchell seconds board members is there any discussion mr galbraith thank you madam chair mr former i neglected to ask the other night but but i thought we i thought you'd given us a total that said that we were we had pretty much depleted our contingency funds and it might be the difference between rural and non but can you tell us how much is left in in here i see there's obviously some interest earnings in there as well so your microphone is on miss farmer yes sir hold on looks like we
062cancelled each other out hold on let's try again go ahead can can you use one of your neighbors yes thank you miss hall let me turn yours on a moment please there she is okay here we go you are correct the difference was between rural in general and so what we have left with this amendment would be a hundred and seventy two thousand four hundred and twenty six dollars in general and then two hundred and twelve thousand five hundred and fifty three dollars in the rule so we're pretty much out now so and so if we have any more overages we're going to have to go back to the county commission so we've depleted all of our all of our contingency funds that's correct great that's basically correct and if i may mr galbraith since
063you mentioned that just to just as a reminder the differentiation between rural and general because we have a k-8 school district in the in the county franklin special school district our requirements are to differentiate between rural which is k-8 for us and general which is 9 through 12. mr mitchell thank you madam chair can can we again i guess mr golden i think you mentioned it a minute ago we built this particular floor plan 11 times is that correct i'm trying to remember the exact number so we have actually this it will be our ninth according to mr samuel's fingers okay so eight times previously maybe mr samuels can speak to the difference in costs between this one and the previous most recent but thank you for that mr samuels and by creekside is actually
064the most recent so mr samuels you're on thank you when we first built this school back in or this floor plan back in 2006 2007 for longview elementary and nolensville elementary the new knowledgeville it was 14.6 and 16.8 million back then so those numbers have kind of gone up and down a little bit starting with jordan we got over the 20 million number almost 24 million creekside was 23 million and so the prices continued to grow we've cut all the fat out of this design necessarily the design works very well what we're dealing with here is just an increase of of market prices so thank you actually i'm i'm counting seven now not eight i'm sorry one two three four five six seven that we've done already this is number eight i don't see any
065further questions board members please cast your votes mr brown oh mr sorry okay mr brown so just to be clear what is this josh hold on just a second don't let me reset it yeah let me yeah there you go okay thank you to be clear what is what does this amendment up to the 7.2 bring us to total for the for this school mr samuels if i may i've referred to him but in the in the in the board packet the bid came in at 30 million 800 000 so if you would mr samuels yeah with the other i won't call them administrative costs the cost that we need to outfit the school to manage the construction project and all that adds another 3.3 million so we're at 34 million dollars about all total
066and that includes technology furniture fixtures library etc professional services we need to overlook the project and all in a in a very small contingency so we're roughly 40 more than creekside in two to three years time now the number i gave you for creekside was the construction cost so there's other costs associated with that okay so the apples to apples would be more like a 30 increase right just i'm gonna i'm gonna speak to to that just with making sure i'm double checking with mr samers on this so the apples tables would be from about 24 million to 30.8 is that is that correct mr samuels creekside construction cost was 22.9 okay 23. and so 30.8 is the construction cost for here i think you're about right 30 35 okay thank you and creekside was
067a bid in 2018 so board members i see no other hands raised if not please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members our next item is the approval of the general purpose school fund amendment 2.22 athletic donation in the amount of eighty thousand dollars mr golden thank you madam chair as mr tonicliff one of our county commissioners sitting here this is one of the rare revenue items that we have on our agenda the tennessee titans are donating eighty thousand dollars to fund two years worth of our flag football pilot program those of you who watch the titans playoff game may have noticed i think in the first quarter a reference to the to the to the girls flag football program that is a community effort from the titans
068joint with us we're going to we're going to pilot it and we will have girls flag football at all of our comprehensive high schools this spring and this will fully fund it do recommend approval board members do we have a motion to approve mr makes a motion mr cash makes the second mr i believe we have a board member requesting discussion mr wimberly yes mr golden could you give us a little bit more context about how this happened and have they done something similar in other areas there's got to be a story behind this not many people just up and write us 80 000 checks so there there are some examples across the country with girls flag football and it is in certain communities supported by the local nfl team i'm going to actually in
069just a second asked dr webb to share some of the specific details of the conversation there was an interesting combination of our eic program where our students in the entrepreneurship classes spent some time on a marketing plan for a particular game day at one of the titans games last season that just evolved into some conversations about how the titans could get girls more involved in the work that they do it's a really exciting i gotta use the word neat program that we think is growing i'm also gonna say before i refer to dr webb that we're gonna make sure that this complements the programs that we have for all our students and does not conflict with the programs the more opportunities our students have the better one peculiarity to this is this is a pilot
070the tws state of double a is involved they're participating in the pilot with us so that they can analyze the potential value of extending this statewide dr webb thank you mr golden and thank you for the question mr wimberley because there's absolutely a great story involved in this the original yes you knew it you called it the initial conversation did begin at the eic where some out of the box thinking was taking place between the tennessee titans as they mentored our entrepreneurship students as they partnered with our jacksonville game with the titans and actually helped produce and did a lot of marketing through those conversations it did come up in regards to the flag football initiative taking place throughout the nfl there are some pockets of the initiative partnered with nfl programs across the country
071but also there are states like georgia who have very competitive high school girls flag football programs in place there's college scholarships now available to students who are playing flag football at the college level the partnership with the titans has been pretty eye-popping for our young ladies who are participating the tennessee titans held a clinic this week they brought in their nfl contact who has been teaching women around the country the sport of flag football i hear from our football coaches who are participating that they also learned a thing or two from this young young lady who is teaching about football and flag football specifically and about the rules and the evolution of the game for our young ladies the initial idea was pushed out to our young ladies out in the buildings to say hey
072who has interest in this and we were blown away at the interest from our young ladies and to participate our teams currently as they are starting practice and formulating their workouts they're seeing numbers as high as 80 85 women and in our and our schools participating in this inaugural year the tennessee titans have been so impressed with their partnership with williamson county they have made the two-year commitment before expanding to other areas of the state but certainly t to bless double a is looking to expand this if the pilot is successful and interest remains throughout the entire state of tennessee perhaps but waiting to see what the pilot produces they are very cautious ensuring that it doesn't interfere with their other spring t blessed blade sports the practice schedule the game schedules have been very
073carefully crafted so our young ladies don't have to choose necessarily during this pilot season of which sport they play we are wanting them to kind of dabble in it to see is this something for them before they make a long-term commitment or walk away from a sport that they've been playing perhaps for many years we believe as the nfl that there are many women and in our community and across the state who are have a strong interest in the game of football but haven't had the opportunity to play so this is a great way to segue into it so kudos to the titans and cheetah blessed to play and we're super proud to be the district that is this hosting thank you and this sounds great to me and thank you to all who helped
074make this story possible this is exciting good stuff mr mitchell thank you madam chair i'm excited and very much in support of accepting this revenue for to do this two-year pilot my question is around i guess this would be considered a club sport then or a club activity in in this case no it's a wcs run pilot we'll actually employ the coaches and use this fund from the titans to pay their salary it is a wcs run program it's not run by a private organization like the club sports and not to be the negative person to throw a question here how does that how does that affect and i don't think it's title ix but i know that there's a particular federal requirement that athletic opportunities are equal across the board how does that affect
075our meeting that i can speak generally to it based on my understanding from conversations with with with some of the regional federal folks you hit title ix that my understanding is that's accurate traditionally football has been an exception to a lot of those analyses because they're just i just assumed volleyball was the equalizer at the football level but maybe not so so short answer is no it is it is not the equalizer it is one it is one more opportunity for the for the women okay can we get a can we get a readout on that then whether how that plays how adding this additional sport into our portfolio then for for for the ladies plays into our title nine maybe i'll provide something thank you i know yep oh yeah mr salsberg's microphone was
076working just want to make sure that could be hurt board members i don't see any additional questions with that please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you our next item is approval of the educational capital projects fund an intent to fund 3.22 elementary school east cox lane mr goldman thank you madam chair our proposed elementary school on cox lane is running on a parallel but slightly behind schedule compared to wilkes lane based on that and the projection we have for the bid coming in we do intend to ask of you and the county commission for this additional 15 million to make sure that we do have funding for that and if i'm not mistaken mr samuels the bid is scheduled to open within the month next thursday next thursday next
077week so we do recommend approval for this is there a motion to approve mr cash makes the motion is there a second mr welch seconds board members any discussion i'm checking both screens carefully and i don't see any requests for discussion so board members please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes zero no thank you board members our next item is the approval of the 2022-23 family tuition rate which is also an annual agenda item mr golden thank you madam chair every year we bring a proposal to you for the family tuition rate based on the per pupil expenditures related to what the state provides us just as a reminder we do not open our school system to those students who are live out of county however there are folks who move in who
078have a contract whereas a parent they're going to be moving in during the school year for continuity of instruction we do allow those families to have their students enroll this tuition rate is based on that for that window of time where they might be in the process of moving in and so we do recommend approval on that final thing i want to mention is the last paragraph of that you do under board policy allow children of employees full-time employees to attend williams county schools for a reduced rate that is generally aimed at a portion of the county portion of funding that particular fund has been flat for the last three years during i know during my tenure as superintendent we do not recommend an increase in that so do recommend approval on the family tuition
079rate for this coming year is there a motion to approve mr welch makes the motion to approve mr and was that a second oh i wasn't i thought you had your hand up okay so you do want a second okay great we do have discussion mr galbraith thank you madam chair jason have have you have you brought this up with the with the mayor recently yes and you're talking specifically about the tuition the tuition rate for employees outside of the county employees for out of the county employees yes over the years the members of of the county governing body including the mayor have made it clear that they do expect those who are out of county to pay something towards towards tuition if again if they don't live in the county and that that standard
080continues so i'm just trying to trying to think out of the box as we as we're trying to attract teachers and didn't even think about this on on thursday and really thinking out loud but i'm fine with i'm fine with the proven this because we can always come back and if we're going to reduce it we can we can reduce it later but i would really like to understand if there was a way to to provide this as a to provide a loan that's forgivable if and when the the teacher if they if they stay here for x number of years like on the on if we if we're trying to get our teachers past those first two or three years when they're when they're leaving and they're they're their new teacher or they've or
081they've got five years of service with us i'm just throwing out a number just wondering if that if that would be something that we might be able to consider i like the brainstorming of that we'll make sure that we have that discussion and also talk to the wcea leadership we have regular conversations that really have been in earnest the last few weeks with the wca about opportunities for that so we'll we'll add that brainstorming to our discussion thank you mr mitchell thank you madam chair and for the record i like jay's idea i would i would support something of that nature and i would also like us to seriously consider i this got past me thursday night as well i would have made a suggestion that we lower this maybe to 3500 or something i
082am curious as to what is the standard operating procedure for subsequent years that it's calling out there and finally maybe if you when you talk to the county mayor about this if you know throw the idea if we've got the appears that we've got the capacity to support it based upon our open zoning numbers that maybe we can this could be a benefit that would be open to all alta county out of county county employees so it would be because i know the county is also struggling with hiring as well and so maybe you could you could throw that idea as a as a county-wide benefit for for county employees thank you for that a couple of pieces of information one the rate goes down based on number of years that a student is in
083in school down to 750 dollars at i think year nine maybe i'm getting a nod from miss farmer that i've hit that correctly also this is a family tuition rate it's not a per student rate so we for our employees we it's the again it doesn't matter how many how many children you have and we'll make sure we have that conversation the existing board policy finally does allow for county employees who have a school assignment so or particularly sros do have that benefit right now so we'll have that discussion about whether there's some value in going beyond that thank you mr mitchell mr brown thank you madam chair i'm looking at the board packet i see the breakdown of some of these numbers but i don't see the number of employees this applies to currently
084do you have that number andy i'm going to look over i don't have that number handy myself i don't know if miss farmer or mr samuels has that number it may be a rough estimate it is in this it is in the high double figures or low triple figures if i'm not mistaken okay so if it went off 100 for example then obviously we can do the math that producing per elliot's common if we took that down to 3 500 we're only talking about a very small number in terms of the impact of the budget and this is something if we were going to make an amendment to this or try to make this change and lower it we could do that at next next month's budget discussion is that correct or not yes sir
085mr golden can you clarify again who this applies who this applies to the the there's there's two two pieces of this you all are voting on the rate the out of county tuition rate standard rate and that would apply to those who who are in the process of moving in in addition to that for additional information we have that reduced rate that we've we've established administratively over the years lower than that annual rate and that is the rate that we've had those conversations with some of the county commissioners about over the years so just to further clarify because this can be confusing what we're voting on tonight is the family tuition rate that is correct the 7965 family tuition rate okay and that applies to that applies to anyone who does not have a child
086in school and we're in is working for us i probably said that poorly that applies to anyone who might be moving into the county and needs that window of time to move in thank you for that clarification mr cash thank you madam chair i just have a quick question we're counting employees correct not technically thank you for that question we are our employees are employees of williamson county schools which is officially a different entity from the county government right but if if we were to say we're going to cut the tuition rate don't some of the county employees you know that work for the county now fall under the same same guidance i mean if you give one something you're going to have to look at giving others under our existing board policy the the
087county county in county government employees who work in our facilities do have this option to bring their children to the school where they work or that feeder pattern right but it is quite limited compared to county government employees as a whole okay i'll just check them thank you i don't see any further questions board members please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you the next item is another annual agenda item it's the approval of school fees mr golden thank you madam chair annually we have a proposed school fees which actually under tennessee law require your vote to approve and i want to make sure that i specify what i specified at the work session that any curricular fees are called fees in tennessee but they are not strictly speaking fees
088as we traditionally think of fees they are request for funds so if somebody has a twenty 25 fee for a blank science class it is a request for funds not a requirement i do believe we had this discussion that over years i think we've been doing a relatively good job compared to past years of communicating that this is voluntary this is a revenue item that we do budget i'm estimating miss farmer usually the total revenue is somewhere in the close to a million dollars district wide which comes close to being one penny on the tax rate and so we do recommend your approval for this with a caveat that this is a request for for funds final final piece of that extracurricular activities that are not related to instructional can we can require those as
089a condition of participation what we try to do generally speaking is find a way to cover that for with fundraisers for those who who just aren't able to pay that is there a motion to approve mr wimberley makes the motion mr welch seconds any discussion board members mr galbraith thank you madam chair i would just i would like to ask and voice my objection on an annual basis to to these to these funds being collected but i guess i would i would just like to ask if we if we have the opportunity to get any additional funds from the from the state if you would consider remove removing this light item or at least removing these fees as a revenue source and because we hopefully will be getting that sometime soon and in addition to
090to more than likely paying teachers more as well as probably providing some additional positions that we that we don't have available i would really i would really like to let the parents keep this money and more than likely they are going to going to going to put it back into to the ptos and it will it will still be able to to benefit our schools so i think there's a there's an opportunity for a win-win here if we if we're able to to be so lucky as to get some additional funding thank you mr hall thank you madam chair i have a question for clarification purposes with the extracurricular fee assessment the question was asked if they can if the schools can require a fee on top of the existing fees for to supplement for
091things that may not fall under exactly like a uniform requirement but might still be required for the sport so thank you for the question the short answer is we cannot require a fee unless the board approves it so if there's an example of there's let's say there's a 250 fee and someone you know a wcs employee says you've got the 250 fee plus you are required to pay an additional 100 that is not within our standards okay and more specifically that's not that's not appropriate under state law governing fees so that the appropriate thing to do in that case would be either to have a fundraiser or or ask for it rather than to require it okay thank you i imagine that would be particularly helpful as parents are considering activities and they think that
092this is the full cost of entry it's it's helpful to have all of that information up front well to your point most every activity every extra curricular activity is going to have a fundraiser element to it yep thank you mr mitchell thank you madam chair mr golden just for some additional clarification as i'm looking at the high school fee schedule a couple of things there's a one i guess what i'm looking for is the true clarification between what is a voluntary supplement slash fee versus a mandatory fee for the extracurricular piece and so i'm looking at an athletic fee per person per sport cheerleading dance golf marching band and then i'm over to the site here i'm looking at graduation jrotc and things of that nature so can you can you give me a clear
093distinction between what what where i'm coming from is if you have a family that can't really afford it or it's a burden upon them what is the what what is the delineation between what they have to pay versus what they don't have to pay and then subsequent to that what what process do we have to identify those families or children that are not participating in something strictly because of their their parents ability to pay it i'll answer the first part of that and then actually refer to dr royer and dr webb for the last portion of that and that was a lot of questions and i don't know that i articulated it very well but well we'll see we'll see if we can get the get the gist of i know the heart of your
094of your question any fee voluntary fee is voluntary if it is related to a particular course and what's necessary to get the credit for that course during the regular school year so that's that's the standard for purely voluntary any extracurricular activity that is not related to getting credit for a course could be a fee that is required as a condition of participation so let me give you the best example i can you can take a banned course and if there's a fee for that's exclusively voluntary if you choose to participate in marching band which is exclusively extracurricular then you could be required to pay that fee so i think of that this from a flow chart you've got those two pieces so let's let's step away from the course part and go to the could
095require you've hit on the next piece of that flow chart which is generally speaking we're not going to require the fee because we have enough support from our families with fundraisers etcetera with that i would like to turn it over to either doctor or dr webb whichever the two one of you wants to speak to it related to how we make sure that we're serving all our students and giving them even those extracurricular opportunities dr webb excuse me go ahead thank you thank you for the question mr elliott it is a passion of ours to ensure that every student has the opportunity to participate in things they want to participate in and in regards to those required fees find a way to to help the students with these required fees whether it's extracurricular or part
096of the academic day our school counselors and our extracurricular coaches are the way currently for the most part that we're finding out about students who wish to participate in something or have a required fee that they're unable to meet the expectations on and we work with those individual families we also have ways for knowing with on within our campus our counselors with full confidentiality certainly know those families who are struggling within their caseload and can make those connections for coaches if the coaches don't aren't already aware and then we work to ensure that every student within all realms possible or have the opportunity to participate so i want to i want to put kind of a holistic description of of of this the conversations we have with our administrators and our coaches is if you
097want to do blank you know how much it's going to cost and you look in the aggregate to see if you have all that have enough money to do it whether whether from fundraisers or from fees if you have enough money you you know you've got a chance to do it if you don't have enough money you're not going to do it you can't go back to the parents and i'm kind of you all know me from my previous discussion on the food shaming issue for instance where where we have to give a meal to somebody regardless of their inability to pay and to make sure that the meal we give them is completely the same as the meal somebody pays so we're not publicly identifying students who who who due to no cause of
098their own are unable to to purchase a school meal and i want to make sure that we're doing the exact same thing for these extracurricular activities that we don't have a situation to where everybody on the on the football team knows who didn't participate in the feed piece or who didn't participate or we don't have even worse we don't have children that are not participating in something that they want to because of a fear of of of that identification and so tell me what what we're doing or what we're communicating to our principals to make sure that that one that these children are all given an opportunity to participate and i think i heard mr golden reaffirm that a minute ago but two we're making sure that the fee piece doesn't come down to you
099know who paid and who didn't and that's a that's public knowledge so number one it's part of our culture and we reaffirm that culture at the beginning of every school year when darren joins has those conversations with our coaches likewise on the arts side that we do the same thing with with those directors and i'll i'll i'll tell you years ago we you know we've gotten some examples of that it takes constant effort and constant reminders and it's really about the heart for students dr webb dr earl are you about to say something i was one piece i want to add is a little less about elementary per se but to enhance what dr webb said we also have monies for students who are identified as homeless which this school district has specific to extracurriculars
100both in arts and athletics and so our social workers are a key piece of those components certainly there's someone in the school building who is the liaison to the district homeless liaison as well as the social workers it's often the counselors that dr webb mentioned but that team creates an opportunity once we have that information those fees can come from that so that's i appreciated the language mr golden used if it's our culture i think i think it's we have done an incredible job in the last few years of making certain that teachers understand that administrators understand and then we have whether through boosters or through coaches or through you know organizations at the school level also at the district level with with with the federal monies figured out a way to take care but
101for our students who are homeless and most vulnerable in that way so in closing i think i would like to to throw a suggestion out to you mr golden your staff is to i appreciate the culture i appreciate the intent i think i'd like to see it kind of codified whether that being an sop or or a policy of some type that we're confident that there's any you know something that says any child who wants to participate in an extracurricular activity blah blah blah is able to thank you for that we do it included in our annual training but we will double check our sops mr brown thank you madam chair so two two-part question mr gold and i'm putting you on the spot here a little because i know we didn't talk about this
102at the work session is it is it fair to say i'm from looking at the chart that most if if not certainly not all but most of the more expensive fees are tied to the extracurricular activities would that be fair to say yes okay so to jay's earlier point about if we could get to a point where we have enough budget money coming in to make this an expenditure and not a revenue source i think that would be great i as a parent who gets these fee requests all the time and get it is a little bit of a nickel and dimming situation and i know that's there's there's a lot of reasons historically we've done it but if we could get to a place where we did that would be great so my question
103is have you have you given any thought or could you give some thought to how you would delineate what would be covered in that fee line item if we were to do it that way so let's say the money falls down to us we can budget for it if you can you think through maybe for the next work session or next board meeting which items you would feel comfortable recommending be part of being covered by that expense and maybe which ones you would say might fall outside that expense are you asking which of these items are you asking us to consider eliminating some of the items on this particular list not eliminating necessarily but i guess maybe the better way to ask it is are there some of these things on here that you would
104say you would not be comfortable covering in that budget item that would be deemed strictly extracurricular and not something that the district would need to pay for out of its own budget that the parents would continue to need students wouldn't continue needing to fund that or parents would and then assistance could be provided if needed i think we'll be able to speak to that during the budget time i will speak generally extracurricular funding is pretty minimal from from us and that's a long-standing tennessee thing and we're no different there have been times that the wcs school board has asked for us to look for additional sources of revenue that has not been discussed in the last few years but we look at our revenue sources in the aggregate and look at our expense request in
105the aggregate and end up having to drill down and cut specifics when before we bring the before we bring a budget to you if we have an elimination of a revenue source then i anticipate that would carry with it a commensurate reduction in the expense requests we take to you that's just generally speaking so but but to your point with ex-curriculus for sure we can we haven't talked about this recently in part because because of the last two years i'm trying to remember the exact number on the extracurricular side if i'm not mistaken we have had some years where we've gotten up to 11 million dollars in in donations from fundraisers now it's gone to specific restricted purposes that principals have worked out with their ptos or coaches have worked out with their families we
106couldn't do it we couldn't do what we do without parent support yeah so i think my larger more general point or question was if this amounted to a million dollars what we're looking at in front of us amounted to a million dollars let's say for argument's sake would we necessarily need to have a million dollars of new money from the state to cover that or could we cover it for a lesser amount yeah that's a lot about yourself i see what you're saying okay yeah we'll look at that and study that to prepare for next month so mr welch i'm i'm going to pop in here for a minute and then take your comment but i do want to say you know jay makes his annual statement about fees and then i make my annual
107statement about fees which is i think school fees i wish we didn't have to have them but i think it's absolutely the fiscally conservative and responsible thing to do so that people who actually participate in the schools pay these fees and they aren't a burden or an additional cost to taxpayers particularly retired people in this community and regarding some of this opportunity for all students to participate mr mitchell there are some leading edge practices i proudly represent a school that has a scholarship program for students who cannot participate in in sports that process is completely confidential and they work with with the student for them to be able to participate in a sport so dr webb i believe you'll remember the school that i'm talking about and it's a very active program and something that
108our parents really had the great idea to put together and has been in existence for a number of years so mr welch thank you and nancy you stole some of my thunder on that which i'm glad to hear it's i agree it would be wonderful if we had the funds where we didn't have to do this but the fact is we do not have that money in order to do it and to sort of try and put this on the ptos as someone who served on the pto executive board for for three years nancy i know you were president of the pto angela i believe you were as as well over at fear of you i think we can all speak to just the amount of effort that goes into this and i encourage you
109to go ahead and serve on a pto board if you think there's excess funds and capital to be raised there those those moms and dads mostly moms are raising about all they can with with that money and so if we take it away it has to be made up somewhere it's just it's just not there and that's somewhere becomes the kids go out and sell more cookie dough or i've bought tubs of cookie dough over the years or they sell more coupon calendars or everything else and that pulls them away from practice and the time and teams their homework and everything else that way the simple fact is we are not a money flush school district an organization that has accused us of that also tax our curriculum and has suggested we're flush with funds
110but the fact is tennessee is 46th in the nation in what it spends on public education and we are in the bottom half of tennessee so we are in the bottom half of the state that is about 46th in the nation and i think we give what about 2500 for sports across the board if i'm not mistaken mr golden per school about that for athletic field maintenance on our funding it's a little bit more than that but that's that's close 2500 3000 that's across the board for all sports so again this is a voluntary fee this is this is not a requirement there's no shaming that's done in it if you can't do it if you just don't want to do it there's no child that's restricted from this and our parents do step up
111and do this and along with nancy i've seen that very close hand worked on that very close hand worked on a lot of events close hand from being wrestling tournament directors and lucky mutter board i know that brings up a sore point for you mr golden that particular memory but there's a lot of effort that goes in there and even if we did want to make this up with other funds frankly i think there's an opportunity cost there as well is this the number one thing that you know if we did get an additional million dollars or something like that is this the number one thing that we would want to go to and spend it on and i'm just not sure that is the case so if we want to talk about the revenue
112side we should and that's great i think we should have used some political capital and get out there and do that when there was a sales tax issue i would challenge everyone who kind of went out there and put effort behind that and went and talked and put themselves on the line if this is what you want to do those are the opportunities to do that but to just simply say let's take this revenue away from the teachers and the coaches and everything else who need that without having a plan in place for how we're going to make it up i think it's a little bit irresponsible to be perfectly blunt so i appreciate the sentiment i support the sentiment but it's it's definitely a needed volunteer opportunity that we request and frank i think
113a lot of our parents are happy to to do that i know i certainly was mr galbraith thank you madam chair just to answer mr brown and i wasn't clear this year that my particular issue is not the fees themselves but it's the it's it's the require it's the it's the fees associates the non-required fee is associated with academic classes and so i wouldn't i wouldn't i wouldn't expect or or ask to offset anything else if i were if even if i had my way to to apply some extra funds and to to mr welch's point the additional i mean my hypothesis is that we would actually not raise as much money so yes we wouldn't have we wouldn't have a revenue source but the people who are going to give who are nickeled and
114dimed it's just like the invest campaigns that people the people raise we actually actually increase the amount of money that we raise when we just ask one time for an amount and they and they give it rather than feeling like they have to pay they're paying more money because they're being nickeled and none for these things where i think we're i think the net total that we raised through these fees and the ptos could actually go up by but just more money funneled to the ptos that can that can handle school school fundraising that way so that's it thanks thank you board members i see no further discussion if you'll please cast your votes for the approval of school fees your vote is nine yes one no thank you our next item is approval of
115the encore summer 2022 enrichment program fees again another annual agenda item mr golden thank you madam chair this is one of the non-curricular fees for those who would like to participate and doctor or you may cringe when i say this but i equate this as close as i can to summer camp okay you're good with that it's it's kind of those fun summer activities we have made sure that the schedule for this is stretched to july so that it doesn't conflict with what's going to be year two of the state summer school program which they actually call summer camp so we do we do recommend your approval of of the fees to make this a self-funded program for this summer is there a motion to approve mr cash makes the motion mr mitchell seconds any
116discussion board members please cast your votes i see notice oh mr cash did you want to discuss thank you madam chair this is this program's well worth the money kids get a lot of a lot out of it and it's a lot of fun for them keeps them busy in the summer and i know i've had a few in it thank you thank you mr cash board members i don't see any further questions or discussion please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members the next item is a school board policy for first and final reading which is policy 1.703 school attendance areas zoning and non-resident students mr golden thank you madam chair after a lot of discussion about a new state law regarding open zone schools we went
117back and studied our policy knowing that the new state structure which has the potential to just last for one year by the way includes a lottery if the maximum available seats have been reached at any particular school so because of that we've come back to you with a request that we modify our existing board policy in one way to move the deadline from may 15 to april 15th so that our staff has time to process the out of zone request after that lottery structure is done to the to the point i made earlier there is some pending legislation we don't know where it's going to go because there's been a lot of discussion across the state about the some concerns over the logistics of the new law that's in place this year so we do
118recommend approval for now of this one change knowing that depending on what happens at the state in the next few months we may be coming to you with a with a more deeper review of this policy so board members this request does meet policy 1.600 policy development and adoption regarding the first and final reading mrs brooks is that correct yes that is board members we do have in policy that you can waive the second reading and take immediate action to adopt a new or revised policy board members is there a motion to approve mr hall makes the motion to approve is there a second mr galbraith mr haw discussion thank you madam chair i would just move to waive the second reading of this policy and approve for this policy at first and final reading
119mr galworth thank you madam chair mr samuels do any any update as far as the number of requests that we've received and kind of how it relates to prior years i have numbers as of thursday night before the work session and i didn't get them today as of thursday night there are only four schools that had double-digit requests all the other schools those that had a request were single digits only two schools were at the 50 level and in in terms of comparison numbers from the last couple years i don't have that information but what i recall is we didn't get a lot i think this is probably a bit more than that but that's where the numbers are right now okay i have i have a little bit last year's centennial filled up with
120the with the numbers that we had available and so there's a possibility we're projecting we might have one or two schools that look are looking like the possibility of a lottery based on our traditional experience with a spike in in in requests on the front end as the as the window opens and then a spike as the windows closing as the numbers that we have are right now no lottery would be required but it's it's early board members i don't see any other further requests for discussion please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no our next agenda item is board policies for first reading policy 3.210 naming facilities mr golden thank you madam chair as we discussed in detail at the policy committee and more briefly at the work session we are
121proposing two changes to the naming facilities policy based on the input we got from the board at the policy committee meeting to to change at first reading for tonight a list of names for schools to be two or three rather than just three names when the committee meets and second that the naming committee does have the power to to rank the names presented to the board if a clear consensus exists so we recommend approval on first reading of this policy is there a motion to approve mr wimberley and mr hall makes the second board members any discussion shocked to see there's no further discussion board members please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no now we'll be discussing policy 6.306 interference or disruption of school activities mr goldman thank you madam chair
122this is a first reading for a new policy recommended by tsba based on some laws in the state we do recommend approval at first reading motion to approve board members mr brown makes the motion mr ha makes the second board members any discussion i see no request for discussion board members please cast your votes that's okay oh am i still voting your vote is nine yes zero no thank you board members the next item is policy 6.500 student receiving special education serves as mr goldman thank you madam chair likewise this is a recommendation from tsba based on the change in the law we do recommend your approval on first reading is there a motion to approve mr welch makes the motion second mr brown makes the second board members any discussion on this item i
123see no request for discussion board members please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members our next item is an approval to extend the 2020 2022 graduation window mr golden thank you madam chair two of our high schools brought this request to us franklin high school and independence specifically based on some conclusions and recommendations that they have had related to their graduation ceremonies our current calendar this year has the graduation window from friday to sunday because of so many schools deciding that they that they liked having their graduation ceremonies on campus they wanted many of them all but two if i'm not mistaken maybe maybe three if you count renaissance want to do it on campus we they determined that the logistics of available stages and available sound systems
124made that a practical impossibility without adding one more day franklin high school and independence high school gave a save the date back in mid-january to their families in the hopes that you would approve this so that they could have those ceremonies in third on on thursday after after the school calendar the current year's calendar the one well next year's calendar that you have already approved actually has thursday in it but we did not have that foresight back when this current year's calendar was prepared for this possibility we do make that request of you recommend approval so you said recommend approval okay board members do we have a motion to approve mr cash makes the motion mr hall makes the second board members any discussion please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no
125thank you board members now we will address the approval of resolution approval of school board resolution regarding house bill 2833 and senate bill 2168 mr golden thank you madam chair this item was not on our agenda at the work session but was a product of the agenda discussion when ms cleveland and mr wimberley presented in during the board chairs report as a result of your discussion we've prepared for you a draft resolution that addresses this particular bill which if printed out is 12 pages long and so based upon your feedback and what you shared at the work session we've we've we've drafted this for for your review mr golden do you do you want to provide a quick review sure i'll give her a little bit of detail i also miss cleveland do you do
126you have your do you want to speak always okay if you'll press your button that way i can log you in thank you so i'll speak to it based on my reading of of of this bill there are a number of proposed changes to the existing laws governing the approvals and implementation of charter schools we noticed a few items that based on our experience had the potential to be a real challenge for us especially locally number one it includes a proposal to shrink the review time from 90 to 75 days and from what we've heard from those individuals who have reviewed these applications 90 days is a tight window for review because of the comprehensive review second the new the bill allows for charters to opt into using a school facility that has less than
12750 percent used capacity for student instruction for us locally that has a potential to be a problem especially as we grow as we open a new school we may hit a window of time especially early where a school is not at 50 capacity but is growing and we project that it's possible that this draft legislation did not contemplate the potential impact of this on fast growing districts and then finally the third reference there funding changes related to facilities use we know based on what the state department of education has shared that the new funding formula that they will be considering this year has some provisions for charter schools especially related to capital and so we added in this draft for you all to consider that making a substantial change this year is premature without knowing
128the impact of whatever they do at the state level with a funding model thank you mr golden for that further explanation given that this wasn't on our work session agenda i've been advised by our attorney to ask for a motion in a second and then you miss miss cleveland you make the motion okay is there a second mr welch makes the second board members just for just let's move into the discussion phase miss cleveland hey thank you very much and just to let you know this is a tennessee school board association on their opposed list they are advocating against this and then one other portion of the bill that has not been mentioned of course again this is to give us all local control for charter schools and not let it to the state there's
129another part of it that also says it charter operators with at least one approves if a one approved school that has been in operation for at least a full school year can bypass local school boards and go straight to the state for approval to expand and to expand another part of the bill and force display to expand so they can so if they have one charter school and there's another like charter school focused on the same academics or from the same organization that they can bypass us and just move into another charter school so that's also part of the bill mr brown thank you madam chair and maybe that's so if you look at the second whereas clause the last phrase there last line says and other provisions reducing local lea decision making so sheila
130i'm guessing that one of the things that references is what you just said right are there other things that would be worth pointing out that fall under that other provisions line miss cleveland just a moment please there you go thank you that's a that's a good question mr brown yes there are and i don't have a list but these are the key major points there's there's like you said quite a few items in that but these are the key points that pretty much our resolution is more to get the just out to the legislators that we need the local control but i will be happy to send you that the rest of the summary bill if you'd like can i ask again for follow-up is there any maybe a question for mr golden is there
131any scenario in which any of us putting this resolution forward prejudices or compromises of the current review that's happening with the applications my reading is no because we are applying the current law to that and this proposal would not take effect this year okay thank you mr galbraith thank you madam chair i think ms halsbrook's probably the best one to to answer this question but i know we've we've had we've had various voucher bills come come and come before us and we've i think we've taken some we've taken some of these up and not taken some of them up but so i think most people are more familiar with the with the voucher discussion and that to date it's always been around it's always been around failing schools and you've had to qualify and even
132the current the current plan i guess it's under that's being being challenged but was just under for selby and davidson county at the end of the day and i think our legislative our local representatives on the legislature have have always they've kind of taken this one stand that they're they've been for it but they are against using it in in williamson county i say that to say when you when you compare vouchers to charters and i and i'm i'm speaking particularly to to the provision that sheila just that just that she just read as far as kind of bypassing bypassing any local review if there is a if they've already got let's just say there's already a charter in davidson county then that under under the proposed legislation that could change a million times before
133it gets gets to the floor but that if it was if it went as red then they could put a they could put a charter school in any county regardless and so they've proven that the charter can operate and then they could put one in williamson county or davidson or shelby or or rutherford without regard to to any particular need in the in that county is that how you understand that provision as i'm understanding your question i believe so the bill authorizes a governing body who has at least one public charter school that's been authorized by the charter school commission either through an lea approval or an appeal approval they have to be in operation for at least one full year and then they can apply to replicate is what they're calling it directly to
134the charter school commission that is the piece that typically would be the local control and the application would be to this body there are a list of criteria as superintendent golden mentioned it's about 12 pages i'm not going to be able to spell out all of that criteria but the broad answer to your question is yes that would be a piece of the local control that this board would lose but just in just in general for for charters and the and even even within even the lea as as the as local control and we get we have to review the we have to we get to review the charter application and then review the appeal and then it goes to the to the state board but is it is there anything regarding requirement to prove
135that there are failing schools or some other kind of criteria that we're in order to in order to in order to show the need for a charter just based on the state rules regarding charters there is not anything that i recall in this bill maybe maybe just in general like before before the bill just the because we recognize we've heard we know more but we know more about how how vouchers have been have been kind of promulgated through and it's and it's always around it's always wrong around failing schools but charters is there is there any such requirement or can they come in and apply anywhere and they just apply to the lea and we say yes or no correct there is to my knowledge not any requirement that a district has to have a
136failing school in order for a charter school application to be filed that's not a part of the process that we are reviewing right now with our charter school review committee okay thanks ms cleveland yes i just want to make a statement too that this is about local control and i want to make it clear this does not anywhere near say the views of how the board feels about charter schools it's just about local control i want to make that clear thank you mr wembley isn't it a kind of a fundamental tenet of charters that they've got to demonstrate that they can provide something that we can't provide it's not necessarily because of a failing school but if they say they can do something that we're not already doing and make and convince the school board
137and perhaps the state i mean isn't that really kind of fundamental to charters i think that's a fair mister point point of clarification mr wimberley who are you addressing your question to are you addressing it i thought you were looking this way so i just want to make sure yeah i think he was gonna answer my question you know i think it was yes and i think i was trying to answer jay's question to based on what i know thank you well and miss allspurs did speak to that's my understanding of it as well that it's a combination and again i'm speaking big buckets of a service that's not provided plus the logistical capability of achieving it thank you mr galbraith so mr wembley i agree i think the where and the reason why i'm
138for i mean i think it i think to to josh's point the the local control piece in in that second whereas kind of covers this but but to me if you that the most one of the most troubling provisions in these bills is the fact that they could once they once they prove that they have a need that they can meet a need in davidson county then then presumably the same need exists in williamson county and rutherford as well and they just place a charter here without having to evaluate the whether they can provide something that we can't so that was the that's kind of where i was what i was trying to figure it out mr brown yeah i mean i'm absolutely supportive of making sure we reinforce the local control piece of this
139one thing that i wonder is whether the thing you just said sheila about making it clear that this resolution does not imply anything else about where the board stands on charter schools generally is it worth putting a whereas clause in here to state that's one question i guess to put on the table the other point is i'm it's not my understanding of charter schools that they have to necessarily provide something that the district isn't providing but rather so i would need to be corrected on that or educated about that because it's my understanding that they have to according to the state law have to provide at least equal services to what the district is providing currently but not it wasn't my understanding that it had to necessarily be something different than what's being provided but
140i could be wrong about that so how do we want to take up that first question about adding something is there is it the will of the board to do that i'd recommend you make that a motion to amend the resolution to include whatever language you're contemplating okay then i would move to add a whereas clause to state that such this resolution does not in any way represent the board's views on the merits of charter schools generally or something to that effect i'm doing that off the top of my head so if you want to wire that up i'm happy to take suggestions so there is and that's a motion okay yes motion to amend the resolution with that language or a variation of that language we have a motion to amend the tim and
141brian can you please put it back on the screen thank you that would be helpful i think we have a motion to amend the resolution with a whereas that states that this is and let me see if i'm paraphrasing correctly that this is about local control of the charter school decision mr brown is that an appropriate paraphrase that it's that's the intent of this board to emphasize the importance of local control and that this resolution does not necessarily represent the board's views on charter schools generally some something to that effect do we have a second miss cleveland is cleveland second miss cleveland seconded but madam chair for clarity's purposes where would you like it placed i have a thought but i'd like to defer to you first well the last whereas clause already kind of
142refers to local control anyway so maybe adding keeping what's there and just adding a second phrase or a second clause to that whereas clause that just references the board stance on charters generally and strikes to the local control language because it's already it really is already there in that last warehouse clause so whereas the proposed legislation reduces local decision making on issues that are best made by local elected bodies with knowledge of local conditions and maybe add another warehouse clause and whereas this resolution does not represent that does not necessarily represent the board's position on charter schools generally some something whereas after after the last after the current after as the last whereas yes mr welch may i suggest something along the effect of whereas this legislation i'm sorry this resolution the board takes no
143stance positive or negative on any individual charter schools or charter school applications and doing it that way i think that captures the spirit of what you're looking for if i'm not mistaken so might might already say the same thing you said sorry mrs brooks i'm sorry are you wanting to amend the language that is on the floor i don't think we have language on the floor i think we're trying to layer it up as we go so it's just making the acceptance or if we do that's fine no i do not want to amend the motion on the floor i'm i'm fine i'm just trying to be helpful mr brown did you i interrupted you no do we attorneys did it articulate language that we can put that we can vote on or do we
144need more if i'm not mistaken madam chair there was a motion in a second by mr brown which was whereas this resolution does not in any way represents the board's view on charter schools generally and that is as i understand it dana if you would correct me if i'm wrong that is now the emotion that's on the floor which is an amendment to the original that is correct mr wimberly i just have an editorial just a suggestion and i'm not sure this is the right way to do it but in your motion you put does not necessarily it seems to me that necessarily is a little bit it's it's superfluous i mean we either it does not or it does so i mean it's not a really real big deal but it seems like the
145word necessarily is not necessary mr mitchell i guess my edit here is on where where that additional whereas is placed i think i would i would recommend that we do not that we put it above the last whereas so as the point of the resolution here is the last item the last argument to be made in the resolution that it's all about local control and not our position on charter schools so that would i would offer up that we put it as this additional statement as the next to the last whereas as opposed to the final one mr brown i would have no concern about doing what elliot's suggesting and then i would also have no concern about necessarily being stricken either so either either of those is good so at this point are you
146going to so i'll try to change your motion to strike necessarily and to move it to this whereas claw is before the lat the next to last whereas cause is that what you're saying yeah and miss cleveland who had the second oh kc miss cleveland are you agreeable to that okay miss cleveland concurs with those changes i'm going to ask mr golden to read that for clarity and if i may i'll just double check does does miss glenn have that written down because you're doing the minutes i want to make sure it's appropriately read through the min by the minute taker so i have a motion lydia just a moment please there you go i have a motion to a man by mr brown and second by miss cleveland whereas this resolution does not represent
147the board's position on charter schools generally i think maybe we were having in any way anyway before representing does not represent does not in any way represent whereas this resolution does not in any way represent the board's position on charter schools generally and where is that being placed and it is being placed after the last whereas paragraph that ends knowledge of local conditions no no then we're going to place it as the second to last whereas clause okay mr hall do we have a superintendent recommendation on this i do recommend approval of this change okay board members if there's no further discussion please cast your votes voting on the amendments thank you right your vote is 10 yes 0 no ok so the amendment is approved and we're going back to the original motion the
148approval of the resolution and staff recommendation is as amended mr golden recommend approval okay i don't see any discussion board members please cast your votes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members and thank everyone for taking the time and being careful about making sure that we got that recorded into the minutes appropriately our final agenda item for tonight is the appeal of the reconsideration committee decision mr golden thank you madam chair as the board knows from the discussion at the work session the appeal of the reconsideration committee decision is on for for your review we spent a good bit of a bit of time discussing a number of issues related to it and certainly want to let you all know that the floor is open for any motions you'd like to
149make related to it do we have a motion to approve mr haw do we have a second miss cleveland seconds have a number of speakers so let's move to discussion miss cleveland what's the motion is it you just said that they could we could make any motions or is are we are we moving to approve the committee's recommendation is that the motion that's what i heard from mr hall okay thank you for clarifying my first speaker was miss cleveland thank you madam chair as you've those have heard me speak before and i'll probably speak i'll be stating this again that i believe parents are also the mentor and teachers and kids look up to their parents for directions of thoughts and opinions about the world around them while teaching them to respect those who have
150different beliefs than they do ws wcs teachers are well educated and professionals over 50 percent of our wcs teachers have 10 plus years of experience i'm a little disappointed in those in our community that have lost faith that our teachers are not capable of recognizing sensitive issues in the curriculum and are not confident that they can teach appropriately and i do listen i do listen to both sides taking in consideration not only the committee's decision but also the opinions of constituents and parents who are for or against the committee's decision i also realize that state mandated curriculum someone will find something wrong about it and it to be admitted i mean that is the known fact that there's always going to be something somebody doesn't like we do have a process based on policy and
151a committee was formed and as a side note the board did touch base on taking another look at the policy because we've had we've never had this situation come up before in the reconsideration process the committee did a thorough job involved over 60 hours of meetings readings discussing books and the teacher's manual i can't even quantify the number of hours of personal time spent i was not involved in the process or the experience of what the committee did and therefore i don't feel qualified to say they're wrong i do understand there's questions regarding grade level appropriateness and i get that and but i also realize that these are opinions are very subjective i have talked to parents that say they're fine at grade level curriculum as you've heard of speakers tonight and some that are
152not and i really do appreciate the parents that took the time that actually took the time to write their appeal and offer suggestions in past years administration has done a great job continuously tweaking the curriculum to fit the high standards williamson county are is known for and my hope mr golden is that you and your staff will consider the appellant suggestions and continue to look at the curriculum of ways to improve it and the one question i have is we did have one or two appellants ask can is it feasible just to get rid of the whitten wisdom curriculum and start over again what is the feasibility of that thank you for the question we do have that responsibility to go through the state approval process which we have discussed in detail at different times
153so i won't give you that detail if witton wisdom is eliminated we will need to go through that approval process we do have the capacity for small changes to to go to the state and ask for a waiver but if given given the process that we've gone through we would need to go back through that approval process were there was generally speaking it's not always true but generally speaking there's six years in a adoption cycle there have been some exceptions with covet where other curriculum has been pushed a little bit so we're in the second year of a six year we would need to go back through that process for the remaining portion of that cycle thank you mr mitchell thank you madam chair i appreciate miss cleveland's comments i agree with them i'll make
154the point too that no curriculum is perfect and that i agree with miss cleveland's request that we continue to look for ways to improve this one given the concerns i think i think there has been a couple of things brought to light here one is the fact that i think our process and policy was written with an idea of of of a focus on individual items and not a more broad review of a whole swath of curriculum and so maybe we need to look look at how that process can be adjusted to support that i think the other thing that has been brought to light that i believe needs needs to be adjusted and looked at is the opt out process for for children assisting children that have opted out and making sure that they're
155not just put in a library and self-directed especially if depending upon the ability of that child to be successful in that type of type of environment so i encourage us to go back and look at how we can we can continue to accommodate both the people that opt out as well as as the larger process when we have when we have a request to review an entire swath of curriculum just as opposed to maybe one specific item in it but i'll i support the motion thank you mr cash thank you madam chair you know this whole process from the get-go was rushed through and for for us to think that parents are blaming the teachers that's that's wrong we're not there's been so many emails and correspondence that i've had over this whole process and
156parents are thanking the teachers and principals because they've really worked hard to accommodate students that opted out i mean we've got 30 students in one school that opted out of a book and i believe the principal's teaching it so no this is in no way looking at bad teachers or bad principles what i mean by rush through is we didn't even have all the textbooks in the beginning of 2020. they were going by the teacher's manual only at that time and like any other curriculum over time the first semester they started seeing flaws things that they felt needed to be changed and with this particular curriculum the structure is so it's structured to the point you can't just change things around and i've had many conversations about this and i think with the process here
157with the 4.403 reconsideration they have moved some things around and they have changed some things and i appreciate that but this isn't going away anytime soon it's just a matter of when people get to these particular areas and i might say right now we have not asked for books to be removed the number one issue all along from the very get-go of the issues and this is last year and going into this year is age appropriateness so everyone that feels like we're up here trying to censor books and take them out i have never asked for that it's always been about age appropriateness and i still stand on that i do agree with what elliott said about the process and you know we need to look at it take it back to policy i've requested
158that and we're going to start looking at different things for for policy to go on the process has been done through policy but to my the other things i had three pages written out but i'm i'm just ad-libbing now since it changed a little bit but the the printouts that we saw last night the charts i read over those in great detail this weekend and today we're we're always we're always saying that teachers teachers don't feel welcome or whatever because they can't move into our into the community 68 percent of our teachers live in williamson county another 15 percent live in nashville which is about the same real estate rates and whatnot and then that's 83 percent and according to the chart there's another 5 in in possibly columbia and murfreesboro i agree pay is
159a big issue but i honestly in my heart after listening to our wca president the other night that got up there to represent her folks the teachers really said nothing she didn't have to say anything there are more issues that the teachers are having right now that we need to get to the bottom of and i believe one of them is this curriculum i truly do i think a lot of principals and teachers don't feel comfortable with a lot of the text and whatnot and i'm not going to go into that but we need to know if teachers aren't happy teaching then it's not going to work right and i think that's what the people that appealed the apology that appealed are trying to say now i don't get on the internet i don't get
160on social media never have in almost eight years but i heard through the grapevine that these folks that are appealing are the reasons that our teachers are so unhappy and want to leave this county and that is sad that is sad now there's so many issues that i looked at that i've really thought about for the last three years and one one was we had a new brand new ela curriculum for elementary school in fall of 2020 we also had a little thing called a pandemic we also had six or eight new platforms put online for teachers that they had to go through and learn online training remote training zoom training everything training training training and they did it they worked their tails off they worked there they worked their hearts out with this and
161i think every parent knows that our parents appreciate our teachers and principals because we can sit here and make policy just like we change some few things tonight all we want but don't forget the rubber doesn't hit the road until till it gets to that principles in the teachers the other thing is with a change in curriculum there is going to be complaining one way or the other and who gets the complaints the teachers and principals and they try their best to handle it i always tell folks when i get calls well i called the principal and whatnot and i said well you know what the principles are going by guidelines set by central office so the next step would be you need to notify this person this person or this person is called the
162chain of command always have done that way they're being represented but one bullet point on the chart was that social media and terrible emails and the community doesn't like them and the other one was scrutiny and i and i asked the question to myself i said okay scrutiny let's see stress from constant scrutiny who where and what are you being scrutinized about and i made reference to those folks that appealed they were scrutinized all weekend for appealing for using their right of free speech what about when teachers come up with principal or a teacher comes out and says you know there's some things we need to change in this curriculum were they scrutinized or were they listened to i don't know but nothing seemed to change much the first year until the reconsideration how are
163teachers being scrutinized how about parents when they ask what about the opt-out the only thing the principal or teacher can say is well we're going to have to do this and this and we're going to have to put them over here i mean you're asking for them to be removed from the class but a lot of the answers are you're the only one i know people that have been asked that and they say no i don't want to mop it out there's hundreds of people out there that are upset with this that will not opt their children out because they feel like you know what these little guys i'm not going to have them pulled out of class and separated from their classmates and have them come up and say hey why am i being
164punished just over and over other things have been like i said earlier that's been injected into them all the training all the social emotional learning is another thing that's put on teachers let me see i had a list of well well anyhow but with all with everything that's been put on teachers the last three years and i've asked this question before four or five years ago how much can we put on teachers how much more can we put on teachers and have them still give these children 100 percent instruction especially in elementary school these kids love that teacher they listen to that teacher those teachers hear all kinds of stories a lot of things they don't want to hear from these kids they're the sounding board forum how much more of all the other stuff
165that's going on can be put on that teacher to do we got 467 instagrams a year or two ago at that time about about social injustice whether it was lgbtq or race or i mean there was a bunch of things a bunch of different issues bullying but where did that end up we had 17 we had seventeen cases on the books at that time and what happened with all that well you know what i heard the teachers weren't writing people up for stuff they weren't reporting it the principles weren't reporting it and we know that's not that's not right that's not fair but see that's that's what when people principals and teachers hear that and like what else my heart goes out to teachers and i will continue to support their pay raises and bringing
166them them up the scale but i will i am very interested in a survey of some kind which brings up all these issues we need to find out what's going on with teachers when that president got up there the other night leanne white i don't know if she's she's still they're back there and said our teachers are having a rough time and could not compose herself and shared with that much compassion it's more than just pay folks there's some issues and we need to stop and listen to these folks and we need to do it soon because we're losing people we're losing i noticed on the chart we're losing our 12 to 30 year teachers about 10 a year now that went up those are our those are our mentor teachers we're losing yes the
167process has been done this is where we're at but we can't just drop it's going to continue it's going to continue and there'll be more and more complaints maybe and possibly fixes in the schools thank you for for the long presentation but i worked hard on it thank you mr cash our next speaker is mr galbraith thank you madam chair so i just i want to i want to say a thank you to everybody who spoke tonight and everybody who's come out and had had really good really good exchange of ideas and sharing i want to i think the complainants and the and those who who took the time to to appeal and for me for me it's never it's never about when when somebody comes up and has a it has an issue and
168dan talked about the chain of command and really what we do as board members is kind of guide them through through that process and make sure that they get access along the way to the people who can who can do something about that you know in this case everything was everything was done correctly to dance another point it was it was a little bit it was a little bit later i think some there were some complaints made and it took a while to to kind of figure out how for for everybody to to figure out how to kind of point these people in the say what you're really requesting is a is a reconsideration of the materials and so it materialized i really think casey and the and all the educators on the and the
169pto representative on the on the committee i mean you guys did did a lot did a lot of work and to me to me it validates the it validates the concerns and a lot of their concerns the committee validated and they're they recognize the kind of the immutable truth that we were not going to be able to to rip and replace the curriculum but but i think you're recognized that the curriculum is not perfect i there's there probably wasn't one out there that was and we would have probably i think in going forward we're probably going to be looking at you know in in five years we're probably going to really look at the look at the curriculum more more stringently than we than we had before you know i think it's the it's the
170combination of the fact that this is that this is not just an ela curriculum now it's it's it's social studies and it's science and it's arts all it's everything and i think that's that i think that was part of the appeal to the to the teachers it's definitely i get it's in it's more interesting than just reading c spot run you know it's it's it's bordering out the i think there there is a lot of what was what i've seen in the in the teachers manuals and again this is not a it's not the teachers doing anything this is the they're dealing with what they what they have but there's there's an agenda being pushed through through the through the curriculum i think we're doing the best that we can to make sure that our
171teachers and i don't mean to say that our teachers are but the but if they did it as as written then they may well they may well be but i had a had a really good conversation with with dr alan this weekend and it made me maybe just think that our teachers are being pulled in in a number of different directions i appreciate mr golden and the effort to to kind of list some things that they can that they can take off their plate but i have a daughter who's who's in college wants to be a teacher and it's i mean as we as we talk about it the things that she's seeing is she's kind of been the schools i mean all the all just all the things from ieps to paperwork to computers
172and i mean just differential instruction there's there's so many things but they've done a the teachers have done the best that they can i think the committee has has done a really good job in in addressing as much as they can without without ripping and replacing a lot of these things again it just it just validates that there were legitimate concerns out there i don't think any of these parents were are trying to are trying to censor any books they're not trying to ban things they're just trying to get things that are that are appropriate for their for their kids it is like i said it's not a numbers thing because to it we can't make the false equivalency that just because more people haven't said anything or complained or opted their kids out that
173they that they think that this is the best thing for their kids but i mean that being said i hope i hope that the dr allen and staff will continue to review these things to over over the course of time if there if there are my requests is that if there if there are books that the publisher modifies and comes up with an with an alternative text to to some of these things to some of these texts that we're having to my word was tiptoe around things you know take out not not review pages and change words and have counselors available because because they think that the that the material is heavier than the than the kids can can really handle the many of the kids didn't really handle it at their age that we
174continue to to make to make changes over time if we can you know from for me personally i mean i appreciate the committee's work i don't think the process isn't really such that we have enough information to to wholesale make a change to to this to this recommendation it's hard to it's hard to just pick a piece out of it and change it we if we were we're going to get rid of a if we're going to choose to get rid of a text we don't really have a replacement for it and no curriculum per se to to attach to it so i'm going to i'm i'm going to vote for the committee's recommendation and but i hope that we continue to continue to review these these as as the publisher makes more opportunities for
175for changes thank you miss cleveland yes i just have a real quick thing and to with mr cash which you touched point on a survey and i believe just so the public knows we did talk about a survey for because the teachers can the concern we have for teachers and so we did talk about a survey and so hopefully we'll be working on that at some point and then mr cash mentioned 30 some students at one school how how many was that from one school we have 35 families who opted out of of some of the curriculum and how many total 66 total 35 were from one school so we have 31 then that would disperse over 26 schools the remaining 31 over 26 elementary schools yeah over 28. 28 okay thank you mr brown
176thank you madam chair i've got a few thoughts to share and i'm really i'm really struggling with this decision for for a variety of reasons in my view what's really gotten us here to this difficult situation is deficiencies in the policy in 4.403 and this got brought up in my first full meeting in the work session i believe back in november you know questions about how we how this policy would play out we it was decided that we really couldn't take up the policy until we got through with this process so i think we'll we'll take up some of these policy changes that can happen once we get past this and i don't and i struggle because i don't really want to blame the or or put on the decision we have in front of
177us the flaws that i see in the policy and there that's a little bit of a of a challenge because i think it's the policy that got us here one of the speakers made this point i think dan referenced this point about this policy is really not written for the volume of of complaints that came in it's really it really was written or it seems to me to be written more for singular instances or more as as i think the speaker said a more granular situation not for the high volume of requests even though this really wasn't a large number relative to the number of parents and students it's still a lot of information and a lot of complaints and i think i think that it doesn't lend itself this process didn't didn't lend itself
178to that and i think that's borne itself out in some of these concerns we've heard from parents and the appellants so i mean it's right it's readily apparent to me we're not going to make the change fundamental change to this process that we need to make until we change the policy so i know we'll get to that at some point to address a couple of things that were said earlier by speakers it's a shame to me that we have got this situation where we're pitting people against each other if you're not for adopting this report as it is if you're then you're against teachers and you're against administrators and you're against public education if you're not for removing wisdom entirely you're not for parents and i know that's a that's a very small minority of
179people who believe that but you're hearing these extremes talk about these kinds of false dichotomies and the reality is what dan said very very passionately was there's not a single one of us up here who don't support teachers and don't support principals we all do and i think the idea that if you challenge the committee's report or if you don't think the committee's report went far enough or recommendation i should say went far enough that you're somehow against teachers and administrators that's nothing could be further from the truth so i think that's where my challenge comes in my dilemma is that you don't want to cast a vote that you think is going to misrepresent your views and that's that's the difficulty we find ourselves in as this has got become so polarized that's where
180it's going to end up teachers i said this at the work session teachers shouldn't be blamed for decisions that are made by someone else that they have to carry out whether this board makes the decision whether the state legislature makes the decision whether the federal government makes the decision teachers shouldn't be blamed for any of that and i think that's that's what's happening and parents you know have to think through this they have to think through where where does the fault lie who's responsible for the decisions it certainly isn't the teachers so let's give the teachers a break when it comes to that on this final point i'll make on this is this idea of removing books i mean clearly the committee recommendation calls for removing one book it calls for making adjustments to other
181texts and other lessons the notion that removing books or removing text is somehow censorship or should should never happen i mean i think it should be we all agree it should be really really rare right it should be very rare that ever happens but that doesn't mean it can never happen age-appropriateness has to be considered we should be always looking out for is this something that should be in front of my fourth grader or my fifth grader and i think that's what a lot of the concern that i'm hearing from parents is about is it is this appropriate for someone that age i won't say the book and i won't name which of my three children it is but one of my kids said that one of these books is her favorite one of her
182favorite books she's ever read but when i read through the book which i did this morning and last night i see some things in that i'm thinking should a fifth grader or a fourth grader really be reading that so you know i think that's where parents have to come into the into the picture and say kids may love something they think may think it's great is it really what's when they're in their best interest and i think that's where that's the where the heart of these parents is coming from is and i think we shouldn't minimize that we shouldn't see them as being you know on the on the friends or being extreme for expressing those views i don't think the report the recommendation goes far enough i'm not sure how much further it should
183go but i'm not sure it goes far enough i'm and we're being asked to vote for the recommendation or against the recommendation as written i'm going to vote against it but i want i want it to be clear that in no way represents or reflects a lack of appreciation for the work that was done or the teachers or the administrators want that to be abundantly clear because there was an immense amount of work that went into this and i appreciate everyone who was part of it thank you mr welch thank you i'm going to respectfully disagree with some of the concepts being made or statements being made that the process was rushed through and also that it was always about age appropriateness i think that was certainly part of it but i look back through
184the emails that we received the documentation josh i know you weren't on the board at that time and received these emails but there were a whole bunch there that this was also about the crt a lot of that and in fact i would say that was a larger portion of it in fact that was the driver and a lot of the age-appropriateness stuff came later after the fact well i think there's a lot of new eyeballs tonight as we're kind of making the final decision on this i think this is the first time as a board we've really discussed this at a monthly board meeting so i just kind of like take a little bit of time to kind of go through the point of how we got here and frankly why i respectfully disagree
185that this was a rush process or some of the other things mr gold let me let me start off with this if i can please does williamson county schools have a philosophy that any student should be ashamed of their ethnicity their gender or other situation of their birth no sir okay do williams county's teachers teach that any student should be ashamed of their ethnicity gender or situation of birth no and we actually remind them of the opposite okay is there any indication in our students work that we have an issue of students being shamed over their what ethnicity or gender that they are born with i have not seen any from from our student work okay what would occur if a child's parents reported to their teacher or the principal that this was the case
186that the student misunderstood the point of a text or a document and was starting to feel shame over that how would that be handled and i know every situation is unique in specifics but generally speaking how do we do that we would investigate it number number one and then how we investigate it would depend on the details of what they share but that is inconsistent with our practice and inconsistent with state law okay thank you the new curriculum adoption process when did that start how far back the adoption process has been in state law for a number of years i don't know how many years but but the process of the state selection given choices going down to the to the local review it's been in i believe for decades several so well i'm sorry
187that this specific curriculum adoption process i i wasn't clear on that question okay for for for for this ela selection yes sir it starts about a year or so it starts in the school year prior prior to adoption and dr alan trying to remember about the date it started the month it started prior to the initiation of that in fall of 2020. if you could answer that one fact you're actually not you know what in fact i'm going to say nevermind it's a it's fall of 2019. well thank you follow 2019 so fall of 2019 okay about about a about a school year before implementation okay okay so i'm 22 right now so we're we're talking two and a half years or so that this process has been going to kind of get to this
188point right here that we did and then the definer recall the state board of education they're the ones who put together our policies and standards tennessee state standards that this is this is what the curriculum will need to to contain or okay and those those members of the tennessee state board of education those individuals were all appointed by governors haslam and or governor lee correct i believe that's the case i'm not 100 sure on that 2019 i guess it's possible not but generally speaking yes that would be the case and then once the state board of education sets those policy standards then the tennessee department of education does the rubric and sort of evaluates the curriculums is that correct yes okay now we've heard this talking point repeatedly and i know this has even been
189correct information we heard it again tonight but this talking point that witne wisdom is a is a two-time failed curriculum we'll talk about that a little bit the if my memory is clear every curriculum that exists out in the world failed if you will if that's the word that we're going to use the first round because it wasn't specific to because it wasn't specific to and specific enough to tennessee that the curriculum experts weren't writing exactly so there was not anything that was approved the very first round that mr allen can dr allen can confirm that yeah i will need to ask dr allen to to to to speak to that i'll speak generally my recollection is that the state went through a process and then started over then dr allen if you have any
190additional details that's what i was going to add the state started a process created rubrics and then started the process over so i think that's what we refer to if everything failed the first we really pick it up just to add to a point of that we pick up the process once the list is provided to us the list of approved curriculums at the state level that we are allowed to put in front of our teachers for approval so we were not involved with that no i realized yes i'm just saying that this talking point of two strikes against the curriculum well the first strike every curriculum out there had there is not a curriculum that didn't have that based upon the tennessee department of education set up that rubric the second strike if you
191will that was based upon it not having a phonics program only correct the actual material the curriculum itself was approved it was just minus that phonics piece is that accurate we needed a phonics piece or what they call foundational skills because you are correct the written wisdom reading program did not have a phonics piece for the youngest grades and then this offered that phonics piece though for free that added it in if you will yes okay so if i can make an analogy here it's like we've directed the maintenance department for williams county schools to go out and find a work truck and we've told them that it needs a hitch and they find the perfect work truck but it doesn't have a hitch but the dealer says i can add one on for free
192i've got it right here it meets all the criteria boom and then calling that a failed work truck that they did not meet the standards is that a fair analogy i'll let you speak to that so fair enough ma'am ma'am you're out who who spoke please please leave thank you please continue thank you so how many state approved curriculums were there i believe there was five or six years yeah and there were a number of pieces that addressed just a few grades that's why i'm i'm trying to to get a clear answer to your question because there were there were a number of pieces of curriculum that weren't comprehensive my recollection off the top of my head is there were four selections that could cover all grade levels k through five right i think there
193were four that we went with because it met our standards but there were more than that initially correct certainly and then when we had these four we allowed a public review of the curriculum it was put out there where anyone in the community could go and take a look at each of them as sort of that first step that's right okay and then the next step on that i think is that all of our teachers were had a chance to kind of take the first crack at it take a look at the options that we selected and come and tell us which ones that they preferred of those for our elementary ela teachers did have that update thank you thank you for that clarification the teachers that would be teaching that material had the chance
194to do that and likewise at the older grades they looked they had other you know looked at other curricula okay so i asked that because i think it's become this narrative of this is being forced upon the teachers unwillingly and well they had the chance to take a look at it and here's the chart that i recall from dr allen's presentation on this that our k-5 ela teachers they picked witten wisdom 65 percent out of the four options three to one over the next one which was wonders which was also the curriculum that we were already using at the time so instead of taking sort of the easy route of saying let's stick with what we already have and know and are familiar with they wanted written wisdom again 65 percent in that first round
195by three to one margin over the others it was more el was eight percent ckla was 5.6 and if i recall properly from the presentation on this the rationale for it for it was that we wanted a more rigorous curriculum that wonders which we were using at the time needed too much supplemental material it was not pushing our kids hard enough as we have a high achieving school district and our parents demand that we push the kids great degrees that all i know it's a mouthful but all right all factual and accurate i'm confident that every teacher had their personal reasons and so i don't want to speak to every reason but your numbers are correct yeah fair enough yeah and that's what i'm getting at that when the teachers were given these the four
196options they chose wit wisdom in that first reading by 65 percent by more than three to one right there and then the second round that we did was the adoption committee and there we had a teacher and a parent represented from every single school every single k-5 school that we had that were on that particular committee the teachers i know that these were just not randomly selected but there were some significant criteria for them to be on the committee can you just real quick remind me what that was for the teacher in order to be on the textbook adoption committee you know as i'm sitting here at this moment i can't recall so i do want to defer to either dr roy or dr allen if you can remember i don't have the specifics in
197front of me it's years of experience that we had some years yeah that's right yeah life and time yeah time in wcs as well that's correct okay and the parents themselves i recall from dr oyer and dr webb talking about their their own days as principals and selecting parents to be on that committee that they would essentially try and pick the more engaged parents our super parents if you will whether it was from the pto or some other group or in some cases had a expertise on the subject matter i know one of the teachers chosen to be on the math textbook adoption had a engineering degree from an ivy league school so a little bit of math involved in that so that textbook adoption committee looking here at the reports we got on that
198narrowed it down to two choices from that the other ones put out it was written wisdom and wonders and that adoption committee chose wisdom by 88 and this was a again a mix of teachers and parents on that and both of them chose it overwhelmingly our parents were 70 with wisdom and the teachers were 90 something percent i mean i can't do the math in my head real quick but it was it was very high it was overwhelmingly at that point so in this case we went from three to one written wisdom against the next closest option when all of our teachers looked at it down to the textbook adoption committee and there was again eight to one that our teachers and parents chose wit wisdom over the other curriculum options right there that's going
199into the history of it at that point so i think the other thing and we weren't alone in this i believe what was it 33 districts out of the 147 are using whitten wisdom in my recollection a little over 30 yes okay so more than one on five school districts in the state of tennessee are using wit wisdom currently yes and if it didn't have the phonics that we had to apply for i'm gonna in my opinion i wonder if it would be even higher in that case as we kind of came across if we didn't have to go to the extra step also dr allen said it's it's every state in the u.s is using whitten wisdom curriculum there's about 167 000 schools across the country that are using this curriculum currently and i
200think if we just did a quick say it's 300 per school that's about 50 million kids using a kind of a nice round number so this is not an obscure curriculum that we've we've got here and as i said it started in what october 2019 that we went through that we the state started that process and then check here real quick and then may june we approved it that's right okay so that's where i'm going to again respectfully disagree that this was a rush process going through that october 19th not that the states are doctor i'm sorry that the principals submitted the nomination of their their teacher to serve on the textbook committee that was just our process after the fact kind of going through that so a considerable amount of time several steps of
201review that included the general public all of our teachers and then a subset of the committee who really put a lot of effort and time into going through this and picking it up and so then we kind of come to i want to add to this too it's no part of this curriculum is mandatory if there's any book text that a parent is not comfortable with they have the option of of opting out they don't challenge them on that they don't have to give a reason we don't have to agree or disagree with the decision it's it's a parental right issue that we say you know if you're not comfortable with it you can pull your child out of that we do have that standard in policy and it really covers all subject areas but
202principals do have typically detailed conversations with parents so that they can get to the heart of the parents concern and make sure they meet that concern right and then actually the great point i think we've had 65 opt-outs about 35 of those are at one school our current numbers are 66 60 60 35 on one school and then i think we've got what 12 schools that have zero opt-outs at all correct that's correct okay and what are we about sixteen 16 400 kids that's about right that ballpark k through five k through five so you know take away 65 that's about 99.6 of those students are not opting out of the curriculum at that point so we're we're talking about the point four percent so far and perhaps it's going to grow and everything but
203you know we've been talking about this for several months and a lot of marketing behind why this is bad so the request to eliminate the curriculum i believe that started around may june before the school year started that we started getting those in the emails and the requests as i recall i can go back and pull the emails in fact i have the emails right here was that it wanted that we were requested to skip the process this was there we go mrs steenman who is not a wcs parent or ever has been but was kind of driving a lot of this i think she described the policy as a delaying tactic here and that yeah let's call a spade a spade these 4.403s are a stalling tactic which was not that was our policy
204that was established many years before ms demon even moved to the community and we provided that information we gave it and we allowed anyone who wanted to to submit it i think we got reconsideration requests from 30 40 reconsiderate 40 reconsideration requests from 37 individuals 14 of those who had a student that was actually impacted by it and then we went through a six-month process reviewing all of the material that was selected the books per our policy everything else that way and came to the decision that we have so far which again it's individuals do not need to agree with we respect that right and certainly different opinions but we're talking about not accepting the decision of the committee or replacing books at that point i think it is important to take a look at
205what were the actual numbers of complaints what are the people who have opted out of the material and you know frankly the appeals the appeals we've had nine appeals to it again out of sixteen thousand four hundred kids that are actually in the k through five of those nine i think four you had said are actually have children that read the curriculum is that correct yes now our policy calls for any citizen to make the request okay that's fine or allows for any citizen to make a request gotcha and then of those requests to the teacher's manual i know there was some challenges about that the teacher's manual that was referenced that it was not a tennessee teacher's manual in that i would like to ask dr oyer to speak to that based on the
206detail of the conversations with some of the complainants i think she's the appropriate one to answer that yes sir thank you for the question the original page the original document that the committee received referenced florida teacher editions pages so an example what we kind of discovered in looking at things was that they were about 20 to 30 pages off we didn't know that originally so there would be a specific complaint about a certain piece of a module or a certain page in a book and then the committee had to work through the tennessee manuals because we don't have access to the florida teacher manuals to figure out exactly what was being referenced in relationship to our the curriculum that we're using in wcs in tennessee absolutely so and all the appeals i'm sorry not even
207the feels the request for curriculum or consideration from the 37 individuals that we got i believe every single one of those referenced they were doing it on both on behalf of themselves and moms for liberty on the form i'm trying to double check on every single one dr oyer my recollection is not every single one many of them included that i don't have that exact number in front of me but mom's for liberty was consistently referenced yes okay upwards of 90 then again i'd be uncomfortable to put a number on but fair enough to put it the majority in that way okay so we had the group that was calling it crt and then i know we read through the emails the miss demon who is head of the moms for liberty chapter here who
208began it admitted that she actually wrote the template that we saw being used again and again for that i want to say it's by my estimation not yours no you're not coming but i would say it's upwards of 80 90 percent of the requests that we received all followed that exact template verbatim even in some cases individuals what appeared to be forgetting to sign their own name and putting an axe because the template had an x that was received on it i went to the moms for liberty website and you know it's everyone has their own opinions and views and what it should be of what is and isn't appropriate for material and what textbooks should be used and you know muslim group they aren't just playing about texas removed they have a textbook they
209do recommend and i went to the website and i found it and it's making of america right here by cleon skousen they link to it on amazon where you can purchase the textbook and so i went ahead and i purchased it myself it says written by scouson if you google him he was a big john birch society supporter he thought that president eisenhower was a communist agent that global bankers were had a secret government and wrote an op-ed that black individuals should not allow to be clergy in his church which was president of the church the head of the church came out and said do not share or repeat that information separated the church from mr scowson but anyway this is the book that cleon skousen wrote that monster liberty on their website advertised they
210describe it as a helpful textbook and i'd like to read a couple pieces from it if i might someone's asking for i know speak to it do you have a point of order i do what is it please hold on go ahead is this in reference to the to the reconsideration that we're that we're talking about just want to keep it on keep it on point so we're going on like 20 something minutes but well with that said we have allowed others to i've been shut off before after i've been talking for two minutes and didn't pose a question so i'm just asking for a little we have not i understand it yeah we've allowed everybody to you can't deny that i've been shut off by by much less and so there is a point
211of order being made mr galbraith i believe what ms osbrooks has said is that we've allowed people to talk at freely tonight at this particular meeting on this subject and we haven't limited the conver the comments having said that board members we've had some some very long comments and i'd like to ask you if you could to please draw be think think be thoughtful about your con comments that you intend to make and draw those to a conclusion if you've been speaking for a while yes ma'am raw i'm going to conclude right here and so the point of this being is that every nearly every reconsideration request that we've received came from the montreal liberty group certainly the head of it emailed us and they had a list of it and said you know represented
212that it was representative of the group the appeals were very much the same so here's you know i think it's fair to sort of say well what is the curriculum and what is the textbook that are recommended so that's going along with it so again this is the skousen book right here just going to read a couple of things first book asks about the three-fifths compromise that made a slave sixty percent of a human or sixty percent of property it's it's was this compromise demeaning to the slaves it's three-fifths compromise not demeaning to the slaves that's highlighted right there other things about slavery in the book talks about families being sold as units the tendency was to sell families as units if for no other reason than to keep the slaves contented the gangs and
213transit were usually a cheerful lot though the presence of a number of the more vicious types sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains again this is a recommended book as a helpful material problems of supervision slavery did slavery did not make white labor unrespectable but merely inefficient the slave had a deliberateness of motion which no amount of supervision could quicken on the plantation standard of living if the picket i'm going to use the word black children for this the actual word is a racial slur so this is not a verbatim i just don't want to say this if the black children ran naked it was generally from choice and when the white boys had to put on shoes and go away to school they were likely to envy the freedom of
214their colored playmates the freedom of their colored playmates on the treatment of slaves the instructions of planters to overseers almost universally emphasize the care to be given to slaves firmness without brutality and justice unaccompanied by indulgence being emphasized on selective breeding the stories a systematic breeding of slaves must largely be discounted growth in population was almost universally left to unregulated nature on cruel and compulsory labor excessive toil occurred only when the master or overseers were feeble witted as well as brutal and then within that same section numerous observers of various shades of opinion on slavery agreed that brutality was no more common in the black belt than among free labor elsewhere and that the slave owners were the worst victims of the system slave owners reverse victims assistance system being slavery itself so that's again
215that's the helpful book that you can look on the moms for liberty website right now and it's there and linked to on amazon that you can purchase the point of this all being that there are various opinions on what is acceptable and what is not acceptable but overwhelmingly i think our parents have indicated that the curriculum that our teachers picked that they picked overwhelmingly eight to one in the final committee vote three to one in the initial vote and now 99.6 percent are using is very positive so i am in a position of accepting the recommendations of the committee along with our ability of individual parents to opt out of anything that they deem inappropriate thank you miss durham okay can you hear me okay yes so i also just want to thank everybody for
216coming and offering your comments tonight i always i usually change my opinion based on what i hear from people coming to speak so i really appreciate that you guys take the time to do that it's a long night for you and i didn't know really what i was going to vote tonight walking in so definitely the comments you guys made and that my board members made and then conversations i've had with people shaped my decision i am going to vote to support this tonight because i don't want to see countless more hours spent one on this particular thing because i do believe that a lot of time has passed which would be one item i want to make sure we address is quicker resolution very intentional nimbleness to address these things when they come up
217i agree with lots of comments made around not grouping everything together and trying to address all of the issues but taking them one at a time because they deserve to be heard one at a time i'm not going to go into my lengthy list of things i think we do need to focus on because i want to respect the time so i'm going to do that at policy and i'm going to suggest that we address it through policy there's a lot of stuff that needs to be looked at and i have a lot of opinions about what you know some of the comments were tonight agreement with some and disagreement with others but i appreciate everybody's work on this and we'll improve that's all we can do is acknowledge that we've got some stuff to
218work on and commit to doing it better going forward thank you mr brown josh hold on let me reset there let's see if try again please just you may have to borrow let's try one more time just don't press and let me reset it i think okay thank you very quick point of clarification one of the things that i had seen in some of the emails we got over the last couple of months was reference to the wooden wisdom not having as much time to be reviewed as some of the other curriculums i know we it was pointed out that the process started in november i think of 2019 can you clarify jason or dr alan whether what written wisdom was available in november of 2019 or whether it was made available a few months
219later just to clarify that point because that's been brought up several times dr allen may have the dates off the top of his head but there there was a window of time where we learned that other districts were considering it with the phonics component and we checked with the state and knew and learned that it was a possibility and introduced it to her teachers i don't have the dates dr alan i don't have the dates off top of my head either it was introduced you just as you said mr golden it was in front of our community review i would i would actually offer that our teachers had more time to review this curriculum than ones that i've been associated with or would recall from years past because we actually it lined up the review
220for the teachers lined up with a professional development day that we had for our teachers so they had all the curriculums in front of them for an entire day which was not something that was typically available to them in the past so yes it did come on later as to mr golden's point that we were made aware that other districts were using it so we we felt it necessary to put it in front of our teachers as a choice but then they were provided a full day to review all the materials for myself internally i came to the conclusion that given the numbers and that mr welch shared about the majority choosing this i came to the conclusion for myself that they had appropriate time to review it okay so but is it just to
221try to validate that point that some of the folks have raised without diminishing the things you're saying that happened on the back end as far as the professional day and all that is it is it accurate that wooden wisdom was not made available in november was made available more like february introduced to the to the list in in more like february is that is that accurate or not i don't believe there was that great of amount of time in between i would have to give i can get you the specific dates i can get that to the board but i don't have that in front of me but it was it was in my mind more a matter of weeks rather than months that it wasn't available to to everyone i think that's the point
222of where the rush comment is coming from it's not so much that teachers didn't have an adequate time to look at it you know on the professional development day or the teachers didn't in a majority vote adopt it or recommend it but i think that's where the rush comment is on the front end it wasn't there when all the other options were made available it came on at some later date thank you for that i can't speak for every teacher because you know they you know their thoughts reflect the scope but what i do know is that a majority of the teachers did select it and my thinking is that if they made a determination they didn't have insufficient time don't select it mr wimberley man i'm sure i'd like to call the question mr
223mitchell is the only other speaker okay since there are no other speakers i think we can move to a vote okay board members are you voting for the question are we voting no since there are no other speakers i think the movement is there a staff recommendation we do recommend approval okay so yes is approval of the committee recommendation and no is the opposite board members please cast your votes oh it's mike it's on let me reset there you go your vote is eight yes two no thank you board members this meeting is adjourned you