001good evening my name is shanera Williamson I've been a resident for in Franklin for nearly two decades now now we moved to Middle Tennessee for a job but we really came to Williamson County for the schools well on Saturday February the 22nd I attended the students speak that is a forum where Williamson County students St shared their experiences in our school excuse me in our schools they asked the adults in the audience to Simply practice active listening well tonight I wanted to be a conduit of the information that I heard so I have just quick three takeaways from that event number one the students wanted more Mental Health Resources now as we've seen an increase in anxiety and depression among teens I thought it was insightful that they would ask for resources like this and
002they wanted group counseling to be in area high schools the second thing that the students noticed was a need for multiple Pathways for success school counselors do a great job of helping kids get ready for college but the students also wanted information on other options like career fairs that helped gear them towards other jobs that didn't necessarily need a college degree now I would also add perhaps a gap year Fair could be good to offer other options for high schools finally I observed a discussion between students about the inequities that happen within discipline and some of those inequities are race-based one black student talked about being called the n-word by a white student at a high school basketball game the black student admitted that she responded wrongly by calling that child the b word in
003response now the black student was disciplined she said that the white student was not other students concurred that they often take the brunt of racial tensions and have witnessed inequities of their own in their schools now as a parent of three black adults who were once kids here in Williamson County Schools I remember how difficult it was for my own children to absorb those racial stereotypes and slurs and hits to their self-esteem so I'm just asking you the adults to remain Vigilant when it comes to Equitable disciplinary actions I think our minors who are racial minorities carry a larger mental load for racial divisions and the grown-ups around them have not always reconciled those differences please don't allow these fear-based slogans things like being anti-woke to give us room for unequal disciplinary actions I believe
004Educators choose this field because they want to help our kids flourish and adjusting our mirrors to see what lurks our blind spots is necessary for all of our kids to be seen valued and given the tools to succeed thank you so much for listening I appreciate your time thank you our next two speakers are theopus Boyd and Kimberly calote and you do have a timer there on your screen I should have mentioned that at the outset and Big Font too good evening my name is theopus Boyd I'm a business owner and proud parent of two Williamson County students I want to thank you for the opportunity to share the impactful output of the one will C teen Conference held last month this event allowed students to share their experiences and gain insight into issues many
005were facing across Williamson County Schools after thought-provoking discussions with peers parents teachers and some of your fellow board members in fact thank you for attending by the way the following were major concerns communicated by the students channels to improve relationships between students and teachers such as being able to seek greater teacher accountability without adverse consequences enhancing the various Pathways to success by offering more exposure to vocational and non-traditional education resources post High School High quality instruction by advocating for diverse learning styles and more Hands-On and less Technology based learning more opportunities for students to have frequent open conversations with their teachers counselors and parents surrounding students needs it is our hope that upon reflecting on these issues that discussions will lead to actionable Plans by the board to address these concerns for the betterment of
006of our children lest we not forget they are the reasons we are all here thank you for your time thank you Kimberly calco followed by chrisy Bailey hi my name is Kimberly calco and I've had four children attend Williamson County Schools since the digital shift to covid none of my children have had a Hands-On science experiment in any of their science classes from middle school to high school it's come to my attention that the science curriculum that's been designated as the front runner currently during the science adoption is highly technology dependent we as parents have expressed to this board that we would like to reduce the district's dependence on screens and return to a more textbook driven classroom with a Hands-On approach how many of us remember dissecting an animal in science class how many
007of us remember building a toothpick bridge or maybe doing the egg drop experiment or even looking at cells under a microscope moving to an even more digitally based science curriculum would further Rob our kids of these Hands-On opportunities my oldest is currently taking a dual enrollment class and she uses a real textbook one we had to teach her how to use because she never learned in school colleges still use textbooks so it's a false argument that we need to lean into more technology because textbooks are obsolete please consider choosing a science curriculum that allows for real experiments doesn't lock our children into more screen time use for eight years and gives our children the chance to experience the true Joy of science thank you Christy Bailey followed by Michelle Kinley my name is Christy Bailey
008I'm a disability Advocate who works with hundreds of Williamson County School families imagine the fear a parent feels when they are notified that their child was lost during the school day now imagine that child doesn't have the ability to communicate or has a limited understanding in of danger this is a very real scenario for my clients children are regularly lost in our schools and astonishingly WCS has no incident report form to provide parents the most recent occurrence I'm aware of was at Long View Elementary School this student my client has been lost three times at Long View I am deeply concerned for our students but particularly for our children with special needs there is no process for documenting lost kids in WCS as such it is possible to identify patterns Implement preventative measures and most
009importantly fix this obvious problem despite repeated request WCS leadership refuses to develop an incident Reporting System I urge this board to take immediate action make documentation of Lost Children mandatory require District leadership to develop detailed protocols for staff to follow when a child is lost then conduct regular formal reviews to ensure the effectiveness of the these measures thank you for your time and consideration Michelle Kinley followed by Sam Leaf hello my name is Michelle Kinley and I'm in my eth year as an elementary school librarian in Williamson County Schools I'm here to urge you to reconsider the PO proposed changes to WCS policy on Library materials specifically the addition of a mature reading list as you know the state has provided pretty rigorous standards by which school libraries must evaluate and curate Library materials in
010addition families have always had the ab ability to restrict their students access to library materials what you may not know is that Librarians are able to create their own Library curriculum and policies for their school communities that provide guidance to students in selecting appropriate materials for example in my library kindergarten and first grade students May check out picture books non-fiction books and only a few select chapter books but no graphic novels another way I scaffold students is through my curriculum it provides a thorough understanding of the different literary genres and how to evaluate books I also have a number of middle- grade books that are available with permission to only fifth graders as a way to provide transitional materials to those students who are ready creating relationships with students and families about their reading preferences
011and choices I think you would all agree is foundational and definitely more valuable than a list the week before spring break a teacher met with a family who has a fifth grade student who reads at and above an eighth grade reading level the parent wanted guidance on how to choose appropriate reading materials at that reading level and the teacher asked for my input I was able to give the students several recommendations but this kind of collaboration and trust is built through these conversations and if we are required to put labels on materials it could potentially create barriers to achieving this trust it could create a mindset that Librarians are somehow hiding materials that are not age appropriate which is definitely not the case it could also give the impression that materials are not appropriate if
012they have themes related to real life such as mental health loss parental absence abuse violence and that is simply untrue many of what we would consider classic literature like Charlotte's Web Little House in the prairie an of Green Gables and even more po popular contemporary novels have those elements because but they were written for children and the very reason why these books become popular and endure is because of how deeply they resonate with their readers please reconsider the proposed changes as a librarian and an educator my job is to provide access and understanding a list May create barriers to that and may fuel feelings of mistrust and create a mistaken impression about our libraries that can prevent collaboration and stunt these relationships thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight Sam Sam Leaf FBA Rita
013Roman hi I'm Sam Leaf I'm a geography student at MTSU this is for an assignment I looked at the fiveyear capital plan and I thought I'd give some insight the Cox Road Middle School location you guys proposed kind of makes no sense most of the people live by KS and the area by Cool Springs I know location and trying to get the land is an issue so I think we should move it between Arnold Road and KS on mboro road cuz there's land for sale right now for 500k that's big enough also an elementary school on KS Creek Side is busting out and there's new Mega neighborhoods being built on KS and on Arno and then another Elementary School by Stevens Valley because they have to drive 10 miles to get to their their Fair
014viw school and the superintendent said it cost $200,000 in busing and that's it thank you thank you ravita Rockman and Connor Britt and then Angela Frederick is our final speaker so those are the final three go ahead hello how are you all today I'm Rita with one will Cole and we advocate for students and families of color in our district tonight I come before you with the other speakers to share about the student speaks event that we invited some of our board members to attend to hear some of the student perspectives and I wanted to thank the two school board members who attended your presence and your engagement that they were really appreciated as policies and rules are created that impact students I implore you to seek out student voices and invite them to be
015engaged having a student representative on this actual School Board would be a great way to have them involved in the input as well at our student speaks event we invited students and commun community members to come and share feedback but we did not want that to be just a area for them to come and compl we wanted it to be a way to find Solutions and for us in the community to try to help them with that they didn't ask for crazy stuff like a three-day school week or coming to school at at 10:00 but they asked for what I thought was really insightful quality instruction and I think that's something that we don't often hear kids asking for I think the other parent mentioned that as well so I think more Hands-On activities less
016copying and pasting from the computer screen and real time feedback from the teachers are some of the things that they ask for they also have the audacity to request accountability for teachers and staff accountability with the goal of improved teacher student relationships and the desire for educators to see them as partners and learning not just names on the roster and that was a sentiment that we heard throughout the day so I ask if we are continuing to ask about improving in education and we want our students to be impacted we need to listen to them and hear them when they speak to us and share so they are L we are listening are we willing to act thank you Connor Brit followed by Angela Frederick hello my name is Connor Brit and I am a
017senior at Independence High I want to speak today about the impact of Hands-On and Project based learning experiences and why it's important to reduce Reliance on tech-based instruction in the classroom technology is a useful tool it has enhanced my learning in many ways but I believe it should not replace the kinds of interactive engaging experiences that help students absorb and apply what they've what they're being taught some of the most meaningful learning experiences I've had in school have been Hands-On projects that allowed me to exper experiment collaborate and problem solve solve in real time these projects made learning real and memorable in a way that reading from a screen simply doesn't I've also experienced the firsthand the downsides of an over Reliance on digital learning tools many classes especially through my first two years of
018high school had lessons that were delivered almost entirely through screens in the form of slideshows digital worksheets and pre-recorded videos instead of actively listening many of my peers would often completely disengage finding themselves clicking through content and distracting themselves with notifications not all students learn best through screens many absorb information by doing by building discussing experimenting and problem solving together the more we rely on tech-based instruction the more we risk disengaging students who thrive in a more interactive Real World Learning environment as a student I ask the board and administration to prioritize Hands-On and Project based learning and reconsider how much instruction is being delivered through screens the more interactive and engaging our classes are the more we will learn not just for a test but for life thank you thank you good evening board
019members I'm Angela Frederick I'm here representing the Williamson County Education Association I have a couple of things I want to touch on this evening I sat in the work session before spring break so some of this is to do with what we talked about there but I encourage you all not to delay the approval of textbooks that are up for discussion this evening so that teachers can have time to develop and prepare lessons for next school year delaying will have an adverse effect on students including those who are enrolled in AP courses your conversations about technology are ones that should definitely include classroom teachers and I encourage you to seek the input of those in your districts the world we live in is increasingly digitized and students need to learn how to access that world
020to be successful in academics teachers use a mix of textbook materials and digital lessons and don't rely solely on one or the other as a teacher leader I stand ready to answer any questions you have about the daily work of our teachers and responding to something that's been said this evening I have a story for you so I when down in the front office one day and I was standing close to the desk and the secretary said you might not want to stand too close to that package that was just delivered I was like oh really what's in there a fetal pig I was like oh okay it was for biology they're they were dissecting fetal pigs in biology and I'm the librarian at the school so whenever students are squeamish about dissecting frogs they
021come and sit with me in the library their parent opted them out so we are doing Hands-On science in my school especially and we'd love to talk to you about any of it thank you very much thank you to all of our speakers in particular our student Connor Thank you for being here we will now move on to approval of our agenda for this evening's meeting we will do this via voice vote gentleman are we up on the technology now we're good awesome all right do I have a motion a motion in a second all in favor of approval of the agenda say I any opposed agenda is approved we will now move on to the consent agenda there are two well more than two items I'll read through these really quick approval of the
022February 18th 2025 Schoolboard meeting minutes and then four five policies for second reading 3604 public records request 4.3 31 inter Scholastic Athletics 5118 criminal background checks 5101 line and staff relations then 5.83 organization charts those five policies for second reading is there a motion and a second on the consent agenda ask it should okay we have a motion by CLA reev second by Melissa Wyatt any discussion all those in favor of the consent agenda say I any opposed consent agenda is approved and I did apologize I failed to mention one item on the consent agenda item C recommendation for field trip fee requests so that has also been approved now move on to Communications to the board Mr golden thank you Mr chair and thank you especially our speakers for sharing your thoughts with us
023I did want to just briefly touch on a couple of items number one with the science textbooks currently we are using what we have called online educational resources eight nine years ago Dr Allen if I'm not mistaken we adopted on totally online science resources we are proposing that we go back to textbooks for science we currently are also doing that with social studies we anticipate that the state is going to go through the adoption process with social studies probably in 2027 is is our projection I anticipate that all things being equal we're going to project that for textbooks as well rather than those online educational resources and our board had a robust discussion at the work session related to the State approved textbooks that our team has been vetting so we'll have a further discussion
024related to that I also want to specifically thank those who shared the information from our students regarding regarding ways for us to grow I also have a conversation with what we call the superintendent's advisory Council from student Representatives at from all of our high schools those are really good conversations and going direct to the source is I think everybody probably recognizes that from their life experience is a is a good place to start so thank you all for sharing that I do want to mention specifically with discipline it is it is that ongoing effort that we have those expectations for our school administrators and they have those for their teachers to report we keep a focus on that and so every time that we that there there might be a question of whether the Mark
025was missed we want to hear it so that we can continue that effort so thank you all for sharing that Mr chair also I want to welcome a number of our principles who are here in the audience and I think I've Nam I'm G to I'm going to have them all as I as I name them but it's possible I may miss somebody as I'm looking around at faces Marissa block from from from Woodland Bill Harland from from Brentwood middle Laura Hall from Fairview Middle Jared grind staff from from Mil Creek middle Clarissa Heyman from Sunset Middle Elizabeth vest from Elizabeth I am in thank you Clover Croft excellent School Christa Kramer from Hunters Bend Quinn Williams from Creekside Dana Finch from Heritage Middle Kevin Dyson from Centennial High School and Amy Stevenson from Oakview
026are here in the audience so thank you all for being here tonight and Mr chair I believe that they are here in part because of some of Carol BT song's announcements and as you all know those of you who participate as board members and those of you who visit us regularly we only celebrate at the board meetings National and state Awards so with that I'm going to turn this over to Carol bird song to share our student and staff spotlights and board memb do I have so much to share with you this evening and we are celebrating academics Athletics and the Arts this evening in addition to all of our reward schools so let's get started with our National Merit students now we have 85 of them so get ready relax and enjoy from Brentwood
027High School Ivy Allen from also brenwood High School Leonardo by Ivy Chang Theo copin Dennis De Janeiro Andrew Estella Andrew Gahan Todd Glenn Cole H Hawkins Allison holel Nisha Jalal parsa Kira Aria Mahala Margaret McLendon Cade McConnell on Park Katherine Perez prono suu Katie Wayne Lucy Wyatt and she belongs to Miss Melissa Wyatt I just had to throw that editorial comed in okay and Colin youngberg now from Centennial High School Natalie blank Roman comr Michael aishen Alexandra hooks Eve odonnell nebd pedi Levi sponsel Corey styles from Franklin High School adelay Edwards Judy Shu renez Jamal Andrew Jung zanen King RM ay Mariah quick finnean Sailor Dorset Terry Abby web from Independence High School Payton Brown Brandon Connor Britt Brendan cner keny Krauss Elliot Lindsay Anthony Paul Lindon Dion suai ad Adit Shan and Nolanville High
028School Deepu balam Muran Desi Kelly Samuel McCarthy Bryce Russell Emily Cheryl from Paige High School share Aloo Anna Avery McKenzie Olivia Lee Nishan suar William swallows from Ravenwood High School jile amaba Obel amaz a b shuy Croc Bley Yash daabra kayin Dunley whoops there's kin well we've lost kin huh okay kyel Jos Caitlyn green Jack Herman William Hoskins Rafael Joseph sha young mon truy kosom Rowan KERO Sonia klani Ariel loen Arn meta Anika nir whoops there's Ana sorry yug Patel Thomas Pierce Jason wayang Che nagala Braden Chen from Summit High School Caroline Constantine Paul Davis Nathan Hoffman there's Nathan and Nathan Phillips those are your National Merit finalists all 85 of them folks woo I've worked up a sweat up here okay now we're going to go to wrestling and we have five state champions
029in wrestling from Independence High School this is rck romano class ablea 144 pound category from Nolanville High School Brody monei 165 pound and also from Nolanville High School Chase May 190b category Summit High School Zachary little 150b category and also from Summit High School Braden leech 157 pound category so now we're going to All State Theater so these are your All State Theater All Stars in acting from brenet high school Lauren Gilder camer Cameron mcleen and Reagan schmeer from Franklin High School Keller Kennedy and also from Franklin Jacob mcre from Independence High School this is Meredith Hollands and also from Independence Annabelle Kirby and this is Vis Maya Chapa from p high school so now we're moving to Design Tech and this is Alexander Dillard from Brentwood High School from Centennial High School meline Fleming
030Jackson Ives Kylie rmus and harun Smith Jameson Whitlock from Nolanville High School William Brown and Anar Ross Wetzel now in musical theater here are your All Stars all date Theater brenwood High School Lauren Gilder Celeste schmeer and Centennial High School Caroline Christan Franklin High School Jacqueline Jackson Independence High School Elliot child Meredith Hollands Emory me Nolanville High School Juliet delli JT McCoy Natalie Rogers Addison Smith an across Wetzel from pige high school Chloe Campbell this Maya Chapa paig High School Musical Theater again Gabriel masternick Paige High School Roma leil Paige High School All State musical theater Ravenwood High School is Gabby Miller Summit High School Cadence Aurora Aurora and Gavin Cox now for playright from Independence High School Ben Allen Lauren dling playright Nolanville high school and Cameron K burbach paig High School All State
031Theater playwright now it's time to talk about our reward schools where we've set yet another record 29 reward schools so if you are a principal here in attendance tonight representing a reward school please stand I'm going to read through the list in alphabetical order first with elementary schools Chapman's Retreat elementary clovercroft elementary College Grove Elementary Creekside Elementary Crockett Elementary Hunters band Elementary Jordan Elementary kenrose elementary lip scum Elementary Oak viw Elementary Scales Elementary Thompson Station Elementary School Trinity Elementary for our middle schools we have britwood middle Heritage Middle Sunset Middle School Thompson Station Middle School and Woodland Middle School for our high schools we have brintwood high school Centennial High School Fairview High School Franklin High School Paige High School Independence High School Nolanville High School Ravenwood High Renaissance High Summit High and Vanguard High
032School so congratulations to all of our award and finally this evening this is Dr Alicia Justice who's the principal of Legacy middle school and she has been named the Middle School principal of the Year by the Tennessee Association of secondary schools principles congratulations to all of our students and staff members and schools thank you Mr chair that is my report thank you so much and congratulations to all of those who were recognized it's great work by everyone I do not have a board chair report so we can move right into new business first item amendments for the current fiscal year first one being approval of a general purpose School fund Amendment 0325 donation for dual enrollment $7,500 Mr golden thank you Mr chair this is a donation that we are asking you to approve and
033to be placed in the appropriate line items do recommend approval we have a motion by Mr Bostic second by Dr Reeves any discussion we'll need to vote on our machines on this one so please proceed to vote the vote is 11 yes Z no approval of general purpose School fund Amendment 0325 donation for safety equipment in the amount of $6,500 thank you Mr chair likewise this is another donation I was remiss in not mentioning the previous one was from MTSU for Career and Technical education students this one is from atos Synergy to help us with some safety related to gas detectors do recommend approval on that one okay we have a motion from Mr bosk second from Dr Johnson any discussion seeing none let's move to a vote on our devices the vote is 11
034yes Z no thank you that's approve we will now move to the second item of new business which is approval of the 25 fiscal year 2526 school year budget budgets plural since there are four of them that we need to approve in tonight let me before I turn it over to Mr Golden and Miss farmer and others just say thank you to especially to miss farmer there's I think I'm right that this the beginning of the conversation about this budget goes back to maybe November of last year where we as a board had requested you'll recall for information around the budget earlier so we could start to process and think through what was ahead of us what we could expect and to start to get get into the details sooner so that we'd be better
035prepared for for tonight's vote so I want to thank you in particular for all the work you've done to brief us on a monthly basis and get us the information that we've needed and all the hard work to prepare for this so thank you want to make sure I say that before we get into the presentation and the question and answer so Mr Golden M farmer thank you Mr chair I did want to Echo what you had said thanking the board for the discussion especially the last couple of days before the end of the of the fall break or spring break rather I'm living in the past we had a number of questions from board members related to that I I hope we got those answers to you I know it's possible we might have
036missed one or two but I very much appreciate you all sending us questions after that work session I did want to point out one change that we're aware of that is not reflected in the budget at this point last week late last week the commissioner of Education sent us an email related to an item that we had been talking about you may recall that Senator Johnson mentioned when we had our meeting with our state legislators that he was working on finding a way to offset the fiscal capacity indicator and the work he was doing was related to the letter grade system that the state initiated last year and we received a notice from the commissioner of Education that they do intend to to give us some funding for that of approximately $4 million what we
037don't know yet for budgeting purposes is whether that is going to come in this fiscal year to go towards fund balance or come in next fiscal year to go towards revenue from the state so at the moment it's not reflected in the budget document but this is one of those items that will continue to evolve on the revenue side so I do want to mention that when this letter grade structure was initiated last year we're now in our second year of that the discussion at the time at the state level was designed to identify schools that might receive an f and create a process by which they had an obligation to mitigate so this actually is working on the flip side which is the first return for a number of A's and we qualify for
038that so we'll probably be talking about that more than than we have to in the last couple of years because that's a change at the state level with that I do want to give Miss farmer an opportunity is there any extra detail you want to share following up on our convers ation at the work session and questions we've had from board members I don't have anything additional to add I think as Mr Golden said we tried to answer as many questions as we could what the state has told us is the next week we will know for sure on that $4 million exactly for how how we should report it so either I will be bringing an amendment to you just like those donations that came through if it's this year or we'll bring an
039amendment for the budget as you approve it tonight so either way there will be an adjustment for it in the coming months your comments actually gave me a prompt we mentioned to you that we projected our fund balance budget Gap from what we proposed was about $15 million so that brings us down into the $ 11 million range and so that's what we recommend you all take to the commission we also discussed our proposed pay increase as a reminder we will not bring you the actual pay increased proposals until May at the earliest because right now we don't know that we will receive sufficient funding and so it's premature to actually ask you to approve some pay increases I know many of you have had some questions related to specific pay proposals we will bring
040a finalized version of that to you in May we're also in the process of talking with the wcea through the Pekka process the professional Educators collaborative conferencing act so we're not quite ready to bring that to you even if we had the proposed funding but with that Mr chair and board members with us projecting an $ 11 million gap it the Gap right now based on our proposal is exclusively related to pay increases for next year that brings us down below the total amount that we project for pay increases which includes some roles for some of for our teachers and some of our classified positions and in addition to some adjustments to some of our arts and Athletics thank you for that update and report so we have I see one speaker Dr Reeves yes
041I had a question related to the pay increases and I had emailed I wondered does that include substitute teachers I had received an email from a regular sub who said that they haven't received a pay raise since 202 one and I know that it's sometimes hard to find substitute teachers yeah thank you for that at this stage we do not have a proposal for substitute teacher pay increases we've looked at some Market comparisons we do know that we don't fill every substitute position every day we're not sure that a small percentage would make a difference but we will have a discussion in the next two months revisiting that I do want to invite Vick Hall our assistant superintendent for human resources to speak to that if you'd like to share any additional information I don't
042have a whole lot to share except that it is always on our radar that is correct that it's been a couple of years 2022 I think since there's been an increase for Subs since that time though we did we began hiring what we call Super Subs who are committed to be the building 18 days a month and then we also have had the ability to hire some subs in what we call a long-term sub role which is where we're allowed to pay them at State rate which that varies based on what their years of experience on when I say State rate that's what's set by the State Board of Education so that's like at over $200 a day in comparison to the regular sub rate and all those things vary based Bas on what's going
043on but typically that's for a long-term leave of absence so the Super Sub pay rate and if I'm not mistaken we have two at every school is that right we have two at every school and we did increase it last year so it's at 190 so we definitely encourage our substitutes who want to be more permanent it's basically 80% of the school days that they commit to to to make that commitment and we can give them a substantial increase before we go any further with questions can I get a motion in a second oh I'm sorry on the floor I fail to do that at the outset and motion by Mr wel second by Mr galberth okay and Mr galberth you're recognized so Claire thanks for for speaking of that but just m Farmer for
044for Subs what do we what's the approximate line item for for Subs what do we what do we spend on Subs it annually I'll have to check for you okay I hadn't thought about that's a great it's a great question but the so I guess when we when we look at when we look at that I guess I would I would propose that we you Jason if you could look at not so much a percentage increase but but what what we spend and what a what a an appropriate increase would look like that would that would be that would be meaningful so I can't think of anybody I mean it to for given the given what other other pay for both teachers and for classified employees have done over the last four years like I
045could I could see some people thinking what you know what do you do you not value the subs as much and they're they're critical to what we what we do yeah thank you for that and I'm GNA I'm G to I'm going to take an additional step based on your comment we will also compare our actual spending to our budgeted because if we don't fill them all we should have some some remaining funds in that lot before we go to miss HMA Can can I ask you Mr Golden to do something you did at the at the work session which is just at a high level to explain where this budget is compared to the current School current budget that we're in from an operational perspective and from a staffing headcount FTE perspective just for
046comparison and context sure and I may miss a couple of items but to give you a nutshell we project a 0.44% decrease in our student population this year most of our grade levels are actually projected to increase in numbers but we're projecting a substantially fewer number of kindergarteners coming in than graduating seniors rolling out which largely accounts for for for that net so we still have people moving in at every grade level but generally speaking we have have fewer younger ones coming than than older ones leaving so from a budgeting perspective that's a good thing from a staffing perspective that's a good thing so related to that for for for Staffing we do project a net total reduction in our total staff I mentioned to you all one specific position that we are including in
047the budget and that's a director of our Innovation Hub we intend to open our Innovation Hub in Fall of 2026 but we need that Innovation Hub director online to work that in that in that year before it opens to put together curriculum get students signed up Etc one item related to that I didn't mention at the work session because we heard some conversation I know Miss rockmont and some others who spoke spoke to this alternative paths for careers are going to be directly impacted Ed by that Innovation Hub I did give you every every program that we had that we intend to put in that Innovation Hub but from an overall perspective at the budget a net reduction based on based on our valuation of our staffing standards at each school and in our programming
048on the operation side of the budget we do project a net million dooll decrease in our operations cost compared to last year here not including our request related to computers in in Chromebook Replacements you all may recall that last year as we stagger our Chromebook Replacements by grade bands we actually included in conversations with the County Commission the Chromebooks for Dr Al or or Mr King I'm trying to remember if it was middle or high off the top of my head that we replaced last year high school high school yes we included those in the in capital expenditures last year as part of our as part of our agreement with the County Commission to to to get the pay raise currently those those devices are in our operating budget but for that we actually have
049a reduction in capital I'm sorry a reduction in our operations expense related to that about 86% of our budget is people and we're in the people business and so generally speaking that reflects the effort that we've put in and I know Mr chair we had a discussion about teacher pay teacher pay is always very important to us when we look at the revenue side of the budget last year our per pupil expenditure our average per pupil expenditure based on the State data that we received was just slightly below the state average by about $12 below State average we have about 147 748 school districts depending on how how the state counts them our teachers were in the if I'm not mistaken in the 27th range somewhere around there in rankings in Pay so we're below
050average in those 147 call it right at average in those 147 school districts and we're our teachers are at 24th ranking or so 27th somewhere in that range our leadership our principles and our leaders are in the top five related to that because we do put an emphasis on on on supporting our leaders we believe that's important we've been strategically working through that for years but I want you to think about those numbers when we're right at average in per pupil expenditures and we're in the 20s compared to the 70s or so for average per pupil expenditure we are putting our efforts towards people but we can always do better and frankly we always need to because the cost of living here is if not the highest right right among the highest in the county
051so that's the basic overview overview operations were going slightly down but for the computers which got moved to a different spot last year and our staffing is going slightly down thanks for that I thought it would be important to get that Baseline out for context once again U Miss edma yeah thank you chairman Brown I would like to make an amendment to the Chromebook budget and I would also like just a few moments to make a few comments about why I'm making this amendment and where I would like to see our district moving forward so if you guys would just kindly indulge me a moment so I'd like to make an amendment to the Chromebook budget to increase it to 6.2 million so we can add computer carts to charge devices at school so children
052will not have to take them home I believe the conversations that I've had with the district Personnel are for our district to reduce overall screen time for students before during and after school the first step to accomplish reduced screen time is not to have children take home our Chromebooks or their Chromebooks excuse me that's my first goal My overall goal I'd like to see is to eliminate student screens in K5 K through fifth grade because I believe as an educ Ator is not developmentally appropriate and Research indicates across the county country that technology in the classroom does not improve academic performance oftentimes it is a convenience for teachers or currently the need to follow our state requirements as a former elementary teacher children need to begin developing social skills and executive function skills their prefrontal
053cor cortex is not fully developed until after PU Liberty and children need to play they need Sensory Learning social interaction paper and pen and face-to-face interactions with teachers and fellow students to develop these executive functions when these skills are not part of a child's brain development they do not learn impulse control and their ability to do hard things the immediate reward system of the interactive screens rewires a child's brain it creates at it creates addicts from the dopamine Rush children can't resist the low effort High reward distractions on screens children do not use screens like adults another goal is to provide Elementary children with a digital citizen curriculum to learn how their brain is affected by the high stimulus screens and then for and for them to use technology responsibly as adults the current there
054currently is curriculum available for students parents and teachers for this type of material but it needs to be approved by the state before it can be implemented in our school curriculum even though I'm approving the purchase of Chromebooks for third through fifth grade I see this as an intermed intermediary step while our district works with the state on computer science standards I am also approving this with the caveat for future discussions with the board on the Chromebooks and other dig digital devices so that they are not used for a reward when classroom work is complete or for any kind of free time in the classroom or as a replacement for recess including days when they must be inside due to the weather our elementary children need as much play interaction with peers and their teachers
055to develop social skills and these executive functions I have concerns with the safety of students access to inappropriate content that cannot be protected by our District's firewalls or in the home such as YouTube Google Docs Pinterest Roblox and other sites that provide access for Content children can never unsee I believe our district is using due diligence to follow the children's online protection act or Copa but I have concerned about data privacy and data mining when we are required to hand over information to the state I would like our board to be educated on what our district currently does to provide that privacy protection for our children so this was a difficult decision to make because I realized that to use technology approp in the classroom there needs to be changes at the state level as
056well as in input from our technology committee who will be studying and re reviewing the appropriate use of screen time in the classroom this is a community issue from my own research I have access to lawyers who can teach us about privacy issues as well as nurses and psychologists who can speak on the topic this is important to me because I want to see the Next Generation develop into healthy productive citizens and the data shows that addictive qualities of screens has greatly impacted the mental health of our students and their ability to function with the proper social skills work eth and work ethic and I want to keep our campuses safe thank you chairman Brown for this time thank you Miss edma just to get clarity on your Amendment you want to take the current
057amount of five 5 Milli $220,600 and increase it by 900,000 is that correct that's correct cor okay do we have a second on that motion I'm sorry 999,000 9,000 okay thank you for that clarification so the motion is to increase the budget item for Chromebooks and computer carts to charge those Chromebooks from 5 5,220 $360 to increase that by $999,000 that's the that's the motion is that's the amendment is there a second second by Mr Cash sorry okay any discussion on the amendment Mr galberth thank Mr chair can I know y'all provided us with some with some data around around what that is and I like could Mr King could you could you tell just what the just some detail around the U the number the numbers for for K through two and 3 through
058five I thought it was really interesting and how we're how we're breaking these down I think everybody should kind of know how many how many computer carts we're going to end up having in the in the classrooms so yes sir with this amendment it would be a total of 866 cards for the elementary schools and if I may if I may Mr chair give a little bit more detail related to that our original budget proposed sufficient cards for K through two with a with a I'm sorry yeah that's correct and they for K and one we were going to reduce it to one part for every other classroom so your the 800 in includes includes adding sufficient carts to cover grades three through five yes sir that is correct we had in the budget already
059was carts for kindergarten and first for every other classroom we were going to reduce the number of Chromebooks in those grades and then it in the original budget there was a Chromebook for every classroom for second second grade so now we're adding this amendment would add three four and five to that and if I may I'm going to give a little bit of history related to that those who've been in the district a long time know that for many years our pto's supported purchasing devices and cards two strategic plans ago we had a goal for everyone to have a device obviously there's been a lot of research since then the state standard speak to students who arrive at our schools as kindergarteners having spent multiple hours per day on their devices and so the state
060standards and its preface generally describe an intention to help students learn how to appropriate appropriately use technology when they enter school as our PTO did that many years ago there was a transition in I'm estimating 12 14 maybe even 15 years ago where we started a process of what was called byot bring your own technology I'm just going to be blunt we didn't find that worked well it included issues related to some of those comments that Miss hibma mentioned with respect to protect protecting every device security issues ETC so this is if this if this passes and we were able to fund it through the commission a step towards bringing it back inh house a little bit especially at the elementary level thank you and I really I do appreciate this because it will it
061gives it gives everybody the option to to leave them at school today today we don't even have the option to to leave them at school because you'd have 30 computers stucked up on a on a counter somewhere and nowhere to to charge them so I think this I think this helps give some options I don't think we're saying that they can't take them home we're we're hopefully moving into in a Direction Where where they're not required to take them home but U but that will we that can that can evolve as as can the number of the number of computers that we actually have U our ratios in the in the elementary school so I'm I'm fine with with doing the refresh and repurchasing the old computers that we have now U but I look
062forward to hearing from from the committee I'm glad we're doing the technology committee to to understand from from all stakeholders to as we as we kind of evaluate how we use technology in the classroom in and out of the classroom because you know over time just because we're buying these computers for 3 through five today doesn't mean they can't be repurposed later if we decide to reduce ratios or do something in the future so I completely appro approve this budget amend Amendment Dr Johnson are you wanting to be recognized on the amendment yeah okay I guess go ahead please I have some questions yeah so I have questions about the final number I'm looking at a Chromebook plan that was sent to us so now this has 6 6,164 46 for Chromebooks to be replaced
063but I'm assuming we've reduced that amount from that for so how much are we spending now it was like 5 what million I'm sorry we got things in all different places so I'm trying to make sure I understand 5,220 360 was the latest request okay for Chromebooks and cards that's now does that include K1 being reduced or K5 being reduced that's K1 okay are we going to look at reducing K5 so let me give a little bit more detail to that we intend not to purchase new devices for K2 okay we it we our plan is to take the existing devices that are near end ofel life use fewer use that we're replacing use those that are still in in the best shape at K2 and actually purchase for three through five so Mr King
064can you speak to the numbers for those for those because that was going to be my next question you saying because the numbers don't the numbers don't add up it seems like not enough yeah that's why I was and I was also just trying to figure out how we had a budget increase for cart when we were actually decreasing the number of purchases purchase well the original budget didn't have cards right because we were just going to buy Chromebooks one to one and stay as normal but we've so we've changed that's the reason that what we s is a little outdated and we'll we'll update that so there isn't so we did budget the and then in the newly revised numbers we budgeted the cost of carts to support those to ensure that as Mr
065galber said students would not have to take them home and on average or kind of to his point how many Chromebooks do we have that are functional even though they might be older like how are we keeping an inventory of that and I ask that just because also when I look at this plan I mean every year there's an ask for almost five plus million dollars to replace Chromebooks yes ma'am so that's the cycle it would be a four-year cycle like this year we would do 3 through five next year we would do K through two the following year we're back to middle school and then the following year we're back to high school and then we start the process because that's the expected life of a Chromebook and has the district ever looked at
066the possibility of like computer leasing I know a lot of businesses they lease computers yes matter of fact that's what we did originally when we went one to one was we did a lease purchase program we have been strongly discouraged from doing that by the comp controller's office we actually felt like that was actually a better option and we've been doing that regularly U Miss farmer can you speak to some of that detail sure so three years ago now before then we were making lease payments and that's how we purchased the C trollers office has changed their position a little bit and at that point in time we then had to begin submitting to them pre-approval before we could do a lease the thought process being that the finance charges charged on those leases was
067too high that it was for tax dollars was kind of I think the thought process behind it and so we submitted and we were rejected and told that it would be a better option to purchase outright or to try to finance through a bank versus a lease we talked to Banks and their their rates were higher than what the leases were and so because we had been rejected that's when we've started trying to pull the Chromebooks into the annual budget okay thank you that's all I have Dr Reeves on the amendment is my mic on okay I also just wanted to express thanks for providing the cart option you know I spoke about this at the work session with regards to Third through fifth graders having to bring computers home every day and how heavy
068they are and I think a lot of parents in our community are going to be very thankful that we are making it a priority and actually you know while it does require an addition to the budget I think that our parent community and our students are going to benefit from it so I just wanted to say thank you any other comments or questions on the amendment all right we will vote on the amendment and then we will go back to discussion on the original budget as amended I do recommend approval thank you the vote is 11 yes Zer no am we are back on the original budget Miss Clemens we were talking about substitute raises and I like that get learning more about the Super Subs and how that works but I wanted to ask
069how are we I brought this up before we have some teachers who are carrying a heavier load say in Middle School you have three Math teachers three science teachers three three social studies teachers but only two language arts teachers they're doing 33% more work I have learned recently that there are districts that will pay overages for teachers who are carrying have real load and I and I want to speak to that because in those situations we have a larger class size we have teachers that are pushing the state limit with 30 or 35 students and we all know that in education in the education business and education standard that the golden number is class siiz I've taught in middle school and had 30 plus students and I've taught and had 18 and it's a totally
070different experience you can learn your students teachers do much better so overall when we are looking at our budget I really want to ideally have our class sizes getting smaller and increasing teacher incentives and stiens for teachers who might want to be a mentor and kind of looking just overall looking at some of our educational practices a little B differently because at the end of the day I think our class size will do better if we have smaller class sizes and teachers who are paid more so thank thank you for that Miss Clemens let me make a couple of comments we do have conversations with our teachers organization the WCA about pay issues we actually have an obligation via the state rules to do that but frankly we do that intentionally and it's actually good
071to have conversations I am in a moment going to call on Dr Webb who who chairs that discussion team for us she's she's our well the old terminology was chief chief representative but I don't know that they use the old terminology anymore to speak to some of our conversations with our with our teacher leaders related to that and to speak to that variation you that may happen based on how particular schools schedule I do want to refer you in the budget document to our school by school position control report where we address that for some of our smaller schools especially our high schools and our middle schools we do have a lower pupil teacher ratio because we want to make sure we have the appropriate course offerings so you will see that substantial difference in
072in in some of our smaller schools you might have fewer students at those smaller schools in particular classes because we want to make sure that we have enough Staffing for those schools to make because we want those opportunities to be there on the on the numbers with the where the state gives us caps for for class size they actually do it in two main ways it's individual classes and then class ranges great band ranges K2 and three through actually I'm trying to remember now three through K3 and then four through six and then seventh seventh and eighth and so especially the middle school it's peculiar because the sixth grade is a Singleton class but at our middle schools whereas the state actually does B evaluates US based on a grade three through six I mean
073a grade four through six range so it can be peculiar as we do that math so with with that I will ask Dr Webb to speak to those to those two issues thank you Mr Golden and thank you for the question so our Pekka conversations are ongoing we still have additional meetings to take place but to Mr Golden's Point that is a topic of our conversation about teachers taking on additional responsibilities we have a couple of items currently that we're continuing to discuss in regards to sub coverage and how classes are covered when we're short staffed that's something that we've been talking about at length but there are some variations of you'll see in additional pay for teachers as an example when we have the secondary level let's just say we're short a school is
074short a math teacher and we're unable to find a person to fill that position and teachers give up give up study halls and planning periods to take on additional Staffing so if a teacher typically at a high school teaches five classes as a full-time load and we need them to take on a sixth class and they are willing to do that due to a staff shortage they do receive additional pay to do that at the middle school level I know there have been some questions about the variation in class size and the variation in courses as students get older from elementary and they start to have choice in classes and those choices are sometimes a preference and sometimes those are academic needs and variations of which math class they should be in based on their
075abilities and their skill level there is a variation from class to class we do try to stick to that Staffing standard guide that you see at the beginning of your budget and I know that Miss Hall and Miss farmer and I were happy to answer questions about that Staffing standard but you will especially students get older see variation the classes the Middle School level it comes with the math placement as an example or there specials that they're able to choose at the high school level it has to do with variations of whether a student chooses an AP class or an honors class and it depends on how many total students have chosen that course whether or not we're even able to offer it you know if there's only two students who are interested in an
076upper level course we may not even be able to offer it but if we have 15 students that are interested we may go ahead to choose to offer that course but it means that another math class or another history class will have to have additional students in it to be able to offer it so those variations we look at closely to try to keep a balance that's why at the beginning of the school year you know our principes will tell parents after the first day of school and we have you know if a school has an additional enrollment and 50 unexpected students come in to register it may mean that the second day of school we balance some classes so that doesn't end up that 32 kids are in one geometry class and 20 students
077in a different geometry class we do try to balance those out right as the school year is beginning and our assistant principls who are schedulers work throughout the summer to try to keep that balance as new students register but there is a little bit of a math balancing that happens and there are some variations that occur but we're super cognizant of that fact to try to keep the smallest number of students in any various class that we possibly can and I may be overstating this but especially at the middle school level we see that more often and say comparing Ela English language arts classes to math because in math you're the our middle schools generally speaking are offering sixth sth e8th grade math Algebra 1 and geometry and whereas the ELA classes are fewer so
078you might see a higher number in an English class than you would in a math class just because of those offerings U but again on the pay side it's it is worth a continued discussion with the with the Education Association thank you I just I would like to see us move up from that 27th rank yeah paying our teachers more at the end of the day I just want their morale I think we'll see them staying more and so thank you for that and we agree with that we don't have direct control over our Revenue side of the budget but we have influence on it and those com those ongoing conversations with our state legislators with our County Commission I definitely encourage you all to have those and develop relationships with them the cost of
079living here in Williamson County I've alluded to it already just briefly there is a cost of living factor in the Tissa funding formula that's the that's the State method but as I understand it right now it's not funded so there is still some room for for growth and Improvement Dr Johnson thank you so you know I ran on a campaign of fiscal accountability so you know that I have come through this budget because we only have so much revenue my goal is to get the funding as close to the classroom as possible in terms of Tas bu like the people who work every day with the students and I do appreciate that we pay our leaders very well I was very disappointed when we got the tsba data and saw that our teachers were ranked
08027th in the state because I like to be number one at everything but so you know in combing through the budget there's lots of positions that I question at the district level even at the school level and when I've asked for data like what do these positions do can you show me data on their impact and you know also backing up that you know educational research supports that the classroom teacher is the one who impacts the students the most so with all that being said I know when we did the fiveyear capital plan we were told to to pass it that the budget would come back to us is that the case here here or if we want to change something we actually have to do line by line amendments thank you for that question
081this budget as proposed includes our staffing standards includes our position control report we will rely on your vote for Staffing when it comes to pay for individual positions that will come back to you our proposal on the on the revenue side and expense side of the budget related to pay is based on mayor Anderson telling the commission at their public meetings he intends to increase spending for pay by 4% that doesn't mean a 4% raise for everybody I want to make sure that's clear right we've talked about that's right but I'm not sure everybody here has has heard that yeah that's true and so our proposed budget includes that and then we intend to bring you our proposal for that in May if we get a projection from the commission that we will receive sufficient
082funding from them to do that and if we don't receive sufficient funding then we would have to come back to the drawing board ma'am and look at line item cuts and things of that nature that's exactly right okay any other comments or questions on the general purpose School fund budget Mr galbert thank you and so just after Miss Clemens was talking about reducing the student teacher ratio which I'm not opposed to at all and also increasing pay I just want to just did a some back of the envelope math and say we had 200 2200 roughly 2200 teachers and our regular instruction budget line item is $255 million and that's that's pay benefits every everything taxes but if we reduced the by a one one student per classroom reduction from but by my numbers and
083this might there there might be better better numbers but my back of the envelope was 18. 76 student teacher ratio and if we reduce that by one that's about 5% it'd be another 125 teachers or 14 million bucks so if we I'm not saying that's not possible that's just the realities that we're that we're looking at in addition to that's that's 125 more classrooms that we that we have to create and some of our schools are don't fit so I mean it would be it would be some some adjustment you know we'd have we'd have schools that are that are fitting in their buildings now that don't fit in their buildings anymore so just trying to think about that and then from a from an overall standpoint you know we're talking 255 million million dollar
084and we see what the cost of of each raise is and so it's all it's all things would that would be that would be nice to have but like Jason said we're you know we're we're limited in our ability to to to pay our staff based on the money that we get from from both the state and the in the county so I mean it's just I don't know how I don't know what the current the current the cost of a or the value of a penny I remember when it used to be a million dollars and I suspected it's a little bit more than that now $1.8 million inflation so let's just call it let's call it 2 million bucks that's s cents on the property tax that we would have seven or eight
085cents that we would have to to increase and to that point I know many of you know this but I know we have a good crowd here this the County government is going through the reappraisal process the value of the penny will go up before July one currently it's at 1.8 million there that reappraisal may make a substantial difference Miss Clemens thank you and I appreciate your comments Mr galberth and I understand how that how that's going to be difficult to do but I think overall I'm really looking at teacher morale and as Dr Johnson said getting as much money straight to the classroom I know we've had discussion on instructional coaches these are Master Teachers that aren't in the classroom anymore and curriculum specials Master Teachers who aren't in the classroom anymore and I
086think maybe we could look at ways to restructure it we see I don't see this model used a lot I think it's come as new to us I think we started doing this as Dr Allen said and 20121 is when we added the instructional coaches we began Dr Looney brought instruction he was the first one to introduce instructional coaches that was prior to me joining the district Mr Golden 2009 2010 I thought we had some discussion at the I'd WR jot it down that it was 2021 would we' we've taken steps towards it so during that those first few years they were doing multiple tasks and then we have we have added capacity with our instructional coaches in more recent years and Dr Allen I think I think you're probably right I think maybe 2010
087but again they were doing intervention work plus coaching maybe there may have been some other work there as well to Mr Clems to your point the significant change did come in 2020 and it was the hiring of interventionists to work specifically with students in tier three which freed the coaches up to do what their original intent was which was to coach with the teachers okay yes so that was the 2020 reference that we had at okay thank you and I will I will tell you related to that we are seeing it more and more around the state the state actually added a category this year if I'm not mistaken Rachel for coaches to to separate it out because the state recognizes that Trend we found that it's making a difference for our teachers I know
088Dr Johnson we've had some detailed discussions about data and there's so many variables we don't have specific data to attribute that to but we do have our we do have experiential shares from from our team plus the ultimate student data so that's that's item that we know we're going to continue to work on and getting data to to show that Dr Johnson just a piggyback off of what Jay and Donna said again the instructional coaches in salaries alone is like 7.4 million that doesn't include benefits and they are Master Teachers and we are in in a teacher shortage there's 101 of them you know have we considered getting them back in the classroom and looking at a different coaching model such as I know I've seen coaching models where they'll pay them stiens they'll you
089can do release time you can get creative in ways that you might do a coaching model and yes we do have very high scores as all students but I actually did some digging in the TCAP subgroup data which I would think that the instructional coaches would be focusing on and many times our subgroups which are if you're not familiar with TCAP subgroups that's like black Hispanic Native American then you have economically disadvantaged you have English Learners students with disabilities and super subgroups most of those subgroup students fall I'm just looking at it quickly 15% plus behind the other groups like The all group so for example the English 3rd through 5th is 70.8 but your students with disability are 31.2 your economically disadvantaged are 34.2 and so that's a difference of like 39.6% 36.6% so
090again I'm wondering what the focus for the instructional coaches are do do we have information about coaching skills coaching model have we looked at potentially changing that thank you for that we have in the past used supplements and stiens and asked teachers to do to do that extra what we have found is a dedicated coach with the skills to teach the teachers has been has worked better for us and you're right about those those gaps in what the state describes as subpopulations some of you may recall that I'm going to estimate 10 12 years ago there was a big push at the state level in doing what they called closing the Gap between some of those subpopulations and the all students category especially in these last five or six years we've been focused on this
091basic principle that all students can learn at High levels we want to make sure that we don't take our eye off the ball on all students but also focus on growing those and that is a focus of our coaches I'll give you a data example I happen to look at related to our science textbooks in TCAP in grades 3 through 8 we were first in all the all students category and we were third in the Hispanic and africanamerican category and so there are some gaps there and I'm talking about Statewide and we can pull some data related to that Dr Allen I know you and I have had some detailed disc actually our whole instructional team Dr Webb and Dr or we've had some detailed discussions about that can you speak to that well I
092just want to recognize Dr Johnson for identifying that it's like you read our minds Mr Golden has we as a leadership team each year identify themes of focus not always all instructional safety is one that always we have every year we limit those to two or three themes of intentional Focus every year we've identified unique learning needs or the differentiation for the subpop data that you're discussing as one of those ones that will be intentional for us next year and so to your point it will be a lot of work of our instructional coaches when we have a theme like that it means we focus our professional development it means we focused our work with our leadership team all of those particular areas because that is an area that we feel like we can we
093can do better in the achievement levels as you mentioned with those Sub sub pops are areas that we really will will Target we also have growth data that supports that we are doing some things really well with those sub pops so we really balance both of those but to your point I just want to recognize the fact I it's like you read our mind that's that's going to be our intentional Focus next year is what can we do for all of the unique learning needs so it could be students with disability could be students who have characteristics of Dyslexia it could be English language Learners teachers have a classroom of of very diverse Learners and we believe that we can better support our teachers in how to address those unique learning needs and that's going
094to be some of the work of of the coaches as you mentioned so I appreciate you sharing that point let's create an evaluation plan around that so we have some data we can we can make operational there's a great book out there assessing impact of professional development by Dr Jo and Killian take a look at that and get some ways because it's really hard to justify spending that much taxpayer money for any of our programs if we don't have data to support it thank you for that Mr galberth before I come to you I want I think it's a good opportunity to make a point that something I've been thinking about with respect to our strategic plan half half of this board was not here was not elected and sitting on the board when the
095last when the current strategic plan that we're operating under was created and approved in my mind at least the budget should be a reflection of the district's priorities and strategic Direction that's what it's what it should be and I think some of the things we're talking about here kind of rise to the level of being more strategic conversations about what's our instructional philosophy going to be as a district what's our because that's going to drive our staffing our positions or the number of positions we have in any different area that's going to all flow out of our philosophy and our strategic plan so I might suggest that's something that we maybe revisit the Strategic plan not for a wholesale review or wholesale read-option if you will but maybe for modification sometime in the next 90
096days 120 days just because that gives the new board members a chance to participate in a conversation about the plan maybe make modifications that might include some of these things regarding strategic Direction Staffing instructional pH philosophy all those things I think rather than trying to deal with it as a budget modification now which might be shortsighted deal with it more holistically as part of the Strategic plan that's just a suggestion and I wanted to say that in the context of this discussion because I think that's where this is going a little bit Mr galbert thank you for that Mr chair I do want to say and I and Dr Allen I could be I could be mistaken lately but the last time I saw the subgroup data compared to our overall achievement yes the Gap
097was bigger than than normal but if I don't if I recall correctly our subgroups were performing it greater than the than the state average in most areas if I'm not mistaken I some of them I believe I don't feel confident in say I do believe that we do have no it might it might not be all and that's fine but like let's just remember the I mean economically disadvantage student here who you know might might be might be much less far behind in Davidson County versus Williamson just because their their peer group is so much is at is at such a high level so we do it's not to to to Mr Golden's point we think that all students are eligible are able to learn at a high level U but we're we're starting with
098a with a bigger Gap and closing the Gap is a great it's a great achievement but it's a I mean it's a pretty big task yeah thank you for sharing that Mr go with our subgroup data compared to others is really good we feel we can do better we're always looking for areas for improvement and really we're taking it on ourselves as a leadership team to better equip our teachers it's not that we're blaming the teachers for not impacting those teachers we feel like we as a team can do better in equipping them with better professional development because dealing with lots of different unique learning needs requires a really complex tool belt to be able to be successful with all of those unique learning needs so we're taking upon oursel to to better equip our
099teachers and help them because they're trying to do the best that they can do they're not intentionally in classrooms saying I don't want to help this student learn we need to better help them and support them with more tools sure well and to and to be clear I know we we talk we started talking about student teacher ratio and then the coaches just to be to clear I'm 100% in favor of our coaches staying coaches so I think the best teachers aren't always the best coaches and I've seen firsthand what with what coaches are able to do with new teachers I mean experienced teachers too everybody can can be on a growth curve but particularly as we as yall talked about how many how many young new teachers we have but they had the ability
100to go in and view that teacher in the classroom which if we if we didn't have coaches that were dedicated to coaching then every time they stepped out of their classroom into another classroom room then they're leaving their students Alone and they're so now we're taking again we're taking our best teachers out of the classroom and so I think the ones who have a who have a knack who have a love for coaching let them coach like they obviously have experienc teach they're probably yes they're probably some of our best teachers but they're ones that with the with the gift of of teaching other teachers which isn't for it isn't for everybody so I'm I will I'll Fight Hard to to keep keep those those coaches in position Miss GL thank you for that so
101when I was a young teacher I had I was paired with a mentor teacher and this teacher continue to work full-time and we would take turns sitting in each other's classes and then I was given advice and I think we could still I mean we're not going to be able to change it this year but or but I think that technology could be a friend to us in this one because Master Teachers can have their classes videoed and then share with other younger teachers and you can still do a peer mentoring without keeping someone 100% out of the classroom this has been done for years I really actually just wanted to speak and thank Miss Farmer for doing such a good job since I've been on this board this process has become more and more
102trans arent and I'm really thankful for that and all the work well I might not 100% support the budget I really am appreciative to all you've done that you have sat down with me and taken time to meet with me and I feel like this budget has been better and leaner than others and I really do appreciate your efforts for that her Miss Farmer's microphone's not on so I'm going to speak a little bit for her thank you she's she's incredible our leader leadership team evaluates and evaluates and cuts and makes priorities and she keeps us on task so thank you for that any other yes yes oh no I have to say this that yes I in this role but everybody I mean like everybody from the school level up contributes to this budget
103and I think we've all learned over the years how to be more forthright with information it's not that we're trying to keep it from we just don't even know what we take for granted that you don't know what you don't know and so I'm appreciative for everybody including you all and but I just have to say it's not me it is a whole team of people that get us here so anyway that's it and I will share this is this is the proverbial fire hose right for for for many of you because it's a it's a large budget I know Mr Cash you're smiling because you're probably thinking back to years ago when you saw it the first time and what you've learned over the years it will be an ongoing learning process I'm not
104seeing any other anybody else seeking recognition before we go to a vote on the budget would you just remind us either you Mr Golden or Miss farmer once we approve this budget the next steps for the budget in terms of County Commission consideration and when we might expect it to come back to us us after they have dealt with it the first time thank you Mr chair so we have a responsibility to the County Commission to get this budget to get their our proposed budget to them before April 1st this year based on our schedule they have actually scheduled their first meeting the last week in March March 24th this coming Monday and that is the education committee if it's both education I'm sorry budget and education are having a joint committee meeting I don't
105know off the top of my head how many meetings that we have with them it's it's joint and then we have an additional one with education additional with the budget committee and then the commission as a whole okay so probably half a dozen or so meetings with them they project that they will vote on our budget and all their budgets in June June 20th June 20th so when we could start getting some idea from them about about the tax rate and what they're projecting that's why mentioned to you may as the as the projected time that we'll be able to take a pay proposal to you because again we don't want that commitment to a pay increase unless we know we have the funds that will still be before their ultimately ultimate June 20th meeting
106but we'll have a lot more information about where the County Commission is on on that by that time I do want to mention that we actually do have a county commissioner in the in the in the audience with us so thank you for for for being here to to listen to this board discussion Rachel any any other detail related to the commission now they have to they have to vote on their own budget as well so this is done in conjunction with with their budget and Bill Petty I actually didn't mention your name specifically thank you Mr Petty for being here to as a commissioner to listen to this meeting okay so I think we have reached the end of our discussion one more call for comments or questions before we go to a vote
107all right Mr Golden I assume since you brought the budget to us that you recommend approval yes I do all right all right let's proceed to a vote on the general purpose School fund budget as the vote is 10 yes one no you approve the budget General purpose School fund budget 2526 thanks for the good discussion we'll proceed to the next three budgets I'm just going to give you a preview that after we deal with those three we'll take a short break and then we'll finish out the rest of the agenda so Central cafeteria fund 2526 Mr golden thank you Mr chair as a reminder the central cafeteria fund is not funded At All by state or local dollars it's funded by users and federal I know that there some questions have come up about
108where the USDA is with funding from every projection we've received any any information we do project that we will still receive that funding I do recommend approval from you for that budget based on what was presented to you do we have a motion in a second on this motion by Dr Reeves second by Dr Johnson any discussion of the central cafeteria fund budget okay let's proceed to a vote the vote is 11 yes Z no approve the 2526 Central cafeteria fund budget proposal item number three the approval of the 2526 extended school fund budget Mr golden thank you Mr chair starting on page 57 of your budget includes what is described as the extended school program fund which is what we call sack school age child care this is a self-supporting fund based on on
109customer payments for lack of a better term our parents who send their children to before or after school care you may recall that at our work session Dr oyer if I'm not mistaken mentioned that we're projecting to open up reopen the possibility for drop in clients based on our staffing having improved over this past year and again that will be based on a combination of capacity and need do recommend approval of that budget can we get a motion in a second on this motion by Miss Wyatt second by Miss Clemens any discussion let's proceed to a vote the vote is 11 yes Z no you have approved the 2025 26 extended school fund budget item number four approval of the 2025 26 Capital outlay request fund Mr golden thank you Mr chair our final budget
110is our annual Capital request this has evolved over the years with the County commission based on some of their request we have a 5-year Capital plan that projects longer term major construction projects but this annual Capital request is related to maintenance safety and Technology typically you may have heard the reference we and we mentioned last year to to some of the computers rolling into Capital that's part of the discussion that may happen from time to time with the County Commission so we go through the process of School request and I know some of our boosters and pto's will contribute to the princi principal's information with a request from us we ultimately bring it to you and I will tell you generally speaking this is a needs budget we have 52 schools of course one of
111the 52 is are Vanguard virtual but 51 School locations with roofs alone you can't replace one roof a year over the course of 51 years and maintain your buildings so we always have cost related to that want to share this also especially for those of you who who are relatively new not new anymore to the board Mr chair but relatively new at least to this budget process this budget is typically the one that that gets the most discussion by the County commission level because they're looking on their funding side for how they fund this and it often is a discussion at the commission level of of debt sending some of this out to bond and so they do ask us some detailed questions related to this Capital plan you on the other hand hear from
112some of our constituents about the need to have improvements and more so it is that balancing that we go through with this capital budget can we get a motion in a second motion by Mr wel second by Mr galberth any discussion of the capital budget request Dr Johnson I think Brian already answered this for me but I think it's good to bring out to the public because in this budget there's 3.5 million for computers but I think if I recall you mentioned those were like teacher white boards and is that correct it's okay because it's kind of like you know why are we spending six million yeah the way the state codes everything yes it's actually not computers thank you any other questions comments okay let's proceed to a vote the vote is 11 yes
113Z no 526 Capital outlay request fund and that gets us through the four budget approvals that we were required to do congratulations to the six of you who voted on your first budgets we will go to a 10-minute break let's reconvene at 8:37 e e e next item on the agenda is two board policies for first reading Mr galbert do you want to speak to these and then defer to staff if needed from policy committee yes I I will as soon as I get to that section so I'm going to relieve Miss osbrook who can't speak very well but she will gladly assist if we if we need so first of let's see what item is this homebound instruction homebound instruction 4.26 just a couple of mainly editorial changes due to change in state law
114so this one is pretty straightforward we just need a can we get a motion in a second motion from Dr Johnson second from Mr Boston any any discussion of homebound instructions policy 4206 on first reading seeing none we'll move to a vote I'm sorry Mr Golden do you have any I do recommend approval thank you the vote is 11 yes Z no is approved on first reading item number two 4.43 Library materials Mr chair a couple of I'd say a pretty pretty big change to to this and not only the change in the in the decision tree Matrix if anyone is familiar with that but that's the that's the first first large scale change after we went through that for the process for for the most recent time and I would just describe that as
115being more reflective of how the how the state law and the federal law are actually being implemented in terms of we read the state law first in the in order versus the other decision tree was more going through the motions on the on the federal law but then still having to do the state law which is where if there if you were going to to fail the process it would it would the state law being newer and and more probably more restrictive you would get to that first but so that's the that's the biggest change there the other one is the addition of the mature materials list I know that was spoken to at a little bit of public comment we discussed this at at Link at at our policy meeting as well as the
116work session so recommendation my recommendation if anybody has any any comments feel please feel free to to make them but but this is this is first reading we'll definitely have some some work to do when we when we get back to policy with that explanation can we get a motion in a second still need a motion and a second we can't it's not on our I'm sorry it's not on the screen my apologies U motion by Dr Reeves second by Mr BOS any discussion as Mr galberth mentioned this his first reading this will go back to policy committee for further discussion and back to the board for final vote let's proceed to a vote recommendation I do recommend approval per Mr galber mention that we still have some work to do at policy committee thank
117you the vote is 10 yes one no policy 4.43 on first reading now move to item D approval of High School courses and special course applications board policy 3205 annual agenda item Mr golden thank you Mr chair annually we submit to you any new proposed High School courses that require year approval and state approval this year we do propose leadership in action and we have attached to the board packet some detail of of different courses certainly open to any questions that you may have related to our submitting this to the state and you do recommend approval sorry thank you we do recommend approval all right can we get a motion in a second motion by Dr Driggers second by Dr Johnson any discussion all right let's proceed to vote the vote is 11 yes Z
118no approved let's move to item e approval of science textbook adoption committee recommendation board policy 4.41 annual agenda item Mr golden thank you Mr chair attached you will find the recommendations from the committee for adoption of science textbooks it's broken out in grade levels k235 68 plus High School science courses there are also two additional courses other than science that are being recommended this year based on state schedules advanced placement psychology and mathematical reasoning for decision making do recommend approval of those and certainly open any discussion because I know there's some robust discussion at the work session okay let's get a motion in a second to get this on the floor please motion by Dr Johnson second by Miss Wyatt any discussion of the recommendations from the textbook adoption committee Dr Reeves thank you Mr
119chair so you know I've really dug into this and spent a lot of time reviewing all the curriculum options and I as a board member prioritized several things the first being that I believe as a board we are obligated to adopt curriculum that provides the highest instructional quality materials and that demonstrates evidence of improving student outcomes in the classroom and as a scientist myself I evaluated the Hands-On piece I really wanted to see how that Hands-On piece was being implemented in the various curriculum options so I've sent emails on this I don't think it's going to come as a s great surprise to anyone on the board here and I've had numerous conversations all of the curriculum Options under consideration for kindergarten through 8th grade utilized a 5e instructional model that's phenomenon based so there's
120no difference there they all offer print and digital resources and the digital resources are custom customizable there's assessment bakes etc etc the clear distinction that I saw came in two areas and that is the amount of evidence that accelerate learning stem Scopes has on its website it is extensive whereas the other curriculum options didn't provide any evidence on their websites of notes Savas has a whole web page devoted to every student sees act the tier the four tiers of evidence for lots of their other curriculum options and nothing for science so I also was able to talk to a couple of teachers late this afternoon I was really grateful to have those conversations because I really wanted to hear directly from from them and I just want to share a few things that they said
121one was for a Elementary School teacher and she was very open and shared that she preferred Salas and when I asked her why the first thing she said was the teap assessment piece and I shared with her that's not necessarily what I would focus on as a board member because I've heard from multiple parents in our community about the concerns of teaching to the test and I understand that's how the system is set up right and so teachers are going to want to see that piece and I don't fault them for that the other piece that she said example that she gave was that if she's out and has a substitute and there was a lab scheduled for that day that she could utilize the a digital demonstration of the lab instead of having the
122sub lead the Hands-On demonstration and I also explained to her that as a parent that's not that's not the most effective way for our kids to be learning science so we've had many several public commenters tonight emphasize the high priority on Hands-On science I think that while all the curriculum options offer digital resources for teachers to use there was one one clear stand out to me and that was stemscope science and the ability to really minimize the use yes teachers can still use the digital features but really it allows for prioritizing the Hands-On piece and the print materials that will give parents and kids greater exposure to to science on a daily basis so I would like to amend the motion to Bobby you may not may need to help me with the language because
123I don't have a prepared statement sure so to amend the motion to pull out the K through 8 and approve vote on approving stem scope science by accelerate learning okay so the amendment is to remove savis and replace it with stem accelerate learning stem Scopes accelerate stem scop well it would be it would well it would be to to to remove Savas to replace Savas in K through K through 2 with stem Scopes to replace Savas in grades three through five with stem Scopes and to replace McGraw Hill in grades 6 through eight with stem Scopes is that correct yes that's correct so the motion is to amend the recommendation from the committee so that K through 2 3 through 5 and 6 through 8 would now be the stem Scopes curriculum is there a
124second for that motion seconded by Miss HMA any discussion on the amendment Mr Welch can you Mr Golden can you speak to the teacher's recommendation how that numbers how those numbers broke down between the two curriculums what they recommended and then what's on the amendment sure and thank you for that with the teacher recommendation number one they recommended Sav is for grades K through K through two 108 teachers recommend recommended savis 88 recommended Studies Weekly 42 recommended McGraw Hiller the Tennessee science and then 19 the stem Scopes so that was 7% for the for the for the stem Scopes and for savis 42% so no no no curriculum had a majority but the savis did have a plurality of of that in K12 K2 in 35 five 82% of the teachers science teachers recommended the
125savis which is which is the committee's recommendation 134 teachers there accelerate learning to stim Scopes was the second most recommended there at 17 teachers McGraw Hill was third for with at 11 and then Studies Weekly was two thank you Mr chair then let's see Middle School grades 6 through 8 the third one that we've discussed there were a total of 75 science teachers at the middle school level who gave their opinion 38 recommended savis 37 recommended McGraw Hill and of those teachers not none recommended accelerate learning stem Scopes or the fourth option which was kidum which was open science head the committee actually recommended McGraw Hill for that one based on based on their review and the committee rather than that 4951 split that we saw with the teachers recommended McGraw Hill by 57% Mr
126Welsh you okay Mr galberth thank you Mr chair at the at the work session there was there was some discussion about about potentially deferring the deferring the decision based on the information that we that we got at the I guess through the process and at the work session was I would say it it met the spirit and the letter of of our of our process and I just want to take some some responsibility for that because since we're you know we've done a couple of after after the wit and wisdom CR criticism and ultimately ultimately we changed some of the some of some of the books and the curriculum there you know we we did a I would say a pretty pretty good look at the at the process that we go through for for
127curriculum review and and adoption so I it seems that though the math curriculum adoption process was pretty similar to to what we did with with science but even as we even as we are approving the math I guess with any with any kind of change we think okay well it's changed so it's so it's better and it kind of does its its goal but at the end of the deth adoption and now when we're when we're sitting before and we're trying to make a decision on on the science I'm I'm still still kind of left with the feeling that the that this process it is a it's a transparent process of of pushing the board to adopt a recommendation but doesn't give us much more information than to do that and so it basically it
128basically says we need to trust the trust the teachers trust the process trust the committee which I think we I largely do I think we largely do but it's but this is kind of it puts us in a situation where trust would verify and so I found myself not having enough information to and it's 100% I'll accept responsibility that I didn't design a process to create the information that would enable me to make a decision as a board member the but so given that you know I'm I'm open to I guess I think it would be a mistake to to move forward with with a recommendation if I thought that doing so would would move us into a keep us down a direction of of overreliance on technology and I believe after I reviewed these
129these curriculum and how they differ I think that while we haven't made a decision as a district where we're going the decision that we make tonight actually you know puts us eight years down the road on on what we're going to be doing with regards to science at least and so I what what I was missing and I still don't have and I'm open to to how to rectify this but I saw the criteria that the that the committee used and provided the teachers on on the things that were priorities to to the committee to the district I can't remember if we signed off on those we probably did at some point but what is what's not clear we have the teacher votes but it's not clear what they were what they were voting what
130they felt was the most important and what they what they felt was stood out for for each of the each of the curricula so I guess Jason I'm I'm actually I'm open to to accepting Dr ree's recommendation but I'm also open if to to what your desire would be before before we chose to accept a curriculum that's counter to the to the committee committee's recommendation would you rather us make a decision tonight or would you rather us have some more discussion and let the committee weigh in and get us more of that information to to answer that question I want to look to Dr Allen and his team on the potential for that we had a professional development day for all our science teachers to make recommendations so I'm going to ask him that question
131and I want but I want to give you this threshold and Dr Johnson actually spoke to this at the work session the textbooks are not the curriculum alone they're a piece of curriculum our teachers our science teachers are the ones who are held accountable for growing our students and what I know from my experience not speaking for an individual teacher of those 188 or however many there there may be what I have seen is they evaluate it based on it the the textbooks ability to allow them to grow their students and help teach their students Mastery that's the fundamental start to that Dr Allen I'm going to get you to fill in really to his specific question yeah I can answer that question specifically if if the two options are delay and get specific information
132from the committee about why they chose what they chose or for the board to vote to adopt a curriculum not that not a single middle school teacher referenced as their choice then I would vote for the delay yeah so I that given those two options I would also say that hearing the conversation about the technology piece leads me to just make the comment that curricula having additional technology resources doesn't mean that it doesn't have the resources without the instructional technology so in those two particular curriculum when we look at them we see lots of opportunities for Teacher choice for Tech integration but we also see a really solid curriculum as Dr Reeves mentioned that is phenomena based in all of those other pieces so it has kind of all of those and so when I
133hear the speakers tonight and when I hear the conversation about potentially the overuse of technology and Reliance on technology as the assistant superintendent of teaching learning and assessment I would say that I agree that is not our intention on how we would want to our students receiving science instruction and by and large we believe that's not the way that they're receiving it right now in some cases may it be being abused at this point absolutely we probably have some of that's why I like you mentioned earlier am excited about the opportunity to engage in that conversation but our teachers are not picking a curriculum because they think that the curriculum is easier to implement because of the technology they are they are they are selecting a curriculum by and large because they believe that curriculum
134will give them the best opportunity to improve student outcomes because our teachers number one are professionals and that's what they want to do but number two they're held accountable to those scores and so I think we're falling short of of what our teachers are looking for if we're saying that they're looking for something to ease their their Tech integration that's not the case and then I also want to reference just back to what our Tech integration philosophy is as a district and this came from our instructional technology department has been in place since probably 2019 our Tech integration philosophy is that we start with the instructional standard and that our teachers work in professional learning teams to dissect and disaggregate that standard to really understand what the standard is asking the students to know and
135be able to do and then they are required by law to use our state and board adopted resources first and to implement the highest impact instructional strategies we use hatti as our reference most of the time to determine what is the best way to deliver this instruction so the two primary occurrences through our Tech integration plan don't mention technology at all in the first two steps those first two steps are disaggregate the standard determine what is the most highly effective instructional strategy using Hattie's research through the last decade couple decades and then at that point if there is a tech integration tool that can help the teachers provide differentiated learning or if there's a lab for example that we can't replicate without the use of Technology then there's an opportunity for Tech integration but only
136if and when they do those first couple of steps is it probably time that we need to revisit that yes absolutely but from from the person who's responsible for how we instruct in students and coming directly from our curriculum specialist and our instructional coaches in the classroom we are going nowhere in a direction of relying more heavily on technology to teach science that is the absolute opposite of what our instructional philosophy would be Mr Gabbert I want to add a little bit to Dr Allen's answer if and you all might you all ought to know this as individuals if you have as an individual made a decision already I ask that you just vote on it now if you're not sure and you want to hear that additional piece from teachers Dr Allen mentioned that
137there that there may be a way we can get it I am concerned about putting that additional questionnaire on our teachers but if Dr Allen believes based on his team's analysis that they that they can do it then then I we'll be open to it but again if you all have already decided based on what you have now and you were convinced that you know where you want to go I'd rather us just get this vote so that we can get the get the textbooks purchased thank you Dr Rees superintendent golden I appreciate you saying that because as you know I called you yes and Dave today and had a very candid discussion and was told that you all would prefer that we make a decision tonight so to hear it expressed that we now
138are open to deferring which is what I was leaning towards so that we could have some more discussions kind of is very surprising to me I come back to a couple of things well one is if we did decide to defer I had asked for our edte department did an evaluation based on a rubric that they developed and that they presented to the committee and I would like to see the results of that evaluation I did ask for that before the meeting but it was late it was today so I understand why I didn't get it when we look at the questions that the teachers were asked to consider it was instructional model assessment Banks print resources versus digital resources how it integrated with schooly whether those resources were editable customizable and whether or not
139supplementary materials were included Ed and so apart from the very first topic instructional model which they all have the same instructional model the rest of those bullet points directly speak to a lot of the digital features of the platform and so again I go back to we could all come up with a different preference based on what our priorities might be for a board member I think my priority has to be student outcomes and in the conversations that I had with a few teachers today I asked if if if there was evidence of a curriculum having increasing having a positive effect on student outcomes would that make a difference to you and the answer from both was a resounding yes and I asked were you aware of some of that when you were you aware
140that evidence existed when we were going through the curriculum evaluation process and they said no they don't recall that being discussed so M Wyatt just as there are no perfect books there is no perfect process we can learn and adjust this process next time if needed and I welcome those discussions in our policy meeting I am not comfortable delaying this process if it would negatively impact our students and teachers I support the original textbook science recommend the science textbook recommendations because I support the work that has been done by our T teachers parents and staff the committee made up of teachers and parents met four times including full day meetings in October and January and shorter meetings in December and February there was also a meeting for the committee of teachers and parents with the
141Publishers in February there was interaction and conversation during those meetings between people who very much have our students best interest in mind additionally I trust our teachers on how science is taught in the classrooms I trust the work done by the teachers parents and staff on that committee and I thank them for their time and effort to support our over 40,000 students Dr Driggers how do we turn it on oh there we are I'm as probably the only other scientist on this board my degrees are in biology and chemistry in high school led to the university led to a career for 10 years in that field and then later I got into teaching the point I when I was looking at the books I don't care how easy it is to access the test I
142want to know if that kid when they finish that class are they ready to go into the university and from the University are they ready to go into biology or chemistry or Premed a science field in in the industrial world so when I looked at the books the biology chemistry books I came out with McGraw Hill and I said if I had to teach that to these kids this is the book I want it does a better job of content and preparing for a future career here how having said that I'm not going to have to teach that in the high school class so that's up to the teachers how they're going to do it I would have one question for the superintendent what was the vote between what the committee picked and what I
143picked with McGraw Hill was it close or not even close Dr ders you're referring to the biology and chemistry okay the bi the biology textbook let's see 44% recommended savis 34% Sage 22% MRA Hill oh I'm sorry yeah mcra 22% McGraw Hill so that was that was more that well it more balanced no it's 21 44 to 22 and chemistry yeah and then then there's a accelerate learning and Kindle hunt there were two other choices not not neither for those for chemistry the recommendation was 16 for savis six for S gagee the National Geographic and four for the McGraw Hill with zero for the stem Scopes okay so in in those terms they weren't that close the teachers had a clear the teachers had a clear preference of which book they want to use for
144for for biology to use a mathematical term the plurality recommended savis but a majority recommended savis for chemistry okay then I don't contest what the committee picked Dr Johnson so I'm just going to say that I probably don't have enough information to make a decision tonight while there is a process over half of this board you know we came into this the process was already created I'm I know I asked how people were selected and it was principal recommendation I know our board member who was assigned wasn't able to attend the meetings and there wasn't like followup and there there was like a lack of communication and some breakdown so my recommendation like I said would be to defer it because I don't know that I have enough information to know that the teachers well
145even with the technology changes would that change which product that they would want I don't know you know and this is an 8-year Commitment if it weren't such a long commitment I could probably make a vote and i would support teachers but knowing that we've already starting to change the direction of some of the ways that instruction is going to be delivered and again the teachers didn't have that information and it's an 8-year commitment I would propose that we defer can I just for clarity we're what were you referring to on the changing the direction of how we're doing instruction how how does that pertain to this particular decision well I'm just thinking you know we're I know particularly 3 through five we're no longer doing the one to one Chromebooks now we are well
146they're still in the classroom but they're not being taken home and yeah so and the fact that this board seems committed to reducing screen time so if we're going to reduce screen time but we're going to adopt a curricula that students have to use technology you know the screens to access the techn the curricula then and would that make a difference for teachers in terms of how they are going to start delivering their instruction so I think the just a statement for context is that we some of the things you're talking about are longer term Decisions by definition are longer term decisions strategic decisions this decision that we have before us whether we make it tonight or make it in a date in the future it's still has to be done relatively soon because of
147the timeline that we're under by the state so we don't really have the luxury of kicking this can down the road to coincide with those future strategic decisions that you're talking about so we so the state kind of puts us in a Crux I appreciate the I appreciate the in an idal world we would be able to have those things be done simultaneously but we don't have that luxury right now so I think we have the choices in front of us are either to act on the recommendation or a different recommendation as is the subject of the amendment before us right now I want to remind us that we're on an amendment we're not on the main recommendation just procedurally we're on the amendment that Dr Rus has proposed which would address K through 8
148okay so we need to deal with that amendment in the in the in the moment all right but then the larger question is again making decisions tonight which Mr Golden has spoken to versus making deferring to a later date and then the question for that becomes what do we specifically seek to accomplish if there's going to be some kind of deferral and then by when would we do that because we talked at the work session about realistic timelines for this for the district to be able to acquire the materials to begin the process of the training and so forth so just trying to sort of objectively lay that out there for us all to consider but we need to deal with the amendment that's on the floor currently anything else Dr Johnson in the moment
149Mr Welch on the amendment okay thank you so I guess I want to start I want to address this phrase teaching to the test because I hear that used often and I and I honestly I still haven't really figured out what that means because a lot of times we're talking about the teap test and our teachers don't know what's on that I mean if they did we'd have perfect teap scor when the kids not really learning anything and well we saw you know 85 National Merit Scholars nominated tonight so I think the kids are learning something instead what we have is testing on on what is supposed to be taught and we have a set of standards that the teachers are given and those flow from the State Board of Education to us and we
150augment and there's a whole process but that is what we actually test on and when people complain about that I I kind of wonder what is your alternative to this testing the kids on what they haven't been taught it doesn't seem really fair to to our students so yeah you know we're we're teaching on standards and testing on those standards because that's what we've decided things that are that are important another thing I want want to ask superintendent golden how many how many members of the committee were there for middle school and Elementary School so I'm trying to remember off the top of my head I think it was 20 let's see 12 for 12 for K2 28 for 35 not more than that I mean there was 108 for oh committee members yeah you're
151asking committee members I'm talking the answers I gave on the data was teachers teacher revie how many committee members committee members sorry let me let me total it up so my recollection is around 225 230 of committee members yeah now there's there's the teachers all the science teachers evaluated it and then we had a committee that reviewed the teacher recommendations the evaluators the teacher evaluators that's question thank thank you thank you so the teacher evaluators it's a the K2 we had a 108 plus 88 plus 42+ 19 so I'm going to estimate that's somewhere close to 200 50 in that range 250 okay for the grades three through five it was about 150 171 134 and two by the way that difference is because in in our grades three through five we have teachers dedicated
152to teaching math and science and other teachers dedicated to teaching social studies and English so you have fewer science teachers at those grade levels okay at middle school I'm going to again add add those numbers up for teachers total Middle School teachers of 75 I can manage that number okay so the number she gave I mean it was 42% to 7% and what 82% to like 17 something like that for the lower grades so about a 6:1 and a 5:1 ratio I mean it wasn't close and with the amendment we quite literally being asked to substitute the highest recommended some cases overwhelmingly so and some case plurality for the lowest recommended to to flip-flop those and it wasn't like it was three or four teachers to your point it was 250 in a group of
153not only just teachers but parent volunteers who tend to be our more engaged active parents as well as those parents are chosen based upon their their own expertise in the field I know when we went through the math adoption a lot of parents were asked to be on it because they were engineers or mathematicians or or others so there is there is something to the wisdom of the crowd in this case the crowd is not just 250 random names out of the phone book it's our certified teachers with subject matter expertise and again I point back to our 85 Merit Scholars or tonight they're getting the results the last thing I have it's a bit of an antidote and so bear with me and I'll I'll make it very quick but about two weeks ago
154I got a message on Facebook from my former company Commander in the Army who I hadn't seen in more than 30 years letting me know he was going to be in town and you know could we get together for for lunch or dinner which for me is absolutely it was great and we got together Saturday in fact I was so excited I met with him even while the Tennessee Auburn game was going on that's that's how excited I was about it and we met and you know first thing he does he says well lunch is on me and I said no sir absolutely not he wanted me to call him bill I couldn't do that I said I don't think I can do that sir and I said let me explain why lunch is on
155me too you and I had a letter that he had written me when I got out of the service as a 20-year-old kid leaving Germany and it was a reference letter and then I didn't know I thought maybe I wanted to go on ROTC program do military career simultaneous membership program I knew I wanted to go to college also wanted a recommendation to an employer and you know and what he wrote it was it was standard military you know has exceeded the standard that but then it was also Kelli really put his time and personal an meant a lot to me and I'll say you know there's there's there's two instances I can remember that I've used this one is when I had a have a character reference letter wanted before the dean of U
156student discipline I won't talk about that one today and the other was when I needed a job between getting out of the army for a few months in college and it was an opening for a server at Ruby Tu days and had you know maybe a dozen people applied for it and I got it and the reason why the general manager told me was not he said you interviewed fine he said but honestly there were people had a lot more experience than you did it was really that letter that stood out and you probably hearing that going okay big deal you got a server job at a chain restaurant and I would agree with you except I start started dating a cute little hostess while I was there and a couple of months ago that
157Hostess and I celebrated 29 years of marriage so it was a little thing that letter that got me a little job but little things can have these huge impacts on how it steers your life and without that I never meet my wife I never have my kids all of these these things you know it improved my lives in a very different way and I tell the story to say delaying these textbooks is not a little thing it's a big thing we've we've heard that tonight from our superintendent from our assistant superintendant from our teachers that it delays our ability to begin preparing the lesson plans for our kids they are less prepared it impct the quality of the instructions and you know maybe that doesn't hit every single kid it doesn't hit every single kid
158but it's going to hit one of them out there it's going to hit quite a few of them out there and it's going to hit them in ways like they're not as excited about a career path they don't get the ACT scores they need to get that scholarship we don't know but it it happens there are real life implications negative implications and those implications are paid by our students who were supposed to put first and foremost so all this to say I'm not in favor of delaying we've had a good process it's been transparent it's been open it's very well documented the committee has made their decision and additional three weeks or a month or what have you isn't going to change that it wasn't a rush decision they were thorough they read the material
159they discussed they knew the standards they got the recommendations and these are the recommendations that they came with and I don't I just can't flip-flop the top recommendation for the bottom recommendation on that when it is so clearly designated between the two thank thank you m CH if I may address that a little bit Mr wel to your comments about the test Dr ree thank you for sharing those examples of conversations with teachers I will say we don't approach it that way we do teach to the standards and then the state tests the standards and our teachers have done an excellent job in that I mentioned earlier that in in in all grades for for science according to the state data on TCAP all students were first economically disadvantaged happened to be first in Williamson
160we were first Statewide I mentioned that we were we were third Statewide with African-American and Hispanic that subpopulation our teachers are really good at it and they use the the textbooks and the curriculum with an eye towards how do I teach the standards with these materials I want to be doubly respectful of of you and the discussion that you and Dr Allen and I had today and just double down on what I said if you all have already made a decision I would ask for a vote now and I know Dr Allen mentioned me mentioned in response to to to Mr galer's Question and so I want to speak a little bit to more to the timing of it based on Mr Welch's comments we have emphasized to you that when the selection process is
161well when the selection is made we then go into the queue for textbooks and I'm going to speak for you for you just a bit because if I'm not mistaken you told us today you had a conversation with with a with a rep from SIM Scopes and he said we've got them now we could we could address that now that's as I understand it Dr Allen that's not what we've heard from savis that that it's really a question of when the requests come in and it's first come first serve so if you would speak to that a little bit and also speak to the technology discussion especially to reference the comment that you received from one of the teachers about about well I can just do a virtual experiment if if I happen to be
162absent that day well thank you for that I if it would be helpful for the board we do have Miss sa here who ran the process who has a better understanding of what's actually included in the instruction materials and whether we have to use the tech integration pieces so if it would be helpful to the board I would like for her to to speak to that and so that way you know exactly what's in the curriculum any objection to hearing from Miss s okay Miss s you're welcome to come up thank you I wanted to speak just a little bit about that technology piece I think that if you look back 15 years ago if you looked at a textbook really for any course for science for math for social studies it was what we
163I guess I shouldn't speak for everyone on the board but when I was in school a textbook looked like a book right like it was a book and you turn the pages and there was the book and I am a former science teacher so I know that like the Hands-On instruction was supported with a book lab manual and there would be a teachers guide that supported that instruction in book form in the last 15 years or so I would say the national appetite has shifted Publishers towards we're interested nationally not speaking at all about Williamson County or our teachers specifically but there really is a push for there's a lot more technology integration and so you'll see that reflected in all of the publisher offerings they have print materials and then they offer often it's
164exactly the same material offered in digital form as well sometimes the digital supplements or supports the print material but I can tell you with confidence that in looking at all of the science materials that were approved by the state handson science instruction is really first and foremost in all of those materials and if you look through whether you're looking digitally or whether you're looking print multiple opportunities for students to engage in Hands-On instruction supported by print materials so when we were talking about K to8 specifically the K to8 curriculum in all of the different materials that we looked at comes in the form of a consumable physical workbook that supports Hands-On instruction in the classroom so what that might look like is the student receives the consumable workbook we don't have to talk about digital
165at all as we talk about this piece the teacher instruction includes here are some Hands-On activities that you can do with your student at the beginning of the lesson to kind of like introduce phenomena based instruction throughout the unit to continue to support and build the what am I trying to get to the like competency towards the standards and then in most cases there's actually Hands-On assessment that's offered for students as well so that multiple Hands-On experiences are really in all of the different curriculums that this the teachers evaluated none of that requires any digital integration at all I on the spot would hesitate to say with 100% confidence but I would say with 90% confidence you could really Implement any of the curriculum completely physically without any digital use at all what other questions
166you Mr Golden back to your original question if you could speak to availability from the Publishers if there was a delay because Dr ree spoke to accelerate learning but I couldn't answer the question about yeah no and I think that I mean to be very clear for you there's a little bit of speculation in my answer but I will tell you that both the advantage and disadvantage of the state going through their initial vetting process is that every sing single District in the state is choosing from the same very limited list of Publishers and so there really is a line that starts to form eventually there is going to be a bottom to what they have available right this minute as opposed to what they're going to have to print on demand I think it's
167hard for us to say but we can say with experience looking back at the math adoption some of our math textbooks were coming in days before we need needed to get them in the hands of students and that was with the timeline that we're kind of proposing right now if you don't mind just remain there in case other questions come up but we'll just go go through the queue now U Miss Wyatt I just wanted to say that I feel like that we're between a rock and a hard place here on this timing we don't control the timeline of when the Tennessee Department of Education releases their approved textbooks and we need to have material ready for our school year and our teacher training but I have a lot of confidence about what happened during
168the time that we could control and I really would like to see us move forward in confidence with those recommendations from those teachers and from those parents and I would like to see us trust those teachers with the outcomes of our of our screen time committee I'm really excited about that and I feel like they are going to be receptive of that they are within our community many of them our parents they're having the same struggles that we are and I just would love to see us move forward in confidence of the work of the committee and trusting the teachers thank you Dr Reeves so I can appreciate all of that Miss Wyatt I think our teachers truly do care about student outcomes and we can have a debate about I absolutely acknowledge that all
169of the curriculum Options under consider ation have a digital platform they all offer print based instruction and where I keep coming back to where I saw a clear difference is just the sheer amount of research evident based evidence-based studies that showed improvements in students scores when it came to science and I wonder if teachers had that same information for example comparing fourth grade grade stem Scopes where is it this Tennessee Middle School raises science score six plus points in one year with stem Scopes would they have voted differently and the second question that I guess I would pose to everybody on the board is after this adoption process can you clearly point to what exactly what features of the curriculum led the teachers to vote the way they did and prioritize one platform over another
170and the last piece back to talking about the teap and testing is that I had a discussion with Christy Brown who is the chief academic officer for the Tennessee Department of Education last week and we talked about all kinds of things including the fact that Pearson is the company that developed the teap and then Pearson became Savas and became a curriculum m that now provides teap assessments with most of the curriculums that they produce and I asked her you know is that a conflict should we can be concerned about that and she said that's an absolutely fair question that they've had those exact same conversations themselves so you know I don't think it's it's out of the ordinary to be thinking through some of these things and I know that it is a it's a
171180 Dee opposite recommendation from what our teachers recommended but the fact remains I still wonder how much of the ease of implementation of the curriculum came into the decision-making process I watched a lot of videos savis is beautiful not going to deny it has a wonderful platform it has autog grading it has you know read aloud features that's all great and I hear you know Dr Allan and Miss Sour say we could Implement any of these without using the digital platform at all then then then why are we even I mean then why why can't we adopt a curriculum where where it's it's the it's the has all the rigor but none of the fluff essentially so that's where I am okay can we I'm I'm sorry so Mr galbert then we'll go to you
172Mr Cash thank you Mr chair Miss s is so I looked at the I looked at the Sabas website and both of them really but so they did they did highlight on on Ela and math their their as a tier 2 like research that shows their outcomes and that's one of the things that they highlight when they're trying to sell us on their math curriculum yes and so I guess so the fact that it that it doesn't exist for for Science and if it did they would they would surely be highlighting it so I guess how do you how do you compare how you compare that from from the curriculum that we did that we did approve and that was research based versus the versus the stem Scopes that has that same research-based criteria or
173or or history and the and the saice that doesn't know yeah no I appreciate you asking that and I am going to again tell you something that I think is true that I hope is true but I apologize I was out of the country until last night so I've been keeping up on email at a very big time difference but I believe that we got some questions last week about what were the research studies that all the various Publishers had done with their curriculum we reached out to we went and looked on their websites as well so we saw all the same information that was publicly available that was available to teachers if they chose to look in that part of the curriculum and we also asked each of the Publishers can you send us
174any research that you've done we also went and kind of in dependently looked for what are the SS studies that exist for science curriculum and interestingly what we found is that there are actually no curriculum that are currently labeled with Essa scores on their website lots of Publishers have started to do studies I don't know how much you all know about this Research into curriculum but it is incredibly expensive and it takes a long time to show results and so it may take several years to build up enough data to really submit a report that gets approved what we found is that and I may have to turn to Jenny because she pulled a couple of the reports Savas and mcra both had reports that they had put together with research submitted through a university
175one of them I believe was John Hopkins I forget who the other one was and there a statement in those reports that says we believe this data is conclusive with an Esso rating of tier 2 but because it hasn't been long enough in the process that isn't like an official rating yet I think that we were able to pass some of that on to the board but we have all that information and we're able to pass that on to you if you're interested in seeing it Mr Cash that works thank you Mr chair you know I read an email from Mr Allen this week and he said we really need to take some time and look at the process and make some adjustments I heard that back in the Wht and wisdom days no adjustments
176and that started out in a mess and we approved it on time Miss Miss Wyatt basically said if if we need to make changes in the process that we can go ahead and do that at some point but tonight probably isn't the night I've heard that with math I heard it with wit and wisdom and now I'm hearing it again tonight so how do you trust the whole process let me just continue savis is very heavy with technology if you look at the website accelerated is a quite a bit less there's a lot of bells and whistles with savis and what they put on there if they want to prove their point they can say anything they want but they still never put any proof on there of what the outcome was but if this
177process isn't only a Williamson County issue you know on behalf of our staff and the teachers it's not a matter of trusting a teacher or the teachers this comes down from the state the state the governor selects Specialists to come up with standards for us and that'll look at these books and then they go from this State the the folks that are on the commission that develop our standards goes to the National Science teaching Association for more credibility in what they're doing okay so that now it's gone from state to probably you know National and then their standards are all combined I guess and they make a decision and then this all this goes all the way down to the National Association references and the United Nation's intergovernmental panel and then what happens we come
178up with global norms for standards this is what's at stake here it's not just about teachers and staff I know how hard these folks work been on this board for almost well 10 years now and I know how hard these folks work but we go through this every process something needs to change if we don't if we don't want it to change then we won't vote for this stuff if we want it to change we're going to get involved and we have to push you know buttons to get it changed and it's got us Chang at the state level maybe maybe just an amendment like this a change comes down maybe people are going to see this maybe they're going to say hey these boards are looking at these issues differently now with with some
179of these issues that are in the science curriculum there's no debate it's this how many theories have changed in the last eight years there's theories on everything it's science like Miss Wyatt said we're not going to have a perfect book ever but I think this is a chance to let our voices be heard and change some of this stuff and work together in the future and and get this process taken care of and thank you so much for your hard work all you guys I really appreciate it's hard work and it's it's tough getting up there and standing in front of the board and trying to explain things but this is just down to earth this is from from from me this is just my opinion I've seen the process too many times and I'm
180just I'm looking for some change thank you Mr chair Mr chair if I may mention a couple things related to Mr Cash's comments the states made some changes from the wit and wisdom time to Mass they the textbook commission started emphasizing to these Publishers that Tennessee standards must be addressed but to your point the key window is still just as tight as it ever was and so you know locally we've tried to inform you earlier than we have in the past but the key window is still that narrow time for evaluation I'm I know you may have a couple more comments I know Miss hibma is there the to to the chair's Point earlier the motion on the floor is to substitute at K through 8 stem scopes for the recommendations we spent some time
181talking about a delay versus that and I want to make sure that we that we're differentiating on those points my answer to to to Dr Reeves question about and I'm going to speak for you again your original thought that there' be a delay to try to get more information versus make a decision now I want to reemphasize if you all have already decided what you want please vote on this amendment and then we can make it then we can take the underlying motion as amended Dr Allen in response to Mr Gabbert's question did add some additional information that we had not discussed or additional thought that we had not discussed related to the possibility of delay and so I do want to explore that a little more based on the comments some of the comments
182that you have made can you speak to that in more detail I just was speaking specifically to what can I recommend can I recommend we vote for the curriculum that was not chosen by our teachers or delay that Liv that leaves me limited options and I didn't certainly didn't mean to go in a different direction than what the conversation that we have with Dr Reeves today but we didn't really address an amendment that spoke specifically to I've got to answer a question on do we do we vote on on that particular option if there is additional information that the board feels like that we can provide that you can make a more informed decision we can do that I don't I don't know I'm not I'm not hearing any new questions that we've not addressed
183and so back to what Dr Reeves and Mr Golden and I talked about today if you have all the information and it's time to vote then it's time to vote MMA yeah I was just going to say I think we should just take that vote so we can see where everybody stands and I just agree with what Mr Cash had said as well but also as new on the board and we went to the Tennessee School Board Association orientation and they informed us that as a board member we are to make our decisions based on data and I and you know telling me which teachers that's you know the answers that were posed about how many people voted on on these you know which which topic or which books or curriculum didn't answer my why
184and Dr Reeves did answer my wise a lot clearer and so that's why I'm G to I'm going to vote for stem scope but and that's because I I want to make decisions based on data just like the decisions I make on the Chromebooks it's from a lot of data and research that's out there that I've read and yeah that's how I'm making my decision thank you can I ask a question I'll come to you in a second Tony I read or heard somewhere in the last few days that stem scopes of the choices that were available that stem Scopes was the only one or is the only one that only does science I believe there're Science and Math Science and Math okay but the others have full curriculum full curriculum every subject area Okay
185so this one stem Scopes is a little more specialized in the stem area if you will it's where they focus their attention yeah all right Mr Boston yeah was just going to say to Claire's point you know and kind of what we've talked about tonight so I'll be brief but you know we've heard from one of our students that was here tonight we've heard from the student speak Summit that they had and overall theme was kind of that they want more engaged Hands-On kind of you know education with screen time so it comes to digital integration screen time I feel like we've heard and I know that this is intentional but it's like you know it's not really happening that way but isn't it great that it is type of thing because we have all
186this it's available to us but we don't really use it but we need to choose this CU it's available to us and like just seems a bit incoherent to me I think the evidence-based student outcomes piece should be something that's definitely considered on it so declares point for stem Scopes it seems like that piece is there can I speak to that one more time if you don't mind we have evidence-based research from mcra from from Savas also from stem Scopes and they are all very similar in the student outcomes I believe that all of those papers got sent to the board but if they haven't been we have them and we can pass those along Mr chair if I may oh I'm sorry Dr re is on there I won't speak I just want to
187reiterate though that stem Scopes is the only tier 2 it's the only curriculum option that qualifies as a tier 2 curriculum under the every student succeeds act so yes there are research studies to your point but I mean I found it on their website I specifically reached out to the publisher rep and he sent me an email if you know to Mr gal's Point earlier today and I've seen it myself if Savas had tier 2 data for their curriculum they would absolutely be using it as a selling point and it would be publicized on their website so while they've conducted studies and there is research it doesn't reach that level that's required to get that tier 2 designation I don't see any other speaker so any before I come to you any final comments on
188your motion since it's your motion oh sorry Dr ders I need some help here the biology and chemistry I'm okay with I looked at it fine they can use that but I've got 40 to 50 emails in the last week and they all name one book Meyers AP Psychology that's on the list it's the only book we have so my question is what if I want to read that book well let me let me we have it physically I mean so to speak to that we're right now we're on the motion to deal with k through eight once we once we dispose of that motion then we're going to be back on the original recommendation which includes that among other things so we can deal with that in short order any Mr Golden any final
189comments on the motion before we on the amendment rather before we go to a vote Yes Mr chair with a warning that this is on the edge of being Direct related to the to the to the motion to amend you all as board members have in your in your either in your Norms or your internal ethics standards a commitment that you won't make a decision until after debate based on that based on what I've heard from my team leader that's different based on based on the questions that you all asked I'm prepared to change my recommendation but it's not what's actually on the floor right now Dr Allen has basically said he thinks we can get an answer to the question that Mr galbert and Dr Reeves asked related to teachers and as I understand
190it what you're saying is the delay that we spent so much time convincing you is very important is less important than making sure we get you guys the information Dr Allen is that accurate I don't want the board I want to say yes to that but I want you to have all of the information that you need to make an informed decision that's where we started this process from the very beginning and so if we've not I tried to answer every email last week you had me you had me on the edge of my seat all week ready to respond and so if if there are still unanswered questions and it's still for consideration then yes to Mr Golden's point if that decision has already been made and you have all the information then and
191so Mr chair I'm not recommending approval of this motion but if there was a motion on the floor to defer I would recommend that okay so the motion we do have on the floor is as a reminder is to amend the original recommendation from the committee to replace Savas in K through2 with stem Scopes to replace Savas grades 3 through five with stem Scopes to replace McGraw Hill grades 6 through eight with stem Scopes that is the amendment currently before us it has been moved has been seconded we can we can now proceed to a vote the vote is 8 yes two no and one abstain motion carries U so the the main recommendation now now amended has stem Scopes as the approved curriculum for K through 8 so we're now back on the main
192motion which involves recommendations for biology chemistry physics physical science I'm reading off the list here anatomy and physiology AP bi biology AP Chemistry AP environmental science AP Physics 1 and two AP Physics C AP Psychology mathematical reasoning for decision making those that I just named are part of the original recommendation that still need action by this board and Mr chair if I may I want to give one correction Dr Driggers mentioned there there was one textbook for AP Psychology if I'm not mistaken they were four so just so you know Dr ders you're recognized I would still like to read the one that was recommended because I got so much mail about it okay so I don't know how that works with I'm not going to put words in your mouth but let me ask
193you would you would you would you want to make a motion that some action be taken on AP Psych ology other than recommending its approval for tonight that's exactly what I meant would you like to make a motion that it be removed from this recommendation list for further discussion yes is there a second to that motion Mr bosk is seconded okay so we're now on the motion to remove what's that motion we're on an amendment to the motion to the original motion as amended to remove AP Psychology BFW Meyers psychology for the AP course fourth edition to remove that recommendation from the committee's recommendation list any discussion Mr galberth yes I guess in response to the I mean we have gotten a couple of emails and I guess more than a couple emails about this
194book but I guess my question is to to Dr Allen or maybe Dr web around around the AP curriculum and I as I understand the AP curriculum and going through AP classes myself albeit a couple years ago they focus they focus widely on looking at at different different ideas looking at the at the author and their their bias and what they're what what they can't what what kind of point they're trying to to drive and I guess if we I would hope that part of our part of our teaching philosophy and our that our teachers are going to take with with the even even our source material our primary source material being the being the curriculum itself or being being this publisher of the book can we can you just talk talk to the talk
195to how they would view some of these some of these statements where where they where they do they do reflect a cultural bias if you will around some I mean they were talking about gender gender identities and things like that which I recognize as a mental health issue that has to be that has to be addressed and I know people in in that industry very close to me and understand that the way they're talking about it in the in the material is probably the way that it's taught in most of the classrooms and it's considered kind of a norm in the mental health in the mental health world but maybe not so much proven science How would how would that conversation go in terms of when that when that topic came up in conversation in
196in a classroom so let me take a quick stab at it and make sure the doctor well I'll just I'll be brief first of all there's actually some some state law that maybe Dana could speak to that we would number one stay within the limits of the state law and follow that number two we would stick to the learning outcomes and if it's not one of the learning outcomes through college board then we stay away we're not going to we're not going to be going down that path as well so within those two parameters that keeps us free I think of of some of the issues that you're describing and you want to take it from there the other thing that I would mention is similar to what we've been discussing with the science textbooks
197with our AP courses when we adopt curriculum in partnership with college board and the standards that they lay out and the learning outcomes that they lay out we don't teach that book with Fidelity we teach we look at the process with integrity and to review the standards that and the learning outcomes that we're trying to accomplish and then use the a the aspects of of that adopted textbook to to help reach those and I agree with what Dr Allen has established and if there are controversal things that you've seen in a textbook and they don't align with our standards those are not aspects that will be taught in our classes that's fair I appreciate that yes sir M Clemens for chair my trigger finger was not quite fast enough this actually is my undergraduate degree
198and so I when I went down I went down couple times to look at the textbooks review and I really my favorite and I thought it was I thought they were fair in the way they presented it was s Gage and that was the one that I was going to recommend instead of Myers I don't know if we can amend amend how we do that but I did I did kind of pour into the four choices and I my favorite was engage so again not putting words in your mouth are you wanting to put that in the form of a motion or are you just making a comment if that's how it if that's how we can do it I Robert's Rules yes okay okay then I would like to make an amendment to the
199amendment for S Gage to be the AP Psychology Okay so the amendment on the floor is to remove the AP Psychology recommendation from the list the amendment to that amendment is to make S Gage this the choice for AP Psychology correct is there a second Mr bosk second any discussion on the amendment to the amendment does the staff have any feedback or input from on Sage observations about Sage before we I'm sorry Mr Wyatt sorry can we have some information about the voting on that on those books from the committee those choices so just a couple of pieces specific to that book and I don't have that data in front of me but I think I know the information and Miss s can correct me if I'm wrong I believe it was unanimous among our
200teachers for s correct correct yeah thank you yeah thank you for more specifically nine nine AP Psychology teachers recommended it was nine of nine and then there were eight committee members on that on that evaluation it was eight of eight okay thank you yes and then also that is the book that's currently being used this is just an updated Edition that particular publisher was the first to align to the updated course and exam description by college board so our teachers have had a lot of they've used that instruction material for some time so I don't know if Dr web has something to add the only thing that I wanted to add about AP Psychology specifically is the exceptional Talent of the teachers who teach these courses our AP Psychology scores are through the roof they
201far exceed the national average this group of teachers are phenomenal typically you have one teacher in each building who teach this course and they're a super tight group of professionals who you know you can speak to specifically because it's such a small group they are super passionate about ensuring that what they teach is in line with college board and that they're meeting the psychology most of our students who are taking AP psychology have a specific interest it's not a required course it's a course that students have the elective to teach and I would say in in some of our schools students take that course because of the reputation that those teachers have they're excellent they're passionate about their work and our students who take our Williamson County AP Psychology courses Excel greatly at the University
202level to me when I see this recommendation that our teachers all chose the same textbook it carries a significant weight because of the expertise and the level of those nine teachers and I just want to share that with you guys because of the weight it carries for me from being in those classrooms and seeing the outcomes that we have consistently with some of our highest achieving students it's it's incredible thank you for your comments no one's going to be surprised that I'm going to go with the teachers is there any data about the recommendation Miss Clemens tell me your question again your the data around your alternative recommendation as I said earlier I thought it was a more fair and balanced representation of the psychology course I thought that the Myers was a little just
203didn't reflect Our Community Values thank you Dr Johnson so speaking of the outcomes and I know it's last minute so you probably don't but I would like to know data for like the percentage of students who passed the AP exam cuz it would make sense that the teachers would want the same book that they were using but again if we want to make evidence-based outcome based you know do we have some data to support that I have that on my computer if you want me to check I can get it I know they're they're pulling theirs up so whoever I would just at some point like to hear it can I say one more thing about the CED alignment as well just so we're all in the same terminology CED is the course and exam
204description it's really College board's version of the standards College Board the whole reason that we are adopting a book for AP Psychology kind of out of rotation is that college board made a really significant change to the course and it's not necessarily the content it's the structure of the class so they've actually reclassified AP Psychology traditionally for a million years it's been considered a social studies course they've changed it and as far as College Board is concerned it's now dual assigned social studies and Science and so they now incorporated into the course a lot of science practi practices and from the teachers the overwhelming what I heard from them was that's what we're looking for in the resource the content as Dr web said our teachers are phenomenal they know the content they've got the
205content down what they're looking at is does this resource support those practices that we know our students need to be proficient in and their evaluation was that this is the book that really aligns to those practices as well as the content if you will of the course Mr galberth thank you Mr chair that Miss how that's really that's really helpful I love the I love the why behind it and particularly given that we're we I mean we adopted this book prior to there being a book that met all the all the standards and we had to have something and so I mean I'm I'm inclined to I mean it's it's got to be a pretty high bar for me to to go against the recommendation of the teacher and the and the and the committee
206for sure so I don't I don't take that lightly lightly at all but I mean I you know outside of outside of more U databased information like I'm I'm inclined to to give the teachers the I mean I would hate to pull the pull the course the book that they're using that's worked and they've been successful at I know this course saved me like 20 about about 2500 $3,000 or so for mine and so I and I really I really love this the course and the and the teachers that teach it so I will not be agreeing to this amendment Mr Welch my son took AP psychology his teacher had a PhD was a licensed psychologist and was the school teacher of the year she's obviously recommended it because it's a universal recommendation as did
207all of our other teachers on this I would really encourage some of you to go and talk to your principles about the impact you're having on teacher morale and staff morale when you insert your own opinion over theirs on a lot of these things when it's not always an educated opinion just a comment from me I I have some I had some concerns about the de Meers textbook and I guess my personal preference just speaking as an individual not as the chair is would would have been for more time on this particular one and I want to ask you Mr Golden are we under the same constraints TimeWise for selecting the AP psychology textbook as we are on some of the others no because of the volume and because of the teachers's experience with this
208textbook okay for that reason I would respectfully oppose choosing oppose the amendment and would prefer the original amendment that makes no recommendation or removes this recommendation from the list for tonight for in order for us to have a future consideration of it that'd be my personal preference any other comments on the amendment and to be clear the amendment to the amendment that's on the floor is to adopt Sage as the AP psychology textbook instead of meersma I'm having a lot more difficulty making that decision I understand the Community Values and fair and balanced and that weighs heavily and I also understand that we can't always Shield our kids from the world I mean it's out there and that it that is going to be part if they're going to Community College orever that's going to
209be a part of the discussion and that's the discussions that you need to have with your children at home so I'm you know I'm trying to weigh this in my mind so I would like to have some more time to review those books myself and just try to come up with a good decision thank you Dr re sorry Dan Mr Cash and then Dr Rees okay yeah sorry I'm not on the on the board tonight I got to remember to look over there sorry that's all right well thank you Mr chair you know I got to be honest it's it's a hard decision to just switch books Midway I I would rather really look at these books and evaluate it my granddaughter she graduated U 4.3 or four or five something like that she took
210she took this course and I never heard anything from her on it really and she's succeeded in her first semester of college and again all a so you know it's hard to it's hard to change a book like that I kind of agree with Miss HBA by this point in in their life you know they know what's going on they know everything and they try to do what's right I wish I wish the curriculums though gave them a chance to have an opinion in a real true debate on some of these social issues that they're facing rather than it being leaning one sided all the time so I just i' just assume wait and get into the books thank you Mr gber just want I think Dr did you get a chance to to look
211at the scores the you referen the value of the course being elective credit when kids get to college so you have to have a passing score typically the university that student is attending sets that what that score is typically it's a three four or five so you at least have to have a three to get the passing score the national our average score is a 3.29 across all of our schools 725 students took it in 2024 the national average is a 2.97 the 2.97 equals a 62% pass rate in the course and we have a 73% pass rate in 2024 so we exceed the national and those are all AP students from across the country right so it's kind of compar comparing Apples to Apples so we exceed that national average by about 11% in
2122024 yes maam 725 in 725 in 2024 yes in Williamson County yes ma'am yes they have to okay any other comments on the amendment to the amendment okay as a reminder the vote is whether to adopt Sage as the AP psychology textbook instead of the recommended Meyers textbook let's proceed to a vote I'm sorry recommendation I do not recommend approval of the amendment both to change it toau or not the vote is two yes N9 no is to delete the AP Psychology recommendation from the recommendation list as part of the main motion is there any discussion on that motion okay let's proceed to a vote recommendation Mr Gold yeah I missed I missed the original motion so this so there was an amendment the original motion was to remove this from the list was by
213Dr Driggers okay to remove to remove AP Psychology from the recommendation list entirely and defer it well it's just to remove it which by definition means we'll have to take it up at a future date okay and Mr Golden's feedback was that we're not under the same time constraints for this as we are for some of the others W with that being said Mr chair I think we'll be fine but I recommend based on our teachers track record that we that we do honor the request that was presented by the committee again we'll be fine either way okay all right with that let's proceed to a vote I Rec I recommend no on the amendment e the vote is seven yes three no and one abstain the amendment carries so we're back on the main
214motion and where we stand just as an update is we now we have now have a motion which is the which is the original recommendation from the committee that has been amended Twice first amendment was to amend K through2 3 through five and 6 through eight to replace them with Sim Scopes the other amendment was to delete remove AP Psychology recommendation from the list we are now left with all of the other recommendations as as presented to us by the committee are there any other comments or questions about any of the other recommendations on the list Mr Welch yes I just want to say for the record that this is a vote to to replace what our teachers recommended to us their top recommendation with a series of texts that was their bottom recommendation in
215some case Zero teachers recommended this is what we're voting on so I just want to be very clear and have that on the record that this is what we're all going to vote for now Dr ree what I'm confused are we voting on something quite yet just the remainder of the we're back on the main motion and we're taking comments or questions for apsy no no we've already we've already voted on the aps Amendment it's getting it is yeah it's confusing because we've had variety of procedural things going on but where we stand now is the recommendation list has been amended twice yes and we're back on the main recommendation as amended so we're now left to take up any of the other recommendations that haven't already been got it voted on got it okay
216so you know the high school biology chemistry and physics classes all had similar options with stem Scopes being one of them and so you may be wondering why I didn't include that in my prior motion and that is because the evidence related to these High School courses isn't quite as strong or as clear to me so I just wanted to speak to that piece I still have the same concerns about the digital integration of those platforms but yeah that's what I want to say about that Dr ders this is a vote to give this board more time to look at a book simple as that you can look at the book or not look at the book and then come to your own conclusion it's simple any I do have one question can can you
217Dr Allen or or someone walk us through which of the remaining items recommen recommendations had only one choice available to the committee m s can it was anatomy and physical science are the two courses and mathematical reasoning those are the three that only one book Pass State betting physical science anatomy and physiology and then mathematical maical reasoning only had the one option correct okay yep okay do we have any M Clemens so this is more of a procedural question but since we've removed Myers do we need to make any adjustments on when we're going to make a decision on the AP cuz I know that's a course that a lot of kids loved or is it just automatically delayed well I'm going to I'm going to answer it procedurally and you can ask answer it
218substantively procedurally we don't have to do that right now okay substantively I'll defer to Mr Golden on when on when it should be taken up post post this meeting if this passes I would anticipate we bring it to you in April okay so most likely we would be on the April April board meeting regular agenda not a special call meeting a regular agenda item for for April with a new recommendation for AP Psychology is that do I understand that correctly well we would have a recommendation I don't know what it would be at this stage it may not necessarily be a new one it just would be another recommendation that's right to bring it back to us for another vote where whereby then presumably we would have more information at our disposal if needed M
219Wyatt can you go through we are we this is a motion to approve the amended titles for K through 8 and then what else since we've removed AC AP Psychology well that would be it so we're Mo we're the motion now as amended is The Replacements in K through2 3 through 5 6-8 M which we approved and the removal of the recommendation entirely for AP Psychology M everything else stands as recommended can you read those titles those recommendations yes and the courses including the ones already amended or not or just the other ones yeah the other thank you so the remaining ones are biology Savas Savas experience biology is the exact wording chemistry Savas experience chemistry physics physics Savas experiened physics physical science McGraw Hill Tennessee physical science anatomy and physiology McGraw Hill holes Essentials
220of human anatomy and physiology AP biology BFW biology for the AP course AP chemistry sagee chemistry 11e AP Edition AP environmental science BFW environmental science for the AP course AP Physics 1 and two s Gage College physics AP Edition AP Physics c s Gage physics for scientists and Engineers 10th edition AP Edition and then mathematical reasoning for decision- making Savas thinking mathematically thank you okay I don't see any further comments or or anyone in the queue Mr Golden recommendation on the on the on the recommendation as amended thank you Mr chair just as a reminder this will be the final vote on this If This Were a recommendation to defer them all I would I would recommend approval because it's not I do not recommend approval but we'll be fine either way okay thank you
221okay board let's vote the vote is nine yes two no science textbook adoption our final item on the agenda is approval of the 2025 26 school fees Mr golden thank you Mr chair just as a reminder from the work session we have on your agenda the fees for elementary school plus fees for high school extracurricular activities our plan this year is to take the curricular fees for middle and high school from the past and treat them as an administrative request for for funding donations I do recommend approval to the document that you all have before you thank you we have a motion for Mr galberth a second from Miss HMA any discussion M Wyatt I brought this up at the work session I just wanted us to revisit this it's very important to me that
222our language is descriptive about what this is covering just because for families that are paying so many different things at the beginning of the year with ap fees and stuff like that and I'm sensitive to our PTO and their fundraising abilities and I just want to make sure that our families know what they're supporting and I agree I agree with it I just want to make sure there's a lot of great description around it for our families thank you for that so I'll I'll start with well I'll start broadly and then drill down broadly the state allows us to charge fees but the word fee is not an excellent descriptor for all of it because we cannot require someone to pay for for for school which is in essence inclass time we can't require somebody
223in a public setting to pay for a class for additional tests such as an AP exam which is not strictly part of the class we can for extracurriculars we can but the state calls at all fees we have struggled over the years with making that clear to our community because the state nomenclature so that's Piece One Piece two is we can charge extracurricular fees but we don't make payment of the extracurricular fees a necessary precursor to participation we have found a way usually through PTO or booster clubs to support that making that request for fees with a commitment that if you can't pay those fees you can still participate in the extracurricular even though we could require that so in no way are any of these required fees even though the state calls them that
224the distinction this year is for the curricular fees we are eliminating that nomenclature of fees to try to make it more clear that it is always been a request for funding for voluntary funding from parents and so our intent through our through the process for this coming year is to make the request basically in the same format we had without using the term fee for curricular quote unquote fees with all that being said one issue we're still exploring and we may not have an answer because we're not tax professionals but someone's tax professional May if we structure it in an appropriate way we may open the door for our families to if they give us a donation for curricular Services write off write that off as a donation on their taxes we don't have that
225defined yet but we're going to do our best to put that in terminology that may give them an opportunity with their tax professional no I agree with you I just want to I know our PTO are fundraising at the same time so I agree with you about making it clear to the community what the money is being used for thank you Mr galbert I know it's late but I mean you got to give me this I got to I gota at least thank you for for finally making something happen and it's it's been been a lot of years up here I still want to talk about science textbooks but I know you do I know you do can we call off his microphone please but I but I really I really do I really do
226appreciate it's not not exactly how I wanted to go this and and things but but it's it's more movement than than I've gotten in the last 10 or 11 years so I'm going to I'm going to take it and run with it so I appreciate the appreciate the movement on this Dr Johnson and I just want to Echo what Jay said because when I had two seniors and paid $5 to $600 in curriculum fees I would much have rather made that a tax deduction than just make it so I'm I'm happy about this one Dr Reeves yeah I also think it's a wise move I want to make two points one is just one example at at Perry Creek several years ago we recognized to your point about feeling nickel and dimed at the beginning
227of the school year there was the student fee a class t-shirt and one other oh and then the PTO was doing their fundraising and so what we decided to do was to say hey pto's going to cover all of that and all we ask in return is that you make a donation of any amount that you feel comfortable with and we did provide a recommendation for what that amount looked like but again made it very clear that any amount was welcome and we actually increased our fundraising efforts doing that so you know that goes back to kind of one of the goals that we talked about sharing those types of strategies with all of the different PTO and booster clubs across the district and then number number two I'm going to make a plug for
228foundation you know it's we've talked about bug budget struggles tonight and many many many school districts public school districts Across the Nation have foundations it that you know public private Partnerships if you will including my tiny little M Junior Senior High School in northb Nebraska where the state or the that County actually pays more than we do per student about $14,000 even they have a little Foundation that they use to support certain initiatives like you know art supplements for teachers and things of that nature and this could be another example of where maybe a foundation might be able to feel those gaps because one of the things I do want us to keep a pulse on is do our teachers feel like like I know science teachers you know there's labware and things like that
229get purchased I think with these fees and we don't want them to be shorted we don't want them to be having to come out of pocket and so keeping a pulse on that making sure that this new system works well is going to be important Dr Driggers closing statement I'd like to thank Dr Allen and the entire District staff superintendent golden for six or seven months everything I've asked for I got it so I've never been denied anything that I've asked for so I thank you for that thank you just a comment based on something Dr Reeves just said I think there's two things tonight well we need to get past this item first but I'll say that after we vote any more comments on the approval of the 25 26 school fees all right
230let's vote the vote is 11 yes Zer no my comment was going to be that two of the things tonight that we've dealt with deal with your goals that we set for you one of those being the creativity around funding which this is sort of tied to the V we just took is sort of tied to and then also what happened in the budget which we didn't really talk about tonight but the try to the differentiation we're trying to do that you're you propos doing for Arts teachers supplements being more mindful of the folks who were on that the non-traditional positions if you will supplemental positions and so forth so I think just recognizing that you've in a couple ways tried to address what we've asked for in your goals and Incorporated that into some
231pretty important decisions that we had to make tonight so I just wanted to acknowledge that thank you for that all right with that thanks everyone for your patience and for the good discussion we're adjourn