001thank you all for being at the meeting with us this evening the next item on the agenda is election of school board chairman wanted to let the board know of the process for this first we will accept nominations for board chair nominations do not require a second and i'll give you that opportunity to nominate after the nominations are completed i will ask if they're completed and we will we will then close nominations next we will vote on the individual who is first nominated if that individual receives a majority then that will end the that particular agenda item and then we will move to the next one in the event that first nominee does not receive a majority then a subsequent nominee would then have their name up for a vote so with that i ask
002are there any nominations yes and i see mr wimberley's hand is up mr wimberley thank you sir before i say anything would someone please send ms durham the link i just now received a text from her asking me for the link and if them or someone could send that to her i think that'd be great she's trying to join us so you know we're under an incredible amount of pressure these days our students are our parents our teachers our staff our senior leadership our community and i think our board is as well and in many cases the strain is beginning to show and that could be the case with our board i think it probably is the case that's one of the reasons that i want to nominate nancy garrett as our board's chair i
003believe she has the skills the knowledge and the heart to get us through this very difficult time so with every fiber i nominate miss garrett as our chair i think we need her thank you mr wimberley any other nominations if there are no other nominations we will close nominations nominations are therefore closed with that it is now time to vote a vote of yes is a vote in favor of miss garrett as board chair vote vote no of course is not in favor so if you would miss gwen please do roll call yes yes yes with that i would like to welcome nancy garrett as our board chair for this 2021 year you're here i think that you said it would be appropriate for me to make a few comments yes ma'am so i'm here
004tonight with something from my dad's classroom at franklin high school i wanted to bring this because thank you mr welch because as a person whose family has three generations of investment in this district it would not be my choice to be the school board chair during the middle of a pandemic but like a poster ahead of my room at college says there may be better times but the time we have is now and i just wanted to talk a little bit about what i hope my goal what i see is my goals for this year and wanted to share those with you first of all i think this is really an important time for us to listen to listen to voices that are asking to be listened to but also try to listen to the
005voices that we're not hearing from because we are in a such a unique situation this year it's paramount on us to to listen to our community and to our stakeholders and like stephen covey said dan i think you'll remember from the saturn days where we took all those stephen covey classes listen to understand rather than listen to respond or to be understood there are a lot of people that want to talk to us right now and the best way to start that conversation is just to listen second i think that our teamwork is critical right now we've got to work hard and work together to support all of our stakeholders and to provide the governing feedback that is needed we all know that our authority is only in this room and our varied and informed
006thoughts that we discuss here are so much greater than the individual opinion we have been doing you know important work spending a lot of time at these meetings trying to figure out things together and i think that's very important to do in the spirit of fairness with each other and direct with each other with the goal of serving williamson county schools and then finally i want to mention a graduate a recent graduate within the last five or six years from williamson county schools tony kemp who's a major league baseball player and who is a finalist for the roberto clemente award which is a humanitarian award for major league baseball players i read an article about him when he left the houston astros and this salty reporter said tony kemp has made the most positive impact
007on a team culture that i have ever seen in my many many years of being a sports writer and so that is what i want to pledge to you tonight i want to be like tony kemp and and be as positive as possible now being positive doesn't mean you're a yes person or you're a rubber stamp what it means according to john gordon who someone wrote the energy bus and a terrific book it doesn't mean you ignore the reality of the situation but it means you have the optimism belief and faith to overcome the situation and we need that right now we can have that we can be that type of board being positive also allows us to focus more on solutions rather than the problem so that's my commitment to you i want to
008when when this year is done i hope that people will say that person did make a positive impact on our culture so if you find me not doing that if you find me not being a good team player if you saw me not listening please you know call me on it tell me about it that's all i have to say thank you all for your confidence in me i appreciate it and moving on the next item on the agenda is the election of the school board vice chairman this work just the same way do we have a motion sorry i see two first of all i saw brad madam chair congratulations and i would like to nominate casey hall to be the vice chair are there any other nominations okay if not the floor is
009closed it would proceed with the vote yes yes yes thank you very much hey i'll start by saying that you know the this current situation brings together a lot of frustration in the community and among parents and families and the board itself and i think that when we share that it's for the same goal we are all looking out for the kids the students and those families and we all want to serve them as best we can and how that happens there may be different approaches and different priorities but that's really what we need to have a laser focus on now and to stay committed to that goal going forward and i feel that i think that you just validated the unanimous vote for a chair with your comments so well stated and we're really
010going to do well by your leadership thank you mr hahn if you come and get the congratulatory timer for the public comments we'll next move on to items of particular public interest this is our public comment portion of the meeting and all commenters we have six speakers tonight each speaker has up to three minutes mr hall will be doing the timing speakers state their name and address as they give their or their name and affiliation as they give their comment just so you know if you're speaking in public comment sometimes people expect that the board will respond but the board does not respond to public permit the board listens to public comment our first speaker is biff curtis address 7517 union valley road in fairview tennessee here tonight i have three students in williamson county
011schools do a quarantine two at the high school one at the middle school not being quarantined today i've sent multiple emails to the school board into the school and to the health department the school has responded school board has responded and the health department has not responded to any i've listened in on the most recent working session last thursday for the school board and i have a few comments and suggestions that i'd like to make first the school board has been responsive to me and also to our community and appears to be working towards a resolution to create equality across so i want to commend you guys ladies and gentlemen there are gaps in the current health department protocols for tech testing and tracing that create inequality of education for all students that the school
012board by staying involved in this process has domain and responsibility there they certainly have domain for the equality of education for all students if the in my opinion if the school board continues to follow the health department protocols they are then complicit in inequalities against the students so first suggestion the school board should completely remove itself from the medical process that the health department is conducting and i understand you guys have taken steps but i don't think you've gone far enough aggregating information on the students and providing it to the health department muddies the waters and shows that the school board is still involved in the process and by being still involved in the process then that makes them complicit the school board's decision there's no other entity that does this and it's out of
013character it might work they don't provide a seating chart they don't provide information on on any of the employees the contact tracing works then it works if it doesn't then we've got bigger issues a second suggestion is if the school board's going to abide by health department protocols for quarantine and closures there must be a conditional it must be conditional on a confirmed second positive test a pcr molecular test done by a second it should not be okay to abide by health and health department determination to shut our school down because they were scared or could not confirm the originating case to me when i heard that immediately signaled that these were most likely false positives and potentially worse than that 36 schools in williamson county 39 cases 28 of them at fairview high school
014it seems that there would have been some additional testing and investigation thank you thank you our next speaker is marty latito i apologize if i got your last name wrong thank you my name is marty letito i'm a founder of ignite health foundation a nonprofit 501c3 headquartered in franklin tennessee our mission is to serve underserved communities with free health screenings and it was founded last year i'm a concerned parent i have two children in williamson county schools and i want to make three points the first point is to acknowledge how difficult this is for everyone this is difficult for our students this is difficult for our teachers our administration and our communities we've never been in this situation before it is very difficult there is no one person that has all the solutions but i
015do believe collaboration in this amazing healthcare city which is nashville tennessee needs to happen more we have some of the most brilliant healthcare minds in williamson county and i would urge to have more of the private collaboration with our public partners instead of people sitting on the sidelines this is our kids that we're talking about and there's a lot of people way smarter than me that have offered up some amazing ideas i think it needs to be more collaboration the second point i want to make is i would like to make the school board more aware of the effectiveness of antibody tests i'm very concerned that we have not made an optional antibody test to our students we have been in communication with the department of health on this we have multiple labs that we
016know that have communicated on offering optional antibody testing most medical professionals will agree that antibody testing can help determine some type of level of immunity which particularly with students and kids that are playing athletics we believe that's important to make the school board and our county more aware of antibody tests as well as the new saliva pcr test these are not nasal swab tests these are saliva-based pcr it's the new yell protocol that the mba funded these tests are available and we have reached out to the department of health to help the third point i'll make is this it's an old saying and i would say this to all people in leadership for people that have students or people that care what did you know when did you know it and what did you do
017about it that's the question i ask myself every day so i would ask all of us in humility those questions what did we know and what did we do about it and when did we know that because these are very difficult times and i truly believe collaboration is the answer thank you thank you our next speaker is i believe it's luke pape a lot of school board members golden thank you for allowing me to speak today my name is luke page and i'm a senior at jeremy high school i wanted to share my comments on the closure of charity high school and the extracurricular activities and how it's effective to do that so i'm an ap capstone student at very high school and i've taken all ap and art classes you know i've taken out
018near perfect grades i'm running for valedictorians with a victorian and my number one priority right now is as a senior you know school is very important i'm looking to get scholarship money working to get into great academic schools as well as like football office so you know this pandemic is effectively greatly so i have the decision to close every high school and stop next year my family and i discussed doing online learning but that was not for me as i went as back you know it also did not provide the class that i needed some of those classes i need to graduate i need to you know get into these schools it's you know the classroom setting is it's something you need to have there's no collaboration with students online there is no teachers can't
019check the budget they can't look at you and say hey look you need to pay attention you need to come see me very very focused we don't have that opportunity over 12 years teachers and students both have been conditioned to learn in the classroom setting rather than online and with this being on zoom and sitting in front of computer all they just don't fit either one of our needs it forces us out of our comfort zone and forces us to surrender our education and forces us to not perform the relationship and hope you know in remote learning we have zero opportunity to interact with our classmates play sports interact with our friends we are losing the entire social aspect of school and why does this matter to me personally as a student athlete like i
020mentioned before i'm looking at some of the top 20 schools in the nation and the opportunity to play sports at these schools is you know pushing me to do better in school is pushing me to become a better athlete pushing me a better man and without being in school and on the field personally i cannot feel comfortable doing that for myself schools are recruiting me as an athlete a person and a future alum to help the future generations behind me and if i'm being cheated out of education out of sports out of everything that comes with the in-person learning experience i feel like i cannot do a good job at leading the future generation and i'm competing against some of these people from all over the world they are you know just as good and
021academically as good as me athletically and they are probably in school they are getting that experience why not so that is hindering my ability to get into these schools and do what i want to do for the next four years but williamson county is also known as being the leader in the state for education most counties look up to us as the best practice policymakers of being thought leaders let's take some let's take the same role and leave tennessee and push them through this issue please put us back in school please put us back on the football field in other support fields or whatever thank you for your time thank you thank you thank you our next speaker is tom hayden and tom if you'll please state your name and address for the record thank
022you my name is tom payton and i live at 2121 ravensport tribe thompson station i have two kids that graduated from franklin high school i'm here to talk really to jason golden lee webb and shane pantel and their committee let's start with the franklin high school mascot you may have to change the name and you never ask the opinion of the franklin high school area constituents and i know you put up an email on the local news stations but and asking for a response anyone could have seen the email and sent their opinion in could have been someone from out of town you never send out emails to the parents students and alumni of franklin high or the feeder schools and why well when you want to be politically correct then you don't ask for
023anything and you did it in record time you did it in less than five weeks it was really amazing how you guys must set some sort of record did you ever discuss getting rid of the confederate general and just keeping the name rebels because ole miss did that you've done it very well now this is the real kicker you all were absolutely politically correct and you never told anyone how much it was going to cost we still don't know and and no one knows who's going to pay for it we still don't know i'm a taxpayer i want to know this information i mean you're talking about new scoreboard football field the gym uniforms the letterhead so many different things and no one knew before they made a decision which they didn't really make decisions
024never contacted them but if you had them i think they would have said wow it's going to cost 200 000 i don't think i'm in favor for that i don't know where we're getting this extra money guys so it's just it's just crazy and the school board this school board never had a vote on the name change one would think that the school board would be voting on major changes well apparently they don't this the school board has no power or vote on major changes and if i was on the board and i was the president of hoa hillstone farms i'd be mad as hell you know i would start making policies to give me a vote on on major changes this school board is talented and smart i know some people on this and
025you have the power to make some new policy and i hope you do because i want your input i don't know what you all do i think about the school curriculum and does this board vote on changes like this written wisdom program i mean i don't know it's just being so politically correct there are a lot of liberal views in that and it's scary it really is to me and i just i can't believe that you no one knows how much this change is going to cost where the money's coming from or or who's going to pay for it so anyway i hope you all are happy you've all got your way pushed it all the way through and god knows what other changes you're going to make that's all i have to say thank
026you our next speaker is cornelia gibson mrs gibson if you please state your name and your address thank you sure my name a parent of is child and wilson county school because recent calls and emails continue to go unanswered and rewarded by the administration i am here to ask you school board members to do more than issue statements apologize and continue being reactive to the students the parents and the faculty of williamson county schools contacted by racism and discrimination in this do-more charge i have already answered you're discharged by drafting an email of recommendations and sitting in all of your emails right now but i'll give you highlights right now first we would like to use we would like you to use your special community ability to create a diversity equity and inclusion advisory school
027second we would like you to adopt and expect the creation of an anti-racism policy third we would like you to adopt an equity lens statement to guide thoughts and actions around racism the cultural pharmacies committee has been in place with most if not all of you in your roles approaching three years without any of the requests being heard or settled one of my heroes freddie gregory said power can be nothing without a demand it never has and never so on behalf of the many parents students faculty and this community i am here to make a demand for those of you who are in power williamson county mission says we exist to provide all students with a quality education that supports their intellectual physical emotional and social development from where i stand there is much opportunity
028to make this business statement a reality parents should expect the school to do more when our children are not safe do more when our children are asking for help because it is do more when time after time a news is found today and an nigta is painted on someone's body tomorrow this should not be a difficult ask for any from any of you because people like me are dependent on people like you speaking more thank you thank you and our final speaker for this evening is laura clemens good evening i'm laura clayman president of the williamson county education association last week we surveyed teachers and staff.com and i sent the results to you along with 62 pages of comments thank you for taking the time to absorb that information and for the concerns you expressed
029at the work session i would like to note that wcea exists to work for the welfare of children the advancement of education and the improvement of instructional opportunities for all which dovetails with our own wcs mission statement teachers become educators because we love children and we love helping them grow and learn but we've reached the point that our tanks are nearing empty and we're running on cues our district leaders have hurt our concerns and are looking for ways to create time for us to recharge time to become skilled in our new platforms time to develop quality educational experiences for students time to respond to individual learners and reinforce standards i am asking you as a board to support whatever solutions our district can provide the asynchronous tuesday for secondary is a start but we cannot
030forget our youngest learners and their teachers they too deserve an opportunity to refill the tank how we got to this point is water under the bridge there is no pandemic playbook there is no precedent in my role i have the opportunity to hear all levels of employees and wow all i can say is every single person has been working non-stop systems and procedures that shouldn't have taken years to develop became de facto standards overnight i applaud our leaders for the adjustments they have made as a blazing new path but i also want to remind everyone that we must also monitor the well-being of our staff i know everyone here especially our teachers want what is best for our students but you cannot pour from an empty vessel i also wanted to address a public misconception
031that all teachers who are concerned about exposure to coding can choose to teach online the reality is this many staff who requested accommodations did not receive an online position as a result if an educator fears for their health or that of their family their only options are to request fmla roll a dice and hope they don't bring cove at home or leave the profession in love and spend years perfect the third option worries me the most we had a teacher's shortage before the pandemic started we are halfway through the first quarter and we still have numerous vacancies posted we cannot afford to lose more highly trained professionals we must protect our teachers and provide time for them to be effective thank you that concludes our public comment for tonight next item on the agenda is
032the approval of the agenda for tonight's meeting is there a motion to approve motion from mr welch is there a second second for mr mitchell is there any discussion if not let's move to a vote yes dan cash yes elliot mitchell yes yes jennifer apria jake albrecht yes sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly yes eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes zero no thank you miss glenn the next item is the approval of the consent agenda we have a motion for approval motion for mr fiskus there a second second second from mr welch is there any discussion if not i think we can go ahead and vote angela durham yes dan cash yes elliot mitchell yes brad fiskas yes jennifer apria yeah jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland yes rick
033wimberly yes eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes 0 no okay board and with that approval you've approved the following items and it's a long list the approval of the august 17 2020 school board meeting minutes the approval of the september 9th 2020 special called meeting minutes approval of the following board policies on second reading maintaining test security that's 4.701 semester and final exams policy 47001 middle school exams policy 47002 recommendations and file transfers policy 5203 family and medical leave 5305 title 9 6 3041 child abuse reporting 6409 you've also approved the approval of field trip fee requests you've approved the e-plan application for fy 2021 lea reopening and program programmatic supports grant and the cares act you've approved the collaborative conferencing team the calendar committee membership and
034you've approved the city of franklin sewer easement and now we'll move to communications to the board and first we'll have the superintendent's report from director bolton thank you madam chair and i want to thank you as board members for coming and doing what we know is volunteer work in this in this pandemic environment to your point madam chair that this is where we are and i appreciate you all working during this time i do believe that we're here for a reason that we are the best people to work through this pandemic and so i very much appreciate your commitment you know the six folks who spoke at a public comment actually addressed the four items and i'm going to give you a brief update on we spent about five hours or so in our work
035session i'm not going to spend that kind of detail this time just want to give you some quick updates number one i want to praise our teachers and our staff our our teachers assistants our bus drivers i can't name everyone that i want to thank i do know that miss clayman mentioned mentioned that everyone is working hard and that's true and i know you are too but i want to specifically thank those those who are who are committed to serving children we all are committed to serving children and every decision we make that's that's our focus and it's a lot of work it's the hardest work any of us have ever done in our professional lives and i wanna thank everyone for that second thing i wanted to give you was an update we talked
036a lot about about tomorrow september 22nd as our pilot asynchronous day where our secondary schools and the hillsborough elementary school students will actually also be be piloting that our staff is going to talk wednesday morning about how it went as you heard from this claiming and for me last week our goal is to see what value we can give with given this time i want to emphasize to you that this is an educational day this is an instructional day but it is asynchronous so we're going to see how that goes as i mentioned to you we're really looking at everyone how this affects children how it affects students how it affects parents how it affects our teachers how it affects our staff we really want to get a good grasp to see if this will
037work we do know that some of our peers in in other locations have have done this unusual year and again i'm very curious to see how it goes i will update you on that next thing i wanted to mention was the health department and their work as i told you last week we've been having many many conversations within brainstorming over how how to facilitate them doing their work with the contact tracing i mentioned to you that they had said that they were committed and had a plan in place with ema emergency management for williamson county to get the messages out directly from them based on their decisions related to quarantine we actually sent one more for them today because they were still putting that process in place happened to be seven seven students that carol
038birdsong sent but we believe based on what they said either today either tomorrow or or or wednesday they will have that up and running as i understand they were testing it today with ema to make sure they could get those messages out we really look forward to that and we and the final thing i wanted to mention is something that i know we've been talking about these last few months race relations in our community you may recall that a few months ago i mentioned that in any discussion we might have mistakes may be made in the words but we nevertheless still need to talk about it and so i want to emphasize to you that we are going to continue to do that i mentioned to you last week last week about a particular event
039with with some students that made social media i want to let you know that we are working and we'll continue to work on on growing our wisdom and our capacity to appropriately teach and grow our students in our diverse environment and we've done some items we've i've spent a lot of time listening spend some time listening to students to alumni to parents to teachers and to administrators and we've made it a point of emphasis this year as the school year started to listen to young alumni about their experiences in williamson county schools for good or for worse and to make it a point to all our teachers that these policies that you all put in place the anti-discrimination policy would be followed each and every time at the same time we are working on reviewing
040those policies to see how to strengthen those and we are looking at the possibility and the probability of of developing a coherent plan so that we can grow as a district with with with a professional development and professional health i thought it was worth that quick update for you on all four of those we will continue to talk about these things and i think from what you heard from those six who spoke to us tonight we really covered the gamut what's on the community's mind is what's on our mind as well so madam chair it's very short compared to normal but that is my report thank you mr golden moving on to the board chairs report this will also be short chair oh yes may i ask you a question sure mr golden sure so
041jason with with regard to the to the asynchronous i mean you know we talked a little bit about this on thursday night but i guess i'm going to go back to this and see if you have an answer but i guess i'm trying to i'm trying to find where the where the definition of of asynchronous is in our in our policy because it seems to me that we by by allowing allowing us to to have this day tomorrow without the board weighing in i guess if we if we do this i'm going to ask i'm going to ask our policy committee chairman which i presume will be mr hall but i guess that's not i don't that's not a foregone conclusion i guess but i believe we're setting inside policy and doing this because i
042believe we need to look at the at the calendar the policy related to the calendar and the policy related to the definition of a school day because i don't i don't believe this is this we're we're creating a new kind of day in this so we've we've had we've had professional development and that's on the calendar defined and we have holidays and those are on the calendar but what we don't have is a professional education a professional day that's that's also a full instructional day so that's not defined on our calendar sure mr golf galbraith said he would like to ask a question i really am waiting for the question i'll i'll ask our should i ask our attorney mr gordon yes ma'am i'll ask our attorney to to weigh in on that you're on
043mute he did he did state that he wanted to ask a question for mr golden so yes he does need to state his question okay i think i'm in the process i mean i'm i'm explaining my question if that's if that's okay i think you need to state your question and if mr golden doesn't understand it he can then ask for an explanation the first for me if if i may mr galbraith you can you can respond that's fine i'm i think it's completely ridiculous thank you i understand what your question is i think and of course you have the as i as i understand it your question that we discussed last thursday at our work session is the authority for for those kinds of decisions and i think it's perfectly appropriate for the board
044to discuss the possibility of a policy addressing this like i said it is outside the box and i certainly want to respect each of the board members and you as a body in in those decisions what we're trying to do is to to address this pandemic it is to use a term that i know miss garrett use as nimbly as we can and i mentioned to you at our special called meeting the week before that there was a real possibility that we were going to name that as a as an asynchronous day and so from an authority standpoint i've i've i've i've concluded that i have that authority but to do that likewise i have the authority to to to close the school with those with those stockpile days that the board has put in
045there but i haven't i haven't suggested that we do that with but with all that in mind i'm more concerned about the board working with me as a team and if it's the board's will after this pilot i'll certainly respect the board voting on that this is new you're a hundred percent right this is new this is outside the box never before to my knowledge have have we contemplated the possibility of analyzing an asynchronous day for students in this context i am trying to be creative so i guess i guess my question would be and my request would be that before we if if we if we agree to accept this there's a day that we that we agree i mean our typical our typical process for setting aside policy which i believe this is
046a this is setting aside policy but our typical response would be that it would that we would take it before the policy committee and review and i believe that the the policies that are reflective and i was looking up i haven't i haven't found the policy for the definition of a school day for but but certainly the calendar and the definition of school day which is what i believe we're we're violating here mr mr galbraith if i if i may clarify and i apologize i didn't see your hand raised no no you're fine there's mr welch's microphone is right there thank you mr welcome so if if i'm correct this you brought this up at the work session as well and we did we did discuss at that point that we could look into this
047and we could have the attorney look into this and see if it was indeed a policy violation and so we can continue to do that and i think we discussed at that time that even if we did that wouldn't wouldn't preclude the day tomorrow that we would go ahead with the pilot is that is that clear from everyone's understanding is that clear from your understanding i mean i agree that we that we i mean i agree that jason says that he believes he has an authority and i don't think that there was a consensus to to challenge that authority necessarily for tomorrow my desire is that we that we at least weigh in as a board to see if there's a policy that needs to be made before we before we take this before we
048go any further and establish a calendar option that's going to set forth more of these days thank you for clarifying that's helpful thank you so much miss garrett this is brooks in reviewing the work session yes your memory is correct and i have noted that we will place either for discussion a one if not two policies after i have reviewed them at the october policy meeting okay thank you thank you for the question and thank you for the clarification are there any other other questions at this point on the superintendent's report just want to make sure i see your hands if not i'll proceed with the board chairs report and it will be short as i said first of all i guess jason and i will be able to proceed with some preliminary planning for
049the retreat prior to this meeting we did identify a couple of weekends saturdays that we're looking at so lydia will send out to everyone this week and ask you to vote by preference would ask that everyone if possible try to clear your calendars for that because we obviously have some things we want to talk about and talk about in a retreat developmental type setting so expect that soon she's going to give them in the emails she's going to ask everybody to to let let her know what they think is the best date for them the second item is a reminder to sign up for your tsba training we discussed that but there's some late breaking news about tsba just today they canceled the statewide leadership training and the annual convention in november that we generally
050attend so fyi to all board members and i think i think that is it for my report this meeting so we'll move on to new business the first item is the 2020 2021 school board budget general purpose school fund budget and there are two amendments that we need to vote on the first is the governor's give grant director golden thank you madam chair as we discuss at the work session this is the governor's give grant that was that was awarded jointly to us in columbia state actually we're the ones who who who received the funds for the mobile cybersecurity cyber security unit for class i want to give you guys a quick update on that we are in that process we've done a little bit of work in the prior budget year and doing work
051in this budget year as well so leslie holman is asking to move that the funds to this current budget year we recommend approval okay is there a motion to approve mr ha second mr cash any discussion if not let's vote angela durham yes dan cash elliot mitchell yes brad biscus yes jennifer priyanka jake albert yes sheila yes yes yes nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes zero no yes the next item is united way mr golden thank you madam chair this is an item on the on the finance agenda to accept a grant from the united way i want to specifically thank the united way for this after school tutoring funds of thirty six thousand dollars this is the ninth year they've given us those funds and i wanna remind everyone that within board
052policy united way is actually specifically mentioned as a recipient of fundraisers for the district so thanks again to them and i do recommend that you approve acceptance of these funds is there a motion to approve mr welch a second mr mitchell any discussion if not we can move to a vote angela durham yes dan cash yes elliot mitchell yes brad fiskas yes jennifer priya jay galbraith yes sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly yes eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett yes your vote is 11 yes 0-0 thank you everyone the next item is under the education capital project's fund budget an inter-category adjustment inter-category high school projects mr golden thank you madam chair the county is going to bond market soon on some of the projects that they approved back in march if you all
053may recall that was the window of time where they where they looked at some really low interest rates so they are now going to the bond market as part of that they asked if we had any available funds from our from our capital projects to use towards our capital projects ms holman in consultation with the county's finance director has proposed that this three million dollar move from contingency to those three items of page high school construction the summit edition in the ravenwood edition recommend approval motion to approve motion cooper mr welch was there a second second mr fiskus any discussion yes mr mitchell could could we get kind of an explanation on what we're doing if the county is going to bon is going to market to sell bonds what's the relationship of us spending
054money that is in our account to the county seeking additional bonding i'll let miss holmen give some detail but i'll give you the gist of it that is i'm using my terminology leftover money from other projects in contingency for some of our other high school and middle school capital projects so it was based on this holmen's review of of those accounts so ms holman and the money when they issue the bond money for us we have to use it within a certain period of time so looking at this money and the amount that we have in general funds i felt like we needed to give back about three million dollars of this money towards this project because i can't let it accumulate forever and it's not general purpose school it's in the capital project eu's
055for capital projects so are you thank you solomon are you stating then that this 3 million is effectively reducing the amount of money that the county is having to bond for the for those projects is that what we're we're doing exactly and at the commission meeting last monday they've also used a lot of education impact fee money to fund these projects also so they won't be going to the bond market for the total amount that they've approved for us to have they're going to use three different funding mechanisms my money our money left in the capital projects funds they're going to use education impact fee funds and they're also going to issue the rest through the bond market and do we know what the total amount of bonding they're looking to fund and how much
056of that is forced for the school district i do but i don't have that in front of me tonight because at the county commission meeting it was i really don't i don't want to say the numbers without having it in my hand but she did have a spreadsheet on that at the county commission meeting about the amount that was relative to the whole issue and the amount that was particularly for the school department if i made mr mitchell we'll make sure we email that to you i know it's you know for a vote and tonight that information may be later than the vote i will tell you that the county commission is working on of course a number of our projects plus some county projects they spent some time talking about juvenile justice and judiciary
057that they've been working on for a couple of years to improve the sheriff's department the juvenile court and the and the court so they do have multiple projects in addition to ours so one last question if i might i'm sure chairwoman do we foresee our capital needs changing given the fact that our growth this year is not consistent to what it has been in the past that's a great question i think that's a possibility from a timing perspective i actually had a discussion last week with allison nunley who does our projections we have a meeting scheduled as you all know we have gone down in student numbers this year compared to last year one of the items we're going to project is this a one-year flip this is a two-year blip where we go so
058from a timing perspective when we come to you in november with our five-year capital plan the dates i anticipate may be a little bit different we have a little bit of difference every year based on our projections and we're going to make that same evaluation this coming year thank you and jason i just emailed that to the board members if they've got access to email so okay thank you is there any further discussion if not we'll move to a vote and angela durham yes and cash yes mitchell yes francis yes jennifer apria yeah jake albert yes kela cleveland yes rick wimberly yes eric well yes casey hall yes thank you miss glenn the next item is approval of lease purchase agreements for chromebook computers director golden thank you madam chair as we discussed at the
059work session our technology department tim mcneese and mark samuels who of course is our assistant superintendent for operations have spent a lot of time talking about how they project the need for chromebooks to the future as you may recall we bought some new chromebooks and we added them to chromebooks that we that we were squeezing an extra year of life out of so that we could meet the coven 19 pandemic and our decision to make sure that every student in grades kp12 actually had a chromebook our proposal is because this window of time is open to move some of our technology funds to this higher priority that's what we're asking the view it actually will this request will actually go to the commission because it is officially a lease purchase agreement with a com with
060a commitment for for for annual payments although the interest is actually structured at zero we shared some additional detail about our concerns about access access to some of these devices if you have any questions we'll be happy to answer them but i recommend the proof is there a motion to approve mr mitchell is there a second mr welch any discussion yes mr hall i just want to take the opportunity to thank the i.t folks for the forward thinking that they've used throughout this pandemic going back really earlier this year when i know that the supply chains for a lot of this equipment were really challenged and i think we were in a better position than some other districts just because of the proactive response that we had to make sure that we have the equipment
061we need and this is further further evidence that we've prioritized appropriately and i know it's been a really tough lift for everybody in the department thank you mr hall and i have i've heard from some of my peers who still haven't received their orders and you know so often we hear about the challenges that we're facing and it's it's rare that we talk about the things that we did well but thank you so much for mentioning that any other discussion if not we'll proceed to the vote angela durham yes and yes elliot mitchell yes yes yes sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly yes okay well yes casey thank you the next item this board policy for first reading policy 4.600 of report cards and grading systems mr golden thank you madam chair as as we discussed
062this is board policy first reading for report cards and grading systems and this includes some some small modifications to some of the detail regarding valedictorian and salutatorian since this is a public meeting typically with more people watching than at a policy committee meeting i want to briefly mention that after much discussion the proposal is in in heart to to keep the valedictorian and salutatorian standards the same i'm gonna mention two big reasons although they're not the only reason number one it allows students who are taking some classes that actually have a 4.0 is a close to a 5.0 that still have the opportunity to receive one of these awards and also it opens the door as we've learned for the potential for more scholarships so recommend approval of first reading that would invite you to
063come to the policy next policy committee meeting if you'd like to discuss it in more detail motion to approve mr cash second second mr mitchell discussion no discussion let's proceed to a vote angela oh i'm sorry i probably need to get my left eye click on the drawer then slowly oh okay mr welch thank you gonna support this because it's first reading i know it's going to come back this is not a final vote but perhaps perhaps jason you can address this a little bit i'm looking at the grade scale and i'm sort of thinking that kind of historically one of the things that had raised a flag a few years ago well i guess it still does is great inflation and you know sort of that bell curve that we have in our district
064it's not a bell curve and i think there was some concern about almost being too lenient on the grading scale and i don't think that's that's not quite the way i should put it but hopefully kind of gets the point where i'm going with this but i look at this it's a d is a 70 to 71. that's that's a razor thin margin there whereas the c is 72 to 80 so we've got an 18 point scale for a c grade and a two point scale for a d grade and it's just it doesn't feel right we haven't discussed it in the most recent meeting that particular great scale but maybe just briefly really in the context of plus or minus i will tell you over the years i've participated in many discussions about the
065great scale and d has over the years fluctuated a little bit it's been it's been a number of years since the board has discussed it one of the one one of the keys for for us is really the based on my recollection of so much of that discussion the failure is so much more significant than the d range right anything below them i will tell you over the years we've also increased our focus on students learning the standards and doing what we can not to fail students or not to give them a d but to put the teaching the standards so that they're prepared when they graduate and so from a from a from an administrative perspective we believe that that the value of a c is appropriate but again you're right the d window
066is very narrow i will invite dr webb to to address it she of course has been in a high school with with with that d scale there's an element of it that's a warning and i will say we don't think about we don't think about it much in the terms of of of of great inflation when it comes to our students who are who are going on to college the their performance and how well they do on the standards is really the key so dr webb if you would now i'll echo only what you've said already which is that there isn't a perception of great influence inflation within the buildings currently and then our focus is on mastery of the standards and so i do not have a concern nor have i heard one in
067the last three years as i've been in central office in regards to a concern about inflation specifically as it pertains to the d with that being said it's going on for second reading of policy are there any other questions not let's vote angela durham yes dan pad yes elliot mitchell yes brad vista yes jennifer yes yes kela cleveland yes with wimberley yes eric welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett yeah your vote is 11 yes you know thank you ms glenn and our final agenda item for tonight approval of board parameters for the school calendar thank you madam chair as you all know we discussed this at our work session and some possibilities were raised by board members i want to mention to you also that you approved the board committee the calendar committee and
068the in the consent agenda we are actually scheduled to have you vote on the calendar in january at the january board meeting after the discussion my recommendation is that you follow the process you have done the past few years in asking the calendar committee to make their best recommendation but give input and ask them to consider some items that some of you have raised so with that i recommend a motion to approve no parameters for this coming year mr webb i'd like to make a motion to recommend to the calendar community to put forth the best calendar possible without parameters without pre-set foreign mr cash second discussion yes mr mitchell thank you madam chairperson so i don't know that i'm i'm on board with no parameters at this point i will make my recommendations and
069then see how my peers feel about going that route or not so i think that given the fact that you're we're talking about we have a crisis or the beginning of a crisis if we're not in one already on teacher fatigue instructor fatigue administrator fatigue i think we want to look for suggestions on how to maximize the opportunities for asynchronous learning days in the calendar i think we want to look at potentially increasing the fall break potentially is another way to help recharge give instructors and students an opportunity to recharge i think that we've got i would look for ways to incorporate the usage of the additional snow days as we as whether we have the discussion of snow days even being necessary anymore with our ability to be remote in our teaching so maybe
070use those as opportunities for our asynchronous or for breaks is necessary so those are the type of concerns i have as we enter into the calendar is there any other discussion mr welch i said i agree with everything that mr mitchell is saying those are all things that the calendar committee should definitely consider but i would i would counter and ask him to to consider with that the makeup of the calendar committee is such that there are representatives from all stakeholders including parents through our ptos teachers through our wca leadership our administrative and all of those considerations i trust will be considered as well as many others that we ourselves have not thought of so i hear what you're saying and i do agree with you that all those things should be considered but i
071would make the argument by giving flexibility we don't lock them in to saying these are the only things to consider or prioritize that as other things pop up they can look how it fits into the entire mix we're allowing that to happen in the most efficient way by a little bit more in-depth discussion by you know those experts who kind of bring that expertise to the table and then of course we as the decision-making body still have the authority to yay or nay or make changes at the end of that process mr galbraith thank you madam chair i agree with mr mitchell i mean and i guess i guess there and i don't know i mean jason's already said that he would take these these rec these recommendations to to look and i and i
072guess so technically mr mitchell you're you're not suggesting necessarily parameters by which they craft a they craft a calendar rather rather ideas that they consider while they're crafting the calendar correct thank you mr galbraith my discussion point for us all is whether we give a parameter that has them address teaching and student fatigue potentially and use that as the parameter coming in for it because because i think what we're seeing and hearing is that if we're if we're in the same situation next year that this seems to be the crisis that we're that we're fighting for our staff is that they're working 10 12-hour days six days seven days a week and they're exhausted and so our calendar i believe needs to reflect that concern going into next year sure that's kind of where i'm
073yeah well i guess i mean i agree that regardless of whether we consider a parameter or not tonight i guess that's that's definitely a lens that i'm going to evaluate evaluate whatever whatever calendar comes back from the committee so i hope that they that they listen to this i know we have an opportunity i guess madam chair is there i think somebody said that somebody recommended that we that we email the calendar committee and i'm not sure that's necessarily appropriate so should what do you what do you think about that i guess given that we speak as a board through only our i guess to the calendar committee i don't want to i don't want individual what do you think about individual board members weighing into the calendar committee what our individual preferences are madam
074chair if i make sure that sure i have conversations with individual board members regularly and i would invite you all to let me know and i will encourage that committee to consider those if this motion that's on the floor passes you all in these particular examples have spoken to that already so if this particular motion passes i'm convinced based on my experience with the folks on this committee it's not it's not the exact same committee as it has been in the past but my experience is that those are going to be items that they discuss so i'm convinced that if if it passes as is these items will be discussed i will also tell you that our staff as you know was open to discussions with with you all regularly as well my request would
075be that if you have anything let us know fairly soon and so that so that we can consider that if there's something that's outside the scope of of that committee i will tell you just to make sure you grasp who we have we have representatives from high middle and elementary school district wide a wcs parent assessment coordinator which is significant right if you think about where the state is teaching learning and assessment and professional development so we are you know we have representatives who kind of look at that scope of of of of possibilities for the calendar and mr golden if i may just ask for an affirmation of something that's already been said you said that you've recorded the discussion here tonight about what mr mitchell said what mr galbraith said what mr welch
076said about the calendar that's correct okay mr cash thank you madam chairman mr mitchell brings you know to light a couple of good points especially on asynchronous days versus snow days that would be your call on that also wouldn't it jason yes sir okay so that could be done if we needed to do that some of the other things he's talking about more rest in and you know kind of giving the teachers a break spring break and stuff like that hopefully this pandemic's gone when this calendar goes into effect so you know we have to wait and see on that but you know when we start putting all these things in place in one calendar you're kind of setting a precedent and it's hard to revert back from that so i just look at well
077i agree well i just look you know i mean you know and i know and what what mr mitchell said is very you know well said i mean some of these things need to be done but we got to thank all aspects like that so i'm i'm still you know not for going into all spring break and all this stuff i think there's other means to take care of that thank you thank you oh mr wimberly thank you madam chair having been through the calendar discussions i think this is my ninth time i have the general impression that the parameters simply don't work in the years where we've had them i think the intent was to communicate to the board and commun communicate early on the board's general opinion about what the calendar should look
078like but even when we did that there was extensive debate among the board when we got the calendar back so i don't think it worked in in those cases and when we've not had parameters it's just my general observation that we've had extensive discussion about it anyway so i think the question before us tonight is really do we want parameters or not the motion on the floor is to not have them and i just simply think although lots of good points are made about what the calendar could look like i just simply don't think parameters work and they haven't worked for us in the past i don't think they've accomplished what what they was intended of them i will say that over the years i think that the communications between the calendar committee and the
079board and the public have improved rather dramatically and i wouldn't think that'd be different for this year so i say let's go forward without the parameters mr mitchell then mr fiskus mr fiskus i was i'd access the policy the calendar policy on my phone so that's what i was looking at here so just a review it says a regular school year should have 200 days and scheduled as follows a minimum 180 student days a minimum of five in days of in-service education for all certificated personnel one day for parent teacher conferences and four discretionary days so in these discretionary days technically those that number could be higher to provide the opportunity for if we call it asynchronous or more professional development or release time whatever we needed there i would think that correct yes sir
080and those discretionary days are actually actually specified those are the four days that are within board discretion now again to your point minimum you know mr mitchell thank you chairman so i'm fine with moving forward i my last comment would be that we all be sensitive to the fact that when we ask people to be on a committee to make recommendations to us they're working hard to put that together and they vet a lot of different things and for us to then take their recommendation and kind of slice it and dice it and change it up to a certain extent can be viewed as as insensitive or critical of what they've given us and so it's that's my only thought of providing some feedback input on the front end so they have an idea what
081we're looking for and what we're likely to the mr galbraith's term the lens that we're going to be looking at it through and therefore they don't that they're not left with thinking well why did we spend all of these hours putting this together if they're just going to do it themselves and that's kind of my that's one of the reasons why i felt it was important for us to kind of give an idea of what we're looking for in a school calendar before they spend hours putting it together thank you thank you mr mitchell is there any other discussion if not we'll move to a vote angela durham yes dan cash yes elliot mitchell yes fred biscus yes yes sheila cleveland yes rick wimberly yes hey welch yes casey hall yes nancy garrett board members
082that's our final agenda item for tonight just a reminder that if you did not discuss anything that you wanted to discuss about the calendar during this public meeting jason has requested that you get in touch with him about that thank you yes ms garrett i think jason wanted to say something about the county's donation of some computers to us oh one thing we mentioned at the work session madam chair that i didn't mention tonight the county is actually purchasing some additional computers for us i don't remember the exact number a little over four thousand with some coveted money that they received and i know that we thank them at our public meeting on thursday so i want to do that again and i really want to add that ms holman was deeply involved in that
083detailed discussion and gave them that priority to ensure that we could get that done thank you to leslie as well thank you miss holman and thank you williamson county greatly appreciated and with that we'll adjourn this meeting thank you