001good evening and welcome to the november 2020 meeting of the williamson county school board our board is meeting as is necessary to protect public health safety and welfare and williamson county school board is officially meeting electronically in light of the coronavirus and pursuant to executive orders number 16 and number 65 signed by governor bill lee and waiver of williamson county school board policy 1.400 miss glenn man please ask you to record board members attendance thank you this is lydia glenn angela durham dan cash can you hear me yes i can hear you okay dan cash present elliot mitchell here rad fiskus president gina priya here jay galbraith eric sheila cleveland present andy emerson rick wimberly here eric welch casey hall here nancy garrett here and i just wanted to make sure angela durham i see
002angela i see you yes ma'am thank you okay sorry i'm here i keep muting the wrong button great thank you board members and again a reminder this is nancy garrett board chair if you will please state your name prior to speaking now that we've recorded our attendance i'd like to ask our two school board members who are veterans mr dan cash and mr eric welch to lead us in the pledge of allegiance and after that pledge we will observe a moment of silence before getting back to our agenda i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states to the republic for which it indivisible with liberty and justice thank you board members we now come to the moment in our agenda where we hear from the public on items of particular public interest tonight
003i believe we have five speakers who have signed up each speaker has up to three minutes to speak you will be timed from from the time after you state your name and address the timer starts and mr casey hall who's our vice chair of our board is the time keeper so he'll alert you when you have reached the end of your time i want to make sure all our speakers are here our first speaker who signed up to speak tonight is annetta gaines good afternoon or good evening good evening superintendent golden and school board members my name is aynetta gaines i reside at 6608 north creekwood drive in brentwood i would like to discuss the ongoing racial issues in our district my family has been in the district for 25 years we have two adult
004children that have gone through the school system and currently have a granddaughter at franklin high school as she's participating in their pre-ib program i won't take up a lot of time retelling our family's unfortunate racial incidences dating back to 1996 i'm sure some some of you especially my school board representative have heard about most of them most of which we've addressed along the way with the different teachers administrators and some that were on the school board at the time some of those issues we tried to deal with on our own please understand that this has been a long journey not just for our family but for the many families that are here in the district so at this juncture this extremely important time it's beyond necessary to put sustainable action and funds to helping our
005community to address these racial incidences which continue to occur i'm just asking you to please not miss this opportunity to lead our community to a better understanding of how harmful these incidences are to first and foremost our african-american students our marginalized students but also our community as a whole we can read all the self-help books have professional development days school assemblies but until we have a professional who can help break down why these issues exist and they continue and that person has the experience to help rectify them we're somewhat spinning our wheels and i'm saying that after 25 years in the district i'm sure we all agree that hiring a professional racism isn't about to disappear in our community i'm not naive to believe that however we should all agree that is not acceptable in
006our school district and should not ever be tolerated so please i am asking you i am imploring you at this very very critical time to hire someone to help our community to deal with these racially insensitive issues thank you very much thank you miss gaines our next speaker is brian bryant herbert yes good evening dr golden and the school board my name is brian herbert i am a current employee a restorative practice teacher in williamson county and i am speaking on behalf of students and colleagues who may not feel comfortable speaking on some of the issues of diversity and culture williamson county as we know is one of the best school systems in the nation but i believe we can make it better we can make it better by hiring mr derek young by hiring
007mr young it will free up dr golden to implement his vision and ensuring training for every employee for diversity and cultural issues and to dealing with some of these racial issues that we are know that are brewing in the in the school system mr young program will also help build bridges among faculties and with students that may have a hard time navigating racial incidents or conversations which i have experienced firsthand mr young program will also help improve culture and morale of the faculty in each school secondly i implore as a professional that the school system also hire a diversity equity and inclusion administrator who can help lighten the load on dr golden this admin would be able to focus on incidents of racism sexism homophobia and discrimination that our faculty and students experience as we
008have heard this year from dearest wcs and incidents at independence brentwood two times and ravenwood as a restorative practice professional one student or one educator experiencing a disrespect is one too many in one of the greatest school systems in the nation a diversity equity inclusion admin can also help improve the percentages of teachers of color which is around two percent right now out of twenty two hundred over twenty two hundred students lastly i also asked the school board to look into implementing an african-american health history course g o four h two three at every high school at centennial i've spoken to students hispanic students who really appreciate the cultural heritage class they say it is a class that reminds them of their culture and is much needed well african-american history is american history and i
009believe as a professional it would be beneficial not only to african-american students to learn about their culture but all students to learn more about american history let's make williamson county schools the best school system in the nation by being the standard for everybody and making sure every student and employee is served equitably thank you thank you mr herbert our next speaker is ravita rahman i'm turning the floor floor over to my husband i think he's on the call all right can you guys hear me yes okay i'll just give my feedback on the reason why i think that we should have someone a part of wilson county school system that can lead the direction once talk about the diversity inclusion i'll give an example of an incident that specifically my oldest son dealt with at
010sunset his sixth grade year there at sunset sunset is a great school but this incident occurred around the donald trump building a wall campaign so regardless i mean i don't i don't care about a wall but the wall was developed by other students there weren't students of color that would that linked arms i guess in the during the resource time and made a specific point about not letting quote unquote kids of color whether it be black any hispanic through their specific world again i don't care too much about a wall but i think the biggest thing to think about is that these students had enough i guess they were conscious enough to say that only you know quote unquote white kids can get through this chain link or this wall so i thought that was
011very disheartening in terms of not letting those kids of color through on this quarter court wall the school did have a session talking to some of the kids about it in terms of the insensitivity but i think with us having someone someone in place for williams county school this can specifically focus on and hone on us on these different on these issues we could be a lot better off in terms of the school system so i'll echo what the gentleman said before is that i wholeheartedly think the williamson county school system is a great system but it some changes need to be made for the better so thank you sir and since we had a change in speakers could you please state your name and address for the record oh yes ma'am yusuf rockmont 300
012shadow creek drivers shadow peak subdivision and sunset middle school okay thank you mr rachman our next speaker is sarah broad i believe you're yes you just came up with me okay thanks i'm sarah bro and i'm a parent in williamson county and i've had one daughter go through the schools in williamson county and i currently have one son who is a sophomore at centennial so the nationwide experience of police brutality against african americans in the past year have led to significant shift in conversations and attitudes about racial inequalities in america the murders of george floyd and others have galvanized calls and increased support for dynamic changes in all parts of society williamson county not excluded while many black leaders and black led groups and communities across the country have been working for these changes for
013decades white citizens and those of all colors are more and more engaged in this work by listening to the voices of community members and educating themselves on the history causes and consequences of systemic racism in the u.s as mlk junior once said an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere in light of recent events and changes in attitudes i wanted to bring to your attention the problem of anti-blackness in williamson county and specifically how we can fight to be anti-racist and encourage a productive dialogue on race and identity among our students one of the core foundations of a student's mindset is shaped through educational process i am sure you can agree that the education system is of absolute importance in the lives of americans america's children and while it has been very successful in
014many of its endeavors it has also been dramatically underutilized as a tool to combat racism in all of society 66 years ago the unanimous brown versus board of education decision declared school segregation unconstitutional but williamson county schools remain segregated by race and socioeconomic issues centennial has 36.5 percent of black indigenous and people of color students compared to franklin high 17 percent and brentwood's 20 in addition the use of screening tests and biased admission practices for ib program and a b courses in high schools have historically woefully underrepresented by poc students school boundaries and selection criteria to should be designed with race equity with a race equity lens according to data from the u.s department of education's office for civil rights black hispanic male and american indian students face higher rates of school dis disciplinary consequences
015such as suspension and expulsion than white students and they are also subject to more interactions with police and schools in the form of contraband sweeps interrogation physical restraints and arrests middle and high school students with higher concentrations of law enforcement officers compared with mental health staff are more likely to be in areas that serve primary black primarily black students how does williamson county schools track racial disparities in these consequences one online grade report for schools states that 88 of centennial high school students feel safe at school compared to 97 at franklin high and 92 at brenwood high education curriculum as we know is developed by those in power and history is written by the winners we also know that the united daughters of the confederacy a group founded in nashville tennessee to honor the contribution
016of the southern soldiers of the civil war rewrote all of the educational curriculum in the south to advance their perspective on the civil war only calling it the war of northern aggression or the war between states and stating that the reason for the war was not slavery but states rights one of the textbooks written by a member of the udc for mississippi public schools said that this book is dedicated to the author of the south of the southland hoping that a perusal of its pages will inspire them to respect and admiration for the confederate soldiers who were part of the klu klux klan and whose deeds of courage and valor have never been surpassed or rarely equaled in the annals of history now yes that's it our minute mark if you can just give it
017a quick wrap yep so i just wanted to say that there is parent support among white and brown parents alike for change we can see it demonstrated in the number of advocacy groups and organizations that have been launched this year one williamson together nolansville the public diversify your narrative franklin black lives matter franklin students for black empowerment and franklin justice and equity coalition abacus you can my son is now going to speak if that's okay it's our next speaker is atticus and excuse me i forgot how to pronounce your last name it's bro bro thank you please go ahead atticus all right my name is atticus bro and i'm a person of color at centennial high school i feel like there is a horrible stereotype that all black kids from chs are ghetto and lay
018in chs is labeled the hood school other schools have tweeted before games to lock your doors when you park at chs because kids are going to break into your cars i've gotten to know most black kids pretty well at chs and they are the farthest thing from what they are being labeled as it was very hard to see a black key get slammed by a student resources officer that is stronger and much older than that student meaning many of me and many of my friends felt that sro slammed him out of aggression and anger and i feel that sro could have handled that better that's all thank you and rose i think i neglected to to ask you to state your address as well okay it's 225 gloucester street okay franklin all right thank you
019to all our public commenters tonight we appreciate the effort that you took to be here because it's a very unique situation and a little bit awkward so we very much appreciate you being here we'll move on next to the approval of the agenda for tonight's meeting is there a motion to approve sheila cleveland approved okay is there a second all right who was the second from brad okay is there any discussion on the tonight's agenda if not let's move to a vote miss glenn i don't see her on here madam chair i think we may have lost miss glenn looks like we did if i may i'll pull up the list by district and ask for a vote if you would just bear with me briefly i believe she's back she is miss glenn we're
020ready to vote on tonight's agenda thank you and i apologize lydia glenn angela durham yes do i need to say my name first nancy do we do we need to say names for all these votes yes okay yes we do all right angela durham yes dan cash and cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell votes yes rad fiskus brad fiskus votes yes gina priya and aprea votes yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall you see hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes zero no thank you moving on the next item on the agenda is the approval of the cons items on the consent agenda for tonight's meeting do we have a motion to approve so
021moved mr dan cash makes the motion to approve do we he's happy a second casey haw seconds is there any discussion on consent agenda items if not miss glenn will vote miss glenn we're ready to vote okay this is le diglin i'm going to turn my video off okay angela durham angela jerome votes yes dan cash dan cash flows it votes yes looks like we're having some further technical difficulties our name first could we just go and order and say name and yes there she is again i'm sorry i'm back again as soon as this is over i will i will go somewhere else elliott mitchell elliott mitchell votes yes brad fiskas brad fiskus voces jenna priya jennifer yes jay galbraith jake albrecht yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric
022welch eric welch yes casey hall ac hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes 0 no and board members with that vote you voted on the following items and i'll read them out the approval of the october 19 2020 school board meeting minutes the following board policies for second reading the discrimination and harassment of employees policy complaints and grievances policy student discrimination harassment bullying cyber bullying and intimidation policy and the lea compliance report so those were the items on the consent agenda and now we're moving on to communications to the board and i'll turn this over to superintendent golden thank you madam chair jason golden here superintendent for williamson county schools and i thank you board members for coming and participating in the in this zoom meeting what we found is
023that having having everyone participate in zoom assuming you get a good signal tends to work better so we thank you for participating in that i want to talk about two main issues number one i want to thank the individuals who spoke at public comment those five individuals all of whom addressed race tonight and then and i wanted to point out a few things that we have done and where where where we are and where we need to go first of all we did pass you all did pass some policies that miss garrett just recently mentioned where we have actually improved our discrimination and anti-harassment policies you may recall through discussion that those policies were created about 15 years ago or so with with help from the united states office for civil rights at least on
024the discrimination and harassment policy and dana osbrooks took some time over this summer to to to revamp and the policies based on where we are now and she actually got help from the state office for civil rights as well so i want to thank miss osprey ospros especially for the work she did related to that also i said i've spent a lot of time in that first year of my of my official role as a superintendent and in in speaking with students speaking with parents speaking with with teachers and with school administrators about where we are with respect to race what i have found is over the years that there's been an acknowledgement that we need to grow in in how we serve our diverse community throughout that time also our community has grown more
025diverse and one of the points of emphasis that i made to our teachers this year as a result of those conversations and as a result of our experiences is an emphasis that every time every time there's a race-based comment a race-based incident in school it is to be reported to school administration and investigate it appropriately so that appropriate discipline can be can be can be given to to anyone who's a part of the the wcs community who violates those policies but we've also learned from from a number of students and alumni that there were times where they didn't report incidents for for many reasons that were very individual and personal to them for a lack of comfort is one common example that we've heard from from students and through those discussions through finding what what
026some of our alumni have talked about we've realized and learned that it's not just about enforcing our policies it's about growing in increasing the quality of our environment so those who who do come from a diverse background are comfortable enough to share that's part of it but there's also a need for us to grow in in in learning what we don't know you know that old saying about you don't know what you don't know there's a reason there that there's that old saying because it is a truism and so through that process i ultimately came to the conclusion that looking back over the decades prior to me becoming superintendent many of our leaders have worked to grow us but it's time for a comprehensive plan that's sustainable that we can that we can put together
027kind of in the form of a strategic plan so that we can grow our community and serving in serving our students in a better way like so many of our speakers said we're a great school system but we have room to grow and so we've had some conversations more specifically i know that the board spoke with eric young at a retreat he gave us some really good insight and i know that each one of you spent some time sharing thoughts with him at that board retreat and so vicky hall our human resources director and i continue to plan on finding on finding the help to get that professional work together i have a suspicion based on the work we've done that it's probably going to take a team once we get a plan together my
028vision is that we will be finding the right folks over the course of time to to grow us in this way y'all this is important it's not something that we can let go it's not something that we shouldn't talk about it's it's something that's right for improvement and i know we all want to improve so i appreciate again those individuals who are willing to speak to this to get us started because it needs to be in the forefront of our minds as we continue to to to grow in in this way second i do want to give you an update on where we are with covet 19. we had about a four hour work session i'm going to give you some bullet points quick reminders of of the items we talked about related to that
029we're not going to give you four hours but i think it's important for the public who's listening to this to hear these bullet points but second if if anyone wants more detail obviously feel free to go back and look at our work sessions that's where the heart and meat of our work is done as a board and we invite you to to review those meetings if you haven't done so back in july on july 9th you all actually approved our return to school plan and we started the year with a metric of of 0.5 of our total population with active cases and that was a that was 0.1 to the metric and then 1.0 to to move us either to fully on campus to a medium spread structure to a large spread structure about two
030weeks into school we went into what i think of as the green that low spread and we were able to get everyone on campus starting then part of that plan included this language that if the community spread reaches a medium or high level wcs will consult with the health department and evaluate the need to apply the medium or high spread metric and and we started that way we were able to get on campus one of the one of the focus points we had in that was if it hits that point we will consult with the health department but what we have found over the months since school started is we are talking to the health department constantly we are regularly having having discussions every single day someone from wcs is speaking with someone from from
031the williamson county health department and they've been facing many challenges that we've been facing with relate with with with the spread of the virus with quarantine issues so many things that we've talked about but during those during those months of school we learned over time what a couple of you as board members pointed out when you pass that plan that there would very likely be times where individual schools needed to needed to go to remote based on spread in that community where many other schools might not have needed to do that and we have found that the school the impact of covid on each school has been unique in that it can be tracked and that we have been tracking that spread in each of our schools so we've moved many schools to remote for
032a time over the course of this semester and at those times there have been times where it's been painful there have been times where it's been patently obvious to everyone that we needed to move those those schools to remote but there have been many other schools where it hasn't been justified because the spread of the virus was not overtaking that school and then it's keeping students on campus for direct instruction was appropriate so right now as we sit today just a few days before thanksgiving break about half of our high schools are currently remote and about half of our middle schools are currently remote the fact is the numbers have gone up the number the positive case numbers have gone up and the and the number of quarantines have have gone has gone up we've
033been evaluating each individual school on really three main metrics one is the health department and their recommendations based on the particular knowledge they have as professionals two is our ability to staff and we've talked about that in detail about substitute teachers about about teachers filling in spots where they could about individual teachers and staff members either being positive for covert or needing to quarantine as a result of exposure and the third thing that we track third main item that we track is attendance that there does come a point where the attendance is such that we really can't serve students on campus because of the need to address students or who are quarantined and we haven't gone remote without a need we have not sent any school remote without a need but we have sent those
034students remote when we had that need and we've been doing that throughout this semester we've also had some some some times where we've sent individual schools or just individual grade levels in a school remote based on staffing whether whether whether due to teachers or teachers assistants or special education teachers or even counseling groups if if if certain services couldn't be performed as a result of the of the quarantines and sometimes the numbers might seem low but we don't have the capacity to staff and we've been making those decisions throughout this semester another thing we've learned is over the course of our conversations with the health department it we're not the main contributor to the spread of the virus we've had so many examples from the health department about individuals coming to campus with a virus
035and then and then triggering a number of individuals who are quarantined we don't have perfect data on that it is it is qualitative data on that but we what we do have is an indicator based on the positive cases on our campus compared to the positive cases in the community that from a statistical perspective based on our total numbers in the total county population we reflect the community our numbers in our ratios positive cases to the members of the wcs community are fairly similar a very fit very close ratio to what we see in the community with our total population compared to positive cases and so we base our decisions on those on those health on those health care recommendations let me tell you another thing that is really important to us right now over
036the course of this semester we have seen examples of post-holiday numbers going up on our campus fall break halloween etcetera and we're concerned about thanksgiving we know that our numbers are going up already they've officially reached that medium spread if you look back to our to to the to the to the metric that we originally established and and we've we're having conversations with the health department about that we are talking to the health department tomorrow about the impact on the county and the impact of the virus in schools especially this last week and a half two weeks where the numbers have gone up and having a conversation about what this means for us after after the holidays like i said about half of our high schools are remote right now in about half of our
037middle schools because of current numbers so we're very concerned we're very concerned with that i also want to mention to you that over the course of of of this semester just like we made our we based decisions on whether we could serve students on campus based on health department recommendations on our ability to staff and on student attendance we've done the same thing with extracurricular activities many of those extracurricular activities involve a lot fewer students than a full school likewise staffing so we've had times where we've had to cancel extracurricular activities either because we couldn't staff it or because there were a number of students who were either quarantined or who had positive cases who just could not could not field either a team or could not compete complete a play could not perform a
038concert because the the students and staff members who were out just could not just could not get it done at the same time we have had some situations where we have been able to complete those extracurricular activities because even though a school might have been remote the quarantine did not affect those those students and did not affect those staff we're going to continue to make that one of our points of emphasis to make sure that we can serve students in academics athletics and the arts just like our mission statement just like our vision statement calls for through this difficult time i think it's very important for for everyone to know that we're still exploring possibilities for where we go through the rest of this year we still don't know what the future holds we've had
039these moments of hope where the numbers go down in these moments of angst when the numbers go up we're at a time where the numbers are going up and i mentioned to you all last thursday that we were talking about the discussion of what if the virus increases to the extent where we have to go remote for long periods of time not just this week or two weeks or some fraction of days based on when quarantine's complete for our students what happens if next semester goes long with with this virus we're continuing to brainstorm over that we're exploring our capacity to have high school students test what we think of as a hybrid plan all these terms that have come up in our community and really across the nation over these past six months but
040what i mean by that is could we have students take turns monday wednesday tuesday thursday with a with a friday remote day based on the alphabet could we do that at our high school levels and find a way for students who might otherwise have to spend weeks remote spending at least a little bit of time socially distance on campus so they so they can get some kind of a mid-range of direct instruction when we started this plan we thought this through and concluded that it that from an instructional standpoint it would not be good but what we have done over these past few months is greatly improved our teachers capacity to teach students who are quarantined we've also learned that many students at risk need that direct touch even when we're remote and we've learned
041that through some of our schools who have gone fully remote so we want to explore that we're talking about the possibility of piloting that at a school to see if it is one additional tool we can add to our toolbox over the course of this year so we're really trying to emphasize to everyone all those messages we send that they get to the point where you don't even want to look at where we're saying be safe follow the safety protocols where your where your mask the mayor has issued that mass mandate please honor that make sure that when you're off campus that you honor that people are getting tired of that message but there's a reason why we keep on repeating that message because it's important for our community to have our schools as much
042as we possibly can in session and serving our students we do once again ask families and students to pay attention to those safety protocols fair follow the mayor's mass requirement be safe at thanksgiving do what you can to honor that we want you we want students on campus we've got the capacity to serve students remotely but like we talked about back in july that's the second best that's the second best of being on campus with direct instruction i want everyone to know that we do it when when we need to and we haven't been shy about doing it when we need to but at the same time if there's not the need we know that being on campus is the is the best thing so we're basing those decisions on conversations with the health department
043our ability our ability to staff and student attendance so with that miss garrett i i know from our experience with our four-hour work session that there probably are some questions but i felt like it was important for us to give that bullet explanation to our to our community once again thank you mr golden mr wimberly has a question thank you madam chair that was a good explanation mr golden and what what i'm going to ask you is going to be tough and may not even be fair but if you had 30 seconds to explain why we're not going to remote at this point what would you say mr wembley because not every school needs to go remote we are not going to remote at this point we found over the course of these months that
044the health department in our in our capacity is really good to go remote when we need to and generally speaking it's worked so that's why so if i may follow up do you foresee a circumstance where we would go fully remote it's another great question that's a real possibility okay we have we have not taken anything out of our toolbox you recall that language i put in about the medium spread that we committed to talking with the health department when we hit that i always mention that we're talking to them constantly there is a point and we as education professionals don't know where it is on the health side because there are so many other variables but there is a point where we may have to go fully remote we're looking at we're looking at
045it by grade levels we've found that the impact is has historically been much higher on high schools second on middle third on elementaries but again we might do it if we have to but we're going to be very careful and thoughtful when we do thank you i don't see any other hands up at this time mr golden thank you madam chair based on that i want to thank the board for for responding to parent emails we continue to do that and we've spent so much time talking about hard issues this year but i want to emphasize that instruction is still going on we still have wonderful students who are performing incredibly well and it is my pleasure to introduce to you our district spotlight and carol birdsong has told me she has a lot that
046we have to celebrate tonight so madam chair with your permission i'd like to introduce carol birdsong thank you mr golden yes this is carol birdsong and we do have a whole bunch of students that we are going to celebrate tonight it's been a while it's been a while since we've been able to do this so we are going to start and brian king is helping me out here so he's going to maneuver the powerpoint we are going to start with our perfect act so and we have 16 students tonight that we are honoring so from brentwood high school this is childhood shelby also from brentwood high school angela who julia lee brentwood high tyler myers brentwood high nelson rose brentwood high jane stallman brentwood high school anna sullivan brentwood high emily ben schlack brentwood high
047stephen walter brentwood high eric youngberg brentwood high school from centennial high school this is jacob williams from franklin high school this is jason amsler also from franklin high school brandon vaughan from independence high school emma sauer from ravenwood high school casey gooden from ravenwood high school joshua liu and now we move to athletics and as mr golden has said some some teams have been able to play some sometimes they haven't but during cobit we were able to bring home two volleyball state championships and we're going to start with brentwood high school who won the 3a division and i believe this was the eighth time that brentwood high school has brought home a state championship in volleyball and then for the second year in a row nolansville high school won the 2a volleyball state championship so
048congratulations to those ladies and their coaches in volleyball but let's talk about soccer and from ravenwood high school they brought home the state championship in 3a and then let's move on to cross country brentwood high school brought home the girls cross country team championship in 3a and fairview high school this is andrea alyssa and she won the girls cross country small class division state championship so we want to congratulate all of our student scholars and our student athletes thank you board and madam yeah it's pretty amazing madam chair that is my report thank you mr golden and moving on to the board chairs report just a little bit of trivia and the last young woman from fairview she's only a sophomore and she won last year too so she's a two-time state champion already so
049congratulations to those athletes and to those scholars it is wonderful to see those student faces and to hear of these achievements during this unique year i have a short report first of all i want to say a big thank you to all of our teacher and staff veterans we discussed our veterans at the work session and then mr golden sent us a booklet that had been put put together and featured 20 of our teachers who are veterans and so that was really nice to read and we're very appreciative of your service and the perspective that you bring to our district so thank you all to all of our veterans the second thing that i just want to acknowledge is that i love seeing all the creative instruction and efforts from our teachers and am able
050to see that in each week's in focus this past week i think it was i think it was bethesda dr oyer that did the outdoor reading with parents is that correct i don't know if because of this i know definitively that heritage did so it's really it's so nice to see all the types of creative instruction that are going on and that also included several veterans day celebrations reverse parades and video tributes and things like that so that is that's just so wonderful to see this year and then the other thing that i just want to mention now that you're all happy and thinking about these student and teacher achievements is that we normally don't meet in december but we are going to have a com combined work session and board meeting in december given
051the current circumstances it's just a good thing for us to do and will help us stay on track with some of the decisions we need to make so everyone mark your calendars that will be december 17th and the start time is to be determined we normally start our work sessions at six but we may try to even start earlier if we can so go ahead and mark your calendars for that meeting please and madam chair this is jason gold and if i may just as a reminder december 18th is the last student day of of the semester okay thank you so that's that will be the meeting is at a good time for us to kind of take in everything that's happened prior to just missing for the semester moving ahead to new business the
0522020 2021 school board budget and the first item is the general purpose school fund amendment 11 11.20 disproportionality thank you thank you madam chair this item on the board agenda is a is a an item that leslie holman our assistant superintendent for finance has proposed to move money from the federal funds to to the general fund per the further requirements of the laws governing finance recommend approval okay do we have a motion to approve eric welch motion to approve second for mr mitchell is there any discussion if there's no discussion then we can move to a vote miss glenn this is olivia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash mr cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell votes yes brad fiskus fiskus yes gina priya sena priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes
053sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall they see her yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yet zero no thank you board the next item is the general purpose school fund amendment 11.20 dg fund mr golden thank you madam chair there were a number of of donations honoring denise goodwin upon her retirement this is a request to move those from contributions to contracted services to fulfill the restricted gifts in honor of miss goodwin recommend approval we have another one to approve yes i'm sorry yes approved in cash motion to approve do we have a second rick wimberly seconds is there any discussion okay if there's no further discussion ms flynn lydia glenn angela durham angela durham approved yes dan cash dan cash
054yes elliott mitchell elliott mitchell votes yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes ginapriya gonna priya yes yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall casey hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes zero no you miss glenn the next item on the agenda is education capital projects fund an intercategory adjustment for independence high school mr golden thank you madam chair there has been in our opinion a long-standing need for a traffic light at the entrance to independence high school over the years we've done traffic studies we've finally hit a point where the state has done their analysis based on traffic volume and agrees that there's a need so we are asking you to allow a transfer from from contingency capital to independence
055high school traffic in the amount of 250 000 dollars to to get that work done i do want to let you know this actually also requires thompson station approval before the state of tennessee will actually commit to the work but this is our side of getting that approval we recommend that approval do we have a motion rick wimberly moved to approve elliott mitchell moved to second motion is from mr wembley and second is from mr mitchell is there any discussion on this item i see no discussion let's move to a vote lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes stan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell votes yes franciscus brad fiskus yes ginapriya then apria yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric
056walsh yes casey hall casey hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yet zero no motion passes thank you miss glenn the next item is the general purpose school fund resolution gps transfer to cafeteria mr golden thank you madam chair this year is an extremely unusual year in so many ways one example is the u.s department of agriculture is actually funding every school lunch this year traditionally we we have you know of course charged our our individual consumers for that as a result of this there is a cash flow challenge in the in the in the food service department based on when they receive those usda funds traditionally we've gotten the funds immediately from our from our from our students who purchased lunches now there's a delay leslie holman our assistant superintendent
057for finance and james ramidi our food service director have done an analysis and have recommended that we allow for a transfer of general purpose school funds to address that cash deficit with the commitment that money will actually be paid back by the food service department to general fund this is not a transfer such as we experienced in the spring based on coveted money this is a cash flow request of you and mrs holman is available if you have any additional questions and we recommend approval there a motion to approve elliott mitchell moves to approve sir second eric welch second eric welch seconds any discussion i see couplings up here mr mitchell thank you madam chair chairman i support this measure i was mainly raising my hand to talk to make sure that everyone on the
058call and our staff continues to remind people that the lunches school lunches and our food service is available to all students regardless of whether we are remote or in the building as well and mr golden maybe you can clarify for students that are quarantined if they're also eligible for lunches as well thank you for that mr mitchell you're exactly right every student can have a free lunch this entire year based on based on the covet structure that the federal government initiated and i will tell you also if you're if you're participating as a wcs online student or even remote we actually even have a structure where you can pick up weekly lunches so that you can get so that you only have to travel once to the schools we also have a program where we
059can deliver the food so all it takes is just asking we've we've initiated this conversation with many families to let them know it's available we just need we just need to get a yes from anyone yes i want it and we'll make sure that we get that food and i don't know how i can emphasize any more strongly we would love for folks to to grab those lunches this year mr galbraith thank you madam chair jay galbraith i guess this is for jace or for for leslie so do you have a do you have an estimate of of the revenue that we that we have from actual well i guess can i presume that nobody is paying at all so are we taking any paying customers for for lunches this year i can address that
060i can address that to start if i may mr galbraith jason golden then let leslie give some details we still serve a la carte choices and that is paid it's just it's the traditional school lunch that the usda is reimbursed reimbursing for and leslie may be able to get some details what he said that's it okay so given given that we're taking in a little revenue but is the is the 2 million is that does that represent funds that for the meals that we have given away for free is that the actual amount that we've recognized as receivable from from the federal government right now or is it some or is that estimated for some longer period of time we've done a forecast for the year based on the amount of money that we're getting
061monthly we've only had two months where we've received money from usda and we've had two to three months of actual meal payments for a la carte and what we've tried to do is try to forecast that out and the assumption is it's going to about be the same because we keep going remote and there's just not as much traffic going down through the line to get the usda payment there there has to be an actual meal provided again if they go remote and they come in and get it we'll get credit for that meal but again it's just right now just forecasting for the rest of the year we felt it's safe to ask for up to two billion as as we need it we if i don't need two million dollars i won't transfer
062that much over there we're gonna watch it for a while i mean they we actually need to put about a million back over for sure but we're gonna watch it for a while may not transfer up to 2 million so that they can in the future pay us back and admit oh sorry go ahead mr galbraith no i was just going to ask if there's a what's do we know what the break even is on on on how much how much we need to cover our cost as we currently have them actually there's no break even we're just wanting to make sure we don't go into a deficit we just don't want the cash to go into the negative so and you know again like i said we'll watch it each month and right now
063i don't need to transfer the money and if it if each month hiddling amount goes up a little bit more so that i don't have to i won't go into a deficit i won't transfer the money i need the permission to transfer when i feel like that a month in would end up in a negative situation thank you thank you i see no other hands up in the participant panel so i believe we can move to a vote ms clinton thank you this is lydia glenn angela duro angela durham yes dan cash dan cassius elliott mitchell elliott mitchell votes yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes jenna priya anna priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland hila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall e.c hi yes
064nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes 0 no motion passes thank you the next item on the agenda is the general purpose school fund resolution inner category coordinated school health mr gold thank you madam chair jason golden this is a proposed transfer from in-service training to contracted service and materials and supplies for our for our for our health services based upon the training processes that are that our nurses are doing so we recommend approval is there a motion to approve some move mr cash makes the motion is there a second angela durham second miss durham seconds discussion i see no one wishing to discuss this matter miss glenn we can move to a vote this is olivia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell mitchell votes
065yes franciscus brad fiskus yes jenna priya sena priya yes jake albert jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes ac hall you see hi yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes 0 no motion passes thank you and our next item on the agenda is the 2021 22 school calendar mr golden thank you madam chair we talked about the calendar at the work session want to point out a couple of things number one this is actually on our annual agenda for a little bit later in the year but our committee that consists of a parent representative representatives from the wcea our staff and a franklin special for lack of a better term ex-officio member have made a recommendation i've reviewed it and
066i liked it so we asked to put it on the board agenda a little bit ahead of time so that parents can have some notice on the substantive side this proposed calendar does include a full week of fall break for students as part of that five days three days are actual true true break days there is there's also included a parent-teacher conference day and a professional development day for our teachers so we recommend approval and i want to specifically thank those individuals who participated in this committee and let the board know that laura clayman who's the president of the williamson county education association is on just in case you have any questions of us recommend approval your motion to approve sheila cleveland approve ms cleveland makes the motion to approve is their second angela durham
067second is durham second is there any discussion there are no hands up for discussion miss glenn let's vote this is olivia this is olivia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell votes yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes gina priya sena priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett nancy carrot yes your vote is 11 yes zero no motion passes thank you our next item is substitute teacher pay for substitute teacher pay 2020 2021 mr golden thank you madam chair as you all know as board members we spent a good bit of time at the work session talking about substitute teacher pay it's one of the items that we're
068recommending to address that staffing that i mentioned when when i was presenting our discussion about covet 19. i do want to let the public know that one of the one of the specific data pieces that we mentioned was traditionally our substitute staffing is somewhere around 85 or so percent on a daily basis right now it's in the 40s and so it's been a really difficult issue for us when it as a result of covert 19. one of the ways we suggest we are we are recommending that we that we shoot to address this is raising the daily rate to 100 for for what you see on the screen is uncertified substitute high school diploma we have had so many discussions about this we went back and went to the drawing board after our discussion on
069thursday night and my biggest concern when we when we talked about this was our teachers assistants and our special education teachers assistants and we tried to do some math on what we could do to raise their pay as you all know we had a budget where no one got a raise this year because of the unpredictability of that budget we've done some math and to raise just the special education teachers pay by 1.50 an hour is going to be somewhere between 900 000 and a million dollars out of our budget just for the rest of this year and as we looked at that we're just not at a point where we can afford that vicki hall our hr director reanalyzed the data we've gotten from our substitute teachers about about why they said no the
070vast majority of it is just a discomfort with with covid19 for those who have been reliable substitutes and just aren't comfortable this year our goal is that moving up that minimum to a hundred dollars daily might incentivize those who who have that who who haven't been doing it for us who have that ability to to to to come and and serve especially during this holiday time it's not perfect but we feel like it's what we can afford right now and we want to see the extent to which we can move that needle at least on the pay side so with all that said we haven't we haven't eliminated the future possibilities but we do recommend this with one addition after reanalyzing this to increase the substitute nurse pay rate from twenty dollars an hour to
071twenty five dollars an hour so that's the one change from the from the work session after we went and restudied this so with that we recommend approval and miss holman and vicky hall our assistant superintendent for human resources are also available if you have any questions okay do we have a motion to approve elliot mitchell moves to approve motion for mr mitchell do we have a second second casey hi second for mr howe do we have any discussion i see mr mitchell your hand is up thank you madam chairman so my i have two questions real quick the teacher assistant staffing level mr golden what do we know what can you share with us what that is i'll give you some anecdotes and then ask ms hall to give you some specifics we've lost some
072teacher's assistance this year some of it was the same reason i mentioned the lack of comfort of being on campus during covet we've had some examples of of teachers assistants who chose for their children to go online and wanted to make sure they are they are home with their with their children we have open positions right now and it is a it is a challenge on on on normal years and it's it is definitely a challenge this year miss hall i don't have any good specifics because every time i give a number i end up getting it wrong well it does change a lot thank you mr golden we have currently we have about 35 to 40 vacancies for sped tas so special education teachers assistance their pay is actually a little bit more than
073general education teachers assistance we talked about compressing the pay schedules and that was the number i gave you related to special education teachers assistance and if you think about the numbers spread it across the district on average it's less than one per school but but it these these teachers assistants are largely driven by specific student needs in the in the locations we place them thank you mr golden and my second question is the percent of what's our staff absence rate percentage as well as the total number that we been running at i guess i don't know that we're we're given those numbers weekly like maybe mr anderson could add that in in his reports that's a that's a great question and we'll and we'll work on that i will tell you before the work session
074i had double checked that our teacher attendance rate is somewhere between 94 and 95 so they're our teachers are knocking it out and you know we have built in personal days as well they have just been bending over backwards to find ways to serve our students and i'm so proud of them thank you mr cash has a question or comment thank you madam chair mr golden i just want to thank you for looking into these salaries and whatnot and letting us know what we can do this year but in the future and as near future as possible i still think it's time to look at these areas tas subs you know certified subs and you did include sub nurses in this which is which is great that we start really looking at salary adjustments for
075these folks the amount of money per hour that it averages out to be is really it's it's it's below below average of any business so i just appreciate it if we continue to look at this rather than every year start all over again and looking at this thank you thank you for that i will tell you that our special education and general education teachers assistants get benefits and get retirement but it's not cash in pocket and to your point it is something that needs some immediate attention as quickly as we can get some funding for it mr fiskus yeah yes thanks miss chair i just wanted to say too and we've talked about it some throughout our work session but again i'm hearing from from teachers and families about how much they appreciate just the
076work that all of our staff is doing covering classrooms during planning periods during lunch period those kind of times when they could have a break to be working on the next lessons they're actually covering classrooms because we don't have subs to fill those spaces so i wanted to say thank you to them but then also i don't know if miss hall or mr golden one of you can address as we have these spots open whether they're tas or special ed tas what are take this opportunity to share what are some of the what's what is the person ex what are they required in terms of education you know what are some qualifications if there's someone out there that's that's looking for an opportunity to fill one of those spots where we have the opportunity to
077be heard mr fiskus i'll start with with with one and then let vicky hall address actual job qualifications but i'll tell you over and over again it's i'm reminded that people do this out of love a service to the community finding a way to serve children it's such a rewarding work in those ways that money can't measure but we have an obligation to to make sure that people get a good wage for it ms hall if you would speak to some of the job qualifications thank you we do just require a high school diploma for those positions and there's some additional training that happens once they are hired and you know continual training that's provided by the student support services team thank you and and again i noticed on the subpay scale that the original
078pay sheet had it broken down between certified substitute active tennessee certification and then uncertified subs whether the bachelor down to high school diploma in the new proposal there's just two delineations active tennessee certification in high school diploma and up to active church is that right is that how i read that okay thank you for that's correct okay and some of those were five dollars apart and so we're recommending simplifying that okay thank you mr priya i just wanted to clarify that if we vote to approve this also means that the 40 training fee will be waived for future subs i had a parent ask about that so i wanted to make sure that's a great question we've actually already done that administratively and that was that was an item that we did i'm trying to
079estimate maybe six eight weeks ago something like that to facilitate that good point thank you okay there are no further hands raised so we can proceed to a vote thank you this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes stan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell votes yes brad biscus brad fiskus yes jenna priya sana yes jake albert jay galbraith yes cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimbley rick wimberly yes eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes you are no motion passes thank you the next item is approval of board norm 1.107 and this is an annual agenda item mr golden thank you madam chair you all as a board spend time talking about board norms this is not something that's required but it's something
080that you as a professional body have chosen to address from time to time as a result of some discussion at your retreat we have brought to you proposed norms for this coming year with a couple of alterations you may see down there on line 20 of your screen where we're referencing a nod to the modern eliminating newsletters or similar reports in addressing social media so madam chair because this is a board issue i recommend that you definitely approve norms based on your standards but i will leave it to you as board members to to make that decision on whether to approve this thank you mr golden as mr golden said this was an assignment out of our board retreat that we held last month we were asked to look at our board norms and look
081at our code of ethics and submit revisions to the community they were combined and discussed them in our work session and so now we're looking to adopt those is there a motion to approve that fiscus move motion to approve by mr fiskus is there a second rick wimberly second mr wimberley seconds is there any disclosure i see no hands raised then we can move to a vote miss glenn this is olivia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliott mitchell votes yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes gianna priya sana priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall lacy yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes zero no motion passes
082thank you and then the next item is a similar item it's the annual approval of our code of ethics board policy 1.106 again this was an outcome of our retreat the retreat feedback from board members was compiled and sent to ms glenn and then just like the board norms our attorney mrs osbrooks worked on these and did the words nothing mr golden thank you madam chair you are required by law to approve a code of ethics and the state has the minimum standards you actually have placed some additional standards on yourself over the years and likewise i'll leave it to you all to make a decision on on approving that code of ethics you have a motion to approve rick wimberly moved to approve mr wimberley makes the motion is there a second believe angela
083was first there angela durham any discussion again these were updated to reflect more of the modern times i see no discussion ms glenn is olivia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell elliot mitchell votes yes brad biscus brad fiskus yes gina priya sena priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes zero no motion passes okay our next my next item is capital plan mr goldman thank you madam chair we of course talked about this at the work session i want to i want to hit a couple of points number one this is a requirement of the county commission annually to assist them in in the
084structure that they have to to to to initiate their bonds to help them with bond rating so for years we've been doing this but for us we have made it so much more for for our planning purposes this particular year's version of our five-year capital plan is about 50 million dollars less than the total of last year's five-year capital plan the county commission did vote to fund a number of our projects this year especially when the interest rate was so low so i want to i want to thank them for that i also want to let you all know that based on your approval tonight we do intend this fiscal year to make a request for all the items that are showing up on the intent to fund needed 2020 2021 because we are currently
085in that fiscal year but but again the county commission when they get to it they repeatedly say this is not an approval of the projects it's an acknowledgement that this is our plan that we will ask at some point for these funds so with that i do recommend approval is there a motion to approve rick wimberly moved to approve jake albert ii mr wimberley makes the motion of mr galbraith seconds is there any discussion board members we had a nice discussion about this on thursday night but i see no further wish to have discussion tonight so miss glenn we can move to a vote please this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell william sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric
086welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11. excuse your vote is 11 yes zero no match motion passes okay thank you yes i'm sorry jay please go ahead she just she just skipped me but i she got my vote right so i'm sorry i'm sorry it's fine no you're fine i voted jay galbraith yes just for the record and he seconded the motion so yes ma'am thank you thank you mr galbraith the next item on the agenda is the policy exception to board policy work-based 4.211 program mr golden thank you madam chair we are bringing this request to you to to make an exception to this board policy specifically related to the item in the policy that says the students must be a senior to participate in the work
087based learning program so we're asking for an exception of that policy the state actually allows anyone 16 years or older to participate we have historically been tighter on that but after much discussion in our career technical program we feel like based on the covet 19 structure it's just become apparently obvious to us that we do have some juniors who would do well in this and we want to make sure that door's open and we also anticipate that long term we intend to bring this back to the to the policy committee for it for a permanent change so we recommend approval okay is there a motion to approve motion to approve motion to approve for mr cash is there a second angel second from angela miss durham i believe or i believe yes the first one
088to the buzzer there do we have any discussion i see no request for discussion miss glenn this is lydia glenn angela joram angela durham yes stan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell william mitchell votes yes brad fiskus brad fiskus yes ginapriya jennapriya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes hey hall yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes zero no motion passes thank you and our final item tonight 2020 2021 dismissal hearing officer list mr golden thank you madam chair this is an item that we haven't historically done but dana ostberg's our attorney has recommended that you all approve a tsba list of dismissal hearing officers they actually present that list annually in in and this would be
089someone who hears a dismissal hearing for teachers if they choose that process in the event of a recommended termination of employment in the middle of a school year or or if they are tenured so with that we recommend approval and we ultimately anticipate that this will be placed on the annual agenda the next time the annual agenda comes up thank you board is there a motion to approve elliott mitchell moves to approve mr mitchell makes the motion is there a second a second nancy okay mr cash seconds any discussion i see no requests for discussion miss glenn we can move to our final vote of the evening this is lydia glenn angela durham angela durham yes dan cash dan cash yes elliot mitchell william mitchell votes yes brad viscus brad fiskus yes jenna priya ben
090and priya yes jay galbraith jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly rick wimberly yes eric welch eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes there are no motion passes board members and staff if there are no further topics to discuss this concludes our meeting and let me conclude by saying this is the season of thanksgiving and i am very thankful and appreciative for all your work