LRSD School Board Agenda Meeting 04/08/21

001um and welcome to the board agenda meeting for april 8th 2021 miss hatter okay i'm unmuted good evening uh little rock uh thank you so much for joining your little rock school board of education uh agenda meeting um we do not have much to cover on on tonight um but we are so elated that you guys have uh decided to uh give us uh some of your time to um stay in tuned on what is going on in your district so um of course i'm i'm vicki hatter i'm the board president i figured i should say that and then we have our fellow board directors all all nine of us is here tonight and we're gonna do as we always do open up with our um pledge and uh director johnson uh would you uh

002please lead us in the pledge will you stand please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you director johnson for for leading us in that director callaway uh will you share a a word of um inspiration uh with us uh this evening again i'd like to remind us all that what we do here what we say here what policies we put into place will affect us not only now but in the future thank you director calloway i appreciate you and uh this um month this is april this is the hundredth and eleventh day of all nine of us uh being in office and um this marks our third and a half

003um official meeting the december 17th was like the hey y'all how are y'all doing and i apologize for my camera all right let me get that together um and so um as you know um every month we have a either word or a phrase and uh this this month is a uh cooperative um economics and how and that deals with of course um economics and how will we be good stewards of what we have and so um that is uh part of it so the um target for this i okay i have down a motivation um let me throw uh director morning are you on yes okay uh a 10 second of motivation oh i would be able to land [Music] so hey everybody um i'm the poet artistic creator and energy curator and something

004that i want to share today that's been um really on my spirit in the season is to be resilient it's so easy to give up before we know we can actually reach the finish but whatever you may be facing right now just know that that moment is temporary and no matter where you are in this moment it is not where you have to be forever so be resilient and be relentless in your pursuit of happiness so whatever you desire or want out of life you actually can have just gotta believe it awesome thank you so much um for that and that is gonna take us into uh our um target of our meeting uh we're gonna start off with a two action well we will have um action items and we'll have public comment uh

005before those action items um our items will be of course our district mass mandate um so keeping so until the board will vote on uh keeping our mass mandate um um in place or uh vote how the vote come out by the majority and then we will get into our digital learning academy which is what we pre which is what was uh presented on uh last month so with that uh i will turn it over to dr o wong and uh he will uh lead us in with the public comments and then going into our um actions that i just shared with you all just real quick where dr ola starts um with our public comment tonight we of course because we took action we set up public comment just like we would on any

006other normal meeting and set it up so that any of the speakers that chose to speak on the topics can have three minutes we did have a combination of folks that wanted to speak virtually in a virtual delivery but we also had individuals that turned in written comments that dr ola will handle and as part of our custom we'll take care of the written comments first dr oil will share that and then he'll set the stage for introducing the different folks who will speak uh in public comment to you virtually dr ola thank you uh superintendent good evening president hatter and our board of directors and viewing audience as superintendent poor stated uh the written comments um most of them were concerning the masked mandate we roughly had about 12 written comments in favor of

007the mask and one of the mask mandate and one against the mass mandate and of course all of these written comments will be provided to you but most of the written comments that uh centered around in favor of the mass mandate talked about the fact that we still have students who are below the age of 16 who are not vaccinated and at this time we have to consider our students health as well as our staff members who have not been vaccinated as well and so in light of that they are asking that we continue uh with the mass mandate of throughout the school district in all buildings in all schools and of course the uh one person who's not in favor of it uh stated that because in light of the fact that um the

008governor has uh released or the uh no longer has a mass mandate in the state our students should not be required to have to wear a mask in the school building that at this point is just ridiculous for us to continue to have that mass mandated and that all teachers should now be vaccinated and so that was the comment um that is not in favor of the mass mandate and then we had one last written comment about the disappointment in the school district and how the transition of hall administration was handled and that that it was unfair that most of the community knew about the uh transition before the actual staff knew all the details but uh the comment does say that they appreciate mr poor mr rutherford for taking the time to come to

009the staff and to explain the next steps from that and so she just wanted you all to know how she felt about the community knowing about it before the staff it getting out to the community prior to the staff receiving the notification so that concludes the written comments of course as stated those will be shared with you via email we do have five individuals community members who have signed up for uh public comment uh via zoom and the first one would be uh mrs rebecca olson mrs olson you now have three minutes for your public comment oh she's she's reconnecting so let me go to uh mrs olson are you ready yes i'm ready okay okay uh you have three minutes for your public comment okay so i speak for all of the parents and

010teachers and students who want the mask mandate lifted um the teachers have all had a chance to be vaccinated at this point children are not the ones who are at risk for getting covenants and getting really sick from it there is communication problems with masks especially for kindergarten when they're learning how to read you can't see people's mouths with masks it's hard to articulate especially with the littler kids they're hard to understand as it is and having a mask on their faces just makes it even that much more difficult the social interaction social aspect of school it is affecting that terribly they can't talk to each other like they used to they can't see their expressions or other kids emotions they have also um the so and the mask mandate's been lifted by the governor

011and several other schools in arkansas have already lifted their mask mandate mammal actually has lifted their mass mandate but actually hasn't even had kindergarteners um they only made fourth grade and up wear masks this whole entire time and there hasn't been like a hot spot in mall male schools we didn't see an uptick in covid there um also i think that we'll lose a lot of teachers and students who don't want to wear the masks and they'll move to other districts who don't make them wear the masks um so they are also at risk because it's so hot and humid here they can get bacterial pneumonia because they have to wear them inside outside when it's hot in the sun it's during recess during pe it's just a lot for little kids i'm talking mainly

012about elementary kids and all the negative aspects of mask wearing it makes them even touch their face more than they would normally because they can't wear a mask properly and so they're always messing with their nose and touching their face to adjust their mask they just it doesn't work for the kids or the teachers and i know everyone wants to be safe and everyone's vaccinated or has had a chance to be vaccinated now the children are not at high risk and so i think it's time to lift the mandate do you want to say anything is wilson are we at time it just went off that was your three minutes thank you so much miss olson thank you ms olson next we have and i don't see her in here but i just want to

013make sure that we give her the opportunity to speak if she is of mrs tiffany lindsey miss tiffany and lindsay okay next we have dr anika whitfield dr whitfield dr ola before you go to dr whitfield with miss lindsay was she one of the folks that put in a written comment as well and if she did you might want to just read it before we have this dr whitfield go [Music] and while you're looking baby okay go ahead she does uh and her statement states i strongly disagree with the mass mandate in the continuation for virtual fridays the sign simply does not support being out of school on fridays nor wearing masks there is no science at all that supports that that people need and that people need to do their research i have between

014the vaccine signs proving that children rarely getting the virus then all of the rest of the population having had the virus equal earth immunity especially in another five months when we return to the fall our child is in kindergarten a crucial year to bridge the gap between not knowing how to read or write and being expected to do so in first grade or fail i send her to school because i'm not a school teacher that is their job to get up and get going on fridays these children need five days of instruction virtual learning is a joke especially through this system schoology i would be willing to bet most of you have never been on it to see what a child has to do most of the virtual learners do not even log on to

015begin with that ends her comments um next we have dr anika whitfield dr whitfield uh you have your three minutes now thank you for um giving me three minutes i wanted to first start off by saying that i understand that there were people who were not aware that during this agenda meeting there were going to be action items with which people could speak publicly and so i think it's really imperative that the little rock school district does due diligence to make sure uh whether it's through text messages or however when there are action items that people can speak to that the public is made aware um i happen to see it on one of our board members facebook pages and so that's how i was even aware that this was happening i also want to

016address some of the concerns i am a doctor uh and so i work in the medical field and i do a lot of research and and want to share that there are other states uh who have decided to remain virtual because the numbers are increasing in age groups that are 30 years of age and less and and that's because in some states especially there have been less persons vaccinated but we do know that in pulaski county our numbers continue to be up in the top five and so we want to be very mindful that removing masks is not a wise thing to do until everyone becomes vaccinated and we know that in the state of arkansas you can be vaccinated up to the age or as low as the age of 16 but that does

017not preclude you from getting the virus itself for the parent who earlier said that um there aren't are there masks that prevent you from reading and learning to read i have an example of a mask where it's clear mouth there was actually a student that created this idea in this concept and so i believe that we should encourage uh in our educational system creative ways to wear masks and be safe and wearing those masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus which we know is deadly we still are seeing arkansans dying every day i also wanted to address the virtual academy or the digital academy um i was only given three minutes to talk about both but i'm in favor of wearing the mask to be clear and i think that we should do that to

018be safe and to be medically sound and preventive and i also believe that the little rock school district has received millions of dollars to help provide those pepes and we can be creative again in the ways that we use those to include the innovative technology of our students right our our students are very wise and are as well as our educators so i think that there are some wise ways that we can implement those masks and make sure that everyone has them and has access to them but as it relates to the digital academy i'm concerned because we already don't have equity in our public schools we already have students who are challenged by the digital divide and i know that part of what the little rock school district is trying to do is to

019to be competitive with other districts but i think one of the best ways to be competitive is to provide the best education possible for every student in every classroom and i think if we can do that uh people will come running to the little rock school district and i think part of doing that is to involve and engage parents and students in decision making processes and currently the way that our board is set up dr whitfield that's your three minutes thank you for coming next we have uh megan freeman mrs prentevan and you have your three minutes thank you um hello little rock school district board of education my name is megan pritiman and i am actually district um and i actually want to talk about both the mask mandate and the little rock virtual

020academies first the mask mandate i think if we were to end the mask mandate now it would be premature currently the cdc does recommend universal masking in all schools this is based on their guidelines that were released halfway through march i don't think lifting the mask mandate before all students have the opportunity to be vaccinated is going to be productive or healthy or create the best learning environment for students especially the students who are coming back into the schools right now because they feel safe i have students who have been virtual learners for most of the year and because there have been a declining cases and they feel safe with the masks in place some of those students are returning to class and these are students who i haven't been able to interact with i'm

021afraid if we lift the mask mandate now those students who feel safe with masks on will return to virtual learning and i will no longer have the ability to educate them in the classroom as well as i do currently shifting gears to talk a little bit about the virtual learning academies um i think having a virtual learning academy is really important and i think it is the right direction for the district um and i think approving them sooner rather than later is going to be crucial for them the success of these programs um but i would also advocate that any approval be contingent on input from a variety of stakeholders from my understanding the committees that were developed that developed the plans you're looking at tonight were solely of administrators so making sure and if

022i'm wrong on that please someone correct me after my three minutes um but i know i i did not see a way for teachers to provide input onto those committees and i asked for that at one point so that's something i just would like to have on your radar to make sure that as those are developed that all stakeholders have ability to comment i know i'm almost out of time but i do know that i'm also a member of the ppc and um the ppc i know this lookie boston normally speaks at our normal meetings she can't be here um and so i did just want to let you know that at our ppc meeting this previous monday there was a a vote made on a motion to recommend from the certified ppc and i'm

023not looking at it directly um but to recommend that from the ppc certified we recommend continue continuing the mask mandate at all times including at recess unless there was a recommendation from a physician or thank you miss prettyman your three minutes is up thank you next next we have miss caitlyn craig and i do not see her listed in the participants but she did send comments as well and since she signed up for speaking i will read her comments um lrsd board my son is in first grade at dunn roberts and i'm respectfully asking that you consider lifting the mass mandate for young kids while they are in single classrooms i understand the need for kids if they are switching classes or in the hall or common areas however i think it's time to reconsider

024making our young kids wear them all day my first graders at a point in his education where where articulation matters and it's impossible to see the mouth movements when learning phonics if his teacher has to wear a mask the students are already confined to one room throughout the day please consider allowing our students to live and learn freely also i strongly encourage the district to move towards a virtual academy next year for any parent not wanting their child to attend school in person our teachers cannot handle the workload of teaching both in person and virtual and our kids education cannot suffer any longer and that concludes all of the public comments president had thank you uh dr owa for that getting into the the first item which is the district uh math mandate uh dr

025orwa do you want to go ahead and read that and then we can go into discussion afterwards yes ma'am i thank you president hatter uh board of directors uh quickly uh of course many of you are aware that uh the arkansas department of ed had sent out communication via commissioner memo about next steps as it relates to districts ready for learning plans and of course the mask mandate and so i quickly want to share that with you of course you can see there are strategies that they list listed and that includes wearing a mask also according to the cdc it recommends that of course the three feet uh minimum distance and classroom setting when everyone is using the mask in that classroom or in that area and in courting and in addition to that individuals

026have to maintain six feet between adults or adults and students when mass cannot be worn and then of course uh during activities that causes heavy breathing or any ex exhaling and and so forth in inhaling and then of course in common areas such as lobbies and auditoriums um in regards to the required mass wearing local districts our school boards will decide to continue modify or eliminate through formal action whether what the mask policy mandate would be for that particular district and then of course it tells you that mass can be taken into consideration when identifying close contacts and there's a diagram that shows that that if everyone is wearing a mask and then that determines the next steps for quarantine that may be mandated and then of course once boards make approval or make a

027decision on the mass mandate that becomes policy those areas that are identified within that motion um districts who have a mass mandate uh if there's a confirmed positive if both the confirmed and the exposed individuals were wearing a properly proper mask then and if uh or if fully vaccinated and not exhibiting symptoms or if fully recovered from coping 19 and are within three months of original diagnosis those will not have to quarantine and so as you can see if everyone is wearing uh the mask or if everyone is fully vaccinated and not exhibiting the cis symptoms then that will determine if those individuals have to be quarantined or not and this is a diagram that i mentioned a few seconds ago and then according to the american rescue plan act the district with board approval

028will have to revise they're ready for learning plan for how to move forward with in-person learning as well as continuity of services for the summer and the fall and of course you will see that plan will be drafted by the learning ready for learning committee uh submitted to a superintendent poor uh for public comment and then it will come to you all when public comment concludes for uh the final revision for the reticle learning plan for summer and fall so the district administration recommends that the lrsd board continues with the district-wide match mandate through july so that we can actually see after the summer months summer learning academies where we are as a community with the vaccines as well as uh with the virus itself and so that's the recommendation at this time and so

029i'll pause there for any questions uh board unmute and i just began uh speaking the people i have i can't see everyone and i'll just direct the uh traffic uh this um the comments or statements should be um comments and questions should be related to the math uh mandate do we have any thoughts yes president hatters uh ally noland um i i just wanted to make a comment and say that up until the public comments tonight i had not gotten any um feedback asking us to remove the mass mandate but i had gotten approximately 10 to 12 messages asking us to keep it in place and so i just wanted to share that with the board and are there any other questions thoughts or comments okay i have a question i have a question for

030mr mr mr porwood would the administration be opposed to uh consideration of a uh an amendment to the mask policy that would allow removal of masks during reading instruction well i'll i'll start with that and then i can have mr smith jump in in particular because of leading the elementary schools some of the concerns that were brought up today we actually have tackled that in a pretty progressive way not only do the the staff have masks that are clear so that you can see you know the the shape of mouths or mouth forming on words but even the students have those type of masks that are available mr smith would you like to add on thank you mr and in addition to the the mask with the clear shields uh we've also installed the uh

031speaker systems which have also allowed uh for projection for teachers to communicate uh clearly uh during phonics lessons uh to support the instruction there as well so are teachers using clear masks during phonics instruction universally in classrooms i've observed i have seen teachers using the face shields so that the students can see the formation of the words and letters with their mouths okay mr wood in addition to that uh our special education department has also purchased the same masks and shields because of that so that our students who are receiving special services would be able to uh see their teachers uh as they go through those uh uh instructional action exercises excuse me yeah okay thank you i have a question um do we have any any shields available for parents or students that can't

032afford to clear shields do we have any that we could pass out or pass along to them i know that for students our curriculum and instruction team led by mrs worsham that was part of the phase one of esther funding to order additional uh shields and mass clear masking shields for our students moving forward and so that's but not uh we did not place that order for parents uh it was only for teachers uh and students okay thank you dr uh oh are there any other uh board members with question thoughts one last point i'd like to make is what um when when the does our april uh when do our april assessments and our testing that's going on right now um let me see we run through pretty much all of the month of

033april because of uh the extended time to make up um but the exact date i can um let me get that to you i'll i'll share that with you the final day the exact final day for testing well i'll take your word you know late april uh and then are we experiencing uh significant more numbers of students in our buildings this month taking tests um than than we've had the previous the previous months of this school year we um let me make sure i understand your uh your question or do we have more students in the building taking the exam that's right assessment um to be honest and i don't want to give you uh an inaccurate number i can get that information for you we do know we had have a couple of schools

034who've seen a decrease in the number of students uh taking the assessments but for the most part the schools all the schools have created plans to for the in-person students as well as the virtual students to take the assessments and so that includes fridays and afternoons and so it's hard to tell because we're in the middle in the midst of testing to have those final numbers but that's that is something that we can share with you all after asses the testing window concludes i think also mr wood that complement the question you've asked is also the fact that the numbers have increased in all three levels of in-person learning at the end of the third quarter so we do have more students on campus as well and then of course we have set up all

035sorts of opportunities for people to make up and do their assessments who are virtual learners so as doctor always said we can get those numbers for you but we do have a lot more people on campus right now too compared to where we were the last time we probably all talked about this as a board thank you thank you director okay um are there any other um thoughts or questions or concerns from the board excuse me miss heater i would uh i'll be prepared to make a motion and make a comment after my motion okay i have a few questions a couple uh just one question and this is actually um triggered by the um with our increased um students on on campus will the uh buses and the lunchrooms um always be monitored more

036um will the district or have the district give any thought to um making sure that the building principles or passing down directives to monitor um children's uh interaction because they're going to be children and they're very touchy and um know why to minimize uh the spread yes uh president that's uh that's correct in their plans that they've worked with uh mr smith and mr rutherford as well as dr cummings for testing they put in those protocols on how they would facilitate the testing environment for the lack of better work for example in order to be able to spread all of the students who were taking the assessment some of the high schools had virtual days for 11th and 12th grade students and then the 9th and 10th graders were on campus to take the assessment

037and they spread them across the building the school building so that they could monitor uh the social distancing uh between or among the students so that was part of their assessment protocol plan that they developed thank you dr owa for um for letting um folks know about how the schools are doing their testing and assessments um i may not have been clear on my question i was asking it for i i was asking as far as the playground the hallways the lunchrooms the common areas um making sure that our our children are staying at a distance and not um that is what i'm speaking about i'm talking about socializing and playing and doing what kids do you know right and and i i understood you correctly that that's part of their plan and so because

038they had an increase of students on campus that was part of their plans to make sure that they monitored uh recess they monitored the cafeteria the halls and so the students i mean well the students were notified of the expectations the students who returned back to campus but the principals also made sure to reiterate the expectations for physical distancing uh throughout the school day in building okay great and my last question and this is just for the common good um just to hear the uh respect response from the district um when a person is out being tested for possible covet um are they to remain off campus until the results come back in yes okay and and there's uh and of course that protocol is outlined in our district ready for learning uh plan but

039uh they're also supposed to contact immediately contact our point of contact and that's the procedures that nurse uh bushmeyer and uh mr self will walk them through uh with quarantines uh they expect expected excuse me uh uh misconception word expected quarantine procedures okay great and then you will act after all this is approved we will you guys will uh do the american rescue plan act and have it posted right by the 15th um so our public could do a comment and do everything that we need to do with that right that's correct yes okay all right so uh given that there are uh there there's mrs i'm sorry can i ask you a follow-up question based on something you just asked um so doctor oh it just caught my attention because miss hatter asked a

040question about people um quarantining if they are tested and staying home until those test results come back um i know that i think the board recently discussed this at one point and the question that came up was about is that a blanket policy or is it based on you know is it based on the circumstances that led that person to be tested um you know if if a teacher or staff member just chooses to go get tested do they automatically stay home or is that um based on the circumstances like their exposure that indicated that they needed to be tested and i think it i think it is important ms hatter asks that question and i think it's very important for us to be clear um on what that policy is because it does have

041implications for the employees about whether they should come to work or not right and and you're correct but there's also the procedures that we continue to rea recover i mean to cover with and to reiterate with the staff members about if you if you're a close contact then uh you're supposed to contact well the our point of contact uh mr self and nurse bushmeyer will contact any close contact of any exposed or person who tested positive now i will be clear that with the covet leave that you all voted upon i voted on that if a person cannot self quarantine without going through the district's uh established procedures because if they do then they are not qualified for the covet leave per uh the policy that was put in place and so if a person

042uh felt like they were close contact then they're supposed to immediately contact our pocs and then they will do the investigation to determine if they need to quarantine or not okay thank you okay all right uh thank you um educational leaders for uh the conversation and questions director adams yes i'd like to make a motion and then and speak to my emotion afterwards but i would move that we adopt the administration's recommendation to continue the mass mandate through july do we have a second to uh mr director adam's motion to adopt the uh recommended proposal by the district through july of 21. director johnson's second director johnson have second all in favor if i might make my own i'm so sorry i questioned yeah yes thank you miss hatter i want to acknowledge the the

043concerns of the of the folks and i'm my experience has been similar to miss nolan's that it's been a minority of people that uh have heard who wanted to discontinue the mass mandate but i think it's a real concern for people that they would like to be done with it it's tiresome it's annoying it gets in the way of communication i don't think there's any doubt about that and i don't think anybody denies that the question is is the priority and what are we to do at this point and it's certainly we are glad that there is there are now vaccines that are available and that has been made available to our to our staff although those are people can choose whether or not to do that but i think that with the cdc guidance

044that we have with the with the risk that children although there are not as likely to be infected and get seriously ill it is still a risk and the risk that people can that children and um can still infect family members and we don't know how many of our family members moms dads grandparents other people at home you know could still be at risk and our responsibility to the community at large and with the the difference of quarantine guidelines where we could keep kids in the school and teachers in the school and in education better if we continue the mass mandate i think that with balancing all those things out that it's the most responsible thing to do at this point um and i would hope i think probably most of us would hope that

045maybe we could make a different plan for the fall but there's no way to know you know what the conditions will be then and we'll have to wrestle with that at that time but um but it seemed at this point we're just not far enough we're still in the pandemic we are not out of it and and i think it's the responsible thing to continue it mr adams i'm going to jump on after if you don't mind and just share that one other thing that we are as a district are doing also is continuing our effort to push uh and make everyone aware of shot clinics um so you know we can we push that out through pam obviously to our public but we also have a survey out this week for what family members

046are saying about getting their 16 through 18 year olds a shot and then we hope to have a plan in place so that the first round of shots for our students can happen before the end of the april so that we can get the second shot in before they leave in may so we're trying to be very proactive to enhance quote that herd mentality but to mr adams point of you know where do we get safe remember that's supposed to be at about 80 percent of uh to get to a herd mentality of folks that have the vaccine we're a long ways away from that as a community madam president i'd like to speak to the motion if that's okay okay um i i support the motion and i plan to vote in favor of

047it as well i i believe that uh things are going relatively well in our schools as it relates to the the cases that we're seeing uh right now but i don't believe that the the risk of disrupting the end of our school year and disrupting the assessments that are going on right now in april uh are are worth the uh the the convenience that would come with removing the masks as as much as my kids would like to have them gone and as much as i'm ready for them to be gone truthfully you can't go anywhere in the community without still having to wear your mask even in light of the governor's recent policy change and so i i don't see how wearing them at at school is that much different than wearing them anywhere

048else that that we go in the community i would also say this though that when it comes to the summer's question um i'm i'm starting out as a hard no on continuing the mask mandate absent significant evidence to convince me to the contrary but i think that we should finish this year with the way we're going and finish strong and then and be prepared to start strong in august hey closing out discussions okay so um director adams made a motion to just to recap for everybody director adams made a motion to to accept the district's recommendation to continue our mass mandate on mass through july of 2021. director johnson seconded we went into discussion and now we're at the vote all in favor aye aye aye okay it passed unanimous miss unanimously and um and

049so uh there you go it is a favorable vote for our district continuing with our mass mandate thank you guys for that up next we have it's still an action item it is our digital learning um academy and dr owa will present and then we'll go into discussion thank you president uh board of directors last month the team the committee i presented you the tentative plans of our k-12 digital learning academy and so we wanted to present it to you as an action item so that we can meet the first may 1st deadline for our digital learning academy application that has to be submitted to arkansas department of ed as well as any staffing changes would need to be made prior to may 1st as well we did start the committees led by mrs karen

050heatherly as well as mrs stephanie franklin have started a frequently asked questions document and that will be ongoing but we wanted to make sure that you realize that this plan was not done in isolation both committees the k-6 as well as the 7-12 committee had school levels uh at all schools their guiding coalition teams that includes teachers but they've also had parents and community members to participate in providing feedback prior to presenting this to you last month and so we have had community input as well as personnel our staff member team members input and we'll continue to do that past this point we also want to make sure we reiterate that all of our teachers all of our instruction will be taught by little rock school district teachers who are certified for that content area

051and that we will those teachers will deliver and design those lessons the instruction now we will have different tools that they could utilize uh such as an approved digital curriculum but it will be delivered on our learning management system that all of our students and teachers have been utilizing this year which is schoology but they will be teacher-created lessons um that will be delivered both for the synchronous and asynchronous learning environment but i will want to be make sure that we're transparent that depending on the credit recovery needs for our secondary students they will continue to utilize the approved digital delivery tool that the schools utilize for credit recovery and we also want to make sure that we reiterate the the options for students not just our current students because that's important to make sure

052we have a virtual learning environment digital learning environment for students who we currently serve but also students with outside the district we know that sometimes parents and students to choose home schools the home school choice because of the academic flexibility and the parent and student input that they will have in court as well as the family environment and flexibility of the learning space and we want to show our community who have not yet chosen little rock that they have these options inside the little rock school district and so we will continue to provide the efficient learning the meaningful learning at the comfort of any learning environment that that parent and student choose but the advantage for students who are not currently our our students but also our current students is that those students will be

053able to graduate with the little rock school district diploma because at this point the students are still tied to their home schools and so they will still graduate with that school's diploma as well as they have the option to participate participate in the district's extracurricular activities as well as any support services that they may need and and so those are the advantages for new students as well as our current students we want to continue to provide flexibility and it's just not because of the pandemic pandemic but we know that one thing that clover19 has shown is that we need to provide a variety of learning environments because our students have a variety of learning styles and we have instructional staff who are already trained and are eager to be trained more in the virtual learning

054environment digital learning environment and so we want to make sure that we provide an additional learning environment for our students to excel but also our staff our personnel staff to showcase their expertise and enhance their capacity by providing personalized learning self-paced courses that are geared toward college and career and the opportunity for students to have flexibility in case they want to do internships or on-the-job training they can also have flexibility uh with their school day by choosing the digital learning environment so the district is recommending that you all our district our board of directors approve the implementation of the digital learning academy for our k-12 students starting fy 22 for the new school year president okay we will open it up for um for questions have some but i hate to always go first does

055anybody else want to jump in and no if that's how it went that go ahead please um okay so um one question you just answered but i want to make sure that we're very clear on it the teachers for this would be teaching in areas for which they have certain content areas for which they have certification there wouldn't be um outside that's correct okay um there was some discussion about use of synchronous and asynchronous um i've even seen it discussed in the media about whether or not these are good terms to use um i wanted to address that really quickly one i agree that it's the words that the vast majority of people do not have a familiarity with and it can be difficult it makes it less approachable to understand this topic um there

056are also words that are i have found the accepted standard um language when we're when we're dealing with uh virtual education and help me just so that everybody who's watching understands make sure that i am correct synchronous is when it's live education it is happening at the same time the teacher is teaching and the children are learning at the same time so like a zoom like this like this right this right here yes ma'am but asynchronous is something where they upload the content so the you know the assignments the videos the reading assignments all those sorts of things and the child can progress at their own pace is that correct that's correct it's like the fact that we're recording this uh this session right here and so we will post this session to schoology and

057then the students will then be able to log in at night to review the uh video as well as the assignments and complete the assignments and submit it and then that's the asynchronous so my question because i'm going to use those words and i just want to make sure that i had a good understanding of what they were and we were all on the same page and there was some discussion at the last meeting about you know these are literal teachers they are going to create the content they are going to provide it but for some of the asynchronous instruction where the students are progressing at their own pace there would be content available that is um content that we get from other sources and is that is that correct and then i have a

058follow-up yes that's that's definitely correct uh but it's it's a bank of tools that the teachers would be able to utilize so it wouldn't be like what most experienced last spring uh even if the digital curriculum was at momentum our teachers would dictate what parts to pull in from edmonton uh because it has some great parts but it by itself is not feasible for our kids and so our little rock school district teachers would be able to because they're still responsible even if the student chooses a secretness they're still going to be tied to a teacher and that teacher is still the teacher of record for that student and has the responsibility of providing a sound educational experience but they would probably utilize more tools for the asynchronous students than they would with the synchronous

059students because they are actually engaging in real time with the students uh uh who chose the synchronous format okay so that actually leads right into the follow up question i have which is that are these two separate tracks that families are going to have to choose synchronous versus asynchronous or is there you know i would just say my experience this year as a parent of a virtual student has been it was a mix we have daily zooms but we also had asynchronous material that my child could move through on their own and so i'm a little confused about are we having two totally separate tracks and one is all synchronous learning and one is all asynchronous or is it a mix okay yes so it could possibly more so the synchronous students could have a

060mix of additional assignments outside of that actually classroom experience so it could be like most of our students are experiencing now but the asynchronous would have they they would have to opt into that because our teachers would have to know and our administrators would have to know how to uh configure their attendance and so we have to have a set uh schedule for those students and so yes they would have to opt in to the synchronous or asynchronous so that we would know how to deliver their instruction and of course uh for accountability purposes that's you keep leading right into the so the third i had it down is my third question but i don't know how many i've gotten so far the next question or the last question i have here is um how

061will these students their test scores their attendance their grades be counted or credited since they are enrolled in their home school will those grades you know my concern is that i don't want a student who is struggling with this virtual academy um i mean i don't want our students to be struggling we need to address that immediately no matter what but i am concerned about um holding for example their home school accountable if that school doesn't actually have much um ability to change what's happening in terms of their virtual education all right well i would tell you that they there will be definitely an open communication between the virtual teachers and administrators with the students home school we we've discussed that the committees have discussed that but those students are still tied to their home

062school because the virtual the digital learning academy will not have an lea and so assessments grades everything will go back to their home school but but there will be ongoing communication and updates between the digital learning academy and the home school environment but we wanted to make sure that students had the ability to participate in extracurricular activities as well as any activity that's triple a sanctioned and to do that they would have to be tied back to their home school okay i'm going to request that we keep records if this is approved if we move forward with commercial academy so that down the road if there are questions about whether or not the scores and the attendance and things like that have um had any detrimental effect on the home school things like i want

063to make sure that we have the ability to have that information that data so i'm going to ask that we somehow collect that in a way that we can review how it is impacting the home school and director nolan um i believe miss heavily was one of the uh administrators that mentioned that's that's part of the digital learning academy plan is to keep ongoing data on uh how our students are performing in the virtual and they will do it more often because that will determine if the student if if the teachers and the principals will have to have a conference with the uh student and the parents about a change in the structural environment if they need to go back to the in-person uh learning environment so that's going to happen throughout the school year

064and so that would be individual monitoring uh that would take place so we would have that data so guess what are there any other questions from the board i had a question uh dr uh there is uh another presentation you talked about a commitment a required commitment uh what that required commitment what is that is it 12 months six months we we are asking so that we can streamline staff and be able to really track our student not track our students but be able to provide the most ideal instruction environment that parents and students commit to at least a year one of the proposals for elementary says semester but even with that in order for us to really effectively streamline teaching staff and staff schools effectively based on the students who will be in person

065versus the students who would be uh in the digital learning environment we really need our parents to commit to a year unless there's an extenuating circumstance and that's what the plan talked about if there's an extenuating circumstance such as uh change in the home environment uh students are not doing well academically then we would uh take that into account to make sure we make the very best decision decision for our young person and so but we're asking for at least a year commitment uh so that we could we won't be overstaffed uh either virtually or uh in the on site so so will you have will there be counselors for the online versus the in school yes sir uh that's the plan so that and those counselors would receive just like the teachers in the

066digital learning academy professional development that's geared toward how to support students who are in the digital or virtual and learning environment and so yes we will have those support services there so let me let me if i'm doing virtual all the way up into my senior year and i say i want to go to i want to go into the school my senior year will will that there be an opportunity for a seat or a person to do that to do that unless you all uh change our plans in the next couple of years as it stands now based on these plans uh the students will have that opportunity to return back to their home school uh the next year at any time that next year or the year after all right madam president yes

067director one question and if i missed it in your presentation i apologize dr owa do we have a thumb on as of right now what our enrollment might be uh next year as as you know have we gauged interest as of now and then do we have a projection of if this is approved what it could go up to um to be honest uh mr wood uh no it's just more so qualitative instead of quantitative because uh we did not want this enrollment process uh which take place after a favorable approval from you all favorable decision from you all and so we have not uh started any process that would give us some tangible numbers at this point we just we've like i said just qualitative of parents asking if we would uh offer it

068for next year uh parents responding saying that they hope we do such as some of the community or public comments that i shared with you all tonight fair enough okay um okay hearing a scene there aren't any other comments um i do have a few questions um i know we have um spoken about um the various stakeholders that were that were involved and how were um administrators and lead teachers um uh involved in creating this plan uh can you one share um very briefly about how how how um principals and teachers were involved and then schools and then if you know whether it's geographical area of the city or actual school names yes ma'am uh hopefully everyone can see my screen as you can see the elementary digital can everyone see my screen yes i

069can't i don't know about what else elementary digital learning academy uh this is just one of their meeting minutes where you can see the focus group attendees the parent and guardian participants you will see we have representatives from booker carver fulbright chico gibbs pulaski heights stevens terry and exactly what took place during that meeting as well as questions about students and their participation we've also the elementary principles uh and that um actual committee sent out links for each school to provide uh input and so as you would see if i click uh clicked on uh bail since that's number one you will see that their teams at that level were able to provide feedback to the district committee that encompassed our school school leaders school educators and so their input was also uh incorporated into

070the report that you all uh received last week i mean last month there's another meeting minutes that will show you who all were involved and then i believe there was a pen uh right here so the uh for the secondary uh you will see the high schools who received the opportunity or who had the opportunities to provide feedback their team members teachers staff members and then same with hall and the feedback that were given from their their teams at each level so we um i hope that answered your question about uh who were the individuals who were able to provide input because at both the elementary and secondary level they were all it was more than just an administrator or a group of administrators who provided input and feedback on the development of the plans

071that were presented to you last month okay and then as far as the parent meetings um how did how how how did parents find out about these uh meanings where it was with a message sent out to all virtual current virtual parents or was it by invite only or school-wide city uh district-wide how how did that happen well the uh each group uh had their own process of getting pam feedback they use social media uh to get parent input they also utilize uh surveys uh and then they also ask the individual schools i know secondary did this as individual schools to get feedback from their parents and students uh to provide that in their overall report and so it was uh via survey via social media um let me i have my notes i'm trying

072to make sure i cover all the areas team i know i hope darion and randy are on here if i uh forgotten any other part if you can chime in that would be great yes uh each on secondary um the uh request was for every principal by february 15th uh to provide names and contact information for at least two parents by the end of the day february 19th and so they had parents who would provide who actually served on focus groups and other parents who attended the meeting uh grade levels represented to them this is on secondary six of the parents represented represented grades seven and eight seven of the parents represented grades nine and twelve and then six of the eight uh parents were african-american two of the eight were caucasian and so those

073were some of the stats or demographics that we had for them and then of course like i said elementary utilized social media facebook a group to obtain feedback as well okay and uh great and then this is just for the public and going back to another um reference uh their their will from what the overview says there will be um weekly uh monitoring from what it says in in the overview and then if students drop below 70 percent uh they will be required to participate in some type of in intervention um i think director would or mason asked about uh the agreement and then that will come um and then and and then when when will the agreement or or else the requirements come the uh expectation is the expectations once um if it's approved

074uh when uh if and when it's approved then based on the plan that we've presented to you the contract the expectations will be listed and that will be part of the student enrollment process and so as the students opt and parents opt into the digital learning academy they would have to sign the expectations and to know that if the students are not performing academically then a meeting will be held for a discussion on uh the best instructional environment for that particular young person okay and then we also talked a little bit about what we talked um a bit about digital equity and making sure that um whether you know because there's a requirement for cameras being on and making sure that students have the um devices and um being able to have access to be

075able to participate and then uh will that be a ongoing um assessment number for those children that are participating in learning virtually like as far as making sure they they are getting um have access to be able to participate um right if wherever they're at they are not you know make making making sure there is um continual equity and within the digital environment yes ma'am that's that's part of the plan because we want to make sure that all of our students have the opportunity if they so choose to participate in the digital learning academy so we will provide the high spots we provide of course the chromebook if anything that comes up and that's that's part of the training that our counselors our teachers our ministries will go through of signs to look for if

076students are not engaged in that particular uh learning environment that would be the digital learning environment and so we they would do monthly not monthly uh continuing continual checks on the students in their progress and in fact one of the plans i believe the secondary both plans said that they would have the counselors will do monthly checks uh in check-ins with the students uh just to see how they're progressing um and not just academically but socially and emotionally as well okay thank you that concludes my line of questioning for you all on uh surrounding that are there i i did do a a quick scan or can i superintendent yeah thank you and and i just want to uh share with our public that our our board members also have been on tours where they've

077gotten to hear uh staff members share their frustrations sometimes of being having to deliver both virtual and in-person learning at the same time so our you as a board you know are well prepared i think tonight to either determine to move forward or not and i wanted the public to understand how you've invested not only what's happened in the board beans but actually through these tours of getting to talk to individuals about it so appreciate that and then the last thing i will share as a pitch is just in my mind this really allows us to cater and and utilize the strengths not only the strengths of what a learner comes into the game with in terms of them being a virtual learner or an in-person learner but also for those that are educators of

078being able to utilize their strengths because some truly are really gifted at being delivering uh the virtual aspect of education so we're kind of setting ourselves up i think to utilize our strengths in a in a very unique way that i think is going to be very attractive to our public thank you miss hatter thank you um so um this is closing out our um board uh discussion i'm sorry uh director hacker um if it's all right uh mr poor for the benefit of the public i want to make sure can you speak very briefly is this financially a good move for the district it is my understanding that this will help us with our goal of having a balanced budget um and i just want to have you address that yeah absolutely in in

079kind of a couple different ways we think that one thing that is possible with this is that as we share the option that it might attract students or let us partner with families who maybe currently aren't accessing um you know little rock school district and that would allow them that access into our system and into some of our clubs and activities as well so that's positive uh on the other side we believe that we will be able to utilize uh some of our esr funding that we have received from the federal level to assist with our staffing with this model because they then help develop the virtual platforms uh that can be used that are necessary even for yes of our in person they're going to enrich our curriculum for virtual learning and so that

080ends up becoming you know a help with us for our staff because you probably all know we're trying to tighten staffing in the district but there are going to need to be educators that get assigned to virtual learning and we think those educators for virtual learning will be able to be paid initially from escrow funding and i think that that is one of the attractive things about this is that we're able to uh try out or utilize this platform or introduce it to the district and not allow allow it to come out of uh general funds so that's one good thing about using esser buns um i'm i'm scanning the top of my screen making sure are you guys ready we're ready do we can we get emotion are we ready to have a motion

081on the proposed recommendation from the district and do we have a director to make that motion madam chair i'll move that we adopt the administration's uh proposal to move forward with the digital learning academy next year hey director wood has just made a motion to adopt the district's proposal on the virtual learning academy for next year do we have a second i'll second the motion okay director mason have second the emotion do we have any um thoughts or statements or um last-minute comments are questions i would just comment uh president hattard i think if we're going to be a a a 21st century school district i think this is a piece of what we need to do um i would like to know uh will this uh cause anyone to lose their job the virtual

082academy we'll actually i'll take that on and actually we actually think this is going to help us with some of our displaced teachers remember we are not terminating or reducing any force this year we are tightening our staffing through attrition and this will give an option for staff members of a place for them to find a home okay you know in the past okay there was a such thing as uh well of course this is no longer exists because we've gone from 100 pages to 10. um if um you're not going by seniority or anything like that as far as uh uh placing uh teachers in jobs and one and one another question i have from a constituent was uh what about are you going to be pushing older teachers out now sure and again

083i'll start with the second question is that we are not pushing anyone out we have had staff members during the course of the year over a hundred staff members who have resigned or retired during the year and currently we're approximately ballpark around 50 staff members who have turned in letter of intent not to return so you know with all those things in place we we do not have to do any type of reduction in force and that is not in our plan so no one is being pushed out and for older teachers there are older teachers that have been really skilled at virtual delivery and uh they have the option to say that they want to take this on and we have young ones that would rather be in person so it's really an option

084of the staff the jobs will be posted and anyone can apply there is no age discrimination of any sort uh and we feel like we'll have a as typical in little rock a very blended staff uh that will be taking part in delivering this instruction superintendent if i could just briefly uh chime in with that uh director calloway mrs callaway yes we have some phenomenal teachers who have been teaching 20 25 30 plus years who are doing exceptional job uh jobs with teaching uh virtually and so our goal is to make sure though we get those teachers who love doing it and who are great at doing it to apply for these positions um and so it's it's open to everyone who would like to apply um and uh who's and and so i just

085wanted to make sure that i stress that we've witnessed innovative instruction from all of our age groups throughout the district so i just wanted to this was if i understand correctly we're just good i want to be able to make a comment about um i am voting for this and i want to say publicly why um i think one thing that hasn't really been mentioned a lot is that we are losing students uh to a virtual charter school and to homeschooling we can now provide that service we can provide that within the district people can have the option of supporting their local school district and receive that content virtually without having to go elsewhere and this will also be as it was said good for our teachers so they will not have to do both

086um good for parents who next year want to have a virtual option um and financially good for the district and so ultimately i think it is a good plan i know that there are concerns about how it continues to develop down the road and i would just say that when we you know for example open a new school or some you know southwest high school it's not hands off after that the board and the district and the ppc who is making you know helping have input on policies continue to have input and that will be the same for this this is not something that once we approve it it is something that we walk away from um and so i just wanted to make that point as well but i do think it is a

087good plan for our teachers for the district as a whole and to be able to provide something to students through the district that they are currently going elsewhere to get go ahead um i would echo the comments of uh director adams and director nolan both make great points about this this allows this positions us to be more competitive in an environment when we are competing for every single student and we we can't afford to lose even one percent of our students because we didn't offer a virtual option for them next year so i i look forward to this being a successful model uh in the next few years i hope that it is something that that may put the virtual academy out of business i believe that the traditional public schools have an opportunity to

088have a natural opportunity to put charter schools out of business when things are equal academically between them because this gives students in our city an opportunity to be part of a virtual environment but still be connected to a traditional public school when it comes to athletics and extracurricular activities and i think that that has an opportunity to create a lot of pride among among those students that are that are virtual learners i will say this and i'll challenge mr poor and his team on this that this has to be excellent this this can't just be okay we we have to continue to push the envelope and getting good at this last last semester or i'm sorry not last semester last spring was a challenging spring we learned a lot from that over the over the

089summer and we implemented a much better plan in the fall and this academic year has been better than last last spring was this year has had challenges though and i i hope that we will continue to learn from those challenges and that as we dive face first into this virtual academy and embrace it as part of a a a more permanent part of the world school district i hope that it will continue to improve and continue to improve and and and deliver a great educational opportunity for for our students okay um director morning here i just want to see if you could speak on what subjects will be available for virtual learning will be all subjects or what i don't want to say this morning all because it depends on the needs but we definitely

090want to uh offer the 38 that's that's required now some hesitation uh about the ap classes depending on what what needs to be offered will be will be offered but we want to make sure we offer definitely a 38 because our students need those to to be able to graduate and complete uh high school and move on from there to be eligible to graduate but we also want to make sure we offer as many as possible but to keep in mind one of the reasons one of the advantages for our students to be tied to the uh to their home school is that any extracurricular activities like band acquire they'll be able to participate in those large group uh activities as well but our goal is to offer the content areas and hopefully some specialty

091areas as well okay well and just to be clear you said you're not sure if we'll offer ap classes no not all uh we will offer ap classes not all the whole gamut of ap classes and that's where uh the example of utilizing the additional tools of resources for example uh some of the virtual academy courses like we've done this year if we had a smaller number of and well and not just this year previous years if we've had a small number of students who would like to take a course then having one course from virtual academy provides that opportunity uh to uh to provide that offer that course for our students and hope worship ms worsham did you want to add to that i was just going to add and in the event that

092there's a student who really wants to take like for example one ap course um it may be that we partner with the home school that that student then attends that one course on campus or we find a way for that student to attend that course virtually um pending if the teacher you know agrees to that and we can work that out so there may be some extenuating circumstances like that where we do utilize um some creative options for students so that they can get those courses it's worse uh director callaway speaking uh what about elected subjects will they be offered yes ma'am they will have access to a set of elective courses so for example there will be cte courses that students will have access to and um some of those again will be offered

093via will utilize arkansas virtual which is um the arkansas provided virtual academy that we can utilize for some of our courses and then some of those will be taught by little art school district teachers so it will just depend on the course and the availability of instructors there and i did have a couple of more questions um so with the uncertainty of what courses would be offered what like what date would you all have that in mind and would the public be able to receive that list yes so we do yeah we do plan to um the approval tonight but put out a list of what would be available course options uh at the virtual school particularly for secondary yep yeah what i'm saying in regards to the ap questions that you're unsure about if

094you will offer like when would that be determined who it just happened right so students have already made but filled out their course selection sheet so based on their course selection sheets we would try as best possible to match that up um in the event that it can't be matched up then it would just be a conversation with the student about what their options are um in taking classes can i make a statement too i think we got off track a little bit here in the fact that if a student signs up for an ap course we're going to find a way to deliver the ap course it just may mean a different delivery than having a little rock teacher do it because it the teachers are driven by an overall capacity within a classroom

095so we have to sometimes be creative of where we find the solution for them to take a class that might be an elective or an ap course but we're going to get their schedules complete because that's going to create the customer satisfaction that we all want okay and one more question is it possible that after the list is distributed that more courses could be added during the year typically when students make their course selections it's you're choosing the course for a year or for a semester so i don't foresee there being a massive change in the offerings um but it could be uh there are some options for students too if they want to accelerate just like in our regular schools now there's options for them to take courses maybe via byu or other avenues

096um throughout the year on top of the coursework they're taking in school now and this morning there is an option for year to year and of course uh selection to change uh but because of personnel placement as well as student offerings when they lock in their schedule during the year that's less likely to happen but from year to year the course selection could develop to add more ap courses or any type of courses based on the student needs and wants um uh miss worsham does the public have a um will the public be able to know what what courses they just need to go to their regular high school or whatever school to find out what courses are going to be offered right so i'd love to get that information there yeah so the state

097yeah exactly the students have uh right now are in the middle of course selection and so um those the course offerings that are out and available now is where um anyone should look right now okay miss callaway that was really a great question because i just texted dr ola to say that so is that you know the reality is that these kids have already picked their courses and they all got to have the same course selection that every other secondary student did so every course was open to them and then now we have to see which students really want to access this virtual academy and then we've got to go cater to meeting their needs through staffing or through using other programs thank you for that question which is why we need to move forward

098on a vote to where it could be an option to choose um to come into the virtual academy and what if the board decides to approve the district's recommendation to implement the digital learning academy um so yeah so all of our secondary children are still selecting their courses right now some of them are have already started and then um and then we will and then the district will hear a pair pair them up um well so let me make sure that i see uh director calorie is still unmuted uh we're close done i'm done okay okay so um and then of course uh we will hope sorry one one of the um things i do want to make sure i always add is because of this being a digital platform making sure that equity is

099um digital equity not digital equality but also digital equity is is a part of um moving forward and then a part of the ongoing assessment of it all so what have happened since since um the motion was made and was second um i'm trying to recall who made the motion just for the record so michael could capture it um remember richard wood was that you who made the motion yes okay okay in our second okay great thank you so director wood made may have made the motion to um accept and move forward with the district's um recommendation of the implement to implement our learning the the digital learning academy uh for our k-12 students that was seconded by director mason we went into discussion and now we're at the vote so all in favor president

100uh director woodson used the term k-12 you you are absolutely correct uh he made the motion to accept the recommendation of the uh digital learning academy the actual recommendation does say k-12 but he did not use that so yes and uh director mason seconded we had discussion and now we're at the vote all in favor aye aye all right so it looks like that passes unanimously i'm going to get that correct um and so moving forward okay all right so uh moving forward on our agenda the third item is is the district report uh this report is will be on salaries uh compensation and it will be a review it's it's not an action item and then we'll go into the uh plc's uh mr robert robinson will uh present to us and um then

101we'll go into any questions or discussion about what we hear from uh mr uh robertson on the salary compensation so um if everyone could mute your mics until the end of his presentation then we'll come back and have a discussion superintendent uh will uh introduce or carry us into the presentation on salaries thank you so much miss hatter and board members we know that many of you talked about this as you work to get elected and share that this would be one of the things that you really wanted to see happen within the district was compensation packages for our employees we know that we also have to kind of continue to build your base knowledge on you know where we're at within these processes to impact both certified and classified staff as well as some

102of our administrative staff we've tried to be very comprehensive in terms of our approach of really working collaboratively on both ends and one of the things that we know um we'll go and go to the next slide is that you know the what we've got to do in order to do this is we've we've got to when you talk about given a salary increase especially in a time when you have some decline enrollment that you've got to be able to be really good stewards with all of your resources so i want to share upfront with all of you is that you know i don't see you actually making a vote on this probably until after we approve the budget in september that could come in september you'll you'll see and hear us talk that that's

103really when we want to have this all framed up for you but then you have your choice to do that in september october november when we do come forward to the recommendation for salary we can always make it retro back to the start of the year but we're excited because we're at a place where we think we're going to be able to execute all this and do the right things to make it happen [Music] for some employees it's been you know over 20 years since they've had uh some sort of change in their compensation for our teachers they did get an increase most recently because of action by our governor and our legislative body that moved us forward with moving our minimum pay up to thirty six thousand dollars um interestingly enough there were some

104districts that still haven't executed the funds that were provided by the governor to move forward and that's because they weren't financially sound enough to be able to take that on so you know there is because it was just a gift to get us through that first year but then you have to be ready to be committed to the salary on down the line so remember whatever we make in terms of adjustments it's a gift that keeps on giving especially when it's a percent increase and for employees a percent increase is gold because that is something that that continues to enhance over their career and you probably have that within your own professional lives as well so as we look at this we know that you know our teachers have really really basically all of the

105educators within the little rock school district we we feel like it's time to try to come forward with a a system but at the same time we're doing things to work with everyone to you know be really smart about our budget reductions you're going to continue to hear more about that from mr bailey and myself this month next month and all the way up through september to justify that we have accomplished the goals we want to make sure that all employees are getting this increase and we want to make sure that um what we come up with is really easy to understand not only for our public but also for people that are looking at us to possibly choose the little rock school district to be the place where they're employed if you go to

106the next slide our teacher compensation plan that we've been working on this has not been done in isolation it has been done with members of the ppc i appreciate the efforts of mr robinson and mr bailey our cfo for their work on this this actually some of this plan and work really began even more than almost three years ago with our our teacher association now continues with the ppc um you can see here that what we've done is we're trying to say we're going to be competitive and what we ultimately would like to do is that we'd like to get our salary up into that 000 range and try to do that within the next two years um two school years so that's a lofty target but we think we can get there if we

107if we stay diligent and we're going to have to work with all of you to do that that will include some right sizing and and possibly some difficult decisions but as shared in the previous presentation that on the point that miss callaway brought up we are not doing any type of thing where we're telling somebody you're you're terminated you're fired right now but we're trying to take advantage of employees that have left us kind of through a natural process of retirements or that they've left to go take different jobs that we've got to be disciplined then to tighten our staffing and really appreciate the efforts then of uh dr ola mr rutherford and mr smith because they've been working on trying to create those plans of what is the appropriate size and we're we're working

108to to be ready to execute that we've even put on a semi-hiring freeze right now to make sure that we are set to go um and and and really honor internal candidates to hire and fill positions as we need them as jobs come open the other thing that you can see here is we also know that uh stipends are another issue that haven't been touched um approximately um a year ago at this time we increased our head coaching salaries for football basketball volleyball and they had not been touched since 1985. stipends for athletics have not been touched since 1985. so we actually regressed as a district and weren't competitive we will need to continue to do that so all these things are being set up to uh impact us what we would love to do

109when it gets right down to it is that we'd like to hopefully come in uh this year with a sizable percent increase uh for teachers and then we also know that we want to come in with a percent increase for our staff that are not educators to that effect um approximately again a little more than a year ago the district entered into a contract an agreement with the mag group as you can see the management advisory group and their task was to really dive in and you're going to hear in detail mr campbell's process of trying to understand a little bit more in depth of you know how what's the best way to move forward on compensation for employees who aren't teachers so i'm going to turn it over to mr campbell right now actually

110mr robinson did you want to introduce mr campbell before we turn it to him yes please uh mr russell campbell is the vice president for mag management advisory group the company has an excellent track record working with uh school districts and prior to uh contracting with mag they became the families and so prior to making the offer we did uh research and the most recent district we talked to the atlanta public schools and i think meg is currently working with the houston isd so they have an excellent track record working with small and large school districts as well as working with city government this time mr russell campbell uh good evening madam president uh other board members uh mr campbell if i may say if i may interrupt you uh dr hawai'i slide eight you

111can scroll up to slide eight exactly thank you okay all right uh good evening madam president uh other board members mr poor and staff uh as mr robinson said i served as the director for this project that started about 12 and a half months ago and what i want to do tonight is take you through our findings as to where the district currently stands with its current system relative to some selected school districts that the district and marriage agreed to compare uh little rock to as well as talk about some of the recommendations going forward i will say that throughout this process everyone that we came in contact with on the staffing from administration to support personnel were very helpful and instrumental in getting this uh project moving forward and so we're going to go

112ahead and go through some of the basics of compensation and talk some specifics that are unique to a little rob next slide please the study in terms of purpose and objectives included approximately 1800 positions both full and part-time these were the non-teaching positions often referred to as the the classified positions in terms of different job titles there are about 300 different job titles that encompass uh this group of employees our task was to uh not only look at the job duties and responsibilities within the district to rank them to ensure that there was internal equity among the jobs but also to conduct a market uh review to make sure that externally speaking what we came back with was going to put the district in a competitive position to be able to uh compete and field

113vacancies uh within the district as a part of that process we had the employees fill out a comprehensive online job questionnaire that asked them to document their duties responsibilities the requirements for their specific positions in terms of education experience any unique certifications that they had to hold the questionnaires were reviewed by their supervisors supervisors did not have the option to change any information that was submitted by the employee but they could add commentary or additional information we use that questionnaire to rank the jobs internally and we also use that questionnaire to develop new comprehensive job descriptions for the school district and to conduct a fair labor standards acts review to determine which positions should be considered exempt or non-exempt for the purposes of overtime pay next slide we looked out into the marketplace uh we

114agreed to survey uh several districts uh we contacted them uh provided uh a list of what we call benchmark jobs we do the job analysis on all 300 positions we do the market survey on a sample a representative sample and so the organizations or other districts that we looked at the majority of them were in the state of arkansas but we looked at some similar districts that had some similar characteristics that were outside of the state of arkansas so moving forward with that list we started with springdale school district north little rock school district richmond public schools in virginia which is pretty much identical in terms of student population uh to the little rock school district uh we also looked at shelby county temp uh schools which is in memphis tennessee conway public schools in

115arkansas we also looked at the city of little rock as an employer because the city does have similar positions in areas like finance and hr and i.t so you compete with the city for those type of skill sets we also looked at the polanski county special school district atlanta public schools and the cato parish school district in louisiana that last note there says o net online private sector data source for the public schools we simply can file a four-year request for the information that we need and they provide us with their salary schedules and pay information unfortunately the private sector is not bound by those statutes or regulations so we take a different approach to see what's being paid in the private sector for jobs like a computer technician or hvac heating and american technician

116a mechanic or a secretary those type of positions and so we use the federal department of labor's bureau of labor statistics database that provides private sector wage and salary information for each region of the country each state and each region within the state so that we can ensure that we have a good feel of what's been paid out in the private market uh for those jobs that do exist within the district and so we collected information from those organizations for those 50 benchmark positions imagine if you will we take the information from the job analysis from that questionnaire where we look to compare the duties and responsibilities of all the employees to our 14 point criteria where we look at things like data that they work with records reports charts could be a budget document

117uh could be a maintenance report instant report we look at education experience that is needed for the position not necessarily what the employee holds we look at any leadership or supervision any asset or or financial management look at any unusual hazards or condition conditions the employees exposed to as they do their job and we'll assign a complexity score that ranges from 1 to 10 in each one of those 14 categories and that helps us build our hierarchical uh list of positions we begin by identifying the most complex position which is going to have the highest overall point value score and then in descending order we have the lower level lower scoring positions uh within the organization so that satisfies our internal relationship and then externally we take the average annual salary from the organization's pay

118tables um for each one of those 50 benchmark positions and then we use a modeling technique known as linear regression to create a new salary schedule where the positions are assigned onto the salary schedule based on their duties and responsibilities so this is much more than just a salary survey where we're just looking to see what is being paid for other jobs what drives this process is what the individuals are doing within your school district even though the titles may say administrative assistant or video videographer there will always be some nuances in terms of duties and qualifications as you look at different organizations so we want to make sure that the employees get maximum credit based on the actual duties they're performing within your district so if someone asks what's the ultimate driver of the

119value of a job as it relates to a study of this type there will be a greater emphasis put on the actual responsibilities that the employee has the market data is viewed more as a reference point because it comes with some unknowns number one we don't know what mechanism they use to create their salary schedules we don't know where they pull their data from necessarily to pull uh their salary schedules we don't know when the last time they updated and so it is a great reference point but what ultimately drives it is providing credit for what the people are doing in the positions in the little rock district next slide please and so when we looked at what you currently are paying for positions across the district and compare that to the market information it

120does not paint a very rosy picture to be quite frank um you'll notice the first number that says negative 21.1 percent average relation to market entry these are entry-level salaries these are for people are you going to hire in various positions whose experience just meets the minimum qualifications they may have just come out of college they may have somewhere between one and three years of experience they're not very seasoned you can typically expect to pay them around the entry level right now your biggest problem is your entry level salaries are not competitive uh at all and that is borne out by some of the commentary uh when i spoke and met with employees a number of employees pointed out that uh particularly supervisor employees that it is very difficult to get potential applicants to accept

121positions based on current starting salaries because they are low uh the applicant pools themselves are not as robust as you'd like them to be which does not allow for hiring the best and brightest to fill some of the vacant positions you wind up having to take uh someone with a secondary skill set perhaps and you're basically going to train them on the job sometimes that works out well sometimes it does not for middle and upper management you generally want to pay uh for experience and you're going to pay a premium for that and so for the upper level positions and technical positions it has been extremely difficult for the district to fill those positions generally speaking and i've been doing hr uh compensation analysis for for over 18 years any job is fillable within a

12245-day time frame you've got basic maintenance and custodial positions that may take 60 plus days to fill because you have difficulty finding uh either a qualified candidate or a qualified candidate who's willing to take the salary that's being offered in some cases out of necessity to feel the position uh the department and hr have had to bring in new people from the outside at salaries above the entry level which creates a whole set of other dynamic problems when you bring in a new employee who's going to make a salary above someone who's been there for a few years that new employees coming in the door leapfrogging over an existing employee and that's going to create some morale issues for someone who's been there and done a good job for the past two three four years

123and i see someone come through the door uh making more and then i've been there three or four years and i haven't gotten a pay raise it really starts to create uh a difficult work environment and certainly i don't think i'm going out on a limb to say that the pay issues have had a negative impact uh on morale when we look at the market averages and this is where we're looking at what people in comparable positions who are fully qualified and competent they're not training they're seasoned you're about 10.4 behind the market so you're a little bit better shape there and then on the top end of the market you're 4.8 behind so if you look at these numbers here the biggest problem is starting rates of pay so that was one of the

124major objectives that we set out to address uh as we build the new uh salary structural uh and system next slide please this here is just an example maybe a little hard to read but this is a review of the market data as we compile it you'll see to the left you'll see those uh benchmark titles those 50 jobs that i talked about uh then moving to the right uh are the entry levels the mid and the uh maxes of the uh districts that we looked at including the city uh and the private sector data and you'll see a comparison of duty days and annual hours and then to the far right uh is the comparison of how you stack up that's where those numbers that i just went over came from this report as

125we compile that market data next slide please and move to the next one this is what the actual raw information looks like when we send it send the survey out to the other districts we give them the title of the position we develop a description of the position in terms of what the duties entail what the qualifications are in terms of education experience and then down in the rectangular box to the left uh are each of the respondents that we contacted and what their comparable job title was uh and then their individual data and then that's rolled up into the report that you previously saw the entire study report is probably close to 400 pages and so what i'm showing you are just some of the key snapshots uh that when you do uh look

126at the entire report you'll be able to interpret some of the tables uh within that context should make for some great bedtime reading at some point next slide and so we've come back every position now has been assigned to a uh uh pay grade uh and every employee has been assigned to a step uh within a pay grade uh based on where their current salary uh is recommended to be based on any adjustments that are reflected in the study uh the current uh structure that we put together uh has a table that has uh job grades that spread all the way from 101 uh up to uh 140. uh it has 20 steps uh within the uh pay structure and within those steps uh there are 2.2 increments between each step and so each year

127if an employee uh was granted a step increase they would get 2.2 uh by moving to uh the next step uh here uh this is the uh unified schedule for the classified positions what we've been able to do and this is just an example here but we've set a a floor wage floor uh for the district so if the study is adopted no job within the district will pay less than 11.53 per hour that would be the minimum value for for any position within the district and we think that puts you in a very competitive uh position as you all know there are tremendous uh conversations and movements around the country to to increase uh the minimum wage unfortunately at the federal level there hasn't been a lot of action on that so the states

128and localities uh have taken a lead on moving that forward i've done work for several uh organizations in georgia virginia and florida that have gone forward and implemented either an 11 12 or 15 uh wage uh of floor uh most have if they're going to 15 they usually do it over a two or three year period uh many of them like we're proposing here we're saying that you should implement the study at the proposed minimum level of at least 1153 which is enhances uh your position to fill those lower level positions in the organization next slide there's another report on a table in the report where we found a few people whose jobs were based on actual duties were not appropriate based on industry standards and so we created a report within the report called

129class comparison or our job title comparison where we looked at what you currently classify the job as and what based on modern or current human resources practices we recommended changing the title to a more appropriate title that reflected the nature of the work keep in mind it's been over 20 years since the district did a comprehensive class classification and compensation study so it's not unusual that we find some jobs that were misclassified and the people of course in those positions were misclassified but we've identified those folks and we've identified uh what the appropriate title should be and all that's contained in the comprehensive report next slide please the next section talks about implementation uh what is it going to cost to move the employees from the proposed uh compensation system uh to the new compensation

130system uh that we've designed now one of the things i want to talk about in terms of compensation system in general is that compensation systems are not static they need to evolve and so one of the challenges i think the district has had in the past which explains why the starting salaries particularly were so low is that you have not adjusted your scales on an annual basis now we're doing the comprehensive study now so you won't have to adjust the s scales again until a year from date of implementation but a year from date of implementation you need to adjust those scales by either the consumer price index or the employment cost index we recommend the employment cost index because it's a measure of what employees are experiencing in terms of benefit increases and pay

131increases from a macro level and that's broken down by region of the country and that's published every quarter by the federal department of labor so for the region that the state of oregon the state of arkansas sits in for the past 12 months uh the eci has been somewhere around 2.4 2.5 so if we were going to adjust them this year we'd do it by 2.4 2.5 so all of the tables would go up by that macro amount but you don't have to do that until the year from implementation because we've already factored that into the tables uh that we prepared now the implementation report is very detailed it breaks down all the employees by department and school it shows you their current cap title it shows you their current pay range shows you the

132proposed title if there's a change the new salary ranges we proposed it it shows you what grade and step we're recommending they be assigned to it lets you know whether or not they're full time or part-time it also shows you the data higher or the date they were promoted into their most current position and then it shows you the breakdown of the adjustments that we're proposing that they receive and so it's very detailed and then it summarizes that for each department each school and then for the organization in total and so let's talk about the numbers specifically uh for the district in totality next slide please because the district has not been able to grant raises consistently for fro for some time we're recommending that as a part of the study every employee receive at

133least a 1.5 percent cost of a living adjustment as a part of the study that would cost roughly 730 261 there will still be some employees who are below the step one of the new salary schedule so we would need to bring them up at least to step one which would be about a hundred and four thousand 407 and because we have a step structure we need to make sure every employee follows on a finite step so to place them in their proper step would cost six uh six hundred thirty two thousand 387 and so the total cost to implement the study and this is just salary this does not include french benefits so you need to add probably 30 33 on top of that and kelsey would be the one to tell you specifically

134what that number is but to implement the study just in pay increases you're talking about 1.4 million dollars and so i misspoke earlier when i said the increment between the steps was 2.2 is actually 2.8 and this would increase payroll by 2.6 which is actually pretty pretty low anytime we see a overall payroll change that's approaching 5 or greater that's a significant red flag even with some of your challenges that the district has had you're still not as as as bad off as as i initially anticipated and perhaps some may have thought but we're looking at about 1.4 to implement and study we would implore you as resources are available to try to do that uh at the start of the next budget year if you could come up with more than 1.5 cost of

135living that would be great but we think at a minimum 1.5 cost of living and then implement the remaining uh figures in the study and so i think of the i met you know dozens of people within the district during the past 12 and a half months some really hard working people uh some have uh stood uh stood by and been loyal through some difficult times and and uh this would be a great time to acknowledge uh those those that have stuck in there and hung in there with the district uh through some turbulent times and uh we're not asking to overpay anybody we're asking to pay a fair wage uh based on where the market is and based on the duties and responsibilities that the employees currently have within the district we will continue

136to provide consulting services uh to the hr staff as you go through the process of budget uh and review the study uh any adjustments uh or changes to implementation scenarios we certainly stand by to provide that as a part of the service and it has been a pleasure working with uh uh robert and and mike and chelsea on this project and if there are any questions that you have madam president i certainly am prepared to address those uh at this time yes uh thank you mr campbell for your presentation um and i i do have a couple but i yield to uh my fellow directors go ahead and unmute please and begin speaking if you have questions thoughts or concerns related to what mr campbell just uh it well i'll jump in then um thank

137you very much ms hatter thank you mr campbell um i wonder if you might offer some refresh now to some of the numbers that were in the final recommendations um the thought about the 1.5 cost of living increase what what makes that the recommended number the the difference in the step increase 2.8 in that neighborhood what what makes that the appropriate step difference and and then the uh the 20-year step schedule why you know what makes 20 years a good number okay let's start with the one for 1.5 percent one of the things that we looked at or we looked at what other districts around the country uh particularly the districts that we surveyed and then some other districts that are comparable size we looked at uh certainly the consumer price index over the past

13812 months and we're seeing uh cost of living adjustments in the public sector anywhere from uh 1.5 to 3 and so understanding that the district does have some financial challenges we felt we come back with a conservative one and a half percent now and i'll digress just a moment when we talk about compensation compensation theory uh by definition a cost of living adjustment really isn't a pay raise it's a hedge against inflation if i can go to publix tonight with a hundred bucks and buy uh uh buy 50 items then the rule is my salary should be indexed so next year i can go back and buy those same number items uh without without losing any purchasing power but over decades in this country due to entitlement programs like va pensions and social security uh

139uh that were indexed to help maintain purchasing power local government school districts particularly adopted that as a way to grant uh salary increases and so that's a loan around about what he'll say i came up with a 1.5 um steps um school districts predominantly across the country have steps city and county governments it's probably a mixed fact probably about 60 40 uh without steps uh 40 with steps when you talk about city and county some people believe that if state retirement says you're fully vested for retirement at 25 years or 28 years then you should have that same number of equivalent steps um i'm not necessarily a fan of that i don't think we should pay folks simply based on their longevity with the organization there needs to be some value there and so when

140we talk about setting the number of steps 20 steps is a realistic number when you look at the makeup of your workforce more people are probably going to hit the age requirement than the length of service required and so it's more cost effective to have fewer number of steps it's easy to add additional steps if we need to but when we start looking at other districts on that list they were anywhere between 20 and 25 steps and so we went with 20 20 steps and then our computer program that we ran the regression model it set the increments at 2.8 and if i change that to 25 steps it would probably reduce that increment to somewhere around 2.2 or 2. 2.3 so it's automatically set by the system thank you very much thank you director

141adams uh do we have any other uh questions yes director hatter um president hatter um so thank you for that excellent presentation um i have um two questions you mentioned that there were some positions that were not in line with or in keeping with industry standards um and i just wondered if you could speak to that a little bit more are those positions where we are currently paying more than what is in the industry standards or what did that really mean no that was a pay issue that was a title or classification issue for example there were a number of individuals in maintenance referred to as drivers well they they remove and replace furniture and do light duty maintenance work but the payroll system carries them as drivers so we want to make sure that

142their title adequately reflected the nature of the work those are the type of things when i'm talking about where it doesn't reflect industry standards there were probably fewer than 10 people whose current salaries are above the top step number 20 and they have been there for a very long time and so that's not unusual uh that you may have a few very long people over 20 years that that are over the top of max but uh the this the problem was a significant number of people um below you know the entry levels and so that 1.5 actually brought up a lot of people as you can probably see and it still left some that still didn't come up to the uh to the to the minimum thank you um that that explains that question for

143me thank you and the other question i had and i think that you probably touched on this and i just did not really understand it or didn't catch it um you mentioned at the outset the morale problem when you have people coming on as new hires at a higher rate than someone who's an experienced teacher or employee and does this proposal eliminate or address that problem it addresses it to a large extent and in compensation we call that uh salary compression when if we look at a scale and then we look at years of service with the organization and we noticed that if we ran a scatter diagram we've got all these little dots down here toward the bottom we've got large numbers of folks with one year six years seven years but they're all

144maybe down at the first quartile of the scale their salaries are compressed and so in order to break that up we've got to find some mechanism to move some of the senior people up to higher steps and so this process naturally does that to some degree but you're always going to have some of that because you can't just throw money to fix it because it would basically require paying large sums of of money based on just longevity which is that's something we're not necessarily comfortable with or advocate but it does address it what i was specifically speaking of is when i talk to some of the supervisors and directors and they've got some critical positions they they need to feel and i'm talking about positions that are not routine everyday positions where you're just going

145to go out the street and pull somebody in these are probably degree positions or positions that require certain license and certification but they're not teaching so it's going to be hard to get that applicant pool to begin with because everybody in the region is looking for that skill set and so you've got a choice to make you've offered russell 50 000 russell is the candidate you want to hire experience and skill set but russell says he can't come for 58. well there are three other people with the same job title as russell and they don't make 58 but this position has been breaking for for three months you got to feel it so i'm going to go ahead and pay russell to and he's going to leapfrog the other three people who are making 50

14651 or 52. that's the kind of scenario i'm talking about now your compensation system should be flexible enough and your policies which we provided some guidelines on policies where you can fairly set starting salaries based on experience when they come in the problem you had now was you were having to bring them so far up into the scale that it was really creating uh disparities and so it's okay if we have to bring in a new hire uh at a step three or step four instead of step one if they've got the experience and education to support but if they're just meeting the minimum qualifications then you need to be getting them around step one but you had instances where they were they were meeting the minimum qualifications but you were having to bring them

147at step four step five because the salary scales were so low so this process addresses that by raising the overall scales to a more competitive level that's more of a reflection of the market but in order to maintain that you have to adjust them slightly every year and then every five or six years you go through this exercise again and do a comprehensive study why number one the market changes the labor market moves forward we could have a recession we could have robust growth we need to reassess internal changes mike may decide to go to hawaii and sit on the beach you bring a new superintendent he restructures the whole place uh departments change duties change so every five to seven years you probably want to redo the whole thing but you want to make

148adjustments to the overall scale every year thank you so much for for your report for your answers thank you very much no problem hawaii is okay am i probably ready for it for a vacation yeah um okay director uh calloway okay so just being clear are you saying that if a person should come in to little rock school district let's say and they have like five years experience and they might have more education than the person who is doing the same job okay is that what you mean by leap frogging or are you saying that a person who that you i mean you've really got to have this person so you're going to leave program regardless to what their education or their years in i mean that's the point i kind of was confused yeah

149let's say for example we've posted a job where the minimum requirement is a bachelor's degree in five years and we already have three people in that position now and they all have a bachelor's degree maybe one's been there two years one been there uh six years one's been there five years okay and then i apply for one of those positions because somebody left remember the minimum is a bachelor's in five i show up i've got a master's and 12 years of experience you're not going to be able to hire me at the moment i'm not going to take that kind of pay cut but as a hiring manager you've got to say or decide is this an investment that benefits or reaps dividends for the district by having someone who can come in hit the

150ground running there's a minimal learning curve other than learning the culture of the district and the processes but the terms of the job they got a blueprint of what needs to be done they can come in and do it you should hire that person you're gonna have to bring them over people that have been there for a few years oh absolutely uh but you can't but you can't let that get out of control you got to have a policy that says we'll go above the the minimum but we got a cap on that okay now same job but without my more years and more degrees here okay of course you would have to you'd have at whatever point you hired that person you would have to pay them more money right right but there are

151some instances where the education experience were pretty much the same but the market has moved and in order to get that person you've had to bring them in a higher salary there's been some of that too that doesn't make sense uh to me uh well that's just to me well if you hire if you hired me three years ago at 50 000 and i had a bachelor's degree in five years experience and then similar position is the open now three years later and you haven't raised the person who's been their salary at all their salary had moved but the market has moved and i know what my value is if you want me and i know what my my values were then either you're going to meet that in the current context or you're not

152okay but uh that's if you don't have like a step like the little school district is at some point i don't know what it's like now had a step system every year you got a step okay now if a person came in let's say with 12 years experience with a phd for the same job of course you would expect to make more money am i right here okay because that was getting kind of confusing now if they came in with the same thing as the person that has had that same year that same amount of time and how can you justify the people the person is having been there who's been there how can you justify not giving them a raise are you talking about a raise for um it's it's almost like pay for

153play if i if i decide that you're going um i like you and you you do a really good job so i'm gonna give you a raise but i'm not going to give her a raise because even though they're doing the same job is that what you're talking about merit pay no no ma'am what i'm saying let's let's use another example let's say a mechanic it happens more with perhaps those positions you don't raise your pay scale it's been flat most people's salary has been frozen but out there in the market everybody's hiring mechanics car dealerships school districts mom-and-pop repair places so i'm a mechanic and you've got dozens of other mechanics but the people that are currently employed you haven't raised their pay but the market pay has gone up and so if you

154need a mechanic to get these buses rolling and cars rolling you're gonna have to pay the market rate and the market rate is probably going to be more than what you paying the people that are already employed so in order to fill that position you're gonna have to hire this person off the street and in some cases you have to bring them in at a higher rate than the people that an area that really isn't a huge issue within the little rock school district i want to emphasize a question that miss callaway brought up we will have steps still continue we are not creating merit pay here we're actually trying to create a more a system that's much more clear for our existing employees and for our employees potential employees and and so i want

155to kind of gear us back because we're getting off into a lane here that um it impacts so few people that i don't think it's doing justice to the overall presentation if if we can kind of get back and on and i i appreciate the how you worded that ms cowan because that helped define that we're not doing merit pay and that we are keeping steps so thank you for that any other questions okay um directors are there any other uh questions and for the sake of time um a couple of my fellow directors have asked in in the ballpark of what my question would be so in the essence of time i will parking lot i i will uh park my questions and not ask them um anyone else have uh any questions for

156mr campbell mr b trying to um raise his hand i'm sorry oh i'm sorry yes go ahead please just just a general question about him coming back because we're not ready to make any kind of votes right right now so is he is he available to come back superintendent if superintendent asked me to come back i'll be happy to come back thank you mr mason and and if you don't mind if it's harder i'm going to go ahead and get my wrap up kind of tied to that question on this topic so you know it was important for us to put this out in front of you because you know as we're doing the teacher negotiations the teachers are interested to say well what are you doing for a bills because there's always that you

157know we want to make sure that everyone's getting you know treated in a fair way and so we had to kind of package this so that we can continue on with our teacher negotiations in good faith and at the same time be transparent with our employees and with you of what we've done with this management study it was time uh mr campbell and his firm has been working on this for a year and he has been more than willing throughout the process to say whenever you think it's appropriate to come in now also i'm sure there's already board members thinking when can we get a more detailed report because we've got five greens on this board and a whole bunch of golds on this board who love to look at budgets and love to look

158at detail so the plan will be that next week mr robinson and we'll be giving that that information from mr campbell we will receive it from him next week and then we will share it with you as a board but then we'll also start to share it with employee groups for them to look at and then again we can always come back to it i also want to emphasize the fact that what mr campbell said related to where we have our biggest gaps in terms of salary disparity is at the beginning part of our salary remember that's the same for our teachers as we work on that too so that's kind of a consistent theme for us and then the the next thing i want you to do is understand is that there's a resolution

159and we will modify this resolution just a little bit and we will be putting that into your board packet and the resolution starts to create the commitments that we would like you to say yeah we're in it doesn't knock totally lock seal and employ raise but it continues to say we want to go ahead and move forward on this we we're on the right direction um and so you'll get to look at that resolution that will be an action item for us later this month and so uh you'll get an updated copy of that resolution we've done a couple tweaks to it we probably will do a couple tweaks after this presentation and and that will help you better understand a little bit of how the board starts to interact um with the salary the

160final thing is that we are working with um our human resource group with the instructional side within german dr ola's house to also find a way to do a pandemic pay for our employees now you notice that i did not use the word bonus and we don't want to use that word bonus because that would not be allowed within the ester but we are going to we've determined a way to honor uh efforts made by staff all staff all staff with a pandemic pay and our intent is to come forward with that pandemic pay uh prior to the end of the school year so that the all current employees would receive that benefit for their efforts that have happened throughout this pandemic now remember that's just a one-time type payment but it's i know many

161of you brought that up before we figure out we think we finally got enough guidance that we're going to be able to move forward on that and that will also come in in the form of your resolution that will come to you for action on the 22nd and ms hatter i'll turn that back over to you i hope that kind of concludes this part of the presentation obviously this is just a beginning point we're going to have further discussions on this topic and once you get the report uh certainly there'll probably be some questions that we'll have to work to answer from you either individually or collectively okay thank you superintendent for um summarizing and wrapping i gotta miss mr campbell um appreciate uh your uh your presentation it was very thorough um the fact

162that um the the district uh has have not done a um a salary a a salary increase or a report or survey much of what you have done in in the last 20 years um that that that is um telling of of the district but it's also uh re refreshing that like uh we are looking at um at least bringing people up to 2021 salary and i'm looking at cola and and then a lot of the things that you highlighted with within your presentation um we look forward to seeing you um in the future obviously look like we will be and um with that i appreciate you uh so with that we are closing out uh this session for her salaries and thank you um mr okay um moving on we're still in the third

163portion of our agenda and the last piece of the district reports will be the personnel learning committees and uh with that we will have a hope worsham will present i see dr owa on my screen so we will start off with dr owa and then uh we will go into uh his team uh per doing the presentation dr olwa thank you president uh good evening again board of directors uh tonight we would like to uh share with you the professional learning professional learning community journey that little rock school district has been on and the impact it is having on our instructional setting at the school level but also at the district level and so uh darian smith who is the executive director of elementary randy rutherford executive director of secondary and hope worship our executive

164director of curriculum instruction uh will all participate in this brief presentation for you and be uh open uh and available for questions at the end so mr smith is gonna go on to get us started thank you doctor i'ma jump right in and good evening board what is a professional learning community becoming a professional learning community or plc requires an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in reoccurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for students they serve professional learning communities operate under the assumption that the key to improve learning for students is continuous job embedded learning for educators a plc is not a model or program is an approach or process there are six essential characteristics of a plc we have shared mission vision values and goals educators in

165a plc benefit from clarity regarding their shared purpose a common understanding of the school they are trying to create collective communities to help move the school in the desired direction and specific measurable attainable and results-oriented and time-bound smart goals that mark their progress collaborative teams focus on learning in a plc educators work together interdependently in collaborative teams to achieve common goals for which they are mutually accountable the structure of the school is aligned to ensure teams are provided the time and support essential to adult learning collaboration is a systematic process in which we work together internship in the intro to interdependently entire time here to analyze and impact professional practice in which to improve our individual and collective results collective inquiry teams in a plc relentlessly question the status quo seek new methods of teaching

166and learning test those methods and then reflect on the results building shared knowledge of both current reality and best practices and it is an essential part of each team's decision making process action orientation and experimentation members of a plc consistently turn their learning into insight into of learning and insights into action they recognize the importance of engagement and experience in learning and in testing new ideas they are do learning by doing commitment to continuous improvement not content with the status quo members of a plc consistently seek better ways to achieve mutual goals and accomplish their fundamental purpose of learning for all all teams engage in the ongoing cycle of gathering evidence of current levels of student learning developing strategies and ideas to build the unstrengths and acts address the weaknesses of the students implement the

167strategies and ideas then analyze the impact of those changes to discover what was effective and what was not and then applying the new knowledge in the new cycle of learning for continuous improvement and then finally results orientation educators in the plc assess their efforts on the basis of tangible results they are hungry for evidence of student learning and use that evidence to inform and improve their practice rick defour summed it up best by stating the success of a poc concept depends not on the merits of the concept itself but on the most important element in the improvement of any school the commitment and persistence of the educators within so y-3 as an organizational arrangement the professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff development approach and it has a strong potent strategy for school

168change and improvement it's about capacity building and not being top-down professional development that's given to our students but requiring an ongoing process to establish a school-wide culture that develops teacher leadership explicitly focused on building and sustaining school improvement efforts the plcs as we call them shift the focus on school reform from restructuring to re-culturing and of course we utilize solution tree and they confirm that if implementing the process with fidelity you will see results within three years and as we know uh as many programs as with other programs three years is really the time frame to really be able to assess how a program has made an impact in an instructional setting and so in the fall of 2019 mr smith mr rutherford and mrs worsham joined the district team and their first task was

169to draft the district plan of support at that time the state has shifted away from the district improvement plan to a district plan of support which fundamentally changes the way we look and participate at the district's role uh at the district level uh when it concerns school improvement it is our responsibility to support schools and their school improvement goals so we moved from being compliance and really having for those lack of a better word dictatorship over the schools to a supportive role so the schools would uh the team started by reviewing all school improvement plans the schools would would develop their school improvement plans and then the district would uh review those school plans school improvement plans to look for common themes throughout and then after reviewing the plans the three common themes were identified

170and those three things were developed developing collaborative relationships and buildings improving teacher teaching practice and improving literacy scores and so goal number one of the plan as shown on this slide is to or speaks to developing professional learning communities in all buildings and so when the division of elementary and secondary education uh extra criteria was drafted and the exit criteria plan was drafted last spring exit criteria number one aligned with our goal of establishing a plc across the district so you will see as the slide indicated that we started from the school uh staff developing their school improvement plans to developing our district plan of support and then of course our exit plan being developed from that and then we get to where our schools where have we been and how did we do we

171pull our schools and put them into two different cohorts also what we did is a threesome when we were looking at the plans themselves we looked at what we considered our most need schools the schools that just needed an impact of support the quickest and that that makes up the cohort one schools based on the information that that we saw in core one so i know we've shown this to you before but again in court one they were assigned again based on need well we knew also we couldn't put all 42 schools through the same process at the same time and so we divided again the schools up based on multiple different parts of data in order to determine which cohort they were going to be placed in next slide dr from there then you

172can see at the top of this chart the three year plan that dr owen mentioned earlier where are we well a year ago not this school year but a year ago we started with cohort one and they of course were in the plc at work coaching academy that was offered by the state and through solution tree itself this current year for cohort one they're in what we call the blending blended learning model and you may say okay well what does that mean well basically what it means is they're offered a year-long sport that basically leads to a combination of services again through solution tree which is who we go through for our services as far as professional development is concerned but that would be interactive videos coaching from them online online professional development videos interactive

173webinars between them and their school leadership teams and obviously print resources that come from solution tree themselves the whole idea is to create a self-sustaining plc model within the school so that they can continue to engage in that cycle of continuous improvement and so that's cohort one cohort two is just starting out where cohort one was last year this year it it looks a little bit different because again these were supposed to have been face-to-face meetings with with the group as they came in but obviously as we all know because of the pandemic all of this has had to be done online but they are in that original set of the plc at work coaching academy that cohort one went through last year and we've had six days during this school year three sessions two

174days each a company with resources plus phone and email support from solution tree and their consultants it also has helped us build a set of skills and development action plan for initiating change within our schools surrounding the plc model they were all completed just so the board knows that that group finished in march with all six of those sessions and so also i'll just point out before we we move on you can also see on the third year where cohort one's headed they're headed to rti coaching academy that's response to intervention which is what do we do after we get the results and the results aren't exactly what it we want it to be for kids what are we going to do what are our actions we're going to take to help again uh help

175those kids and then of course you can see where cohort 2 is headed to where cohort one was in the blind learning model and the whole concept again is is that cohort one will be ahead of cohort two but they also get the opportunity to mentor with cohort two as they're going through so the plc expectations that all buildings and that includes the district office within the lorac school district will function as a plc and we do that on at the district level every tuesday we meet collaboratively as a group and then all buildings will be supported through the three-year cycle of training all buildings will have collaborative team time built into their master schedule scheduled during the school day for the 2021 and beyond and then all buildings will form a guiding coalition who

176will leave the work in their building by fall 2021 all collaborative teams will develop administer and review the data from common assessment at least once per nine weeks and then the funding source uh of course professional development funds title 2a and 1003 funds will fund uh the training as well as the resources that are needed uh for the implementation of the collaborative teamwork um and building that professional learning community in all the buildings our district commitment to continually support through training job embedded support and not just supporting from afar but being in the buildings walking alongside with our principals and teams and in support of their work and then buildings will utilize their title 1 and 1003 funds to contract contract to contract additional support from solution tree we do want to say that each

177year the district team will set tights or non-negotiable expectations to continue to move the work of professional learning community forwards the ties will align with the training that is being offered in the district at the time and in line with the natural progression of the process and then in the fall of 2021 all teachers were to participate in that common assessment training to lay the foundation of the expectation of common assessments being developed delivered and reviewed next year and beyond so where are we um hope will lead us from here sure so at this point like you've already heard all of our schools have attended the plc coaching academy and this is fundamental it's six days it's very intensive training and it's a team of five to seven that came from each building and they

178really learned the foundation of the plc process of what collaborative teams should be focusing on and how that work should be happening uh mr rutherford and i were in a building just the other day and the i think the exact quote was we they had gone through the academy last year and we said so how tell us how last year did this year look different and uh the quote was we have a purpose now and we know why we're meeting in collaborative teams and this was a building that uh to be honest was pretty resistant prior to this year and so just seeing their growth there and they were very excited to share with us their focus their their their energy around their collaborative teaming and how it's making their lives easier as teachers our

179principals have attended a three-day assessment training the reason we put this in uh when we first came on and spoke with solution tree they we talked to him about we said you know we've been spending money with you guys for 10 years and we've been training on plc for 10 years what is the problem why are we not further along than we are and um the the advice that we were given was from the consultants that had been in the observations were that we were getting stuck on using data that we would we were meeting in collaborative teams and sometimes we were focusing on the right work but we never were getting past that using the data to actually make decisions and so that's why we had our principals go through a three-day assessment literacy

180training this year that was three separate days spread out across the year and with the plan of our teachers getting trained in the fall on common assessment and how to use data and then the cni team will be in regularly in building supporting with that data interpretation and using of it we do have two buildings currently in a more intensive program that's mapleville elementary and watson elementary they were chosen by the state to be a part of their um pilot school program it's a very intensive model they have lots of support in their building around the plc process and making strides in that direction and we had i think three buildings that are going to get uh are being looked at for cohort four and they they are in the second round of interviews so

181we're very excited about that and then lastly buildings have built common planning time into the school day for the core areas it's very important that teachers had time in the master schedule to meet together and that will continue so we have established the essential standards in ela and math and why is this important because if we're meeting together as a team we have to be teaching on from a common book right and we have to kind of know the common language that we're using and so the essential standards we had teams of teachers work last summer we had over 180 teachers participate in that process they looked at what are we supposed to teach in every grade level in math and english and how do we choose the the standards that are most essential that

182we're going to guarantee kids learn by the end of the year we're going to go through that process with science and social studies starting in the end of may april and throughout the summer and then other content areas will follow so we have a plan for the cte areas fine arts to follow after this year and then schools have started to inquire about developing what we call proficiency skills and all that is is if this is what i'm supposed to learn it clearly outlines everything that builds up to that and that's just a real clear picture for students and for teachers about what is it i have to do as a student so that you say i've learned this and so the those questions are being asked right now and we're going to look at

183supporting schools through that so we did survey our schools and we asked um where they were in some questions around the plc process and the training that they've received so you've got the data here um 72 percent of the respondents and we had 18 respondents that came in out of all of our buildings 72 being a cohort two and uh the other from cohort one we asked about do they did they understand the purpose of the training that they were attending it's very important that we know purpose and um all of them did say that they understood the purpose if you have a few more questions and and we can handle that have you seen a positive impact and this question for um for for our team was very important um have you seen a

184positive impact in your building based on the training that you have received and um everyone was in the uh neutral to above category with most of our schools saying yeah that they agree they've seen a positive impact and they just want more time to implement we asked them just about what are what do they need additional support in this will help us as the district level guide you know what is it we need to be providing the supports in and you can see the largest area was the developing of common assessments and that lines right up with what we're planning to do in the fall and that's kind of the natural progression where they should be and so it makes sense that that would be the next information that we that we provide them with

185they're getting all this information to our buildings many of our cohort two buildings were saying that and again that's a very natural thing they had a team of five go through the training so now how do we get that to our entire building and remember they will receive as part of this plan and they will receive intensive coaching in their building next year so that is where that process will get to their wider group on this slide what this shows is we asked on a scale of uh well on four different levels starting out as blue developing deepening and sustaining so sustaining is green and you really want on each of there's actually seven critical areas and we just took the first four because we know that we're just starting out so we asked our

186buildings um on these first four critical elements of the success of a of a high-functioning collaborative uh team or professional learning community in your building where are you and what this slide tells us if you look at the common assessment you see a lot more blue there than other areas and that's because many of our buildings are starting out with that or developing again that lines up with where we know that they um that they are and that that's what we have observed when we're out teams are meeting it's now time to start um having those common assessments in place team norms is something that's also very important we probably revisit that with many of our buildings just um that's just how do we function as a team and those are so important for the

187the collaborative teams to be high functioning go ahead dr and then lastly we just ask for feedback and and the feedback we got was we and we told them this is an anonymous survey we say guys be totally honest with us because we need brutal honesty um and one of the the thing some of the things that stood out this the right work at the right time for our building uh the sessions are informative and valuable we look forward to continuing the work and i think one of them may not have gotten on here but just we need some time oh there it is we need some time to implement and bring to scale in our building and so and the the the feedback from the buildings has been you know we have enjoyed what

188we've learned but really it's now time to go do the work so one of the things that we've been doing with our buildings those cohort one buildings that you saw many of them uh we are making our way around to and i'm going through a process with them and there's a tool that solution tree has it's called the critical issues for team considerations it's 18 questions and the idea is that the team ranks themselves on those 18 questions and the process that we've gone through with a couple of buildings um has been to take the the 18 questions rank yourself and then putting it anonymously into a google form that we can all look at the data and a couple of our buildings are very nervous about doing that at first they didn't want to

189write and i said i'm not going to take this piece of paper up please be honest and once they knew they could be honest and nobody was going to look at that information they and the conversation was really good in the in the few buildings that we've been able to do this so far and so for example you can see on the right side there um with team norms this building is is pretty well set they have their norms in place they know what they're doing and they're good there but on question two we've analyzed student achievement data and set smart goals they're not all in the same place so we talked about with that building what are your goals going to be for next year based on the data that you have and they

190set some goals around what are their next steps in the process so the big crux of the plc process in collaborative teams is focusing on the right work and if you go in buildings you will hear um us talk about four critical questions and the first question is what what do we want our students to know and be able to do that's the first question that any collaborative team when they're sitting down and talking these are the four questions they should be focusing on so it's what do we want our students to be able to do how will we know that they've learned it how will we respond when they do learn it or sorry when they do not and how will we extend their learning for those who have demonstrated mastery or you may

191just hear what do we do if they already learned it and that's the crux of the process you got to know what it is kids are supposed to to learn we teach them we assess that's how we know if they learn it so what's our assessment going to be let's come back and look at the data and decide this group of kids got it what do we do for them this group of kids didn't what do we do for them and working as a team to analyze that data to come together with common resources common assessment and that's what drives the work forward so we are we will entertain any questions you have right now for us our main goal is just that you guys understood understand what the plc process is and understand where

192our buildings are and our desire and the building's desire to continue to be supported through the process in the coming years um board unmute and any questions you have for doctor or mr rutherford and or miss worsham uh please begin mr thank you for that presentation dr ola um and the entire staff mr rutherford and mr smith uh i only have one question and it's a question based on my general understanding of issues in the state i don't know if it's an issue in lrsd and so i just want to put it out there um i know that as we have moved towards plc's there hit has been a concern at least in other districts about protecting individual teacher planning time and making sure that they weren't sacrificing that time in order to do this

193uh work which is very important but just that they need that planning time as well can you talk about how we as a district are handling that uh sure i can start and take you all out in here um so in our secondary schools our teachers have 90 minutes per day of protected planning time by law it's 200 minutes a week and so we have more than enough time protected time in the secondary schools for that to for student teachers to have their planning time and also meet in their collaborative team we don't expect teachers to meet every single day in their collaborative team for most buildings it's one one period a week that they would meet in their team so so that is there's more than sufficient time there um in the elementary school

194we have carved out time during the day um so that teachers do still have their protective planning time that is required as well as have time for the collaborative teams and i might add this knowing that when you get the agreement or the proposal from the ppc when it gets to that preparation time they've gone full measure to address that as well inside of that which does make sure that we fit every criteria that we have regarding the planning time individually and the planning time for the plc teams themselves well and i so i know that last session there was a bill about changing the language so it wasn't just individual and this team planning or group planning could actually be done during the um that protected planning time i don't remember if that bill

195passed or not but i know that some of the stress or frustration from teachers was that they needed to have they wanted to do this but they also needed to have that protective planning time and you know to grade papers and talk to parents and all of that and so i just wanted to raise that and make sure that we are conscious and being you know mindful of that as we move forward in this process any other um thoughts comments or questions for um dr owa and his team not i do miss hatter thank you and thank you for the presentation just a couple questions the first would be so on a school level if if i was a parent with a child in the school with this is there a way that i would

196could tell over time that this is having an impact on my child and and so what would that way be well we hope that parents will see a stronger instructional setting when when the teachers and leaders administrators meet in those collaborations they're looking at individual student data and so the hope is that parents will see not only their individual students increasing academically but they will all and not just academically because the teachers are able to even discuss attendance behavior uh everything that really impacts our students and so we should see a better student better instruction uh increasing teacher capacity increase and the dialogue that teachers have with parents about where their students currently are and what it would take to move their students further academically behaviorally you should see a shift in the culture of

197the school as well it should be a more collaborative environment as well and not just among teachers but among support staff among the principals and and it's so important that we have done that work at the district level we meet as a team to really decrease the silos and when we found when we're meeting together and discussing my direct responsibilities randy's direct responsibility that all of our responsibilities and expectations really impact everyone else's and so when we collectively collaboratively meet together we build a stronger uh instructional and professional environment so that's my take of it and i know the team may have something else one thing i would add is oh sorry mister no like go right ahead mr the only thing i would add is you may see a shared responsibility for students and

198so some in some buildings where they have some pretty high functioning teams um in that in that part where you go to what do we do if they don't learn it and what do you do if they don't if you do um we have seen some of our buildings where maybe miss worsham will take the students who didn't get it because i really did my students got it real well but so i'm going to take the ones that didn't get it and teach because i got something going on that that i know how to teach that particular standard and mr rutherford will take the students who already got it and he will take take and do an extension activity with them so you may see your students being shared amongst different teachers um even in

199within the content area well the only other thing that i would add to that mr adams which really goes for the whole board the thing is when this rolls out it really is equity and equality across the whole district as well because those essentials going back to those essential standards that miss washington spoke to earlier it guarantees us and the community that it doesn't matter what middle school what elementary what high school your child is in they're getting the same educational quality in each one of our schools obviously it's going to look different like i said what mr orson mentioned because the kids that get it certain things will happen with them and the kids that don't certain things need to happen with them but i think it also measures to what we talk about

200you all talk about quite a bit as a board on that equity equality part as well and then finally when you look at the plc process it supports our school improvement plan process as well uh with our school improvement plans we're setting goals at the school level which then translate to grade level goals classroom goals and then drills drills down to the individual student and we're setting individual student goals the assistance of the student being able to have input on setting that goal for themselves okay thank you one my other question in a in due respect to mr mason and mr wood the rest of us you know we're we're playing catch up with these things as board members anyway and um so in a year from now two years from now as board members

201what data points would we see that would let us know that this process is being effective and helpful you want me to take that one okay um so i think that we should see a change in our um end-of-year assessment data if we really are working the process correctly in our in and in our nwa data because if teachers are really working in collaborative teams and focusing on the on the four questions then you get at the heart of students not learning something immediately we're not waiting till the end of the nine weeks and so then therefore you're able to intervene much quicker and um in in an essen in effect that should show in our end of year scores because we're filling those gaps along the way we're not waiting until the end of

202the nine weeks or the end of a semester so i would think in about three years we should see a change in our end-of-year scores and our interim assessment scores and statistically with any new implementation program it's a real there's a really great graphic that shows like that implementation dip so you have this kind of increase real quick early on everybody's really excited about something and then it gets hard to do the work and you tend to see a decline but then over the next two to three years you see an incline um in in the typically in the data that you're looking at um and so i would think it would have an impact there and i will also add you we should see within three years uh definitely growth and attendance and and

203behavior uh because if we're focusing on the individual needs uh like we should and discussing those and sharing best practices within the collaborative team then we follow that cycle in career plan do check so if we make a plan and we put it into action if it's not impacting our students in a positive way then we go back to the table and our collaborative teams and we revise that plan but i'll also tell you i think it would be more so qualitative data is that we will see an increase in teacher capacity and leader capacity so that should shift we should see more teachers having that professional collegial conversation about the um the act the instructional environment and the school setting dr just to follow up on that be clear so if that happens how

204would we as board members know that we would uh continue to provide the reports but also the data reports itself like the um the the attendance records the discipline data the assessment data but also as we do uh qualitative surveys such as the one that uh miss russian shared with you with the feedback from teachers on how they have grown but we will also see it in the test and leads data which is part of our exit plan as well because if our teachers are growing their capacity by having that professional conversation then that's going to show in their in the teacher excellent support system as well as our leaders with their evaluation system as well so we'll have those data sources as well and and i would just add to that you know if

205we're going if we're asking our buildings to function as a professional learning community and we should too as the district part of that should be checking checking and so um i don't think it would be out of terms for us to to have regular surveys to our buildings and for that quantitative that qualitative data like dr oh was talking about i mean that's why we put the survey out when we did because we had finished the training and we wanted to know genuinely what is the next step for you and how can we support you so i think there there will always be data like that that should be regularly available because that needs to inform our work and what we do i would add two more critical points that you should be able to

206see as far as data is concerned one would be retention rate that should drop just so you know because i know we talk about that sometimes specifically on the middle school and elementary level second part which should should come about would be at the high school level when we talk about credit recovery there should be fewer students having to take credit recovery because we're implementing the model and they're actually getting their grades during the normal class time and so there's a bunch of data points that we can bring to you guys as we go down this path and i do agree with what dr owa said which is that attendance and discipline rate should change dramatically as well so my last thing is to round this up and thank you for for the additional information

207um so all those different data points that i know we have access to some now and and some you'll be reporting on but i understand that correctly that we really wouldn't be able to have a fair measure of success until three years from now two years from now what what so you know april of 2023 20 what do what do you think no i uh to be fair mr adams i will tell you that i'm confident in saying that we'll see success um even this year i mean from the um but there being increments because our schools our individual groups are at different levels but just based on the data from the survey that hope shared mrs worsham shared earlier we've seen growth i mean teachers which is probably the most important aspect to all

208of this teachers have seen growth within themselves but then um their professional delivery and that's one of the most important aspects of this so i think we will see incremental uh success as we move or progress to these through these three years but i think the when we look at the overall success of implementation we have to stick with something because in the past we haven't been able to be successful with things because they would shift when i mean a year we didn't we didn't give things time to really be implemented nor did we support it so you have to give it time and then you have to support it with with professional development with guidance for resources and that's what we're committing to do yeah and that's part of my question you know is

209i want to be fair and and take what we said earlier that that it takes time you know we implement something to have the results and so i'm just trying to get an idea in my head about when would be a reasonable fitting time to say to evaluate ah this is what is this is the impact it has made or not made and i i would end with this i think uh some of the most telling data is direct observation so if you all were are able to tour the schools and see the collaborative teams in action that will also show you how our teachers and leaders capacities are growing and then how it translates back to the classroom because of the meaningful the in-depth conversation that takes place in those collaborative teams thank you

210very much appreciate it okay so rounding out um this portion of thank you i have one question please um johnson has one question madam go ahead thank you guys for your presentation um do you think within the next one or three years that there will be a drastic decrease or percentage in the kids that are not reading on great level under this model would that take three years before we can see if it's happening or would it be less than that or is it happening now um i can start there and so i think to see there's a lot that would go into that that's going to go into us seeing the the decrease in our students being able to read or increase our students to be able to read so i think it's a

211combination of the information shared with you in the literacy plan as well as a focused use on a focused intervention for literacy as well as the plc process i think it's a combination of all of that together we are seeing for example in our lexia data i just looked at it earlier 97 of our students are in grade level or above grade level material right now in kindergarten and so that indicates to me that we're having an impact in that lower grade right now and and it's even at 75 percent are in and above grade level in first grade and so i think overall we're starting to see that trend towards our students being more competent readers but i i do think you're going to you're looking at two to three years to really see

212a full impact okay if i can answer that director johnson i i think that we're also going to have to be realistic of the impact that the pandemic has had on us this last year for those students who have been uh virtual students who we have tried to make sure that we made every effort to provide the support they need uh consistently throughout the year uh but as you you'll see uh the work that the schools are planning to do this summer for learning loss uh that will continue into the 21 22 school year and providing that those gap measures to uh recover the time that students have lost uh over this last year year and a half with the pandemic thank you um thank you all for the pre the the presentation um i'm

213i'm glad you guys mentioned um learning loss i'm gonna work backwards uh learning loss and literacy and and we know that our students have had a great deal of learning loss and we know that um for every year it takes at least a year and a half to two years to recover but i like the fact that the district is doing summer enrichment as well as looking into the next school year to see what all supports need to happen to fill in whatever gaps may um be there um listing right to your list listening right to the presentation i kept thinking about um my experience um when my daughter was at gibbs and how uh listening to you and then it was like uh being in being back in gibbs um right under dr hogg's

214because this is how she ran that school there was a lot of um uh collaboration among teachers um there was a lot of meetings pretty much everything you have said and then it translated throughout literally the the entire school where it even um uh set a culture and maintained the culture and the academic success level so i'm very appreciative of uh dr ola you and your team for uh rolling it out um across the uh district with the plc's and my one point um that i would like to see more of is is really the participation um right when you guys are sending out surveys because the only way you know if it's working is by people filling it out and then if only 18 people are going to take the time to film out

215or six people um to fill it out you really cannot get a strong pulse on what is going on and so at the building level um uh we would need to see improvements there uh providing the feedback so and so we're not you know continuing this 10-year uh re relationship with um our vendors and then asking them well what's going on so we need to make sure that we're able to really measure um what is going on with the help of our buildings so good deal um is there any other questions or comments from the board uh before we move forward on uh item number five okay seeing that there's none thank you guys um for uh for presenting and answering questions um board members i will direct your attention over to the agenda and

216i i take you guys have had the time to review it so i'm not going to go line by line for the agenda meeting for the 22nd um i will uh so i'm gonna if you guys will unmute yourselves and um speak to any um kind of go down in uh process so uh starting maybe with a d is is there any uh questions or thoughts with the district updates right from the agenda that that was sent out okay and um so uh the consent items they're very very standard on what we would normally um have a with with that the solutions tree contract potential uh consent item is is in there and then um so are there any questions about uh e miss hatter just a quick thing on the consent agenda we we

217did put the solution tree contract there because of the in-depth discussion we just had and deliverable that really just is confirming that we're moving forward and we do need to come forward with that contract every year so that's why we put it in consent if um if if somebody has a different feel about it we can pull it from there but we thought that it would be one that would help us move our meeting more efficiently thank you for that board board do you have any thoughts on e okay hearing none uh f uh those are particip potential items now action items uh and you guys have them before you and i could just read it for the um public and our viewing audience in little rock and beyond it's the ade waiver for freshman

218seminar uh the text the math um textbook and the curriculum adoption personnel um policy manual for uh teachers uh so those are the three things that we have for potential action items okay hearing that there's no discussion or thoughts on those moving forward to g which is our student services that it um revisions and and and it's also a first reading right for the student handbook okay hearing none then eight so quickly miss heather i'll i will interject on that one just as a placeholder on the handbook that please remember that you know it's a first reading but know that we will have and we'll bring this up again but there will be adjustments that have been made after the legislative session so the the changes that the legislative group may have made that would

219impact the handbook won't be in there at this point but we've kind of handled all the other aspects of it and just kind of get it ready so to speak and and two for the listening audience he's talking about our current legislative um assembly that is in session right now and they're currently passing uh laws that will um impact uh the way that uh the district govern and move forward which will uh affect our policies so that's what uh our superintendent mike bohr is talking about okay uh i is the account yeah the academies and that's the summer academy proposal for last learning with much of what dr owai and and then his team uh spoke about uh to to address uh uh the loss of learning director hatter president howard you skipped uh h

220i believe we were maybe the person that um i apologize the personnel uh h is uh personnel september uh work action um is that i know that in a previous meeting we asked for some legal guidance on that is that what that item is i just you know i don't really know exactly what the plan is as far as presenting that item yeah so uh that is to circle back around and uh address right no no want to uh have a board address on the september work work action and to answer any um questions and uh and and and two to address it because it it keeps coming up and so we need to uh put a resolve to some point to it whether it's an addressing or um something else whatever comes out of

221the board because it will be a board um conversation or discussion um of course the district will have um uh be a part of the discussion and um and so we will hear um information from the district we will have follow-ups to questions that have been asked in public as well as um in between our meetings with directors and the district and uh go from there okay um well then i will then i will just wait um and not make any you know comments or get into the merits of that at all write me out and just say all of that for the for the actual meeting i just um i didn't i didn't know if this was at the point where we would be getting the update on the legal guidance that had been

222requested before so yeah i'm sorry um what what this is for today it is just um or this evening we are just going over all of the agenda items and um we aren't taking any um obviously actions on on these agenda items but then we are uh this is the moment for the board to uh express how they feel about about the items or else if it needs to be tweaked or um or anything like that uh b b for the district sends out all of the supporting documents to go with with these um items and it also um per per provides um an opportunity for the district to address any of our concerns if that makes sense okay i just did an overview just just for anybody else that really wasn't towards you um

223and then uh h okay we did h i is it's the academies i i just went over that uh that's the lost learning that uh dr white and his team talked about and then uh physical governance and and then right there with the fiscal of the debt extension as well as the audit and then our monthly expenditure report um i will put a pause right there just to reiterate that the budget that we are uh seeing now uh it is a budget that was already approved uh for the 21 20 21 school year and um and so this board uh will not start uh getting into creating the budget or having input on on the budget for 21 22 um until i believe next month and so the um monthly report and this is more

224for the public is uh it is just a report of expenditures would have already been approved so remember we came in at the end of the first semester of this year 111 days ago okay so um the other president i'm sorry this is on that budget or on that um agenda item and i'm okay i don't know exactly how to praise this question but i want to put it out there because i think it's very important and we might want to just go ahead and put it on the district's radar as something we need to be talking about under this item when we have the meetings i think that's kind of how i will frame it i started thinking about the timeline for the state's review of our exit criteria and when we would be

225going through this budgetary process and when we would be potentially looking to ask the voters for a millage extension and i think it is fair to say that getting out of state control will be a um a big part or a big factor in a millage extension vote it has been in the last two knowledge extensions is the state patrol and so if we are seeking to be out of state control by the time we are asking voters for a potential millage extension that means that we have to meet those exit criteria before that and then in order to do that the governor has said there was a there was an exchange of correspondence with representative andrew collins i believe this last week that he put on social media where the governor said in writing

226we have to pass a balanced budget before um i mean that that was at least my reading of it was that we would have to do that so i wanted to follow up about if we are not going to be you know the september date was mentioned earlier in tonight's presentation as far as when this board would be adopting a budget for um for next year and if that is happening in september i don't know that we can meet those exit criteria before that and that really puts you know the pressure as far as being able to get something as you know done before we would be asking for a military extension so i just i want to raise that because i am getting concerned about the timeline to meet all of these things so

227you know we have to pass the balanced budget before we can meet the exit criteria and i think frankly we're going to have to meet those exit criteria in exit state control before moving on with the millage extension um and so i just want to put that out there this report if you have thoughts um you're welcome to respond or we can just save it for the action actual meeting but i think that's got to be a part of the discussion yeah i think that we could save it for the next um meeting because uh there's there are kelsey's um kelsey bailey for those watching the cfo he spoke about the balance uh of budget and putting it it together and then going um and then for us to go through that uh process to

228have it approved by september and um superintendent poor i will go ahead and let you um fill in because you may have something that i'm not aware of since i think kelsey and i both probably want to mr bailey and i both want to respond a little bit to miss nolan so thank you for the question and you know one of the the things that probably again sharing for the audience that um maybe 18 months ago the criteria that that we would never have anticipated being a challenge would have been the budget but because of lawson enrollment the pandemic it's kind of created a different pressure on us as a district to respond to that loss of enrollment staff appropriately and as we talked about earlier tonight still get a staff raise but you know

229when we're coming in and telling you we're going to look for a staff raise we think we're doing a pretty good job of executing the other thing is and i believe mr bailey may want to add to this but i know miss smith from the department of education not only is asking some of the measures we're taking to work to reduce our budget and how we're moving and progressing that will come out as a report at the state board but also asking how we're going to use some of our esther funds with some of our initial planning mr bailey would you like to add i think you pretty much captured on that but just to go back although we'll formally start talking about budget probably next month a little bit more that's just because we

230get a major influx of tax revenue here to really see how this projection went uh we're constantly doing budget all the actions you all take to have any kind of financial or fiscal governance impact that plays into us formulating the budget so we take all the votes the vote you did for hall and other things and i mean those are all budgetary items so it plays an effect on what we actually implement for next year so uh based on september september is a deadline that we actually have to have a budget voted upon so when we present a draft budget there may be different things that you have questions about the different allocations that we really need to maybe change the different things and along with if we get uh the extension of uh debt

231uh military approved we can actually add a portion of that into our budget before we actually submit it because we will have some capital improvement needs that can happen within that fiscal year so all those things just let's realize we're constantly working on budget i'm taking notes on pretty much everything you all talk about so this is gonna you know cause any kind of uh uh costing a thing for the district or is this gonna you know reduce anything for the district so we're constantly working on budget although this one is set for this year uh for next year we're always thinking of way ahead of you know schedule so can i very i will not uh not get us off track i just want to what i really want to focus on as far

232as for the the upcoming meeting a piece that i think needs to be added to this discussion is a pretty firm timeline of when we're going to do um do this because we talked about i mean under that fiscal governance we're talking about budget and we're also talking about a potential debt extension and if i understand it correctly a debt extension there are deadlines that we would have to make the decision that we would want to put that on the ballot we cannot probably make that decision unless we know that whether or not we are going to be exiting state control that is a big factor we have to know and we won't know if we're actually in state control until it's not you know i understand mr bailey you're saying that you are constantly

233making budget adjustments but our exit criteria area require us to a dot like to pass to adopt a budget that has no deficit spending and the governor this last week in that letter said that we currently haven't met that goal and so i am just really worried about us needing that within the time frame i mean we may have to do our budgeting much earlier this year if we're trying to do it before these other things have to be done so i just i want us to add the timeline issue into the discussion so the caveat to that and we kind of discussed it maybe in one of the work sessions uh we have to address facilities so uh if you have a roof come up uh for next year you say you balance your

234budget you're coming in with revenues uh a million over you're going to add a million dollars to your fund balance but we hadn't addressed the facilities that we have two roofs that failed next you know a secondary or larger elementary that's a million dollars a piece so if you have to spend two million dollars you've already have dipped and you're not in the in a positive scenario so the budget is on paper but you're going to end up in a deficit so addressing facilities and that's why i put it when we talked about it that's very important whether it's that extension or just having a facility discussion because the budget i mean that's a big part of the budget so where we go with capital improvements that are needed so and mr bailey and superintendent

235poor it kind of goes back uh what director nolan is talking about is is is how we talked about a budget um work session and and um to where uh we can everyone is able to be brought up to speed on um one right on the budget and um mr bailey have you know he's been doing this a while for the district and you haven't been wrong yet so until he's wrong um uh yeah but um but but but i think that uh that working budget session led by our cfo um kelsey bailey is really gonna help the entire board understand um right where uh we are and then how the board and and then how the budget actually works um and so we will know and not necessarily because we get a lot of

236i'm sure people get a lot of incoming around our budgets but um um two and we as a board just need to wrap our hands around it and and um and and and better understand and understand it uh right since we are the ones that have to approve it uh superintendent you did unmute mr bailey i saw you you're still unmuted do you have anything on this i think you're right on target we we have to have those budget work sessions especially with many of you all just coming to the board and maybe just come into school finance you won't don't be expected to try to learn all this in a year two years even three years or anytime you just need to have a good understanding and really set those those higher goals and

237standards that you want to see the district achieve at that point and we actually my job is actually to put finance behind it and actually you know do some cost analysis with anything that you all may bring and make sure we're staying financially solvent so but i'm available every month to do whatever you all need as far as work session or if you want to do something on weekends like that as well so but it's something that's i know we probably at least need to if not more because we've got a lot to talk about capital facilities we're going to tackle extension of debt we're going to tackle those uh those personnel pieces that we talked about tonight with the mag study or the teacher salary schedule i mean all that's going to play into

238a part where we're forecasting out three years superintendent thank you mr bailey okay um okay so uh we we started that uh conversation on budget that will continue in and right in a couple of weeks um the other um k is the personnel policy review and that is um pretty self-explanatory uh we will review some policies uh eric walker we will look at success excuse me section five which will be a first reading all of these will be first readings five six and seven five is of course is a curriculum just so y'all will know five is a curriculum six is uh school and home community relations and then uh seven is the finance and business management of it and so and then we'll get into the personnel policy uh manual for teachers which will

239be a second read and of course we will have budget on board comments to round us out as you can see this is a full agenda uh moving forward we will continue to have full agendas because we have a lot of ground and a lot of things to cover so um with that do you you guys are able to unmute and have any um thoughts or comments on this uh before we uh go ahead and let the district to move forward in getting us are getting those supporting documents uh superintendent for thank you miss hatter i just want to bring up something about policy and i know that this week we've received as board members and as a superintendent multiple emails related to policies that deal with equity discrimination and i want you all to

240understand that there were several people in those emails that shared we actually are in compliance yet they think we're missing the mark by not including something in policy and how did it get left off when there was a change in 2017 to modify policies and i talked to ms hatter that i think i can give a very short brief explanation tonight that might be helpful to all of you when i came into the district um one of the things that was easily to recognize that many of the policies that were in the policy handbook had not been reviewed in in some cases as much as 20 years and and 20 years not having to have any kind of review if you look at the current policy ham policy handbook that we have you'll see that

241those policies while we had a community advisory board were being reviewed by that advisory board at least every year we adopted the model policy from the arkansas school board association but when we adopted that and and i believe we've even maybe said this to you but maybe not frequently enough is that when you adopt the model policy it doesn't mean that you can't all put your own print on it make modifications or changes it also means that it always has to evolve as state laws change such as things that are happening right now the state legislative session our policies more than likely will have to change in several areas because of legislation that's being passed right now so for community you know when they have a passion about something that we obviously all have seen

242this week about uh discrimination policies or policies that deal with equity you as a board have every opportunity to say yeah we want to discuss that it actually probably could even come up as you review some of the policies that we have in store for the end of this month to put your lens on it and you can make a modification that is in your realm we have made policy modifications mr mason um and and mr wood would attest to this that were unique that went away a little bit from the model policy because we thought felt it best met what little rock needed but some of the old policies that were there hey if there are things that you really think bring value and would assist our community you have every right to bring

243those back in so i hope that's going to help not only you as board members but maybe our community understand that a policy book evolves but it has to evolve with the legal standing that is being created and it has to constantly be reviewed and updated to make sure that we're going to uphold those policies and people have to have ownership in it which is really one of your primary roles miss hatter i hope i covered kind of what you and i talked about i don't know if you have anything to add that maybe i missed but we thought that might help all of you and of course it becomes kind of a community statement then out to everyone as well um that that we receive so many emails on yeah um doric and nolan

244go ahead go ahead go ahead no go ahead because i'm gonna because when i speak i'm gonna move it to right to the next item go ahead oh um well on that topic so i have two things but on that topic um i'm in favor of putting our own print on that policy by adding a non-discrimination statement and is that something that we want to entertain adding to the agenda or having the district present us with some proposed language or something like that um as far as you know you're right we should have ownership of ownership of it and and request it but i think that at least for me that that is something that i would be in favor of and you know i just want to throw that out there to the other

245board members do we want to talk about adding that maybe not to this agenda i don't know you know obviously our meeting agendas are going until one o'clock in the morning so i would be worried about adding too much to each agenda but um it's not going to happen unless we ask for it to happen so is that something that you all are interested in i think that with policy i think it's important to remember that like we're able we that's what the board do we set policy and so like we're able to introduce um policy while working with in collaboration with the district because we have to make sure that the district is able to execute what what directives we give and um i think that uh policies where we're able to right to

246revise them and then looking back at what used to be which is a very large finder um and what is now we're able to add add back those policies that are relevant and unique um and needed for our district as well as create uh newer policies that is relevant for to to today's time today's students today's climate so um yeah i mean um and then two i don't know if this is getting ahead but you know uh the dis that myself in the district we started talking about policies and protections and around the legislator the with this legislative session around particularly the lgbtq plus communities and making sure that we are providing the necessary are looking to provide the necessary trainings um for not only uh district staff but like board board members as well

247at some point we're going to have to um do that so yeah we are always open for policies because that's what we are here to do um i we are at the tail end of our meeting and it feels like we're gonna be here a little while but um longer depending on how much more comments we we have but um director callaway and then nolan again okay this is an agenda meeting right so we're setting an agenda so uh why are we having to discuss all of this and we can like do a another meeting or even a meeting to uh um do it during the regular board meeting okay i guess uh what i'm trying to say is like whenever we have an agenda meeting sometimes they last to one o'clock and if we

248discuss everything that i have a question i will be here at one o'clock you understand so uh if if this is an agenda meeting this is a topic that we're going to discuss does that mean we have to discuss it now director director calorie you are um uh correct this is not this this is an agenda meeting we're not here to discuss any uh any of these issues um however what what what the meet with the agenda meeting is for is to bring the agenda that have been prepared by the district by the superintendent and and and myself to the board for the board to review it to understand what is um on it and and of course any questions that have not already been directed um to the to the administration um or myself

249to have an opportunity for us for that to be expressed here but but no we are not we do not get into those items because we're going to get into them for sure on at at our normal normal monthly meeting so i think oh i'm so sorry but just to clarify i am suggesting adding something to the agenda so this is pertinent to an agenda item well i was told prior to that i couldn't bring up anything from uh to the agenda unless i did it five days prior to the agenda meeting that's correct at the agenda at the gender meeting it is to review what the proposed agenda is and then it is also to review like like what director nolan is talking about that's a policy so again we can add that policy

250to be reviewed it doesn't mean an action is going to be taken on it it could just be a conversation it's going to be dependent upon the board so do you get a little clarity to that i think that may help miss cowway um the the when you had made a suggestion to modify the agenda that was for the regular board meeting this would be the appropriate time for any board member and and i think that's what miss nolan's trying to potentially suggest is we want to add a policy discussion on discrimination it you could also bring up other items and miss cal we we did work to make sure that the agenda item that you brought up the previous month is on our agenda for this month uh which is right but but what

251you told me at that point in time was i had to to bring that at least five days before the agenda meeting and if that's the case why was i told that and and uh miss nolan just brought something up that i think should be on the agenda don't get me wrong but she didn't have to wait five days no timing i'll just clarify real quick and if i misspoke miss calloway or we had a misunderstanding it was five days prior to the regular meeting the pre-agenda meeting is an open eye open time for board members to have this type of discussion so you you brought it up when it was right prior to our regular uh normal big meeting and that's when i suggested that it needed to really come before we ever got

252the agenda posted for like the mean we're going to have on the 22nd hmm i might go back and look that up i would just like to speak in support of the eye of the idea of us putting that on the agenda at least as an fyi to see where we are what what is our status quo you know for our non-discrimination policy at the moment and where where is it written and what the language is i know that years ago we had a policy that included sexual orientation i don't recall that or included gender identity if we're in compliance now my guess is we're in compliance with the state or the federal guidelines which would not include sexual orientation or gender identity and i think this is a good time for us to take

253a look at that because i think that the context now is a time where we would want to really thoughtfully consider that and be able to be as clear as we can about where we stand and i agree with that it needs to be discussed i was just talking about a point of order okay so um superintendent uh we will modify that agenda and um add that under the uh policies which was something we were gonna talk about anyway so um with that guys uh that is sorry i'm just trying to make sure i'm the personnel um the personnel policy manual for teachers it's the second read so that is the last thing on our agenda for the 22nd outside of the board comments which always is at the end so um this is the

254agenda for the 22nd and if everyone is in uh favor of that uh we can direct the uh uh the superintendent will direct his staff to uh put together our packet um i'm sorry are we did we agree or ask to add the discussion about the non-discrimination okay going on okay i just want to make sure that i don't know if we have to vote on it or what the process is to add to me and that is in our um sorry i closed it but that is one the 1.14 in our right um governance and operations manual if and and it outlines what's the process just fyi i read that okay so if all mines are in favor and um oh and you guys a quick point of reference i almost forgot uh the

255april 22nd meeting is in person uh there will be a option a virtual option to to attend but but meetings from here on out will be in person they will be closed right to the public um and just for the public um i'm trying to find my little note and our superintendent might have to help me uh with that but there is a directive that is saying that uh we need to meet in person in at some point then we may talk about that again as a board superintendent do you have anything um to add on that yeah actually the directive because the governor took away the mandate and now goes with guidance there we have to shift and so for a board we will start to meet board members that could be another policy

256matter for us to potentially take up of whether or not you would allow virtual meeting to take place so we'd probably have to go through policy in order to create the opportunity for someone to attend virtually and and then be a casting vote um because i don't think we have that currently in our policy right now can miss as many as three meetings but you've got to be according to the the rules of the state you've got to be in person [Music] and so you all receive that from the arkansas school board association if you have anything that that you differ in an opinion on that please don't hesitate to get back to jeremy or eye on that so mr poor does that mean that the employee hearing next week is that virtual or is

257that in person it didn't say anything about the hearings did it superintendent go ahead i believe that we have set that up to be an in-person hearing am i correct on that mr walker heard mr dr lloyd do you know that sir that's correct this is missing person anytime the board of directors meet that's considered a meeting and so uh personnel hearings are also considered that as well thank you um i'm gonna raise two things real quick one is that policy about having directors be able to attend and participate in meetings virtually um i'm gonna go ahead and make the request that we developed some language that then the board could potentially vote on not for the agenda for this uh month because that is too soon but i do think that it would you

258know it would be nice to put it out there for the board to vote yes or no on i'm in favor of it so i'm going to make the request that we go ahead and develop that um policy so we the board would develop that that is what we were talking about earlier we the board will have to develop that and so we would either call a special meeting which we can do but to develop that that that policy um so not to get into it now since it's 9 30 but um that is something that like we will talk about and probably uh do and we will do before the next meeting so yeah and you could do president hatter or members of the board as you can always direct staff to create a

259draft and then you guys get your hands on it um and there are other districts and other boards that do have that language so it would be something that we could we could use from another district um the other thing i just want to mention and i made a note and i wanted to make sure i come back to it um i received multiple comments and questions about our ability to vote at tonight's meeting because it is an agenda meeting but we did take action item action on action items um prior to this meeting i reached out to mr poor and um in conjunction with talking to mr walker and dr owa we actually consulted with the arkansas state school boards association about whether the board can vote at um agenda meetings and so i

260want to for the people who are watching because i know some people have concerns um i'm happy to talk about it more in depth but we did some significant research to make sure that this was permitted and it's all about the amount of notice that went out and sufficient notice went out for this and so i just wanted to address that up front because there was an area of concern for some people so i want to make sure that we're clear that we're we're thinking about it but it's it's something that we um we took some time to look at um and that's all sorry i just wanted to make sure that we said that uh all hearts and minds do anybody else got any questions thoughts concerns last minute um anything on that is

261for the good of the people watching or the board the good of the board or the business of the district what time does target close oh my god target is already already closed i just had to i sent a message i'm just saying condolences um okay so here we go you guys it's uh 9 30 on the dot do uh are you ready to adjourn and if so can we get a motion so moved so rules okay second so all in favor aye all right okay now we're gonna have a amazing uh evening and uh we'll see each other on the 22nd