001good evening my name is martha henley i live at 9458 appleton court thank you so much for the opportunity to speak when my firstborn son started kindergarten i remember that feeling of sending him into the world and when he got home from school i couldn't wait to pepper him with questions about what did he learn in school that day but did my child tell me about learning letters and numbers and singing songs no well my child eyes sparkling could not wait to share with me was about the kid who got in trouble it was so exciting it was the most exciting thing that happened that day was a kid got in trouble and i think we can all relate to that drama is what excites is what makes an impression i don't have any indication
002that there was anything wrong with what happened at school that day but our children are watching they are learning what behavior and circumstances warrant punishment and they're also learning what behaviors are tolerated we owe it to our children to ensure that the policies driving this passive education are fair for everyone and have been thoughtfully examined not unthinkingly excited thank you very much annetta gaines good evening superintendent golden and school board members my name is aynetta gaines my student began at franklin high this year and yet she had to transition to online due to covet 19. she has some issues she had to be in the building for the tennessee ready test and when i dropped her off at school i immediately get a call and she's upset saying she's tired of it and she's going
003to the office what she was referring to was a certain young man on social media continuing to bully her she spoke with us and we called the principal she went straight to the principal and i will tell you who it is because i'm very proud of him this evening it's principal pantol at franklin high school so when we picked her up she was pretty happy that he had talked to her when i went in he was in a meeting and it was a very important meeting it was with homeland security yet he came out and talked to us and gave my student the courage to realize that something was done and so what i want to do is just commend him for that and of course the school policy says that he could not state
004what was done but he told my student that if a young man ever said anything to her for the rest of her time at franklin high he wanted to know immediately and this is how you deal with bullying it can be done there are consequences so thank you principal pantolo next up is john paul basham followed by chelsea gilbert hey i'm john paul basham i live at 30 44 boxbury lane i'm going to give you some of my personal experience i'm a half white and half colombian man who grew up in a southern city much like this one and rarely acknowledge my colombian heritage filling out the race section on any form growing up always brought inner turmoil as i struggled with the fact that i had functionally denied who i was my whole life
005the truth to my shame is that it was easier to function as a white young man than a person of color a person of hispanic heritage i saw life easier from my perspective than the perspective of my friends who were black and brown i'm now a father of four kids two of which are part hispanic two of which are mixed black and white and i refuse to let them grow up under those same circumstances and still my son titus through all my efforts was only four years old when he experienced his first very pointed experience with racist remarks against him so i want to say to you thank you time for your work in fostering healthy solutions your work gives parents like me hope that there are better days ahead chelsea gilbert hello board and
006superintendent golden i'm chelsea gilbert in franklin i have four kids in the system one middle schooler and three elementary kids at clovercroft and brad fiskus is our representative hi brad i know with the shortness of time i want to draw attention to a recent concern dr michelle fiskus medical director tennessee vaccine preventable diseases and immunization authority over all of our children has emailed local vaccinating partners to let them know that there will be possibly some exceptions to acquiring the necessary parental consent in order to pre to pre-exist vaccinating some children i will read from her letter the mature minor doctrine in tennessee permits health care providers to treat certain minors without parental consent according to the rule of sevens under the age of seven there is no capacity skipping ahead between the ages of seven
007and fourteen there is a rebuttal presumption that there is no capacity and a physic physician generally should get parental consent between the ages of 14 and 18 there is a rebuttal presumption of capacity and the physician may treat without parental consent i asked the board to investigate michelle fiskus i asked her to step down thank you our next speaker is lee cook followed by jay halterman i believe that's jenny halterman hi good evening my name is lee cook i live at 1012 biddix i have three children in wcs this one i don't know who she is but i hear here tonight to touch on three points of concern that i just wanted to share with you first i recognize that people of color are grossly misunderrepresented in williamson county as it comes to not only
008this board before me tonight but the faculty and staff at my children's school and i find that to be concerning disappointing secondly it's my understanding that there's currently no formal training around diversity and inclusion around topics like unconscious bias that our teachers and faculty experience so i greatly support that i personally go through that every year maybe even twice a year with my corporate job and i see no reason why faculty and teachers shouldn't experience the same training and thirdly i believe we need a better system of reporting and tracking we might have systems in place but i want to make sure that students feel safe and comfortable reporting those incidents thanks jay halterman hi there i am calling for all coveted policies to end and never return the average high school student missed 50
009of in-person education this year and the average middle schooler missed 40 percent the board must vote today to end communication with the health department going in both directions we as parents are calling for the board to use your power over golden as our representatives of parents and end this unlawful classmates no comments during the speaker please and end this unlawful practice of giving private information to the health department manipulation and coercion of minors to get the backs by selling it under the banner of school makes it morally right good and expected thing to do it however has been the most lethal thing it has been lethal to 4 000 people so far none are approved by the fda all are experimental under the nuremberg code is it is illegal to mandate it the recent letter
010of from the health department makes the williamson counties schools the most dangerous place to be giving the facts to seven-year-olds and up without parental consent calling for your vote our next speakers are kay jackson and c kelly hi my name is kristen and i live in nolensville i have two children that i a fifth grader and a seventh grader that i removed from williamson county schools this past year to homeschool i would like to send them back this next year i first want to address critical race theory critical race theory identifies individuals as either oppressors or oppressed bullies are bullied in critical race theory one is an oppressor a bully not based on behavior but based on gender or race it teaches our child that they are either born a bully or a victim of
011bullying it allows no room for actions to speak louder than color or gender it forces our children to believe they are either good or bad this is not the way forward the way forward is to teach our children that they can do better than their ancestors regardless of their ancestral roots my second concern injecting children without parental consent currently we must sign medications in with the school nurse i'm not discussing prescribed medications i'm talking about long-approved over-the-counter medications like tylenol and cortisone cream and provide detailed instructions on how or when they may be administered to our children even sunscreen is not allowed to be applied to children by anyone other than the parent there are good reasons for this i can stand here and quote statistics to you about any of these topics many will
012but at the end of the day we just want the choice hi my name is serena kelly i'd like to talk about the critical race theory and the fostering healthy solutions i'm proud to be teaching in a time when equity and access is not just acknowledged but it's prioritized the integration of uniqueness into a society only serves to make that culture stronger to turn it away forsakes the growth and enrichment of the society itself non-inclusion anywhere it is found acts to the detriment of the society of which it proclaims to serve i believe that exposing students to works from different genders ethnic and cultural backgrounds is not just being politically correct it is simultaneously pointing the student towards a holistic growth while also setting them up to be successful in a global workforce i moved
013here with my family from australia four years ago my children are very capable of understanding that two things can be true at the same time we can be an imperfect country and still be a great country time thank you our next two speakers are dustin cocktail and k james my name is dustin cochter and i'm a resident of williamson county's 12th district and i have three children in elementary school thank you for the unanimous decision to hire fostering healthy solutions to provide some much needed assistance and guidance to help make our schools safer and more welcoming for everyone you put your reputations and positions on this board at risk and you opened yourselves up to all sorts of harassment and hate please stay the course and continue to support the work of fostering healthy solutions
014as a parent of black children i know that talking about race can be complicated and messy but it's critical work for all of us and for my fellow white people i recognize the discomfort you feel about this but we can move through it beyond the discomfort and past the shame and guilt that you may feel for being white if left unattended for too long white guilt can become the best friend of white supremacy so we must listen and learn excuse me deputies deputies i'm asking everyone in the audience to show their respect that you would like to be shown or you have been shown when you have spoken please please continue sir thank you so we must listen learn and act and do what's right our schools should be inclusive environments where the humanity and
015dignity of our children is not up for discussion or debate and they should also be places where our children can see people who look like them as teachers and administrators for the students who are hurting or feel powerless we hear you and we support you thank you kay james hello my name is kim james and i live in the nolensville area i have three young children that attend an area elementary school that are 6 8 and 10 years of age we moved to this area about three years ago what i'd like to highlight here today is that there's without a doubt a very real and dangerous issue as it relates to acknowledging and celebrating diversity in the williamson county school system and in the county in general what i'm requesting as a parent of three
016beautiful brown children is the school system to stop treating black and brown parents and children and wcs like we're invisible and expendable our children are part of this community and deserve to feel safe seen and protected within williamson county schools the false assertion that there is no need for di training in the school system is a blatant attempt to preserve the privilege hate and ignorance that is a serious issue in williamson county just recently we've had kids say extremely hurtful comments to my children like black people are ugly or the n-words are stupid anyway a sentiment the child says was told to him by his father we've also experienced the hurtful effects of teachers racial biases our students deserve to be treated equally and i applaud you all for your dei efforts our next two
017speakers are terry sinclair and debbie pace please at the work session thursday it was stated that there are only 244 cases of covid with no stipulation made as to how many of those are asymptomatic and that was countywide there's 32 schools with zero cases 15 schools with one to two cases and three have more than two does the continued enforcement of mask wearing provide any benefit that outweighs the negative and unintended consequences i'm here to ask you to make masks optional effective immediately instead of waiting till friday set free our students radiant smiles let them light up our schools with their happy faces let's finish out this challenging year on a positive note there's no justification for a delay i'm a school bus driver and it was hot today and it's supposed to be mid
018to upper 80s as the week progresses with a mask it's suffocating to me and i can tell you those kids are not comfortable in a hot bus with the mask on i have two children two grandchildren that are in the williamson county schools but i feel like i have 70 children debbie pace my name is debbie pace i live in brentwood and i have six children two have gone through the school system and i still have four over the last 20 years i've watched the school board steadily walk away from the values that drew me and all of us to this community the function of the school is to educate our children the school board has no authority no scientific standing and no legal basis for regulating health care in the schools including dictating mask
019wearing mandating healthy children be sent home and isolating them this is not your job masks in vaccine administration is not your job our children are our responsibility and we need the schools we do not need the school system to co-parent we are demanding that you do the right thing because if you think this is going to go away and we are going quietly to comply and sit by to watch your blatant disregard of our rights as parents you are sorely mistaken our next two speakers are david holliday and don ann ritter mr holliday hey good evening my name is dr william holliday and i would like to address the critical race theory question i'm not racist i've never been racist but critical race theory is racist mark's all critical race theory is marxism described disguised
020as good manners it's a lie it tells our children and i've seen this on the brain pop videos that they're racist just because they're white there's not an option for i'm not racist it's how racist are you what could be more racist than that it tells our children that people of color are all oppressed if they're white it's their fault it tells our children that this country is a racist country and needs to be fundamentally changed and that we should all feel a deep sense of guilt for being american particularly so if you're white critical race theory all but granted sainthood on a brain pop video to a man who was a career criminal a drug addict and who held a gun to his pregnant girlfriend's belly you don't hear that on the news time
021time thank you our next speaker is dawn and ritter hi i'm dawn ann ritter i first want to thank all of you on the board of williamson county schools for getting our kids back in school as quick as you did versus california or other parts of the country i'm concerned i'm a concern for our kids wearing masks i had to pick my daughter up several times due to severe headaches and that's from hypoxia from not enough oxygen to your brain that is not healthy i also don't let them take her temperature at her forehead which is also an unknown and very debated thing to your pineal gland and also is conditioning your kids to a gun to their head i'm concerned about the critical race theory exactly what david holliday said the stuff they're teaching
022is somewhat backwards i've had experience with some of my daughter's friends that are completely confused and the last one is the vaccinations and the doctrine mature doctrine that's being lobbied by by mr fiskus's wife who's on the timothy board of health we have the letter that's a concern nobody has the right to do that to our children jim bicknell i believe and marissa dip deep loach say the hard names for you for the same time my name is jim becknell i live in spring hill i'd like to thank all of you for waking us parents up for over playing your hand with the masks and waking up a sleeping giant i know that you think that by getting rid of the mask mandate you had no authority to give that will just go away and
023leave you alone now but i'm here tonight to tell you we're just getting started in the past year thanks to you we parents have become keenly aware of what happens here and we don't like it you do not get to vaccine our children you don't get to mask our children you may not have wanted this battle but this battle is coming judges 15 15. we the parents have our metaphorical jawbone of an ass and we're ready to smite a thousand men your move our next speaker is marissa deep deep loach i'm sorry if i mispronounced it's fine my name is marisa diplock i have two children in williamson county schools i'm here to talk to you about this experimental vaccine that you seem to be willing to get ready to roll out into our schools
024knowing that the covid experimental vaccine is still in the safety trials phase and has been has only been given the green light due to emergency use why would you even consider possibly having children vaccinated on school premises children are not at risk the vaccine is personal protection only me getting it does not protect any of you and you getting it does not protect me even if it does protect you there's still that's still up to be discussed you say it's not going to be mandatory for school admission but i'd like you to take that one step further i'd actually like you to request that the children actually have their personal doctors administrate administer not on school premises also will you be allowing parents to take exemptions for the vaccines like you do all the rest
025of them because i'm not wanting my child to be vaccinated time especially time my child is not going to be part of an experiment and i am not going to ask your permission time to exempt them from it randall allen and ryan parrish thank you for your time board my name is randall allen i've got two boys that will be in indy in a couple of months and i just implore you folks to lead us you're leading my boys and they don't know it the policies and procedures you all didn't vote on you gave it to the superintendent you gave it to faceless unaccounted for bureaucrats in the health department i implore you now that you've learned from the past as you're looking to the future lead us lead my boys make these decisions and
026be held accountable to the voters don't give them to bureaucrats that we can't have any accountability to that they can't have any ability to us thank you ryan parrish hello my name is ryan parrish and i live in franklin i grew up being taught that all people are created equal and to love my neighbor is myself but i often ask myself if that's really what i believe why is it that i found myself instinctively locking my car doors when i see a black person standing on a street corner why is it that i felt obliged to smile and nod my head when walking by as if to prove that i'm really not racist why is it the person that i am in these little harmless moments is so much different than the person i want
027to be as much as it embarrasses me to find myself perpetuating these little inequities i can't even begin to imagine what it feels like to be on the other side of them the looks of suspicion the superficial smiles the little changes in body language and posture nobody least of all our children should have to live like that racism hurts us all my biggest fear isn't that my children will grow up to be white supremacists my biggest fear is that they'll end up like me where the person they are in those little moments doesn't line up with the person they want to be education honest conversations and learning about our biases and blind spots may not solve everything but it's a step and it's a step in the right direction so thank you next two speakers
028are e miller and stephanie zieger e miller stephanie zieger hi there i'm emily miller i live in nolansville i have one child in wcs and one that will attend soon first i just wanted to say thank you to the board thank you for your hard work in all areas of our education and thank you so much for hiring fhs a qualified third party to help us have difficult conversations and make our schools better i just wanted to say that as a white mom of white children this still matters to me because why one in it matters to me that students of color are encouraged to equally take advance in ap courses that they're equally disciplined for the same infractions that they have a safe and comfortable place to report racial racist incidents that happen to
029them and then that those incidents are tracked in an accurate way within our district i just want to say please keep up the good work that you're doing and thank you stephanie zieger hi my name is dr stephanie zeiger and as a mother of two elementary students in district 2 and an educator i fully support the boards and districts work on diversity equity and inclusion understanding the diversity of our student body is important to develop a community of respect within our schools that does not emphasize a single perspective but embraces multiple perspectives whether from books conversations assignments or interactions with one another in the classroom or on the fields diversity equity and inclusion work matters equity is essential so students no matter background are supported and have the resources to reach their maximum potential inclusion
030is necessary to ensure all students can participate fully in our community and are respected for their similarities and differences diversity equity and inclusion work matters from our youngest kindergartners beginning to learn who they are in our school community to our seniors that will hopefully be empowered global citizens our students do not need to leave a part of who they are at the door when entering our schools or be excluded due to their socioeconomic status race sexual identity or neurodiversity i employ the board and district to compete continue this important dei work and i'm eager to support you as you move forward shanna lively followed by aaron newman please good evening as a parent of two children in wcs i'm appalled and disgusted with the direction and overreach of the school board and superintendent schools are
031for academics athletics and arts i do not send my child to be given values a vaccine or be indoctrinated to not only what to think but how to think get rid of the coveted restrictions address the disturbing issues and witne wisdom and take the time to understand crt instead of spreading the lie that crt is not being pushed and not already in our schools this is dishonest and reckless our kids deserve better and as a parent i demand it to be better aaron newman good evening and thank you for opening this up for all of us to speak i'm erin i'm from nolensville there have been some testimonies from people in the community that there are several board members that actually don't know what crt is so i'm here to invite you and everybody in
032the audience to crt 101 wednesday may 19th 5 p.m liberty hall at the factory williamson county board of education policy manual 1.202 titled duties of the board members reads the duties of an individual board member shall be as follows to become familiar with education laws rules and regulations of the state board of education and the state department of education and school board policies further your policy manual 1.2021 code of ethics for school board members article six my relations to myself section one reads i will inform myself about my duties and responsibilities and current educational issues by individual study through participation in programs needing providing needed information according to your policy manual you have a duty to learn about this issue thank you our next speaker is jason michael fathered followed by anna anna riglin i
033thank you first for protecting my child this last year it was a tough year and you made tough decisions and i feel like my child was protected and i just wanted to say thank you to that i come though in this brief moment to do my best to speak in favor of dei and racial awareness in the classroom i could come as a pastor i could come as an academic trained in critical race theory but instead i come as a parent of a knowledgeville high school rising senior and i speak because i want him to know about the racial history of our country and how racism still exists today in the fabric of our culture i want him to know about the tulsa massacre the native american massacres that came with the vaunted gold rush
034the fort pillow massacre redlining voter intimidation the genocide of whole peoples inside of our borders and the brutal truths about slavery reconstruction jim crow hatred bigotry and how it still produces power to create racism today i want my son to know this so when versions of the same were encountered in his life my boy will know how to stand clearly and firmly against it so i thank the school board for their efforts in diversity you are to be commended and i suggest that despite those who speak otherwise the board continue to strive forward to understanding amending and reconciling our children in education thank you ann good evening thank you for allowing us to speak and express our concerns my name is ann rigdon 3408 redmond hill nolensville parent of three children in williamson county schools
035one in each level elementary middle and high school i'm a nurse i'm resident of this fine community and i'm a proud army veteran i believe america is the greatest country on earth and that all men are created equal as a war veteran i can assure you we all bleed the same color i come to you tonight to express my concerns over what my rising second grader he is seven will be exposed to in his ela class not his social justice class that he signed up for in college but his ela class i believe the witten wisdom curriculum is robbing our young children of their youth and introducing strong adult themes far too early i believe this is intentional and as the great minds website that has proliferated this curriculum details that these topics will occur
036strategically and reoccur strategically there's a push by some of those that have our curriculum do the right thing stick to your policies don't parent our kids the conversation starts the next speaker is susan macy followed by liz custer my name is susan macy and i live in district 6 in brentwood i'm here tonight to voice my opposition to bringing foster healthy solutions into our schools i've heard the fosters and wcs leadership say things like we are just here to gather data or no fhs will not be implementing critical race theory but it's already here in witten wisdom i have done much listening and studying and with the deepest love for everyone in this room i reject that all white people are oppressors i reject that all people of color are victims that all systems in
037america are racist and that we haven't made some of the most laudable progress in this country when it comes to race issues please hear this also i passionately acknowledge that our children need to understand what bigotry hate racism and most importantly self-worth are so they can live right but i don't want them anywhere near crt and it's single lens race-based political divisiveness my concern is that fostering healthy solutions will lead us straight there our children depend on you all to get this right so get it right our next speaker is liz custer followed by david blackwell hello my name is liz custer i lived in brentwood raised my three kids at edmondson brentwood medal in brentwood high school i've always been proud of their education that they got in williamson county and they're grown and
038married now and thank you although maybe you weren't a board member at that time i now live in liebersborg have four grand babies and one on the way two of which will be in williamson county schools i'm seriously concerned that the school board would even consider this vaccine issue this vaccine is an experimental children are not experiments they're not lab rats we cannot experiment on our children they there are treatments my father has a compromised lung he's almost 80. he got the china virus he took the ivermectin the other man ma'am i believe it's called covet 19. please continue he got that and he she needs to continue please everyone be quiet we're almost done thank you thank you and he took ivermectin vitamin d zinc he's fine there are treatments for this disease that
039are not in being publicized but they're out there and they're very effective so he's fine he lived right through it so dr robertson is correct he has the experience that my father has that backs up the data this is an experiment and it has no place in our school system thank you our next speaker is david blackwell yeah i'm a nurse of 22 years i'm also a case manager with regards to what our schools here in williamson county are teaching my son went off to university of tennessee to study medicine and he said he was in no way shape or form prepared for university of tennessee when he left centennial high school so on that with regards to the mass the maths don't work that's been published science on the cdc website for years we
040called it the mask of shame when hca a corporate for-profit hospital system demanded that they would wear those if we didn't take the flu shot this is all about a coercion campaign the ontario nurses association in ontario sued on that and one on the science alone so look into the science look into the ontario nurses association the nas need to go thank you our next speaker is jenny connolly followed by corey martinez and then laura kleeman who is our last speaker so jenny conley corey martinez and laura clayman hi my name is jenny conley and i am a mother of four i have two in college and two in high school and i live in franklin and i have a master's in biochemistry i'm opposed to the schools being used to distribute the vaccines children
041should not be injected with experimental drugs kovit's not a threat to our children i went to the cdc's website today and i looked all deaths from our deaths from all causes from last year two 43 fifty eight the deaths from covet were 287 that's point seven percent the suicides from kids ages 10 to 14 was 596. it was almost three times the mental health risk is much greater than the death from covid so i'm also taught math in high school before i moved here and i am so i'm going to give you some numbers as well adverse events i went on the cdc website today in 2021 there were three or this these are deaths 300 3726 the past 20 years this is from the vaccine adverse event reporting system the past 20 years or
0423995 okay thank you there are as many deaths in the past thank you just these few months of the past 20 years our next speaker is corey martinez hello corey martinez here fresh top of the year from los angeles wonderful to be here with all of you so we have a pretty good understanding of what overreach is and i came up here to really address the mask issue but after hearing everybody speak honestly it's more of a common sense issue as far as defining the line between parenting and school board or schooling education rather so the masks definitely mean something to me to speak on because that just symbolizes the compliance to be honest after the science has been proven that our kids don't need to be subject to the psychological damage that's that is
043doing at the moment continued by the politis of the crt and everything that these people are speaking on as well i feel goes along with that you know it starts in the home parenting is very important to to separate from schooling i'll stop there for now thank you so much and our final speaker this evening is laura clayman after miss clayman's remark we will take a 10-minute break so those who want to leave without disrupting the meeting people with small children please go ahead and feel free to leave and then we'll reconvene in 10 minutes after the public speaking portion of the meeting miss clayman hi i'm laura klaman president of the williamson county education association and to end this really long evening and this really really long year i couldn't let the year go
044without saying a very heartfelt thank you to all of you many many late nights i think you guys went past midnight more than once more than once and i know how many hours you have poured into this you haven't said she had to read my 60 page document and the teachers also you helped us survive this year allowing those flex days i've had so many thank yous and teachers who've said really that was the only way we made it through this year so truly thank you also very very much for all you have done for us this concludes our public comment we will recess for 10 minutes board members please be back in your seats at 7 31. thank you okay she just watched us we're waiting on just one board member to come back
045two oh mr hall would you mind stepping out and seeing if you see mr mitchell that's also a vice chair duty so quarterback i believe i see him surely you're not waiting on me no not at all not at all so we're ready to move forward with our meeting now the first item on the agenda is the approval of tonight's meeting agenda do we have a motion to approve motion to approve for mr welch is there a second second for mr fiskus is there any discussion i see no discussion oh are we using these devices tonight thank you thank you for asking mr wimberley and his microphone is not on if you would just mention the question it was asked the question that was asked was if we are using our voting devices tonight and
046we are okay if there's no further discussion we will move to a vote to approve tonight's agenda thank you the motion passes our next item on the agenda is the approval of the consent agenda do we have a motion to approve mr mitchell makes the motion mr ha makes the second is there any discussion board members i don't see anyone having wanting to have discussion if not we will move to a vote via our electronic devices thank you mr king mr king was there something that is there a microphone issue oh it looks like it's on if i may manage turn it off and turn it back on and see how's that is that better okay with the approval of that consent agenda board you've approved the april 19 2021 school board menu minutes you've
047approved the following board policy for second reading board policy 1.403 agendas you have also approved a request a physician-supported request for a child to be excused from compulsory school attendance and you've also approved the following tongue twister approval of e-plan applications and budgets for fy 2021 22 142 school federal projects to include esea grants title 1a one delinquent one neglected title 2a title 3a 4 idea part b idea preschool grants idea partnership for systemic change k-12 and carl perkins grant with superintendent authorizations the next item on the agenda is communications to the board and the first item in this segment is the superintendent's report mr golden thank you madam chair and i want to thank our community for coming out and speaking this communication is just one of those great examples that i see as
048what's wonderful about our country that we make sure that with this elected body and us and the work we're doing that our community has an opportunity to to speak to us and one nice thing about where we are right now in this country is there's so many opportunities to share so i want to encourage individuals to continue to communicate with you and with us about about where they are what their opinions are on issues because we are ultimately you know a service organization in the in the way we serve our students madam chair and board i do want to hit four items three of which we talked about significantly at the work session i'm going to just give you a very short synopsis of where we are with our safety protocols and mask where we
049are with with curriculum where we are with fostering healthy solutions and then i'll finish up with a one little extra reminder for us so you all know that i announced on thursday night that we were not asking you to extend the reopening framework that you all voted in in july and i do thank you for going through that process back in july and approving that reopening framework what i told you substantively is that we determined that when school lets out at the end of the day on friday that we determined that there was no need to continue the basque requirement in our schools and we spoke to details about that and i really would like to invite anyone to to go back and look at the recording of the work session so that you can
050get some additional detail related to that but you know that we set the goal of being on campus this year if we could safely do so and we grew and grew over the course of the year and mass were part of that was part of what we put in at the beginning in july the cdc recommended that schools require those to to to return to campus and that was part of that plan that we presented to you we determined now that when we finish school that need will be gone and i recognize that was not soon enough and that has not been soon enough for some but you all also know that's a little too early for others and so we've had to explain that and make sure that people understand while the cdc is
051still recommending they be required 95 of our students aren't going to be on campus this summer and the issues related to social distancing are largely gone and so based on that recommendation we're not recommending that you extend that reopening framework and i also want to let you know a couple of items that were specifically addressed by by members our of our community number one we are not administering a vaccine vaccine to to any of our students we did send we did send a survey out members of the health department asked us if we had any interest in providing the vaccine to students so we surveyed our families we got a pretty significant response of yeses in the thousands but we'd also did an analysis of our community and found that they were actually at the
052time we did this 44 different sites where that map were the vaccines available so we determined there was no need for us to to provide the vaccine over the summer to our students that is a parent decision i will also tell you we have not at any point required anyone to take the vaccine and we never even implied that we are requiring someone to take the vaccine so i want to make sure that's clear as well in our community finally i know that there is some discussion about the health department we have not received anything from the state indicating that we should require it or that we should do anything with respect to students under the age of 18 making their own decisions they have not suggested that to us i know that there's some
053discussion in social media no one from the state health department has indicated that to us as a as as a requirement felt like it was important for everyone to hear that whatever is out there it has not been directed at us from the state department and so i felt it was felt like it was important for everyone to know that from from our perspective those issues are optional we've made them optional for our staff we've and it's optional for our students we have no intention of requiring the covet 19 vaccine so second i do want to speak to curriculum and i know that you all and we had a really good discussion at the work session on thursday night about curriculum and a number of you mentioned what i think of us of as there's
054nothing new under the sun we talked about these curriculum discussions that many of our predecessors have had from probably from the time school boards existed that school boards discussed curriculum that is the kind of qualitative discussion that is valuable for our school board our school board over the course of decades has had policies in place related to that and i very much appreciated the discussion i want to let you all know that i really appreciate dr allen and his staff and the discussion they've been having i again encourage folks who are hearing this meeting to go back and look at that work session to review that very in-depth discussion among you and our staff what i want you to know is what we let you know on thursday that dr allen and his staff have
055been reviewing especially the elementary ela curriculum working on adjustments as they professionally deem appropriate and we will have a communication with you at the june meeting of of where they are with that and again i very much respect that robust discussion and we're going to make sure that we're professional in everything we do in serving students and do right by our students i also know and you all know this too that it's hard for parents of 40 000 students to disagree and we've known that for decades as well and so we talked about the details of the process the state goes through with a curriculum adoption this in the process we go through and then to the point that i've mentioned earlier of our professional staff reviewing the curriculum and then ultimately ultimately the last
056thing that i want to mention is parents do have that opportunity not to opt out so we really go from the very macro at the state level all the way to allowing parents to make those individual decisions for their students because we recognize that everyone's opinion can differ on that i'm very proud of what we've done and what we continue to do to serve students and help them grow and you all can see some of that discussion as we go back to the to the work session i will also tell you that in these times it is more critical every day to keep constant attention on the materials that our students have with internet access with apps and all those kinds of items the material is constantly evolving we have news apps that provide news
057and so often that's updated daily and so it really is an important element for our for our teachers to focus on to make sure that what they're teaching is grade level appropriate and we have a really good professional staff that monitors that and keeps an eye on that so again go back and check that discussion among the board be looking forward to a discussion in june about where we are in reviewing that first year of the year the statewide ela adoption we go through this pretty often cyclically as we evaluate the materials that we adopt and prepare for our students third thing i want to mention is where we are with fostering healthy solutions of course you all heard a number of folks share and again i appreciate that share and we have heard from
058our families both needs and fears about where we're going and we've spoken to this many months but i know we have a lot of folks here at this first public on in person on campus well to the extent we're on campus meeting in close to a year that we are driving our work with our community's needs we don't have a national agenda in mind we're driving this to serve our students and help our students feel safe and that takes attention as well so i appreciate the comments that others have made about that are the fosters have held six of their nine listen and learn sessions they have they the way they structured those those zoom listening learns is maximum at each zoom so that they could so that there could be room for participation if
059i'm not mistaken we've had somewhere around about 250 total participants in the in those first six we have three more scheduled for june 4th and 5th i certainly want to invite anyone to come in and share their their what their experiences and their concerns to help us work on this the fosters are also reviewing and have have reviewed our student discipline handbooks they're going to be making recommendations and identify items that they that they saw you know given a different eye other than from those of us who prepare those handbooks finally they are they have completed the receipt of the surveys from families from students from teachers from our parents they're in the process of compiling that we expect them to get those materials to us in the next couple of weeks and once they
060we put all that together we're gonna make sure that we don't make any decisions without the board leading that you all are our leaders they are not writing curriculum they made it clear and we've made it clear that we are not promoting critical race theory as part of this our state legislature many of our state legislators have spoken to that as well and we are to your to the discussion that you all had as a board really focused on grade level appropriate materials for our students and we will continue to work on that so i do want to encourage folks if you haven't yet participated participate in one of those three final listen and learn sessions or if you have any thoughts that you weren't able to share please send us an email and we'll
061forward those on to the fosters as we work on that final item i want to mention madam chair graduation ceremonies are this week friday and saturday i'm excited and nervous about it because ordinarily graduation ceremonies are inside and so our administrators are watching the weather i will tell you that the weather projections right now show it to be in the high 80s both of those days and sunny so you know that's that's just keep an eye on that i know many of you are going to be coming to some of the graduation ceremonies we've got that structured i think it's going to be neat seeing what it looks like for all our students to have those graduation ceremonies on campus and i am so proud so proud of the work our teachers have done miss
062clayman thank you for mentioning that what a leader she has been for the wcea they have a great team there and i am i am so grateful for the good working relationship we have with our with our teachers association with that madam chair carol birdsong has about 50 student spotlights tonight but i know that's the next item miss birdsong we do have one question on the floor so could i ask you to hold on for just a second please thank you mr cash and let me let me remind everybody before we get started that robert's rules of order state that a person can have up to 10 minutes for a question and mr timekeeper if you will please dust off the time keeper there mr cash i got you on dan there you go hello
063there you go okay thank you madam chair i've got a question a couple questions for jason they shouldn't take too long jason on the curriculum it's mentioned quite often and sent out in emails quite often about opting children out how does that make these children feel in my opinion you know they're going to go into a place another room with another book or whatever and little fellas and you know i mean in grade school they're going to wonder why they're being punished before you know they know even what the opting out is about so i don't i don't think that's you know i mean it helps but i don't think that's anything that can help the situation out i appreciate it the second question i had is with fhs the surveys and are we going
064to be able to as board members read the surveys when they come back so i would like miss hall to answer that about the details of that we have we gave numbers at the work session so there we have a few thousand of those from each of the respondents and so ms hall i know that question has been asked if you would mr cash your mike i'm listening vicky i turned you on you got me on okay thank you mr cash you will have the opportunity to look at the survey responses there will be a an aggregate like an analysis that's provided to you also the board can request all the raw data if that is something that you want you will have the ability though to see every comment that was made on the
065surveys all of that will be provided thank you next is mr galbraith thank you madam chair just a question for for jason well first a first a comment just to the to the crowd about half of y'all have already gone but it was very good to see i'm guessing 150 plus of y'all out in the in the audience staining room only for for those i don't know how much that i don't know how well the video would would get across but so my question for for jason so i love seeing this but we're we're here and we're we got a bunch of people standing room only side by side mask optional so what's the can you just tell everyone the rationale behind continuing the mandate of of mass through the through the rest of the
066even the rest of the four days given that we're we're basically saying that master option sure as i mentioned the opinions of our community you know are wide run the gamut we've had folks ask us to to end it immediately we've had others ask us to ask why we're not continuing into the summer so there are a number of reasons we researched it we have professionals working on every detail related to this and as you may recall i mentioned some big buckets when we spoke at the work session about about about this question and so number one when we said our plan to be on campus if we could safely do so the board knew that part of that plan included mass required and the heart of that was if you all recall back to
067july that we determined that it was important for us to follow the cdc and health department guidelines that we could feasibly follow and we knew on the front end that we weren't going to be able to socially distance students and so that was a big part of it the feasible part wasn't feasible with socially distancing but masks were feasible those recommendations that we require mask in school are still in place so that's that's a big bucket that the consistency of making sure that we followed those health authorities languages there and i recognize like i spoke to there are many who disagree there are many who concerned that that we're doing that we're doing away with them when that need of the social distancing is no longer there when the vast majority of our students leave
068so that's my best big bucket answer that we spoke about on thursday about why we are continuing the mass requirement in our schools through the end of this week through the end of this school year because we can't socially distance everyone through while while all students are on campus i will also like to to ask mr anderson if he would you know as you know he's been leading this and working with our care professionals if there's any additional you know any additional items he'd like to mention related to that thank you we are staying with the plan as was originally approved by the board and moving forward through the cdc guidelines the health department guidelines to finish up this year the way we are also didn't want to make any adjustments and changes to what's
069going on right now during test times and during the end of the school year we're just trying to stay consistent and not make any additional changes that would that potentially could interrupt what's going on in the classroom during this last week of school mr m excuse me whoever did that you're out of order this is the absolute final warning deputies if anyone speaks out during any of the remarks during this meeting i'm going to ask you to escort them out next time please okay thank you both where are we elliott i believe you're up hold on there you go okay can you hear me yes thank you madam chair first off i want to thank you for fashioning a method that allowed everybody that signed up to talk tonight an opportunity to do so as
070that was not not required so i think it was important i felt it important to call out the fact that you figured out a way to allow everyone that wanted to talk an opportunity to do so thank you no clapping the other the other point i had jason can you remind me what our protocol is for graduation both on the outside from a from a mask required and distancing and also what is the plan if mother nature isn't kind to us on friday or saturday night sure so number one all but renaissance graduations are scheduled to be outside for the last six weeks or so we have not required mask outside based on some changes in the cdc and state health department information so those masks will not be required and of course as you
071just as a reminder that's been the case outside for a long time you asked the you know carol says stop saying good question but i got to say it that's a really good question about where we go if we have rain number one there are there are schedules for rolling it to the next day to sunday okay and so if i'm not mistaken dr webb parents have been informed of those alternate dates finally if the rain continues then they will be inside in the gyms that will be mask recommended and it's going to be very much limited because they're the gyms and we don't have the capacity for for all the families who could come into the stadiums and dr webb if you would can you give some additional detail about how many family members
072can come in yes thank you mr golden and so each school has advertised already their rain date if we are not able to have a successful graduation on the scheduled date our first priority will be to delay it just temporarily on the same evening if there's a small shower that's coming through our first attempt will be to delay that same evening and graduate the same night if we're unable to do so due to rain we would postpone and attempt to graduate the following day in most cases it's the following day is the rain delay if we are unable to at that point each school will determine the gym capacity we will allow parents to self-seat and maximize our gym capacity based on the number of graduates that we have graduating at each particular school and
073so the number of tickets that each graduate would receive would vary from building to building but we would attempt to graduate inside peacefully and quickly and our gyms are all have the capacity to live stream and so for those who would not be able to secure a ticket to come indoors for the indoor graduation we would allow that to be live streamed and share that broadcast with everyone at home thank you very much thank you i see no other questions madam chair if i may sure one additional thing since there are no questions i want to mention something that i've been in denial about kevin fortney who is our director of facilities in construction is officially retiring at the end of this month this will be the last time he is sitting up here to
074answer your questions now one of the reasons i'm in denial is practical that he has agreed to work on projects for us so we're going through the state process of getting him approved to do some part-time work for us but i do want to thank him i haven't counted him yet but kevin is responsible for building about half of our schools so if you would please thank kevin mr forney would you like to say anything your microphone is on it's not working there it goes thank you mr golden i appreciate that and thanks to all of you too 20 plus years ago i came to work for the school district from the private sector it's been the most rewarding experience i've ever had i appreciate the opportunity that was provided that has been provided and
075i look forward to finishing up some other things before i finally call up final quits to give you an idea of what we've been involved with i've got a department of four and we managed to to figure out how to get these buildings built on time with quality and within budget in the time i've been here i think we have 49 schools right now i've touched one way or another 47 of them so we've had a great time doing it the most rewarding thing is to see children go into either a new facility or a renovated facility i'll share with you one exciting day for me was when we built and opened the old pinewood gym i saw the new pinewood gym we had a little girl a kindergarten girl you understand pinewood never never
076did have a gymnasium and to see the smiles on some little tykes face faces was probably the most rewarding that i've had so thank all of you and we'll go on down the road thank you mr courtney and finally it's carol birdsong's district update time thank you it's kind of difficult to follow kevin trying to be up beating peppy here so but we are all gonna miss kevin a whole lot but at least you'll be around a little bit so anyway board members it is great to be back and i am so excited to be celebrating some students and staff with y'all tonight and this is such a huge honor i want to introduce you to nelson rose nelson is the state of tennessee's 2021 u.s presidential scholar they pick typically two this year there
077were three they pick