Williamson County Board of Education Meeting - January 18, 2021

001good evening we'll call this january 18 2022 meeting of the williamson county school board to order board members will you please record your attendance mr wimberly are you here i am here thank you mr wimberly is joining us electronically this evening everyone if you'll please stand for the pledge of allegiance in a moment of silence i'd like to ask our deputies deputy hooper and purcell to please lead us in the pledge of allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice thank you may be seated the next item on our agenda is items of public of particular public entrance which is our public comment portion of the of the evening and i'm going to read out the rules for public comment but before i do i would like to welcome two boy scout troops to our meeting the

002first troop is troop 8 out of brentwood robert best is the troop leader and the second is troop 55 out of grassland and bart lowe is the leader so thank you all for being here tonight okay we have four people signed up for public comment tonight and you will all have three minutes so while i'm reading these rules you may want to set your phone timers or whatever timing device you use let me just go ahead and read to you public comment is one of several ways that the board hears from constituents other avenues include emails phone calls and in-person meetings per board policy 30 minutes will be placed on the agenda for the chair to recognize individuals to make comments at the discretion of the chair this time may be extended school board members

003do not respond to public comment during a meeting williamson county residents and wcs employees shall have first priority in the event time remains the chair may allow non-residents to speak all persons addressing the board will state his or her name provide his or her address and that is provided via the sign up process and provide the name of the organization or group he or she represents before addressing the board the board reserves the right to limit the time of any speaker the chair shall have the authority to terminate the remarks of any individual who who is disrupted or does not adhere to board rules speakers will present their comments from the podium the school board expects that each speaker will be courteous modeling for our students how one can respectfully disagree with others views speakers

004will address their comments to the entire school board and not to one individual board member the superintendent a staff member or the audience speakers are not permitted to use vulgar language no yelling speaking out or clapping as loud as a person speaks including while members of the board or staff are speaking remarks of any individual who is disruptive or does not adhere to the rules shall be terminated by the chair disrupting individuals will be asked to leave on first instance and will be escorted out by a deputy no signs are allowed in the audience so i'll now start calling you up our board chair our board vice chair casey hawes the time keeper casey if you'll raise your hand and mr ha i'll turn your microphone on so you can clearly give the signal when

005time is nigh so he'll let you know when your time is up and if you would like to be escorted out by a deputy please approach one of the deputies and let he him know the these deputies will be happy to assist you so our first speaker tonight is marla peterson marla peterson okay i don't i don't think she's here at this time mrs osborne's if you'll remind me i'll call her name at the end as well our second speaker is jared sullivan mr sullivan hello my name is jared sullivan i was a franklin high school student body president in 2009 i am now an author for random house last meeting several parents called for removing books from high school libraries which i felt which i feel warrants a response which is why i'm here

006because in attacking books these parents greatly insult our students intellect let's not pretend that students cannot understand the nuances of difficult material one parent mentioned the book crank which contains scenes of drug abuse some of which are repellent that's the point you'd have to be dense to think this novel would encourage readers to try drugs even if that weren't the case our students deserve the chance to engage with books that challenge their sensibilities and ethics because that's what i have to do every day as a thinking person in this country more important our students have first amendment rights rights that no one should infringe upon most high school juniors and seniors are old enough to be drafted and fight for this country if they can do that they can certainly handle some ink on paper

007thank you thank you our next speaker is michael miller good evening i'm mike miller i only prepared for a minute so this is not gonna take the full three let me start by thanking mayor anderson and the commission for recommending a three percent salary increase for our salary teachers i urge this board to unanimously approve this motion tonight throughout my older son's journey in wcs he's been blessed really with an amazing array of general and special education teachers who have voted tireless energy and work together to implement novel techniques to help him immeasurable credit is due them for his ongoing success in middle school at thursday's night's work session it was noted that the greatest number of teachers leaving our district right now are those with zero to six years of experience some of our

008younger tenured teachers many of those for other districts and private schools we struggle also was noted to attract the same group to apply a healthy student-to-teacher ratio is absolutely essential for special education success we need to attract and retain more of these teachers more investment is required to maintain our excellence in public education and special education in particular even after that three percent raise salary for our new teachers will still lag our neighbor our neighbor to the north by about 10 percent salary is but one factor do you want to make that important note we must also make wcs a place where teachers want to teach again so let's all calm the voices in the room and as part as parents partner with our teachers in our schools instead of tearing them down thank you

009thank you our next speaker is adrian king hello i'm adrienne king i am the parent of two current page high students i'm a franklin high school graduate myself i'm here to advocate for our teachers librarians school staff and administrators the vast majority in our community are very thankful for the people who work in our schools and teachers don't hear that enough i'm here to to speak for the three percent pay increase and remind you it's only a start there are squeaky voices in our community who seek to feed an outrage machine and some members of this board have fallen hard for that narrative any parent advocating for parental choice over the greater good for all students detracts from the mission of our public education system i am here to ask tonight that school boards stop

010catering to that loud minority the potential for success for our system is unlimited if we all work together and set a proactive agenda if we continue to allow those seeking social media fame to set our agenda we will be stuck in this current cycle forever thank you and marla peterson i don't think miss peterson is here that concludes our public comment for the night we'll be moving on now to the approval of the agenda board members is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda mr welch makes the motion is there a second miss cleveland seconds is there any discussion about this agenda if there's no discussion we'll move to vote mr wimberley how do you vote yes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members the next item is approval of the

011consent agenda do we have a motion to approve mr mitchell makes the motion to approve mr ha makes the second lord is there any discussion i don't see anyone wanting to proceed with discussion board members please cast your votes mr wimberley yes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members with that vote you approve the november 15 2021 school board meeting minutes you approve the following board policies for second reading student wellness and the virtual education program you've also approved the recommendation for field trip fee requests and the annual review of board policies which is an annual agenda item our next item on the agenda is communications to the board and the first one of these items is our superintendent's report from mr golden thank you madam chair and i want to

012thank everyone for their participation and presence here tonight especially the scouts working on their badges and i certainly encourage them to get as many badges as they possibly can as they as they go through this good process that the boy scouts have did want to give you a quick report and summary of our discussion back on thursday where we spent a substantial amount of time talking in my superintendent's report we mentioned covid and we we bragged a little bit on our students act scores the previous year and i mentioned one particular goal of mine to improve student sense of safety at school and the particular action steps we were taking towards that administratively this year which includes standardizing our teacher handbooks and our student handbooks and how we address discipline across all our schools especially

013with respect to bullying and harassment and then finally we talked about library books and selection and we had a really good presentation from a couple of our secondary school librarians about the process they go through so i really encourage folks to go back if they'd like to and review that discussion finally i do want to mention to you weather as many of you know i think unless you've been under the proverbial rock you know that it snowed and we were not able to have on campus school today we have used three of our 10 stockpiled school days for weather we've let everyone know that we do plan to be on campus tomorrow morning based on how the how the roads cleared up but i have to emphasize the roads are not perfect there will be

014some icy spots here and there especially in those shaded areas so just like always always we encourage folks to be careful with that and in part because we spent so much time in the superintendent's report at our work session knowing that we have a number of significant items on the agenda tonight i do want to jump to student staff and school spotlights and madam chair if i'm not mistaken we have somewhere around 30 celebrations tonight in our student spotlights and mr golden that means just 30 plus slides we are really celebrating some students and staff tonight so sit back and enjoy all of these fine students we're going to start with perfect act composite scores and this is jackson peppercorn from centennial high school and this is zachary bub from franklin and lillian she from

015franklin as well and also from franklin russell warzetski perfect acc act composite scores now we are really celebrating the arts this evening and we are recognizing our members of our allstate band from a number of schools and this is through the middle tennessee school band and orchestra association we're going to start over at brentwood high school this is atlas stallings and rena shu their directors are andrew o'keefe and katyanna nicholson at centennial high school this is colin miller collins director is scott miller at franklin high school rachel collins vasilios canoglo judy shu jessica wong renate jamal sam swan whoops sorry got ahead of myself lucas varden and november varden jacob campos is their director also allstate band from nolensville high school lemiek schmazzini casey martens and nathan montpole benjamin easley their band director at page

016high school caden monk taylor colemeyer is the band director there at ravenwood high school emily barnes chris genoak and robert fay band director at summit dorothy burt was named to the all-state band eric harris and scott actually band director now we're going to talk about allstate orchestra we're going to start at brentwood high school we had 21 students named to the allstate orchestra andrew gann joanne kang daniel alopaid then amy schue and brian schue andrew o'keefe their orchestra director at centennial high school this is pretzen kitsivan allyson cowan is the orchestra director there at franklin high school marcus chin dylan cook and chloe robinson ross bader is the orchestra director at nolensville high school ella goggins anna mandrell kerrigan mandrell and ethan oh craig madol craig madol is their orchestra director at ravenwood high school

017caitlin castleberry siruccio vorte luke hernandez palmer ash wong alice koh megan lowe diana liu and mitchell liu ross bader their orchestra director all-state choir we had about 31 students named to the all-state choir from brentwood high school sam holt adeline spears kate smith andrew stanmore stallworth olivia webber alexander wilson natalie pratt is their choral director at centennial high school helena erdens merritt hayneman colin miller riley tuttle kyle veren camp and nicole varenkamp jonathan vest their choir director at franklin high school aisha hinshaw adeline sexton and molly boker angela beale their choir director at independence high school emily doverville michael gordy kaden smith and wyatt wheatley and julie schwartz is their choir director at nolensville high school jeremy steinman and isabella wickham cassidy lindstrom is their choir director and ravenwood high school claire dahl faith den

018get and dickerson evan doglovic kyle doglovic sterling jones caroline meyer ella miller emily miller natalie porter benjamin segmeiler miller levisig miller and grady vanilsky's rose helmers is their choir director and last but not least from summit high school logan benton grace greenman and trevor young jenna elsberry is their choir director and right back from competition in atlanta georgia over the weekend this is your mill creek middle theater team who brought home the junior theater festival excellence in music award ali eisen is their drama director this is claire street and claire won the inspiration award from this national level and this is lanie allred and will brown and they were given all-star awards from the junior theater festival again ali eisem is their theater director now it's been a minute since this award but this is

019your tennessee titans mr football for division 1 6a from summit high school destin wade his coach is brian coleman and you may recall that dustin will be playing college ball at the university of kentucky with his brother keaton and for some staff spotlights from kenrose elementary school this is our opportunity to celebrate virginia nix who is the wonderful art teacher there and she has been named the tennessee art education association teacher of art teacher of the year and last but certainly not least is our wonderful maria griego who was received the special educator award from the tennessee association for administration in special education it's a lot of them but how fun is it to celebrate all of our students and staff congratulations thank you miss birdsong that is a lot of celebrating congratulations to all

020of our students and staff a quick board chair report board members remember to file your disclosure of interest filings the deadline is january 31st that is a state legal requirement and then also another state legal requirement make sure that you are current on your required trainings through the tennessee school board association it's always good to keep up with that as well those those trainings you know happen throughout the year and a lot of times you have to balance your day job with those trainings which occurred during the work day i want to also just note that there are still volunteer opportunities in all of our schools one of the easiest to fit in with your day job is volunteering in the cafeteria it's you know that lots of the schools have two shifts set up

021some of the schools just have one shift set up but it's it's a great opportunity to be in the school and to see the re the students and also to you know really be in touch with why we do this work so i'd encourage you to look at your volunteer opportunities and take advantage of those also effective january 1st we did have the every decade redistricting and so you may have some new schools that are in you may your district may have changed you may have some new schools in your district so please make sure that you look at that and introduce yourselves to your new principals and your new parent leaders at those schools and then finally miss cleveland do you have anything to report from the legislative committee there is one bill that

022we're keeping an eye on excuse me it's senate bill 1674. it's basically it's the tennessee education account which is we all know is school vouchers and this bill adds an option by which the students can meet the eligibility requirement for program participation at any anytime during the three-year period period immediately proceeding september first twenty twenty five which means it's going to begin in september one twenty twenty two should it pass and one of the additions is didn't did we did not or the school district did not offer students 180 days of in-person learning for a school year due to the covid19 pandemic or voluntarily imposed a mask mandate in response to coven 19 that and that voluntarily refused to allow parents and guardians to opt their students out of the mask mandate so we're watching

023this one closely and right now this is to be placed on the senate education committee calendar for january 19th and that's all i have to report thank you ms cleveland and mr galbraith i believe you have a hand up here thank you jason is i thought we had had a discussion we've talked about this a bunch just wanted to clarify with regards to recognizing students and spotlights and state champions i thought we were going to start including the club sports that are our school-based club sports and so i know there were several i don't want to attempt to to name them and so if if if that is the case if we could add those to next month's agenda thank you that is our plan to do that we'll make we'll make sure we celebrate

024those students as well obviously well to me the more students we can celebrate the better right right so thank you for that absolutely go ahead and i don't are we going to ask any questions because i wanted to pass along a piece of information that i got from dave that was relevant to our your discussion of the library discussion from last week and we the question was asked about the history if a parent could look at the at the history of of a child's library books and was discovered that was that was off they turned it on today and been verified that parent can go into the child's followed account can go in and sign in through their through their email address or their login information and they can see their history now so i

025think that's retroactive thank you for mentioning that our system does allow for parents to access their student their student selection of library books and to your point yes it is it is on and it and it was not on on thursday and so thank you for pointing that out also madam chair i do want to mention one additional piece related to that our recon our board policy 4.4 if i if i've named that correctly reconsideration of instructional materials does include library books as well i just want to make sure that we that we specified that thank you and madam chair if you're if your presentation is complete i don't really have a point of privilege but i'm going to try one if i may board members next week is actually the national school board member

026appreciation week and i wanted to make sure that you all knew that we appreciate you we do have some mug with the proverbial swag in front of you as a thank you it's you know school board work is one of those unsung important works in our community and really in this nation and i want to thank you for your work thank you very much and these will definitely come in handy for some of those five or six hour work sessions so you may need a pencil sharpener for for something in the mug i don't know thanks i'm going to take a quick five minute break here tim and brian and deputy purcell could i see you for a second please thank you we'll return to new business now the first items under new business are

027approval of the 20 21 22 school board budget amendments and resolutions and the first of these is the general purpose school fund amendment for disproportionately disproportionality arp idea thank you madam chair this is a transfer from federal projects fund to the general fund for the disproportionality idea funding which if i'm not mistaken is our third year of three years prior to review recommend approval have a staff recommendation for approval is there a motion to approve yes miss apria is there a second mr brown is there any discussion i see no one requesting to speak board members will you please cast your votes mr wimberley how do you vote please yes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members the next item is the general purpose school fund amendment middle school stem and

028cte grant mr golden thank you madam chair this is a grant that we've received i want to thank our college and career technical education folks for this to allow for middle school students to explore those opportunities in ccte prior to reaching high school and we recommend approval is there a motion to approve mr mitchell makes the motion mr hall makes the second board members any discussion i see no discussion please cast your votes mr wimberley yes your vote is 10 yes zero no thank you board members the next item is the general purpose school fund resolution for additional staffing mr golden thank you madam chair this is a proposal we usually bring to you sometime around this time of year based on additional growth positions this year we have 33.9 teacher positions plus 11 special

029education positions that we are proposing that you add based on actual growth this will put those positions in the appropriate categories and we do recommend approval for that is there a motion to approve ms priya makes a motion is there a second is cleveland seconds board members any discussion mr galbraith thank you madam chair jason is this the this 3.4 million does that does that represent the entire year's worth of is that 12 months of salary for these 40 people thank you for that it is actually it is based upon our projection of when they were hired so for many of them it's going to be close to that and i may i'm looking over at this farmer to give a specific answer to that yes for budgeting purposes that it would be an entire

030year's worth of south we put in sorry i didn't i did not understand that most as mr golden said most of the most of these hires did occur august september and so these are these are hires that we've already made all of them so these are fully staffed even though we're we're we've got some unfilled positions these are step so we've got we've gone ahead and done this and we because because we're not we're not going negative and we're not spending more money than we have in our budget but then we go and figure out how many we need we kind of add it to the budget now that's correct that's correct and to to use my thinking of the term although i'm not an accountant we are booking it yes yeah that's fine okay

031thank you for some reason i did not understand that thursday thank you i see no further discussion board members please cast your votes mr wimberley yes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you our next item is the general purpose school fund resolution for a raise mr golden thank you madam chair mayor anderson and i have for the last few months been talking in pretty good detail about the quickly changing market conditions that we and so many businesses have experienced with staffing he worked with his staff and let the county budget committee know at their most recent meeting that in february he intended to make a recommendation to them to increase county government staff's pay by a dollar an hour as i understand it that comes out to somewhere around four percent of their

032total county expenditures plus he mentioned that the proposal was to increase the sheriff's department and emergency management staff by six percent with a proposal to come in february he also encouraged us to do the same with what we could do with the funding that we currently had based upon that we did a lot of work the last few weeks had some discussions with the williamson county education association about about teacher pay and did some study and we are bringing to you a proposal to increase our hourly employees pay by a dollar an hour this will include part-time and full-time employees that everyone will get that dollar an hour pay raise upon approval and that we increase the teacher's salary by three percent i want to point out and i've mentioned this before but i think

033the more times we talk about it the better this is extremely unusual in the middle of a budget year it is hard to make a change for a government entity in the middle of a budget year largely one of the reasons we're able to do this is because our sales tax revenue really just those first few months of this year exceeded what we had budgeted for this year in other words folks are confident and they're spending money and the sales tax revenue has made this possible so at the from a process standpoint if you all approve it tonight it will go on the county commission's agenda and as i understand it will accompany as a separate item whatever proposal the county actually puts on the books and this will need to be approved by the

034county commission in february our proposal would make this retroactive to the first february pay period but because of the schedule it would first be realized in a paycheck on february 28th so i felt like it was important to walk through that detail we're very pleased that we're able to do it and we hope that our staff recognizes that we're doing what we can within the funding that we have to make a difference for them so i recommend approval board members do we have a motion to approve mr mitchell makes the motion miss supriya makes the second is there any discussion mr galbraith thank you i think everybody is in agreement that we are i can't speak for everybody i'm completely in agreement that we that we want to take every opportunity to get the teachers

035the pay they need and to get us the funding that we need i think that's part of part of our role as as board members to advocate for that jason i know you talked about this being extraordinary and it's something that we're doing in the mid mid year and i and i really don't take that lightly i just want to like i just want to be 100 certain and i'm and i'm not 100 certain that we that we've looked at all of the potential fiscal responsibility and fiscal things that could go wrong that could put us in a tough spot come next budget year and so i just wanted to and thank you rachel for for answering all my questions welcome to welcome to that so and we you had your first budget this year

036last year but but i typically do this when it comes to making pretty big financial decisions and making them in no fault of timing on our own this is this is brought forth by the by the mayor and we and we need to respond and i think it's appropriate but just a couple of questions jason from when you do we know what what percentage increase the raise the dollar an hour is overall on the on the hourly wages well number one it's it's more than three percent right and so for for three percent for a dollar to be three percent you're talking about 33 plus dollars an hour and i don't know the total average percent on hourly but i'm looking over to rachel i think she may have an estimate of that i can't

037actually tell you the exact percentage i can tell you the overall cost and of what it would be for us and roughly it depends the chart varies greatly so that's gonna that's the hard part well i'm just i'm just trying to maybe if we knew the average pay of of a classified employee it might might tell it but i'm trying to i'm trying to compare the six percent to for the for the sheriff's department to our hourly employees and i want to show that it's that we're getting pretty close there like i don't i don't want anybody to think that the that the one dollar an hour is less than the three percent because it's much much more it's more right it just doesn't i mean it might not equate it equate that in everybody's

038mind to that but so you because you quoted the six percent on the on the sheriff's and they're on but i don't know if they're all on hourly basis or not but it's i mean is it is it close to six do you think so let me give you one example that really hits one of our one of our toughest spots you may recall that a few months ago you all voted to increase the base amount for a special education teacher's assistant to 15 an hour a dollar an hour raises 6.7 pay increase so we do have some staff members who make less than that per hour as an example our general education teachers assistants make less than that so their average will their their pay will go up some some amount more than right

039that's 6.7 so somewhere around that 15 an hour point is the point at which at which they're actually gonna be making more than that six percent gotcha okay so to that end on just as a frame of reference those the special education teachers who we gave and we gave a raise in the in the fall it's a it's a little under seven percent six and a half something something like that's right for that zero to five years experience and some of those special education teachers who have a little bit more experience a little bit that the percentage might be at times okay and so mr welch had a had a question on on thursday regarding the sales tax and whether or not we're getting our share of the of the online sales tax and it

040just i started thinking about it after after the fact and the fact that our sales tax you said was up you know 30 or so year-over-year and i'm trying to understand it seems to me that like maybe there's pockets maybe there's a specific sales tax item or to some type of from some type of vendors that's not being included but i just i can't fathom that we have a 30 increase without without accounting for online sales tax in this in this in this economy and this knowing how much i spent on amazon this year right so is what's your understanding and if because if that's not it then some other thing is causing us to have a 30 we just don't have a 30 increase in economic activity that is a very large increase and

041so i reached out to the county today unfortunately they were out and i asked for the sales tax breakdown but my understanding and the way i answered the question municipalities do receive the online tax so if you're within franklin it's franklin there are areas that are not incorporated and in that case if the company reports that it could be reported to the county we don't necessarily see the breakdown of the different taxes coming in we get our allocation of total and so that's now what i've asked for is to see what that breakdown is so are there funds coming in to the county through sales taxes paid online possibly yes i do not know what that amount is so if i order if i were something online you saying that the city of brentwood gets

042its share but we don't you don't think we get ours not necessarily it depends on how the company reports it if i may miss farmer i think another piece of that is if the sales tax is collected and sent to the state each county and lea then receives a portion of the amount reported to the state so as we understand it there is a portion of it that may not actually go to the county if it was that portion designated locally before it went to the state that's my basic understanding of it that there is one potential opportunity for a fraction of that to go back to the counties that currently isn't but largely because the if for the state collections all the counties do receive that designated county portion well if you can i

043mean if you can find out the final i know we've we've talked about this i know eric's brought it up a couple of times that i don't know that we've ever come to a really solid understanding of that i know i've talked to i've talked to a city manager and he thinks it's being reported correctly of course according to you he's getting all of his all of his money but i just okay it doesn't i can't fathom there it may be true that we that there might be that we're might not getting paid on some of it but there's no way we had a 30 increase and it's not and if and if i understand correctly we're we're two years in to to the internet sales tax allocation right where we where we're getting that

044allocated at the local level or and they're charging it and so is the do you think the big increase is a function of this just because it was in place last year but were there just not enough people that were participating and remitting it and now we're just getting more to full compliance because i know we're not growing 30 so something so this is the only change that's been made that would we're probably growing you know maybe even double digits but seven eight percent is what we budgeted so but did we and when we budgeted were we going based on historical or were we weren't anticipating this where were we that's correct we were not anticipating that kind of jump and so we did historically if you went back five or six years it's fluctuated

045anywhere from five to eight percent growth and so we went ahead and used eight percent of the higher end when we did the estimates but we did not anticipate this a couple of other factors have been with covid people did not travel as much so they are spending here more also prices of things are going up therefore sales tax is going up so i think there's a few factors going into it and we just need and it's this reason so you and i know you're not doing this alone you're talking to to people but you feel you feel very certain i'm not going to say 100 percent but certain enough to to put your money where your mouth is right and here to say that you don't think that this is that you understand you

046feel like that this is sustainable from from a sales tax revenue standpoint and it's not just gonna drop off and leave us in a in a bad situation i feel confident enough to say to you even if it did drop off and things leveled back out we will still be for we will be fine with the existing funds we've already taken in if i ran the rest seven more periods with just seven percent of an increase in sales tax which is in my line with what's been in the past years we would still be able to fund what we needed to fund for for this year and for this year and making headway on next year so well that's that's where that's where i want to understand your certainty because from because you haven't we're

047not finished with i know i know we're not finished with this year's budget and you can you can there's only a there's only so much you can do to it but but we don't know where what what next year's budget's gonna going to look like yet and so just tell give me comfort that you of what get tell me help me help me understand why you feel so comfortable that there's that there's that because we always start out with that gap between what our ending fund balance needs to be or what our beginning phone balance needs to be and where where we are based on our budget and the revenues that we're willing to to project or that the county is willing to project for us and they're really conservative on that over time so

048why in this case are we so bullish on revenue growth in this case we've already have money in hand the funding that we're requesting tonight is money we have in hand on the additional sales tax we've already taken in that's why i feel so confident in it we've already got it's not a question of if in those particular numbers we have it going forward even with a seven percent versus a 20 to 30 percent growth we will have enough funding in order to cover this year and what the beginnings of next year we don't know next year as i mentioned to you all we are in the very early stages of processing what the budget's going to look like for next year in going back 10 years after you asked the question we've never been

049below 6 is the low end 5.5.85 growth in the last 10 years if we have an additional six percent growth going forward we would still have enough based on normal growth within the county on in other areas sales tax property tax we don't know what bep's going to do yet but we do know that we've had growth so therefore that will be an increase there all of those contribute to being confident to tell you this is a adjustment we can make at this point and can financially handle okay thank you i really i really appreciate the i'm sorry for belaboring but i'd i like to everybody who knows that i like to understand how the numbers work no there's there's some wisdom in us discussing this i was about to share my nutshell view of

050how i processed it but i think if that answers the question i think that's sufficient i'll move on to the other questions on the floor mr hall thank you man of chair and thank you mr galbraith for asking some of those questions too because this is as you said mr golden unprecedented and one of the things that i am really happy about is the relationship that you have with the county mayor and the county commissioners to be able to have that discussion in response to a pretty pronounced economic situation that has a real deleterious effect potentially on our ability to staff and provide quality services to our students so this is really impressive how kind of quickly and responsive it is to those market conditions and i think that it's worth reiterating too that no

051one is saying that this is the end-all be-all this is this is the first step but it's a significant one so i appreciate that and as well as your communication to the board kind of getting this information out to us as soon as possible answering a lot of the questions thank you rachel as well for i know answering a lot of questions about this one in the next resolution walking through the fund balance impact one of the questions that i had was what else might hit the fund balance you know every year we have some reconciliations and some things that get moved around and i had pretty good assurance from from rachel that is not a concern going forward that we're going to have enough for what's anticipated what's historically been asked for from that

052financial resource i feel comfortable there the sales tax question has come up enough especially for the online questions i think it'd be worth adding that maybe to frequently ask questions or something to our very good and transparent financial portion of the website but once we get that kind of nailed down and can have some scenarios i think it'd be good to sort of exactly see how that plays out so we can get a comfort level with that going forward because i think it's only to be more significant so i appreciate the questions on that have been asked but good suggestion thank you well thank you for the for the effort on this and i'm very pleased to support it mr cash yes thank you madam chair mr golden mr miller said something about retention okay

053that's a big word these days i understand that and i know the hourly folks are just going to enjoy this dollar an hour because i think they're still actually below what they should be making could you could we get an overview of i think it was mentioned 579 teachers have left some somewhere in the neighborhood of that yeah i am going to ask miss hall to answer that we actually have more teachers working for us this year than we did last year so we have netted ahead ms hall can give you some some detail but i want to i want to especially mention that what we have noticed more than anything is the pool of teacher candidates has substantially shrunk over the last few years and i'm talking the last two or three years right

054and we currently as of last week had 71 open teacher positions and so miss hall if you would share some of the detail that mr cash asked about yeah maybe just retirements and folks that are just looking for a different profession gotcha you're ready thank you on okay thank you yeah thank you mr cash and i think probably what you're recalling is that number we had about that have teachers that we hired between january 1st and december 31st and then we have also had an increased number of separations as well we've had 529 separations from january of last year until december of this year and that's an increase from 2019 when we had about 380 that separated so we have we have seen a upward trend but also last year during covid our separations were

055really down a lot of people stayed during covid which you know seems kind of different maybe than what you would think but i think a lot of people you know they wanted that job security and we did see less separations at the time but the information we've gathered from those who are leaving it's a it's a challenging climate to be a teacher right now and i think that's weighed a lot on our teachers and our other staff we do know that salary is a factor we are significantly below salaries for teachers in this county we're about 7 percent below rutherford county and about 15 percent below metro so we deal stu do kind of run behind with salaries and we've had a lot of changes for that for salary reasons and then just a lot

056of things that are you know beyond our control like individuals moving out of the area because we do have a lot of of in and out but various types of things but the ones that we are seeing recurring are change of career they don't they're the teacher climate is difficult it's very challenging and then also some salary issues related to being a teacher here and if i may mention one one specific item and then speak more generally you heard this in public comment and it and it's true it's it's it's more than salary salary is incredibly important people work you know to earn a living but we actually don't charge individuals for their health insurance premium when someone works for us full time that does not get taken out of their paycheck for the for

057the monthly premiums whereas our neighbor to the north actually does and so there is a mitigation of that expense compared to some of our neighbors but generally speaking our salary is less than many of our neighbors one experience that we've seen over the years with that is very often when we increase our neighbors will increase as well so it is that it is that constant battle one focus point that we have that we continue to emphasize that we continue to work on and we know we need to continue to work on is to provide a good living salary for our professionals and when the market changes quickly there's some reasonableness to making up to making a quick change to let folks know we're responsive final thing i want to mention generally we've made a commitment

058to you at the february work session to to share some details with a presentation from our human resources folks with some with some really good data and in what we've seen over the last few years and some projections for the future thank you thank you thank you for i really thank you for recognizing that the teaching atmosphere and situation could have a lot to do with this just one more question i was wondering if there's anything special you're trying to do to you know keep people in these jobs because it's very important and retain some of those that retired early so thank you for that like like so many other things there's no one pure solution i've i've i've talked to some of our folks about hearing from an airline professional who actually use the

059phrase the pizza parties aren't working anymore because because it's been so difficult in that industry largely because of the civility with what with what they've had they've had to work through we've had some of that as well so one main focus point of many that we've talked about as as a leadership team is when we have a chance to treat our professionals like professionals and to make it easier on them do it and so on some of those days when we've had a teacher only day we've found ways to accommodate their you know their needs and make things simpler for them we've we've shifted to the extent it works for families to to allow for remote parent-teacher conferences as an example when we had that paired teacher conference day if our if our if our

060professionals can do things in a way that our you know professionals have historically done we try to make that change and i'll tell you i mean it takes it takes a lot of effort sometimes we say no on the front end then we later on figure out we can do it so that's that's part of it the three percent proposed raise in the middle of a school year is an example of that our tradition with our teachers is percentage raises and we were able to talk to our teacher leaders about that and make it a clean simple raise it's easy to explain rather than an hourly rate as an example because because our teachers are on salary we've we've talked in in you know in more in more general terms about about being nice you

061know we brought that back our ptos have made it a point to encourage our teachers and thank them and so it really is a team effort we actually i actually have a meeting scheduled next week with the with the board of williamson inc to share with them where we are and brainstorm with them over finding ways in the community to encourage our teachers i thank you mr golden thank you miss hall for your report mr brown josh hold on a second please try again i'll add my support for this i really appreciate you bringing this forward jason and recognizing this need three things i've got and one of them was what you just mentioned about the health care premium health insurance premiums i wasn't aware of that which is actually interesting do we know what

062percentage that represents in terms of benefit to the employee in other words if that were taken out how much less would that be in their check i can tell you how much we pay per full-time equivalent back to the counties ten thousand seven hundred dollars per full-time equivalent employee to the county for health insurance premiums so if obviously not all of that would be coming out of the employee's check so what percentage of that would would be their portion if they were paying a premium somebody must farmer could you answer that does not come out of that check that's our portion that matches and it depends on what they select if it's single coverage versus family coverage so that varies a good bit actually but is it fair to say that maybe one or two

063percent of their salary would be their salary would be reduced by one or two percent if they were paying their premiums if they were to pay the full ten thousand you know if they were paying their their what would be the traditional employee portion in essence mr brown a comparable market amount for health insurance coverage let's just say that a teacher would pay 200 per paycheck for their their portion of the premium not counting what the what the county would be paying this farmer miss hall i don't i don't know enough about the market to one percent two percent maybe i don't want to just totally answer off the cuff but i think it would be much higher than that okay i would think it would be 10 to 15 the reason i bring it

064up is just because i don't know how much we talk about that as a as a factor in this the salary discussion i mean i'm 100 supportive of the salary increase but i just think that's something we should be maybe saying more than talking more about is that if neighboring counties are having to to pay that neighboring teachers are having to pay that in ours or not that endures to their benefit by sounds like a fairly significant percentage thank you for that our employees do pay the premium for family coverage but not individuals so okay and i like your idea i'm going to use the phraseology that many of us have heard shout out from the rooftop right so we'll make sure we share some additional information and continue to talk about it okay thank

065you the second thing is the fund balance i know that we i learned this last week that we start we have to start the year with x amount but we don't have to end the year with any certain amount what are we projecting i know we're saying we want to spend 4 million roughly on this out of fund balance what are we projecting at the end of this fiscal year we will have in fund balance on a normal run rate absent is four million miss farmer i don't if you could mention that and before you do i'm going to give a preface every line item where we don't spend goes into that fund balance which is one of the primary funding mechanisms for the next budget so that fund balance will include unspent line items

066and then it will it along with property tax sales tax and state funding will fund the next year well and you sort of went where i was going with the question about the fund balance carrying over because i was where we end will sort of help us know where we're going in terms of the ability to cover this again in the future that's right that's the farmer and mr galbert mentioned the gap that we look at when we look at the at the budget and that gap is the difference between revenues and expenditures what we're requesting and fund balance is what fills the gap we are currently running 20 higher than what we normally do the last several years we've been right between 12 and 13 million is our requirement to start the next year

067and so we are over that currently and we do not see any big expenditure coming that would reduce the fund balance further i cannot tell you and we will not know it's a moving target because you could have a p.o open tomorrow for a million dollars that's going to affect the fund balance and so that's why when we go and we begin to talk through the budget process we continually talk about that gap and where and where we'll land because we won't know until we get closer to the end so that's a segue to my third point which is the fifth whereas clause in the resolution that's before us talks about the possibility of an additional pay increase in the next fiscal year based on projected revenue yet to be determined so we're putting this

068in the resolution that we're previewing another salary increase we're not saying what percentage but we're putting it in there on the record that this is our intention which again is a good thing but it sounds like to me maybe what you're what we're talking about and correct me if i'm wrong is that there would be enough you're projecting there'd be enough in the fund balance that's remaining at the end of the year to cover the increase we're doing now plus an additional increase of a modest amount is that fair to say that's what we're currently projecting okay thank you and growth because we will need to cover whatever growth we have and not not to mention what we what we potentially would get with bep formula changes that's correct yeah thank you mr welch thank

069you so i went back and i found something from the tsba conference and this was in 2009 november of 2019. it was a slide that i thought was interesting it was a college freshman declaring as education majors and based on national trend trend data in 1975 22 percent of college freshmen became education majors in 2015 that had dropped by more than half 10 and in 2017 just two years later to drop by more than half again which is 4.6 in 2017 and of course we've had some pretty hard years for our teachers since then so i can't go into the you know numbers details like j can it makes my eyeballs swim and my brain hurt but i do know that for our community and our kids you know just having good teachers in the

070classroom is vitally important i know from that conference back in that tennessee as a state were a teacher importer we do not produce enough teachers of our own we have to go out to states like ohio and others and convince them to come down and then when we do convince them we got to fight to keep them here mr golden you mentioned you don't want to say who so i won't but you mentioned that some of our neighboring districts that may or may not be to the north of us are actively calling our teachers and offering them more money to jump ship and frankly that's that's been successful and i know i can do something simple like just you know i popped up realtor.com and i looked for single family homes here in williamson county

071there's a grand total of one house that's under three hundred thousand dollars in the entire county that's a thousand square feet and there's a grand total of eleven hounds that are under 400 000 in the entire county so you look at that you just give you know my goodness how does how does a family of two teachers that aren't very long into their career afford to live in the community where they work and send their children to the system where they go to school so it you know this is obvious this is an easy one to vote for it'll pass flying colors obviously but you know i think important thing is this is a beginning not an ending we do need to continue to fight for it i think the cash asked a great question

072how can we all support our teachers and everything else and i think as a board things like this but also to support them and what they do and when challenges and attacks on them come up that we as a board should be advocating very vociferously for the jobs they do the capabilities and standing behind them and supporting them as well all of that are things that we can do as well but first and foremost you know law spine ban a competitive market we've got to pay them more it's very evident thank you board members i don't see any other hands raised so we can move to the vote on this general purpose school fund resolution for raises please cast your votes mr wimberley yes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you our next

073item is the approval of a retention bonus for school psychologist mr golden thank you madam chair one of the particular items where we are losing individual school psychologists to some of our neighbors is school psychologist and it is such a such a significant challenge that we are asking you to approve a bonus in mid-year for that we do have a number of retention bonuses for different positions this is one where we've experienced this again in the middle of the year our intent is to if you approve this to give twenty five hundred dollars now to our to our school psychologist and then twenty five hundred dollars at the end of the year we contemplated the possibility of doing it at the beginning of the year and we determined that it was important for us to

074spend the money in this current budget year during the budget rather than it rather than it carry over and we will be talking with the wca about all those professional positions and we may have some other bonuses that we include you know after our discussions with them in preparation for next year so do recommend approval certainly open any questions you may have we have a staff recommendation for approval is there a motion to approve mr mitchell makes the motion to approve their second miss cleveland makes the second board members is there any discussion on this item i don't see any oh there mr mitchell thank you madam chair i had a hard time figuring out which button to push apparently so jason this is a one-time payment correct or one-time retention do we anticipate revisiting

075this before august or maybe even before summer where a lot of times people decide to move and see what we need to do to make sure we don't all of a sudden have a have a flurry of of exits after memorial day short answer is yes but long answer which i always love to give is we anticipate discussing this and other positions with the wca so that's definitely a possibility from a budgeting perspective you all will vote on our budget based on our schedule i'm trying to remember is it april march thank you vote in march on our budget the county commission has been asked by the auditors to actually pass their budgets and our budgets before the end of june so they so before july 1 we should know on this and potentially some

076other pay issues so is this a c i don't believe the this is a large funding item for our budget i guess maybe at 54 positions we're actually we're short 12 so you're you're looking at about a 300 000 dollar item i guess the is this going to be a hiring incentive as well so while this is retention are we looking to also have a bonus if we hire anybody new if my name is getting ready to answer that so i'll let miss hall answer that thank you i just wanted to say we do have hard to fill incentives so if we do have a new hire there would be that hard to feel incentive for them and again i'll reiterate that if we if we don't revisit this if we feel like this is

077a is a valid tool to keep our school psychologist if we don't revisit this prior for next year prior to the final payment then you're you're at risk of losing losing people or that tool i guess is gone for the next school year well thank you for that you're right that every year as long as there's a shortage of this particular profession and there is a significant shortage for a number of reasons if you were coming out of school and the increased demand where every school system needs more than they used to you're right about that so that is that is one of those items on our priority list and last question it's my understanding that we contract for positions when we can't fill it in-house we actually contract out to third-party providers for these

078psychologists is the is the cost of our contract service significantly more than what we pay common sense says yes i'm getting a nod from miss hall yes and i will tell you also a large portion of what our school psychologists do is testing to help students and teachers determine the appropriate instruction for them so i wanted to make sure that folks had a bit of a visual of what of a you know a big chunk of what school psychologists do miss cleveland just a simple question how many schools psychologists do we have and are all the positions filled we have 54 budgeted positions and we are short 12. mr brown thank you and forgive me if this was sad but what is the average salary for this position currently we have not said and i'm

079struggling to remember off the top of my head miss hall so we actually pay them off of the teacher's salary schedule with a five percent differential that's over that so that's they're they're paid the same as this teacher salary schedule plus five percent 1.05 times the teacher's salary average the average teacher salary is 55 so it would be 5 percent over that given the difficulty of filling these positions i mean was there any thought given to a higher amount than five thousand at this stage based on what we've heard from our neighbors well indirectly from our from our folks who are talking with our neighbors that's about what the bonus that they're being offered now the reality is the salary is somewhere nine to eleven thousand dollars less so ultimately we determined that this is

080what what we could do now again we're going to be talking to the wca about where we go from here with with what budget money may be available for the coming year ms hall anything else you'd like to add to that i just i just wonder i'm not necessarily proposing this but i just wonder if given what you just said about how much lower their salaries are compared to competitors doing enough that it brings their salary up to par and maybe putting more on the back end instead of on the front end so that it serves to be more of an incentive to stay longer part of our difficulty is there's some truth to so many positions in that context that we're that we're paying less and so it what we are trying to do

081at least in this example is it as much as we can have an immediate response it's hard for me to speak broadly so i'm going to speak anecdotally what we hear from our folks is boy it's it's tough to say no to that much i love what i'm doing here you know and so what we're trying to do is find some amount that that we can do to let them know that we that we really do want them i think i think about this last thing i'll say about it i think think about this in the context of the discussion we had a couple of work sessions ago i think about the increase in mental health yeah referrals and the greater incidence of depression and anxiety and other mental health issues and they're just not

082being the resources to meet that so not only do you have a market problem but you've got a demand problem too on the patient side if you will and just something to consider i'm not making a proposal but i just put it out there maybe to think about thank you for that and we really have a team you know who who work on serving students especially in that mental health needs arena school psychologists school counselors our social workers who put you know our students in touch and our families in touch with private providers special education providers i mean the scope of our team is is pretty broad and in so many of those positions we're all facing those staffing challenges board members i don't see anyone else requesting discussion please cast your votes mr wimberley

083yes your vote is 10 yes 0 no thank you board members the next item is approval of opened and or closed zone schools for the 2022-23 academic year and this is an annual agenda item mr golden thank you madam chair there's a new law that has added a lot of detail to the process we need to go through for open zone schools you may recall that we did open zone schools years before any law passed and the first law that was passed largely paralleled our board policy this time it's different they've the state law has restructured that where we need to go back and look at how many seats are available and open zone for that they have changed the structure from a first come first serve under our process to a lottery system and

084so the essence of this is we have a list of open zone seats that we determined complies with the law but gives us as best we can determine projections for addressing growth which the law still allows us to do so that's the chart that's before you projected open seats for open zoning based on what the law allows us to do including addressing growth in our high growth area the portal for folks to make the request if you approve tonight will open february 1st because there's a as part of the new law they actually require to be posted for two weeks before people act before it actually opens you may recall it in the past that we've we have tended to post it the moment you finish the board meeting because requests start coming in immediately

085again it's not first come first serve anymore it's total the portal is scheduled to end and close may 15th which is your board policy and in the event any of those fill up beyond the amount of seats available then we are required to conduct a lottery for for those seats for those families to choose this is substantially different but again the numbers that we recommend are based on what we project our school campuses can bear i will tell you one other item and we discussed this somewhat at the work session how this goes this year may have a significant impact on potential changes we may recommend to our school board policy because we have a lot of detail in our open zone policy that we've worked through based on families needs over the course of

086years but based on where we are i do recommend approval and if you have any particular questions about the law or the process ms osbrooks and mr samuels will are also available to answer any questions board members do we have a motion to approve mr welch makes the motion mr hall makes the second and we already have speakers mr cash thank you madam chair i've got i just got a question for mr golden or maybe miss osbrook what does a lottery look like thank you and i actually believe that mr samuels may be the best to answer that because we're working on that right now we're actually checking with a couple of entities that have computer systems that can structure for that mr samuels yes sir we don't have a lot of definition on that

087yet because as mr golden says we are been talking to and interviewing different type of lottery opportunities apps and things so i don't have a lot of definition for you but what we're trying to do is get something that would be quick easy transparent and that's kind of where we're going with that and the idea of course is that if they're i'm going to use an example if there's 50 seats available and 60 people who have have have have said they want it then 50 will be randomly selected and so our idea is choose a computer model that will allow for that and mr cash that there is not a lot of specific specificity in the law it just says that a lottery shall be conducted so okay thank you mr mitchell thank you madam

088chair i personally do not feel that our current policies and rules on open zoning are are suited to this new law and i'm talking about our the rules around grandfathering roll over into the feeder program into the feeder schools the sibling as well sibling rules as well so i feel like we need to further we don't have a method for the lottery so i really i'll let jay speak before i make a motion to defer this for a month for us to revisit our policies and get our policies where we think they should be given this new paradigm of open zoning that the law that the state has placed on us and also make sure we've got a lottery defined that we've all been able to vet and think about before we actually post this

089up on february 1st so as this is written we're looking to put this up on a portal for february 1st open you know open the portal on february 1st when we really our policies have all been written for a much more narrow open zone approach that we have had over the last few years so i'll i'll i guess give my time back and then i would like to make sure i get recognized again before we go in to vote mr galbraith thank you madam chair it's a to elliot's point i know i'd mentioned deferral and then the answer around why jason staff didn't didn't recommend deferral let help me understand this because they said that they weren't going to it was going to it was going to delay being able to to to start enrolling

090students and the certainty around that but and i guess would that would only be true if it was clear that we weren't going to have that we weren't going to reach the limit so if they were if we were going to is that what is that the rationale there because if we if we if we reach the limit then we're then we can't we can't touch anybody's schedule right but the limits are pretty are pretty high is that your yes one of the things that miss dunley's what the miss not only talked about was and i'm going to use my language in our experience we usually get a flood of folks early and then we get a flood at the end and so the thinking that we've had is if if there was such a

091small number that it was quite apparent there would not be a lottery in a for a particular school that would allow miss nunley's staff to process those requests that gives some some kind of finality for families waiting everybody waiting till may 15th is a long time and that's one item that i'm not sure that the that when this was discussed at the legislature was fully con was fully contemplated so ms nunley did ask for it to be now so that they could process some during that time another item related to that is staffing but the reality is there will be some that we won't know we anticipate there will be some we won't know for sure until may 15th so i guess my recommendation as it relates to to what elliot's about to propose would

092be if we're i'd be in favor of of delaying a month because we still got a big window but if we if we didn't delay i would actually be in favor of of of setting aside policy with the intention of of reviewing this upon and knowing that we're going to review the policy to well jason what do you think would your reaction would be if we if we pulled the may 15th deadline back to to a month say like to april 15th because now like before i don't know i'm not exactly sure why it's open so long anyway like 90 days is a really long time you know if it would if at february 1 it would be open two and a half months if we pushed it back to march first it'd still be

093open 45 days and we could be and we could figure out they have plenty of time to sign up there's no there's no rush to be first like i mean there's seems to be plenty it seems to be a good compromise because before we didn't have to wait until may we could start working as soon as they came in we just left them as long as possible my proverbial gut tells me i like that you know one of the things we talked about as administrative staff is let's see the impact of this in this one year window and make appropriate changes because we determined that with whatever happens with the numbers we have we could deal with one year another variable that isn't going to help us any is the state going to address this

094because i know tsba has talked about it we don't know if there's going to be any proposed legislation to address it i do want to refer to mr samuels and ms osbrooks to give their opinion on on on both of those suggestions since they've been since they've been mentioned either the possibility of of deferring for a month the impact of that or the possibility of making some changes to the to the policy so if i can as to making a change to the policy the current law states that the open enrollment period has to be at least 30 days so we are well well beyond that with the may 15th that is purely from our policy so yes that could be changed the other piece i wanted to point out that miss nunley talked about

095thursday night is that our counselors are already working on schedules so for our middle schools and our high schools especially not that there's not a lot of scheduling with elementary but our secondary schools waiting that month is going to be very difficult so i do given the way that the law is currently written i legally we definitely could make a change next month that policy we had already decided thursday night to put this on the policy agenda and we could do one reading in february and back that up it just has to be a total of 30 days mr brown thank you so i guess mine's more of a procedural question because there's a motion on the floor for the resolution so would that motion have to be withdrawn in order to take up a

096motion to delay this a month no sir mr mitchell has asked and i think he's now requested to speak if he does in fact make that motion to defer then the board would vote on that but if he chooses not to and goes with mr galbraith's suggestion then the board would just vote on the motion itself regardless of how you all vote the discussion on thursday night was to bring this to policy so regardless of the vote 1.703 will be at the policy meeting in february but to be clear we are we determining with whatever we do that this any change we make could be done in in a way that positions us to be ready for this for the next school year in spite of all the things you've just talked about as far

097as preparation scheduling and any change we make would still allow us to be ready to do this and have it be effective in the next school year i know last last week at the work session we talked about whatever change we would make would only be for the following school year because things are already in motion for 22-23 mr samuels if you if you would answer that question with respect to the logistical work of ms dunley and her staff will we have time mr samuels excuse me but we did not pick you back up because mr golden had asked for miss osbrook's thoughts on this and your thoughts on this so would you not only address that but anything else that you might want to say about the work involved well first a question that

098was asked earlier what if we what if we move the deadline up to say 15 april allison doesn't see any problem with that moving moving the timeline forward though has already been mentioned the logistics of scheduling really comes into effect part of our challenge here is you also get into some of the new summer activities that we have allison does the bus buses for summer school that's a late decision so the workload issue is the sooner sooner we can get started the better and the sooner we can put this one you know to bed so to speak in in terms of workload of staff the better stretching it out on the far end is is a worse and you know dr webb may be able to address the scheduling aspect of it much better than

099i can well and i will tell you also we'll we're going to have an all hands on deck mentality on this because this is unusual and we'll make sure we provide whatever help we need to our staff to give you a little bit of perspective usually we have somewhere around 2 200 open zone students a year in that range you know somewhere close to 5 of our total student population is attending out of zone of course we don't know what this variable might might do to affect it miss dr webb do you want to say anything i can just speak to the timeline thank you we have students who are in the process of registering currently our counselors are going through the process of going over the registration packets so the registration and selection of

100courses all that is beginning students typically have selected their courses and have met with their counselors and all that's completed by spring break so that the scheduling process can begin so that timeline and getting all that complete especially with the uncertainty of not knowing which school you're going to be attending certainly does cause some additional stress for students as they await that final decision and doesn't that also impact tryouts potentially yes and so if it's a student who is going out for extracurriculars or if it's a student who hasn't established an athletic record yet and is going out for athletics as an example knowing which school that they're going to be attending certainly is crucial to those families madam chair just to follow up if i might so help me understand what a change to

101the policy practically speaking does to the situation in terms of help making it better in light of the new law well it depends on what portions of the policy change but if for example there are limits on the sibling clause which allows siblings who who are in that school with their older sibling to to attend might that influence a family's decision to not go it could if if if if if there was a change that required a student to reapply year after year might that influence their decision and if they end up in a lottery annually it might now from from my perspective as superintendent what i know is that we have done a lot of work over the years to try to promote continuity for students and families as much as we possibly could

102in this context what we don't know with this year is how many new out of zone requests there will be over and above what we've what we've traditionally got and that's the unknown that is making so many folks nervous might there be a flood we just don't know so you know my gut tells me if if there are any recommended changes to the policy that affect decision making of families we need to grandfather in those who we've already committed to number one and then second evaluate is this good for a student the timeline change i actually like because it's simple and straightforward and it gives our folks time in a strange kind of way it actually helps families plan a little bit better too for some of those for some of those other items so

103there may be some simple items that we can change you know even while this process is going on that there could be a positive maybe a question for for dana is there any mechanism by which we can amend that policy tonight on the floor to have to have it happen sooner i would not recommend that we do that tonight i recommend that we take it to policy we can't amen we can by the february board meeting make those make that change instead of going through six two readings there is a mechanism and policy to amend it faster and we have done that i think it would be appropriate under our policy to do that but we're i'm thinking we're more than 30 days out from the next board meeting so i'm wondering if so i

104hear you on not not suggesting or recommending that we do it do we have the ability to do it based on polis our policy that governs how the board operates or based on sunshine do we have the ability to do that on the floor or or just tonight tonight we've not given proper notice okay so i would not so it's a sunshine issue might not be stating it correctly but but my suggestion was to set aside policy and make a change which isn't which isn't making it change the policy it's setting aside policy and setting this counter to policy knowing that we're going to review it that would be a way that's that's how we don't change policy we just ignore policy for the purposes of this vote like that's how we would do it

105correct and i did not understand that's what you wanted to do so yes if you wanted to make a motion to set aside policy and right now no one has that right you could set aside policy and then make a second motion that would change it just a minute are you done mr galp okay next up we have mr wimberley and then me he skip skip mister he wants to be off the list now okay thank you so i have a question i think that you know we did ask ms nunnelly at the meeting at our work session on thursday night and it seemed to me that she responded she being the person that will actually do this work and her team that she was comfortable proceeding under the current policy and under the current

106parameters so the thing that i think is still at play in my mind i think that to me her input requires significant consideration i think to me the thing that's still in play is do we do we have some feasibility to move those deadlines mr welch thank you i have had most my questions answered i wanted to see if we could do an expedited one to ask that of dana so i appreciate that we can do it in one reading i guess i'll add i very much opposed to this discussion of trying to amend policy on the fly this was not a casually written policy there's there's a lot of implications and things that it touches a lot of trickle-down effects with this and because we've been put in a precarious position by bad legislation

107now we have to adjust doesn't mean that we should write bad policy as part of that adjustment we can do it quickly we can do it more quickly i think this would be a better way to to say that but try to do it immediately is a bad idea the other along with that and i just want to ask for golden dana brought up kind of the implications of the counselors as long as you feel that they will have enough time i know that summer and all that is their busy season so to speak trying to you know play the tetris game of making all the schedules and the classes and everything fit in there so if we do defer this to next month and adjust our policy at that time as well are we

108giving them adequate notice and time and preparation to be able to put that in place are we putting them in a bad position it has the potential to be difficult and time consuming but i will say it always has had that potential based on when folks choose to register even in that first come first serve what i know our staff can do is work on those families that are already out of zone and that's largely what our counselors do where it could be difficult is for those families who are waiting to hear did i get in or not especially for example an eighth grader moving up to ninth grade and wanting to go you know wanting to go to a particular school and get and get involved my gut tells me i like the idea

109of moving that deadline up but as we sit here to your point on the fly this is such a complex policy my belief is that we have the potential to bring that deadline in earlier at next month's meeting if we have if if we evaluate the impact of that and make a recommendation as we sit here i'm not comfortable making a recommendation that we change the policy at this moment but we do have the potential because this is such a long window of time where we might be able to and still serve our families appropriately but our team needs to talk about those changes before we make them so following up on that then kind of a couple things one doing the policy on the fly as far as i'm concerned at least that's a

110that's that's not a feasible concept i'm i'm not willing to consider that the cure is worse than the disease i think in that case we also have an issue though that i think we do need to change the policy i think elite is correct that it was never written with this with these implications and the challenges in mind so the rules of the game have completely changed and in that fact it sounds like there is some concern with the timeline that we have we can move a little bit more expeditiously which is good but even then you know 30 days out is a little bit of a challenge so what i want to throw out there and see is this something where we should have a special called meeting with a single agenda item on

111it in order to review and make adjustments to that policy only with this in mind because i do see that the changes that we could potentially make to that policy could affect the open enrollment numbers not necessarily what's available but whether parents choose to or not given on what we choose to do and go forward with there's a three and a half month window my opinion as i sit here is i don't see a need for a special called meeting but there may be some value depending on where we land on a one vote policy change okay or suspension of policy pending a second to mr galbraith's point thank you mr mitchell thank you thank you madam chairs so a couple of notes i've made listen to my peers comments my preference would be that

112we get our policies in order before we approve the open zone timelines and that would include both the list of schools the creation of the portal opening of the portal and the closing of the portal that parents need to know what the rules are before they go on and ask to move their students from their zone school to the non-zone school the requirement i don't see a requirement for the portal to be open between february and april i think that's our call you could open it from february to march you could open it from march to april you know we're you're talking the original the way this thing's written is it's gonna it's gonna close in may so we're wanting to modify that to begin with before we vote on it at a minimum so

113that whole timeline of how long the portal is open and when the portal closes is us to make that determination based upon when we get the policies done and so i don't see that's going to impact what scheduling is going on right now because scheduling is going to take place regardless of whether they've gone into the portal or not the counselors are going to determine and set forth what recommended classes the student will take next year regardless of what school they go to now what classes are set up and where and when they're actually getting their schedule i believe if i remember correctly is pretty much a week or two before school opens because then they get to i have an idea of what what classes they're in what their actual class rotation is what

114they're scheduling right now is what classes the counselors are recommending the students take in the next for the next semester and reviewing where they are over their overall career i'm i'm at a point of the risk of changing schools i guess is inherent to the schedule scheduling is where i'm going there i will call out in my in my line of work speed does not equal quality when you're when you're trying to figure out a policy or you're trying to determine a thought a thoughtful process so i don't recommend i won't support setting aside policy tonight to try to figure the policy out and you know a couple of the mr mr brown a couple of the rules that i would think we would want to discuss with this new paradigm of open zoning is

115what are we going to do with the students that are already open zone do they get are they grandfathered continue to be grandfathered for the duration of their career at that school plus the siblings that are following along because that's one of the rules is once you get open zone you're there for the whole five five three or four years depending upon the school and your and your sibling that's in the school with you gets that same accommodation so are we going to carry that forward with this much larger set of open zones and that's one of the things i think we want to look at and again are we doing it every year are we going to make people redetermine and we quite frankly need to have it have the lottery defined before we

116throw this thing out because for us to assume that we're not going to have to run at least one lottery for the 40 plus schools that we're we've got out here is probably a risky assumption so anyway that said i move that we defer this item into february we have a would you please restate your motion i move that we defer this agenda item to the february board meeting is there a second mr welch seconds is there any discussion let me ask the speakers who are in line do you do does your comment pertain to okay mr priya yeah my question pertains to both motions i guess is there anything stopping us from if we decide not to defer and take a vote on approving this but maybe can we change the deadline right now

117i just see the value of opening i mean if we have to wait two weeks to open the portal and we i think there's a lot of value in gathering that data of where we see a flood of enrollments right away as if we opened it and then have the deadline be like april 15th can we then work on the policy and the details of it as that is opened or is that not fair to families to say you're going to apply but you don't necessarily know what the rules are going to be i'm just trying to figure it out procedurally well i'm going to speak to the logic and philosophy of it and mrs ostberg's may speak to the procedure of it if a family or when a family makes an out of zone

118request if when they ch if they change their mind we don't say no no so sorry you already decided that you're stuck right if they make the if they make if they if they go if they decide you know what i'm going to stay at my school up until the point they actually move to their school now if they if they ask in the middle of a year there's a process they have to go through so it's if there's a change the families would need to be informed of that change and make that decision this is still something i want to do and y'all i also one big issue with the policy i want to make sure we honor the intent of the legislature as well and not make so many changes that it becomes

119a practical no for a family and so that's one of the reasons i want us to spend some time before we make any substantial policy changes mike moving it up a month you know from may 15 to april 15 with a set aside of the policy that strikes me just on the fly as being doable but again i'm very concerned about making any substantive changes to the policy but again mr mr mitchell's mr mitchell's motion is to is to defer for a month so i think i followed you but and if i did not the february 1st when we opened the portal that was administratively the decision that's typically when around the time that we have what we've typically done is this year or this month vote and as soon as the vote occurred on

120the open zone at midnight the portal opened so ms nunley chose the february first date that's not in policy that's not in the law so that could be moved the only part in the law is that it's required to wait two weeks or post it two weeks before opening 14 days 14 days february 1st is 14 days after tonight right correct okay and then it must remain open for 30 days so to mr galbraith's earlier question we can also move the may 15th date that is in policy so we either do you see so we need to somehow change policy either rewrite policy which i believe is what mr golden and i would prefer because there may be more than just the date or someone could make a motion to set aside policy so if

121we were to approve the original motion tonight and open it february first and it would be set to close may 15th could we then look at it during the policy meeting next month and change that during the open window of enrollment yes ma'am okay that was that was my question mr brown so i guess my first question is practically speaking what would a delay as mr mitchell is suggesting mean administratively because obviously you brought it tonight asking for approval tonight it slows down the work for those that we know need the scheduling so you've got the practical work of of ms nunley and her staff to to make the changes and then you have the work of the counselors now if you all decide to do this let me tell you what i intend to

122do administratively i intend to have our staff start working on the existing out of zone students and start working under the understanding that we have a commitment to them already and we'll start processing them the difficulty will be in those who have not yet decided but might change their mind so i will tell you no matter what you decide tonight we'll make it work if you if you vote to defer for a month our staff is going to work on the existing out of zone students and their schedules i will strongly recommend that you not go back on the commitment you made to those in years past and change that so if we have a change we've already made that commitment to those families if if you vote to do it now that will allow

123our staff to start working on it because it's always a lot of work it is a flurry of activity they really demand some early work because our counselors can get some classes set and then that later work may 15th has historically been there as a courtesy to our families to help them make decisions as as late as they possibly can because they're working with their ch their children on what's best for them so i hate making a quick change because we're trying to do all we can to to to help our families make as informed as a decision as possible i don't know if that answers your question fully it does and i think based on what i've heard you say we can proceed tonight if we proceed tonight it allows you all to get

124started and not delay that it also gives us the room we need to wait until the policy committee meeting in february to make changes to policy and still not harm the process the integrity of the process so i would move the table the motion to delay the motion to defer would you rather not just vote up or down instead of tablings i don't know does says your first question majority okay so i would i'd recommend we vote on mr mitchell's instead of tabling a defer i'm not okay fair enough i'll withdraw mr galbraith thank you i guess if we're going to if we're going to make changes and you're okay with changing the rules after we i was i was hoping to set the end date earlier to help everybody but if we're if you're

125okay with if you would rather leave it at may 15 and change the date if we change the policy then i guess i'm okay with that i and if you're and if we're going to change the policy i guess it all it all gets down to jason you're going to have to you're gonna have to explain this to to parents right it seems it seems to be easier to to explain to them if we just if we just delay it and everybody's delayed and we and we come forth and they're and they're signing up under under the rules that we know but if we choose to go forward and we make a change and they have they have time after the change to to to change their mind before they have to make a final

126decision this is going to be a really confusing process for everybody i don't know how to i don't know how to make it any simpler than that so the only thing we could do to make it really simple is to is to vote tonight to to go with the policy and not make any changes until effective until that after this process which i don't think i'm hearing i think everybody wants to make changes effective with this new process immediately so i don't i still don't know where i stand to stand on well it's it's a tough one and so we you know we had a lot of these discussions just in the last couple weeks administratively because it is it is tough and so where we ultimately landed was there's a variable we don't know

127and that's how many people will take this up and so what we ultimately landed on was leave the process the same and make decisions based on the impact of what our families ultimately do and we have this one year anomaly that's ultimately where we landed because of all the difficulty that you all are discussing now if you vote to defer it for a month based on those unknown variables that mr mitchell has articulated well i will tell you that if you vote yes on this my understanding of your vote will be that those who already are out of zone can be served as if they're going to continue in their out of zone schools and we can work on serving them if you vote yes i know there's still a lot of discussion so i'm

128not i'm not comfortable madam chair making a recommendation yet on this on mr mitchell's motion but but again that's why we're that's why we landed where we landed with all with all the confusing detail that this brings with it there are three more speakers and then you can make a recommendation after that ms cleveland yes i'm against deferring it and for the exact reasons that mr golden just stated that's that's my feelings is i believe we're getting the cart before the horse here we don't even know what's going to happen we're making a lot of assumptions that have not even happened to talk about changing policy this may not even really impact us we don't know and like to eliot's point previously is you just don't want a knee-jerk reaction and change things when you

129don't have anything you know what you're going to change and i don't believe in changing policy based on just assumptions and i really believe you can if we pass it tonight as the law requires us to we have to do this wait and see and if it does affect our policy if we do seem overwhelmed by the grand fathering in and everything else then we can make the changes but we're making way too many assumptions to decide to change a policy so therefore i don't believe it should be deferred thank you miss cleveland mr wimberly thank you madam chair actually i was going to ask what staff recommendation is and have we reached that point now we have one more speaker after you mr wimberley okay thank you mr hall thank you chair i'm concerned

130that the only the only result of deferring this a month would be to open a can of worms and potential anxiety among the 2200 impacted families this is just there's so much involved in this policy that i would hate to entertain any more changes than what we're already dealing with here i think we're kind of over complicating this we've had a couple more variables introduced but the solution that's been presented is completely compatible and in compliance with our policy from wonder what i understand even changing the may 15th deadline i think would do a potential disservice to people who are moving to the community people who have known that may 15th deadline from years past not everybody watches a three-hour board meeting to pick up on the nuances that you just explained jason about how

131this would be understood as we proceed so i'm in favor of passing this as is tonight without adding any potential changes that could cause confusion with this policy but i do i do think it'll be worth addressing but i also know that there are a lot of people who have counted on this policy maintaining some consistency and really it's important to give them that reassurance tonight i think and in the months ahead with this that anything we look at changing with this we really need to tread lightly on thank you that was our last speaker for discussion mr golden would you like to give a staff recommendation regarding the deferral i do not recommend deferral okay board members the motion on the floor is to defer this action to vote on the open and closed

132zoned schools for 2022-23 so this is the motion to defer please vote yes to defer no to not defer is that correct mr wimberley no your vote is one yes no no thank you board members and now we're back to the original motion approval of open and or closed zone schools for the 2022-2023 academic year mr mitchell so i'll make i make a point here that this open zoning from a at a high school level is going to create some opportunities for the sports teams on the schools that have 30 to 80 or so open spots versus the schools that do not so you're going to open a portal again that's i mean will of the board is what it is but for us to not sit back and think through what we're going to

133what we're doing here by opening up all of these schools without with our current policies is going to create there's going to be a lot of nuances and a lot of a lot of caveats that we have not identified at this point we haven't previously had to worry about quite frankly so thank you for that mr mitchell the numbers generally speaking are higher than they've traditionally been we've had an obligation under the law to open zone schools where there is capacity and so there are some schools that just haven't been open if there's no capacity we've maintained that but you're right there there's that potential that somebody could choose i want to be on blank team or i want to participate in blank band and therefore i'm going to that school you're right that there

134is that possibility now if i may dr dr webb correct me if i'm wrong the way tw is it's hard to talk about tws double-a rules because they're they're complex if there's a change in the midst of a student's high school career that requires a year of no participation so this has a bigger potential to affect an eighth grader for example moving up to high school did i articulate that appropriately thank you mr golden you are correct so if a student has already established an athletic record they either and they transfer schools sitting out a year or a bona fide change of residency is the path to eligibility for a student who has not established an athletic record such as a rising ninth grader there is no requirement from t blessed bla to set out

135a year mr brown did i understand correctly from earlier discussion that there are certain things including the opening date of the portal that can be done and decided administratively that are not subject to our vote tonight we cannot open the portal until 14 days after the board vote okay so that's why we chose february 1st as the recommended date because it's 14 days after this vote and then miss osborne's if i'm not mistaken there's a window of time where the portal has to be open and under our policy the portal would actually be open longer than the state requirement is it 30 days it's 30 days so you can't i'm sorry go ahead so yes to answer your question there are some things that are administratively what what you all are voting on this evening

136is the attachment with the open and closed zone schools and those numbers associated with it so you can't open it until 14 days after this vote but you don't have to open it 14 days after the vote you could open it later if you chose to based on things you might encounter when you start to go into the process that's correct so does that might address part of what your concern is elliot that if the staff starts getting into this we're authorizing you to start the process now and you get into it and you realize there are things that require you to delay the opening of the portal for whatever reason you have the authority to do that is that correct that is correct okay thank you mr welch councilman of course to speak with

137vote thank you so we are back oh sorry jay go ahead just to follow up on that so i guess it depends dana does it depend on what the motion is actually i mean if we what is what's the actual motion on the on the floor if we're if we're talking if we're saying that we're going to approve these episodes of schools and open the open the transfer portal at on february 1st then they don't have any discretion right you're correct so the motion the annual agenda item is approval of open and or closed zoned schools for the 2022-22 school year there is nothing that in the motion deals with when the portal would open we have announced that though so that board members would know but the motion on the floor is for approval

138of the open or closed zone schools for next school year okay so i would i would say that we should that if we vote for this without without modifying language giving giving flexibility to the to the superintendent i would i would propose that if we if we vote for this as is then we do it as is and if we change anything later because of policy then we then we if it whether that's the end date or what what an open what happens to an open zone student after they enroll from a grandfathering perspective like all those things we might we might end up changing in a in policy but i would just recommend this not to not to push back the opening of the portal if we're if we're voting tonight because that's two

139weeks like i don't even know what could pot what could we possibly find in the next two weeks because nobody's going to sign up what could we possibly find out in the next two weeks that could say well no let's move it let's move it back to february 15th through march 1st does that make sense yes to your point what i think that we may know when we come to policy is and if not at policy at the work session we may know some things that we don't sitting here today as we talk about because remember we'll talk about this policy at the policy meeting at work session both before you would vote at the board meeting if we you know if y'all as a board want to make those changes right but that's after

140the february that's after so jason is there anything that could come up between now and february 1st that would cause you to to push back the opening of the of the portal i just can't i can't i can't imagine one to your point okay that's fine thank you so much numerics associated with that list not the details of the memo that is accompanying this agenda that is correct what ms garrett read was approval of open and or closed zone schools for 2022-2023 and that was the motion that was made i see no additional questions so again this agenda item is approval of open and or closed zones for the 2022-23 academic year mr golden is their staff recommendation i do recommend approval board members please cast your votes mr wimberley yes your vote is 10

141yes zero no thank you board our next item is approval of the charter school review committee for 2022. is there a motion to approve miss afria mr cash seconds board members is there any discussion and mr golden i didn't ask you to say anything about that so let me let me wind myself back a little bit well we varied it either before or after the motion so i think we're okay madam chair this is the the proposed committee that will review charter school applications the policy actually calls for this to be done annually it actually mentions december and we didn't have a december meeting we have been notified by two different entities that they intend to submit charter school applications next month which is actually their deadline and so do recommend approval of this committee

142in anticipation of that possibility okay i believe we have the motion in a second any questions mr brown can you know briefly preview the process of after the committee meets and reviews the applications then what happens so there is a there is a detailed analysis of the scope of of their plan in essence what it takes to run a school in determination in i'm going to use vernacular do they have their ducks in a row for all elements of running a school that's the basics of it there's a there's a template with a grid structure for the committee members to evaluate their application ms osborough if you would share some some detail related to that i do know that the law has changed two or three times over the past four or five years with

143with respect to that detail when the lea committee will make a recommendation and then ms osbrooks if you will take it from there sure so there is the tennessee department of education has created a scoring rubric last year's was approximately 37 pages each member will score there's different sections budget operations human resources academics curriculum they will fill out the charter school will fill out that application and then each member of the review team will score that rubric then that rubric will be tallied up those scores and then the review team will after they've made a evaluation they will make a recommendation to this williamson county school board to grant the application for the charter school to deny it or it could be denied with some changes so if the application is approved by the williamson

144county school board then we enter into a contract for i believe 10 years with the charter school and if it is denied then the charter school has an opportunity we would we would provide them with the reasons for denial and then the charter school would have an opportunity to submit a updated application and then it would be back before this board again to vote to approve or not approve and then the final piece if it was not approved again they could appeal the denial of the application to the senate tennessee charter school commission and that's a commission that was appointed by governor lee last year so there is mr brown we do have board policy 1.901 that is charter school applications that sets out some of that process and much of it is also in

145state law and in the constitution of the committee is that driven by policy also or is that subject to the to the superintendent's recommendation or board chair recommendation it is subject to the superintendent's recommendation we did in december receive letters of intent from two charter schools so staff was chosen i will tell you there are there's a piece there's broad categories i should say in state law such as community members but it is not as specific as say our request for reconsideration policy so they're in all of the statutory requirements community members are part of this slate as well as members of staff with expertise in certain areas budget operations curriculum and i can assume that based on everything you said that the process involves that this wouldn't be an approval for the coming school

146year would be for a future school year that's correct so i believe the application is for the 2023-24 school year so yes it generally the applications will have a zero year where they're getting everything together because in essence they are creating a school from you know the ground up and then there's a one year two year so yes okay final question the committee makes a recommendation to this board to approve or do not recommending an approval or denial if the recommendation is denial does the board have the ability to overrule that recommendation and approve it yes you it is truly a recommendation so this body at that level would make that determination could then affirmatively vote to approve the school if they could even if the committee recommended against it correct i would i would

147obviously want there to be reasons why but yes it is a recommendation under the law not you are not obligated as a body to agree with their recommendation thank you and if i may madam chair i want to read one sentence out of the policy about the makeup of the committee the team shall be comprised of members of the administrative staff for the district community members and a member of the board with relevant educational organizational financial and legal experience that's the description i don't see any other board members with with discussion items so board members please cast your vote for the approval of the charter school review committee mr wimberley yes your vote is 10 yes zero no thank you board members next item is approval of the tsba legislative agenda mr golden thank you

148madam chair as you recall from the board work session we have proposed to you approval of certain items in the tsba legislative agenda the tsba membership voted at their annual meeting and we have some particular recommendations for some of those items they voted on that are relevant to us the proposed resolutions we're asking you to approve actually exactly reflect the tsba resolution language with williamson county board of education plugged in at the appropriate locations do recommend approval of these is there a motion to approve ms cleveland makes the motion is there a second mr brown makes the motion board members any discussion i see no one requesting discussions please cast your votes mr wimberley yes we do have one member who stepped out of the room your vote is nine yes zero no thank you

149our next item is approval of the covid 1988 disability accommodation protocol mr golden thank you madam chair a question has come up about granting americans with disabilities act accommodations based on individual needs of students as a result of that our attorneys have prepared a draft protocol that gives me the authority to to accommodate students disabilities within that act that's the best description i can give and i do want to invite miss sosbergs if she has any additional details to share with respect to that i and if there's anything else you can share ms osbrook certainly sure thank you mr golden so this would be with accommodations for covid19 these would be on a case-by-case basis after we would receive a request under the americans with disabilities act our administration would have a interactive process with

150the requester just like we do with other ada accommodations and there are some examples that could be a piece of the accommodation and i okay board members do we have a motion to approve mr mitchell makes the motion board members are second miss miss supriya makes the second any discussion mr galbraith thank you madam chair i think it's important to to talk about the why why we're doing this and i guess i just want you guys on the on the board understand i think i am i'm in favor of this but but i think it we're faced with some with some decisions based on and were and were reacting in in no small part based on based on how the house the federal judges have have kind of decided made some rulings that impact us

151and to me this is this is an effort to limit the potential impact of that to provide accommodations to students as they as they come about at a at a school level and not a district level and then even down to the down to the classroom level and so i think it's really really dangerous precedent that i don't think we're setting it i think we're responding to it but the precedent that you can and i don't know of any other situation and from accommodations perspective i know we've we've accommodated peanut allergies and perfume allergies by requiring people not to do certain things that are that are harmful in in the presence of others i don't know of any others where we're requiring an affirmative action on on on the part of other people to as

152a as a reasonable accommodation but that's kind of where we are and that's what we're being told is the case in terms of in terms of orders from from several judges that seem to all all agree and so this is an effort i love i do like the way that we're we're helping give some some flexibility we're putting a timeline of review we're laying out all the different as as many as many different options as possible so that requiring people and even which you know the voluntary masking let's see how many people given the opportunity would would voluntarily do that if push to push comes the show but there's a you know eight or nine a list of eight or nine things here that we could get to before and the last resort is to

153is to obviously require a the smallest number of people possible to to mask and i just want to make make sure that it's that it's clear and i that the that the existing any any existing exemptions would would apply and in the case that a class would would would be required to to wear a mask correct yes you are correct that is included on the second page of this document that any where required masking is implemented as a reasonable accommodation existing medical and religious exemptions must be recognized thank you mr priya i just wanted to make a quick response to what jay just said about doing this to accommodate a judge i really want to point out that this is a an ada rule of federal law that we accommodate students with disabilities in in

154whatever way we can and so we're doing this to accommodate our kids and keep those who need this protection safe mr galbraith i completely agree and i'm did not mean to say that we're accommodating a judge i think we're we're responding to we're responding to it's not case law necessarily but it comes with the with the impact of case law if i'm understanding correctly their their nr their multiple judges have made have made the are of the same opinion that universal masking is a reasonable accommodation and regardless of whether i think that or not that's the that's the that's the law of the land as well that we that we're under today and so this is a to me so i'm i'm just recognizing the fact that exists today in the in the legal landscape

155but i do want to point out something that somebody told me earlier today with with respect to to their iep kids and that is you know there's we're equally responsible to to provide accommodations to those students like the deaf students and the like who you know where universal masking is a completely isolating experience for a deaf student they used to be able to to at least read lips and understand what people are saying based on their and now it's like the whole world is silent because nope they can't they can't understand anything and i've i can empathize very much so but i have friends who have been who've been dealt this situation so while we're we're we're being told that we can that we have to make this accommodation we're we're limited so if if

156i mean i don't know what what our i mean this is why we need this decision to be made on a at a very hyper specific local level because if there's a if there's two kids in the classroom and one of them is one of those demanding universal masking the other one is deaf and is requesting that the teacher and or the other students not wear masks because they for their participation like now you've got these competing competing interests and so i hope that i hope that claris clarifies my position but thank you i don't see any further discussion board members please cast your votes mr wimberley yes your vote is 10 yes zero no thank you board members i just want to thank you all for your due diligence on all the items in

157this on this agenda i know these meetings require a lot of preparation both preparing for the work session and for the board meetings so thank you all very much and this meeting is adjourned you