001okay good evening uh little rock and good evening my four fellow board directors uh today is march 18th and this is our monthly uh little rock school district uh board of directors business meeting so um we are starting our meeting at 5 31 pm and we will open it up with the pledge and i shall call on i'm sorry well i have a lot of new faces sorry i then i will call on uh mr director jeff woods all right everyone stand up if you're able to i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you director uh wood um for that um as you guys know um we have uh been
002um uh here in in um business for about 91 92 days now and um every month we have a month of work um word of the month or a statement and this month is collective work and responsibility so i will call on director wilson to share any collective work or responsibility you have done that have helped a community or your family moving forward well um collective work i mean i think for the saying about that it takes a village to raise a child is completely true um and so i know the collective work at our school i'm going to shout out to forest heights they definitely have put in the work for my own child as well as other children and i know that happens every day in our district and it's not just like
003individual classroom teachers but the building and everyone that works in the building that lift our kids up and help them get the education they need thank you and lastly for a moment of inspiration and i'm going to add mindfulness to it i think it's i will call on director adams right since our community just love watching you rock in the chair and uh members of the community have shared how soothing your voice is so you can open us up with that thank you miss hatter um i i'd like to take this word just this this opportunity i think to talk about just to make a comment about the young people who i think are an inspiration to inspirational to many of us um here in the past several weeks there's been a lot of talk
004in the public sphere in the state legislature about trans youth and we have some of those in our district and would want to give a message of um validation to them and of appreciation that they're a part of our district and let them know that their leadership is going to do whatever we can do to be supportive of them in their education and their health and we're and we are proud of them director adams thank you so much for um uplifting our trans youth and our youth that identify with the lgbtq plus community because we are going to do everything in our um power to make sure that they are safe and that they feel included so um that's a conversation uh that actually i've started with the district um about that just because of
005everything that is going on so with that you all um i then i appreciate um you guys helping um me open up the meeting and uh we will uh move forward with with with our um agenda and go uh to the district celebrations superintendent pork thank you uh miss hatter if you don't mind i'm gonna take a privilege and just ask us all to take a moment um and miss hatter in particular has been an individual that has been a part of trying to support a family that really went through a very horrific loss of a young lady this weekend that i know it's just mind-boggling for any of us to think about losing a child let alone you know if it was our own child and julia hughes left us at the age of
006nine was a student at otter creek elementary for all of her elementary years a student that just literally bounded out of the car each and every day to go bring life to that school she was bright an honor student she was a young lady that brought other kids together and she was a clue even for the staff so if we can i know this is very close for so many of you of uh your awareness of this as well as uh your heartfelt sympathy but let's just take a minute if you don't mind uh in thought and prayer and and you know all the strength that we can give this family as they go through this loss thank you everyone um i know that's a tough one but it's all it's it is our community
007and it is our reality right now so i appreciate everyone and i want to also just end with gratefulness of the community ms hatter was so excited to share that within less than 12 hours there was a gofundme account that met its financial target uh of to help and support the family now they've exceeded that and they're still probably in need of other resources so that's still possible i'm very proud of our our staff district staff counseling group and mental health support that was at the school on monday for students and for staff and we opened it up really for our entire district for anyone that needed it and so i thank dr fields lisa williams and laquita grayson for their efforts i want to thank darian smith uh for his leadership as as he
008you know supports all the elementary schools but most importantly i want to thank the otter creek staff for their strength this week and trying to help students deal with this tragic loss this wendy minor has been like she always is an amazing later so um thank you and we will now move to some of our celebrations and really getting the opportunity to honor some of our prized partners um and the partners that we're really focusing on today uh deal with chico elementary ms blaylock i'll turn it to you thank you mr poor it's my privilege to introduce to you and the members of the lorac school board the district's newest partners in education and tonight we'll be highlighting two partnerships actively supporting chico elementary one of the district's recently established community schools first up is
009first assembly little rock and i believe some of them are joining us tonight i can't scroll through but if you are with first assembly please unmute these folks are not new to the little rock school district they have been working with schools prior to chica i'm thrilled that they have formalized their partnership with chico as they help them navigate their food pantry who's here from first assembly greg ferguson is frank greg we're glad you're here thank you and larry aren't you from first assembly as well he mentioned to me earlier that he may be late because he's working he was working in the food pantry tonight so that's spoken like a true volunteer isn't it so thank you larry gentlemen would you like to have any say a few words about yourself yeah i would
010just like to say that we are excited um my name is greg ferguson i'm the pastor at first at little rock uh we are excited about our partnership with one of our schools that is 0.5 miles away from us excited to partner with them it's been just a great fit as we talk about how we can continue to to meet the needs and the resources in our community so on behalf of first assembly little rock we are excited to begin this partnership and we're excited what god is going to do because of it we certainly appreciate y'all thank you so much for supporting our schools as you do our second partnership is full circle farm corp and they're also supporting the battle that so many face through food insecurities and due to a recent grant
011full circle is able to help make a huge impact on chico and the southwest florida community and i know several of them are with us tonight i see you rachel who else please unmute and introduce yourselves yeah i'm going to start it here my name is a.b stewart um i use they them pronouns i am the program director of full circle farm corps uh we are an americorps state program um facilitated in part by engage ar and we're operated under the non-profit arkansas resource conservation and development council rcnd for short we follow in the footsteps of arkansas garden corps if any of you were familiar with that program and i myself have some experience maybe some of you do too as well with the love your school program that operated with little rock for quite
012some time um we also have a partnership with farm to school under the arkansas department of agriculture and we highly prize that especially as we're in the context of the little rock school district tonight as you mentioned the mission of full circle farm corps is to confront food insecurity and strengthen communities through farming outreach and teaching we do currently have nine sites in the central region which is pulaski county one out in fort smith and we're very honored to be supporting the little rock school district the city of little rock and community school initiative of which of course chico elementary is a large part and i'd like to turn it over to nicole chandler who is the community school site coordinator there hello everyone um i just want to say uh thank you all for
013highlighting our two partners and they've both been a great asset to our school by supporting our students and our families in the neighborhood the students have been really excited about the work that farmcore will be doing and also first litterack has been a great supporter and helping our teachers by recognizing their contributions during the holidays and they were actually outside serving boxes of food and hot meals to our students in the neighborhood so they're literally in action all the time whenever we ask them to come out um so we're just grateful for both of our partnerships and the work they contribute to our school and our greater community and i believe principal gina gino are you one yeah i am thank you miss blaylock um i just echo everything that mr chandler said we are
014so thankful for first assembly little rock um as well as full circle farm core for partnering with us there are some great things in store that both of these organizations have planned it was nice to meet pastor greg and his whole family tonight i've interacted with pastor greg and larry before but pastor gray brought his entire family out to help serve i mean i think that just speaks to the type of partnership that they want to have with our school and then sarah and ray are on tonight and they've been working with us and our staff on our plans for a garden that will benefit not just our students but our community um and just the surrounding area and so we thank them for all their hard work and can't wait to see um the
015fruits of their labor literally so thank you mr curry yeah we are really excited about this too um i'm ray i am a team leader with full circle farm corps over three of the sites in the central region and also the one site that's out in the western region in fort smith so i have the city of little rock sites which is actually multiple sites and then the urban food loop and the arkansas food bank so at ja fair we are revitalizing some of the gardens there and getting to use the really awesome greenhouse that they have there we're going to be getting into some planning phases with watson shortly after spring break and then at chico we are in the next couple of weeks here going to be breaking ground but not actually going
016into the ground building some raised bed gardens at chico and an outdoor classroom area and a couple of other projects and i'm just really excited about this year it's my second year with farmcore and i'm getting to work with getting to serve with this community school initiative was what kind of convinced me actually to come back to farmcore for a second term and so i'm really grateful to get to participate in this and to make something lasting for the school and for the kids and for the whole community and one thing i try to keep uh saying to myself and everyone else over and over again is just that it's not it's not our garden um i'm we're just here to kind of push it along um so i can't wait to to see what
017we do with it and sarah is going to tell you just a little bit about what else we're working on yeah like she said my name is sarah i'm an americorps member and i serve with full circle farm court chico with rachel um i just moved down here from northwest arkansas and it's been incredible to see the impact of the direct service already and like she said we're in the process of building our garden and we can't wait to use it not only to harvest food and give that food directly to students staff and their families but also to use it as an educational and inspirational tool for the students so we're going to be using some curriculum through growing my plate to teach nutritional classes and about the garden teach them how to literally
018take food from the garden that we're giving them use it to nourish their bodies and how to cook it we're also partnering with an eagle scout and he's going to kind of bring his creative vision in and help us build some aspects of the garden as well thank you to all of our partner members and thank you for joining us we love seeing your smiling face it's a privilege to get to introduce you to our school board as well as our community members and i appreciate you having the opportunity to review your partnership uh with all of our viewers thank you very much and we appreciate you being here thank you first assembly and full circle we appreciate it thank you so much and i i want to just interject real quick uh one last
019tribute to chico uh i know border virtue saw the email but today at about 10 till 7 we found out that power lines were down no electricity at the school and i just want to share the responsiveness of the chico staff principal curry principal donna hall and then our security team led by ron self kevin yarberry energy little rock police department you couldn't even use the bus lanes or the parent drop-off lanes to get kids into school and if you've been down in chico it's one of our most congested areas for people coming into the school yet somehow we got every kid in and we had power back up by a little bit after nine but understand there was no electricity in the building but we managed to get breakfast we managed to get lunch
020ready we managed to have school and um and it's just a a great power of us type moment and i just wanted to call out um especially his curry this hall and their staff for their efforts to make today work so thank you very much for that we're going to move on to the other celebrations um and guess what we're going to start with one of our board members and how cool is that so i know that our board members were very excited to be able to share about miss lee and wilson and miss wilson is uh was recognized by the university of arkansas medical center for what a tribute that is called the chris hackler award for excellence in medical excellence miss wilson besides being a board member for the little rock school district
021she's also a social worker and along with miss montgomery they have a passion and work effort to impact patients that have to suffer with sickle cell and so it is really an amazing thing to have one of our board members uh get recognized uh for their efforts um i appreciate miss noland being the first person to share this with me on a on a text and uh we did celebrate you miss wilson in our retreat but we want to do it publicly uh in front of everybody tonight uh the whole world tens of thousands of people that are watching the little rock board meeting tonight so uh congratulations miss wilson the next item is you know during the whole thing of what happens with uh you know this terrible storm that we had and then
022trying to recover you know our own little rock team did amazing work uh yarberry ron self kelsey bailey and everyone in facilities really stepped up and worked incredibly long hours but i'm telling you the partners that you're seeing up on the screen they stepped up over and over and above and beyond and prioritized the little rock school district so that really we had remember those five schools that were out for a week and pulaski has heights that's out for a longer period of time but these partners that you're seeing in front of you they stepped up and prioritized the district and made tremendous amounts of things happen very quickly sometimes within less than 24 hours notice to correct issues and problems work with our own district team i called every one of those ceos um
023i guess it was two weeks ago and so here's ceos two of them actually got teary-eyed uh being called it just tells sometimes how we don't people need the positive and um you know these guys stepped up for our district i know many of you will know uh individuals within these companies and it could be the ceo or could just be an employee within that organization i hope that everyone that's watching tonight and board members you will find a way to reach out to these organizations or their employees and thank them for their help and support to get our schools up and running we also found really good news in fact just this week that cloverdale mann and mabelville this was a grant that began in 2019 uh tied to verizon and we found out
024that we now have uh an additional two years of having devices data plans professional development and so much more great tribute to our principals at those three schools but also to um the verizon coaches which are chantal miller adam fleetwood and melanie battles because they did a lot of work to make this application possible so that we can have it so this this really was one of those things that was our first one-on-one type initiative for middle schools and um and and now that grant has been extended i also want to thank our district technology staff of john ruffins and margaret anderson for their help and then finally miss linda young who does uh kind of the big grants and she was instrumental in helping us get the extension sticking with uh we mentioned cloverdale
025i want to go one more here's crystal braswell one of our assistant principals a rock star assistant principal um she is now presenting on the national stage and i think that if all of you is board members but probably miss wilson and mr adams are especially going to love this she is a co-author of what's titled the school wellness wheel and what it is it's about a book about raising student achievement through healing and resiliency centered education and just to give a little description because she is also a co-author of this book the school wellness wheel provides research and direction for how schools can shift their culture and structure other organizations away from being traditional curriculum-focused centers to organizations that facilitate healing and building resilience so that all children can ultimately learn to their highest
026potential evolving education of the future with a more relevant innovative and effective model of schooling forms the foundation of this work schools are the bedrocks of our community they are social institutions that have powerful capacity to touch every citizen and schools can also have the immense potential to enhance the process of cognitive social and emotional growth buffer the negative effects of stress and trauma promote resilience in the learners that they serve on a daily basis the great challenge is to balance push for academic success and excellence with a safe and supportive environment and miss braswell is front and center even on the national level and again she is an assistant principal at cloverdale middle school next we're so very proud and uh dr roberts i know is on uh today to be a part of
027our presentation later but i i bet he is busting at the seams because this is a big big scholarship uh jose cintillion is a senior at hall and he recently was named a dell scholar adele scholar it brings twenty thousand dollars in scholarship money it brings fees for books and technology and so congratulations to this young man you know we're so excited and can't wait to see what his future will bring another hall student that was recently recognized this time with the mclarty drives scholarship is maria avalos and maria is also a senior you can see that she got 2 500 and she plans to use that resource to go towards uh her passion and her career choice of being a nurse and so we're very excited for miss avalos finally our last one tonight
028is a young man by the name of bryce bryson warren bryson is just a sophomore and um unbelievable but as a sophomore i i think it was last tuesday night excuse me he was named the katv full-court player of the year which is basically the best player in the state that's what that's really saying to you all doesn't matter what classification here's a sophomore that won it now the thing that is most exciting about it is i agree he's a heck of a basketball player he's fun to watch but what's even more important is what he represents in the classroom and away from the campus he is a gentleman he's a scholar he's just a good good young man that we can also be very proud of today the tigers did lose in the championship
029game against uh north little rock and uh was a battle but north little rock did come out ahead and just wasn't our night tonight but we took second in the state parkview ended up in the the top four in the state as well so we congratulate mr warren and both of our our basketball teams and miss hatter that concludes our district celebrations excuse me well thank you and thank you to all of our partners and community community partners for partnering with the with our schools and in our districts and a um huge congratulations to our students um on their achievements uh both uh in the classroom and out of the classroom um i excuse me and then um our next thing on the item we're going to move into public comment thank you and board
030members we actually have three sections of public comments tonight one is written comments that were provided to the district that i will read we then have two individuals that have asked speak publicly and then finally we will have i believe three individuals that will have asked to speak during the public hearing when we get to the topic of west school of innovation and hall high school so i will start with the printed comments if you don't mind the first one comes from miss jamie alverson miss alberson is a parent within the district and also a registered nurse her comments it is the position of the national association of school nurses that school staff and communities should institute affirming policies that support lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer questioning lb tqu these concerns including bullying health risk
031behaviors and rejection from family and friends professional school nurses are uniquely positioned to help lgbtq youth by creating affirming spaces guiding youth towards resources and advocating for school-wide protections and assuring you that their identities and feelings are normal and appropriate i'm writing to request that the board make a statement in support of our transgender and gender diverse children within the district the american academy of pediatric and national association of school nurse nurses believe that it is necessary at this time and have also made such statements we are in the middle of a pandemic that has led to staggering rises and mental health concerns among children and teens trans children transgender children had statistically higher rates of depression and suicidal ideation before the pandemic around half of the transgender youth consider suicide and a third attempted
032an example statement for your review and board members we will have these in your minutes for you to look at her statement for a possible look at is we the little rock school district board go on record in support of our transgender and gender diverse students you're welcomed included and loved in your schools that's the current student handbook states on page 51 quote the commitment of the little rock school district to the most fundamental principles of academic freedom and equality of opportunity and human dignity requires that decisions involving students and employees be based on individual merit and be free from discrimination in all forms and again board members we will share these comments and community members these comments will be made available on our website uh we'll load those things up tomorrow the next comment
033that came in to for a written form was from a individual by the name of shavonda jackson ms jackson is a parent and here's her concern she says hello i am a concerned mother about my daughter's usage of her school tablet my daughter is 11 and does not have a personal phone or tablet so she uses her school tablet to text and video chat with her friends due to the lack of restrictions on the tablet she was failing several classes but she is choosing to talk with her friends instead of doing her work it is hard for her to keep on task when i went to school there was a way to restrict certain things on the computers i'm asking is there not another way to restrict or monitor more closely what the children are
034doing on those tablets before this my child was an a or b student now she's barely passing with the d and over half her classes what can we do about this and board members we've told you in the past that we don't respond in public on public comments but we will follow up on this and again we will post this into our meeting next we do have two individuals that have asked to speak to you in person tonight uh miss hatter i think i don't know whether you're the time keeper or someone else but the two uh individuals um the first person will be miss debbie west and miss west if you would introduce yourself when you get to start and the second person will be miss teresa knapp gordon miss west and the time
035limit do you want to remind them of the three-minute time is this public comment we're talking about okay it is thank you miss hatter it is a three minute uh time limit uh and miss west you're up superintendent poor uh miss west did not uh log in or she has not logged in yet okay thank you i think we go then to miss that gordon [Music] good evening board members superintendent poor i am theresa knapp gordon president of the little rock education association um to come to you tonight um to talk to you about a couple of things first of all though i want to say central had a tough loss today but to us in the right school district they are still champions and we love each and every one of them with all
036the celebrations great things are happening every day in little high school district as a parent of my fourth child going through the right school district i'm well aware that there is no better place to get a great education than a lot of school district schools um we have spring break coming up next week everybody's excited about that and i want to say thank you to greg adams for his statement about our transgender youth just know that lrea educated or lrsd educators will never be cruel to our students even if the cruelty is legislated and we know that it is our job first and foremost to protect our students um the voucher bill in the legislature hb 1371 apparently is going to resurface probably after spring break so i encourage everyone to reach out to their
037legislators and let them know that we don't need a big voucher scheme in our state we have public schools that are very efficient and effective at educating our students i want to encourage you because i know you're going to consider the whole horse height stem combination tonight please please please don't turn over that staff again um forest heights staff had when if you recall when they joined force heights they had to have specialized training they had to sign agreements saying that they would receive that specialized training in order to even work at forest sites and hall just was turned over last year so please don't do that to those people again and finally i want to talk just a minute about um some of the things that are going on in our city the violence
038that is happening um and i would encourage all of us those listening and our board members think about ways that we can join with our city um the mayor and his group and try to figure out how we can work to address the violence that is happening amongst the youth in our city because when we have children being shot and killed it impacts all of us and we all have to do our part bringing into that we cannot let our city dissolve into violence again as it did in the 80s when we went through all that before so thank you good night i hope you guys have a great week next week i know that the educators and students are going to um and hopefully we are towards the end of this cove pandemic um
039with everybody getting vaccinated thank you okay thank you for your comments do we have any other uh people in the queue to comment on public doing doing the public comments session okay well we will move into our district uh reports and uh first we will have the um certified personnel policy committee report superintendent can you um go ahead and introduce that i don't have the name yes thank you miss austin serves as the president of the little rock ppc for certified employees and ms austin the floor is yours good evening everyone good evening board and superintendent can you all hear me good okay thank you um we did meet ppc met certified ppc met earlier this month and um in order to um in order to get out of state control we did have to
040make some changes to the personnel policy manual which you all have a copy of and so um it will be presented to you all tonight and um the first three sections have come to you all we've worked with the administration um we did some very good collaboration on the document and so the certified ppc um will export your support on those three sections um also i i just kind of noticed the agenda um today but the ppc we did call this document the personnel policy manual for certified staff and so i just kind of wanted to make um just to make that note but again we were working on the second half of it um in a collaboration um today and so that's pretty much my report is that bringing forward those first three sections
041of the personnel policy manual for the certified staff so i hope that you all are pleased with it um we were pleased with it as well and it was good working with administration to get the job done thank you ms austin thank you our next uh presenter is from the classified personnel policy committee and their uh lead on that is miss jordan eason good evening excuse me thank you um i did notice in the chat that it looks like one public comment person was waiting in the waiting room and has not been able to speak do would you like me to yield for that person no we've addressed it and it's an individual that will speak during the hall section of the board meeting okay good evening again everyone um our classified ppc um want
042you all to know that they are very excited about the potential of a bonus that may be a possibility coming up that is very attractive to the classified ppc um we are hopeful as a classified ppc that the funding source will will come through to make that a reality for all lrisd employees um the classified representatives also are hopeful that if a bonus um is able to come through that the bonus is the same amount for all little rock school district employees so um the next topic um our classified ppc um has my voice is not working tonight and has recently been working with the administration lrsd administration and also the certified ppc um on three separate policies one is a sickly bank policy the second is an attendance incentive policy and the third we
043are exploring options regarding a possible sick leave buyout policy so we're excited about that as well um and one very important announcement we the classified ppc we have had two representative groups positions that have been vacated the child nutrition group and also the transportation group we have identified representatives to fill both of those vacated spots so we are excited to welcome those two employees at our next classified ppc meeting and that concludes my presentation thank you mrs and this had our final uh district report comes from dr ola who will give a a very quick overview of our ready for learn task force they've been very busy but we do want to keep you up to date all right good evening superintendent poor president hatter board of directors um real quick uh ready for learning
044task force the task force has met uh a couple of times um and also in smaller groups based on the five focus areas that's outlined in the esser funding guidelines and at this point they all committee members have provided input we you will see that we have students parents uh administrators teachers community members even a medical provider uh so that we can uh have all voices from voices from all aspects of the community represented on our committee of course the task was to discuss possible recommendations for the esser ii funding and the sr3 funding that will be coming to the district these are the five focus areas food security the learning loss technology systemic procedures and facility concerns the committee will administer a survey to a larger community so that we could obtain additional recommendations
045and then once we have those additional recommendations we will compile the list and present those to superintendent poor who will present or i will present on his behalf to you also we will have input on how to expend those funds these are the community survey staff survey they were sent out uh today at this point we have a little over 150 staff surveys and a little over a commun 100 community survey that have been returned and so we'll keep those throughout spring break to give our community and our staff members more time to respond to those virtual fridays we based on the fact that our students are still we still have students who are in the virtual learning environment we have teachers who are providing instruction both in person and in the virtual learning environment
046we believe that it's important for us to stay the course with virtual fridays and to provide continue to provide that opportunity for all of our students to receive additional support as well as having uh allowing our students i mean providing the time for our teachers to uh plan to effectively meet with smaller groups of students and also provide interventions uh so forth and you will also see uh the several uh enrichment opportunities that have been provided on virtual fridays such as the gifted and talented virtual field trips one rock one book lessons that have been sent out partnering with the innovation hub with dr jones and providing virtual stem field trips as well as reading sessions for our students via the academic hotline and of course we want to continue the academic support as well
047that concludes my report for you all tonight are there any questions or do you have um any uh questions for a dr oma okay seeing that there are none thank you dr ober for your report okay moving to the next agenda item we are getting into our consent items those items we do have some action items um in there um so we will move into the personnel changes as well as the donation of property in minutes superintendent poor thank you miss hatter and do appreciate uh want our public to know that we do discuss these items um sometimes especially the minutes board members do contribute and we modify those we appreciate this nolan's help for helping with mr hutchinson and dr ola as they get those minutes all put together and then appreciate everyone else's
048review typically you have in the past anyway made a motion to approve this as a package and once emotions made there can be discussion uh if necessary but that might be the next step is to have a motion are there any questions on the um and excuse me are there any questions on the consent items i do i don't know if we need to make the motion first um but it's just a very quick comment um i've already raised this yes yes you do you need to make the motion first it needs to be second and then of course madam president you need to recite it and then you can call for the question well um two the other way was to we can have a discussion and move into motion as well and i
049was gonna do it that way um just to answer that question but do we have a motion on the floor for a discussion to have director nolan's uh statement heard can someone make a motion i'll make a motion can i get a second you have to respect it you have to recite the motion i'll make the motion please i'll move that we uh i move that the consent agenda to be proved approved as presented a second emotion all in favor wait no are there any questions are there any questions yeah i just have one comment real quick the minutes um i have raised this up with the district i just want to put it on a record now and we can um address it going forward did not include the agenda meeting where we did
050actually take a vote and so we are going to have to document that because we took a vote in that agenda meeting so um i think we can go ahead and approve these meet these minutes as they are now but next month when we approve the minutes we need to make sure that that agenda meeting was included so that we don't miss that part so i don't think that that prevents us from moving forward on this consent package but i just want to make sure that we we do address that director nolan are you able to repeat the first half of what you said i missed it on this end i couldn't hear you sure um i just said the minutes that we have here i think they're great they're accurate it's wonderful um but
051they do not include the agenda meeting in which we did take a vote we took the personnel vote um for those two positions and so we just need to make sure that we include for next month we have to make sure that we include that so we don't lose that piece of the record and that's all i was saying correct okay all right so are we ready to vote we are ready one second i'm i'm so sorry i i'm gonna try and fix my wi-fi on this end because it's really choppy so i'm not sure how this is coming across on your end but on mine i'm catching probably every other few words so let me try and fix my get a better connection or something vice president wilson are you able to hear me
052yes president hatter i can hear you can you put a thumbs up i can't make out what you're saying you can't thumbs down okay um if you can hear me and i'm coming off across clear can you please take over uh the meeting as i um get this worked out do you have the agenda and everything um in front of you i can get it um are you able to participate in the vote i i'm gonna log off and log back in okay mr porter we need vicki here to vote or we have enough board members we can move forward you are able to move forward because you have a quorum perfect all right so we have a motion on the floor to improve the consent packet as a packet are there any questions or
053discussion hearing none then who is in favor of approving the consent packet as approved are there any nays hearing none that is approved and the next thing on our agenda is going to be our educational services so mr porter um i appreciate jumping in help with the life jacket for miss hatter so the we have three reports tonight to kind of uh help keep you informed of progress that we're making on items that we think are pretty important the the first two items are i should say the first two items are kind of updates and the third item is one miss hatter asked to put on the agenda for discussion of charter school but the first thing we want to discuss tonight is the little rock school district digital learning academy i'm going to let
054dr owa set the stage and then i know he has a team ready to present thank you superintendent good evening again board of directors uh tonight we would like to share with you the uh the work the hard work that our two digital learning academy committees have done over the past few weeks several weeks and so we'll have mrs stephanie franklin one of our elementary principals and then mrs karen heavily one of our secondary principals to present on behalf of the two committees on the way we see and they have seen to present a virtual learning a digital learning environment for our scholars for next year we know that some of our parents some of our students have indicated the request to to have a virtual option next year and so we wanted to make
055sure we provide that and to also continue to provide the opportunity for our students to have this learning option as we move the district forward so i will now turn it over to uh president hannah i mean principal franklin and principal heatherwick all right thank you dr owa this is um i'm karen heatherly and i am the principal at little rock west high school of innovation and first we want to say both the committees want to say thank you for uh to the board and mr poor dr owa and the rest of the little rock school district leadership team for giving us the opportunity to work with the stakeholders in the district and put together a proposal for a little rock school district virtual academy and present it to you tonight and i would like
056to take a moment to introduce my members of the secondary digital learning academy the committee and that would be miss takisha campbell and she's the principal at pinnacle view middle school uh dr marcus johnson and he's the principal at horace mann middle school and mr marvin burton the principal at southwest um high school and i just want to give you a little bit of a background in february the district leadership did charge us um two committees uh one for secondary which is grade seven through twelve and one for elementary which is grades k-6 to research and from surrounding districts within arkansas out of arkansas but to do some research and to write a plan for a digital learning academy for little rock school district both committees worked uh to gather input from stakeholders we did
057lots of revisions came up with two plans um that you have been presented with um and that you that you've seen and had an opportunity to look over and we're going to present those to you tonight um so i'm going to at this time turn it over to miss stephanie franklin and um and and let her get started with the presentation and introduce introduce her committee good evening board members and other district leaders that are joining us tonight my name is stephanie franklin and i am the proud principal at terry terry tigers um i did chair the elementary committee and i want to introduce very quickly the committee members that helped with the work in the planning for the k-6 elementary um plan and those people are my colleagues um mr cara jackson principal at
058fulbright who's on with us tonight clifton woodley principal at carver who's on with us tonight and miss gina curry who you spoke to earlier um principal ed chico uh this evening so thank you uh committee members for being on um on with us tonight from both committees i chose to use um nearpod which as our as our presentation tool i know you're accustomed to to seeing powerpoints but i chose to use nearpod as a model because nearpod is one of the applications that the district invested in for all of our virtual learners and to help support the virtual teaching that occurred this year while we are in the middle of the pandemic and so it's a great model as a way to present the information but for you also to see a tool that our
059students and teachers have access to um so let's get started i do have a fictitious student out there in the community who will join us um in some of the actions so um the goal of the digital learning academy and the planning committees are as follows by the end of april the goal is to offer a digital academy option for k-12 grade students for the 21-22 school year the first year goal of the academy is to provide a virtual option for students in a manner that will help bridge the one-year gap given that there may be a continuation of the effect of the pandemic into the fall the long-range goal is to provide a permanent k-12 digital academy school option for students in lrsd the digital academy both elementary and secondary will meet the unique
060needs of all students and families in the district either through synchronous or asynchronous learning paths and we're going to talk about what those mean in just a little bit asynchronous and synchronous so the question becomes why why does little rock school district need a digital cat academy option and the committee work felt that it boiled down to these five main points one the flexibility we know that the pandemic was the catalyst that put us or thrust us into having to learn how to deliver quality lessons and quality content virtually last spring that continued on into this school year so flexibility being able to provide an option for students that may have a need to attend school virtually a second is competitiveness little rock school district is the only school district out of all the other
061larger districts in our state that currently does not have a digital option school choice option it's personalized it provides students and parents a school choice with a personalized learning path it's empowering it empowers students who are self-driven and are motivated by learning at their own pace and then innovative of course in that when done correctly with a quality program it will provide a district model for best practices of digital instruction and i'm a former instructional technology specialist and my hope for what we have learned through living through this pandemic is that as a district we will teachers will never go back to teaching the same way even when we are all back in person in brick and mortar schools or most of us are because there are lots of great ways to integrate technology even
062for in-person students so that innovation model could be that a quality program provides a model where best practices are demonstrated to provide professional growth for other teachers and leaders in the district um miss heatherly already went over a brief overview of the committee work but we felt that it was important to note the the main steps and what we would like to emphasize is that because um we are hoping to provide a k-12 digital option that's consistent regardless of whether the student is in elementary middle school or high school the committees while while they did the work independently of each other we miss heatherly and i as committee chairs converged regularly about our work the path of our work and making sure that we mirrored one another in seeking input from district leaders from district
063department directors of special services from parent input groups as well as all of the administrators at elementary middle and high school and their guiding coalitions and so we mirrored the work from one another so at this point we're going to watch a couple of video clips they're very short and very brief if i could just get a thumbs up miss heatherly when we when i start to play to make sure the sound quality um is good so what is digital learning we need to create a common language and digital tools to provide students some element of control over time and pace okay so i have a student that is in their own home in their own place and as a teacher this is an example of an interactive activity that near pod can be embedded
064so understanding the definition is quite important and so i am going to ask my student to go ahead and answer this question and if she's not capable i will and so digital learning for review is teaching and learning that relies on digital methods and tools to provide students with some element of control over time place path and or pace okay and on the student side they would get the um response that they were correct okay so in the goal we talked about an asynchronous and a synchronous learning path option for students at all levels so what does that mean synchronous means that you are creating an online presence and a cooperative learning community so that means the teacher is interacting daily with students through live video conferencing at targeted times on a somewhat of a
065set schedule while there are sometimes the students work independently with applications and or collaboration projects the teacher has the daily interaction in real time during the day asynchronous is primarily content delivery so students are still getting the same curriculum materials and the same um quality instruction but the lessons are pre-recorded by the teacher and posted so that the students can complete the work and attend school so to speak in at a flexible time or a flexible location how they overlap is that active learning tasks are provided so we're going to watch two more very quick clips that kind of um flush out a little bit deeper and give you a time to process asynchronous and synchronous learning ms chen a teacher at future bright middle school teaches asynchronously to only virtual students remotely during the
066school day [Music] learning is no longer restricted to the school day or year ms chin creates weekly videos and personalizes lesson plans in which she exhibits enthusiasm and uses props and music to engage students students access the curriculum purchased by their school from a content provider using a learning management system this chin uses various communication tools to correspond with students some within the learning management system and some without some of these tools include discussion boards chat and email [Music] utilizing the learning management system students have access to digital resources that allow them to have flexibility in pace and time in which they access content ms chin appreciates real-time data access and communication tools in the learning management system okay so now we're going to do the same thing but this time the focus will be
067on synchronous learning [Music] mr jones teaches a future bright virtual academy all of his students are virtual students and his class is taught remotely [Music] this particular class meets synchronously during the school day [Music] students and instructors are online at the same time in synchronous settings the students use video communication and interact in real time students can communicate with the teacher and each other collectively when they learn secret is setting they can also work collaboratively as a whole group on small groups using breakout rooms and other tools available in their video conferencing platform with this class design students can learn together as a group and actively engage with their teacher and peers all while working remote so another activity is a quiz and so i'm going to switch to the student view in the airpod
068this will take just a second and that way hopefully you can see the questions and what that would look like for a student using nearpod so as a review digital learning is a teaching in is teaching and learning that relies on digital methods and tools to provide students with some element of control of which of the following with the options being time or schedule place path pace or one or more of the above and of course the answer is one or more of the above so that's an example of a question set that a student would see at this point i'm going to give miss heatherly um the podium because she'll be presenting the remainder of the presentation yes ma'am thank you ms franklin um so um you know as she said the the committees
069did work um separately although we did um communicate with one another because we really think it's important um that um as dr owen said you know this this first year of the digital learning academy is going to be a way to kind of bridge that gap between this year and next year um understanding that families um who want to take advantage of a virtual option still have that but the overarching goal is for uh the district is to create a quality digital learning option across k12 and so we would like for it to be a seamless continuation so i said we did we did compare plans we did discuss about how they can match up together and um and so we have a few features that um that are common between elementary and secondary i'm
070not going to read them all to you because i know you have seen this or you've seen this now um you know one thing that's very very important though to us and um and this is important to the district because we had a lot of discussions um with dr owa and and the leadership team um because one question that came across from families when we met with families was you know would the uh if they chose to to um enroll their student in a digital the digital academy would they still be remain enrolled at their assigned brick and mortar school and that will be true for both secondary and elementary so we want to make sure we stress that and point this out um to all of you because i said that was a big
071question among families and we want to make sure that everyone understands that they still have a seat um at their home school so ms franklin we move on to the next slide um there are a few other common features um regarding um services for um special education 504 um our ell learners i'm reading interventions in gt um one thing is true across you know it doesn't matter you know what type of public school you go to but the required state district testing has to be at face to face um all right and so i'll let you read those because um i said don't want to read them word for word okay miss franklin um but there are unique features to the different academies and and and because they are um you know the secondary in
072elementary do have to differ for different reasons um you know i want to point out there are just some highlights and i'm going to point these out to you because i think these are very very important um in in the elementary academy um the k-5 students should be prepared to make a semester commitment while the sixth grade would uh need to be prepared to make a one-year commitment and in grade seven through 12 they should be be prepared to make a one-year commitment um and that does have to do with the fact that um you know when especially when you get to the high school level level we are talking about credits for graduation and um um and to be able to um to move back and forth would um really um kind of it
073would it would it would it would uh mess up that for lack of a better term um um and maybe um put students back and not be able to earn the the full credit that they needed to for a required course both will have the opportunity for to participate in athletics and extracurriculars and and both will have the opportunity to attend and take those elective courses that are going to be required by state or by or for graduation okay ms franklin okay so i know you're going to have questions so those are the main points or highlights and this is a this is the the epitome of what a virtual parking lot when you're in meetings and we say oh put that on the virtual parking lot this is a real virtual parking lot and
074built-in near pot as a feature so um i am going to turn it back to the teacher view while you are pondering your questions because my student that's out there is going to post a question in a minute so you can see how that works but thank you for listening and we are um now here to answer questions i have a question thank you very much for the presentation um i have i think it's just two questions um one is y'all talked about providing the flexibility and the the bridge for next year and i believe at one point you even said something about um students who want to continue to have that virtual option and i am just i don't think i'm completely clear is the virtual option that schools have had this year across
075the state not going to continue next year is this really the way that we are planning to meet that or is there also going to be you know the virtual option that we're seeing right now where individual classroom teachers are addressing that with their students what's the interplay between the virtual account the digital academy that we're looking at here and any continuation of what we've been calling the virtual option miss heather lee do you mind if i answer that one go ahead okay um so um director nolan the answer to that question is that we know teachers this year have um balanced the responsibility but it also is a burden i'm gonna i'm gonna share because it's it's overwhelming to teach both in person and person in person and virtual learners at the same time
076so this one-year bridge gap plan is to help relieve the burden from classroom teachers for in-person learners while still providing quality instruction by certified teachers that are dedicated to teach our virtual learners in the virtual academy who choose either the asynchronous or the synchronous learning path okay so just so i'm oh doctor or someone was speaking that yes mrs nolan i was just going to mention that we will still continue to use schoology both for our in-person students but as as well as in the digital learning academy and the goal is really to continue to build a more sustainable model of having a digital learning option even past the pandemic and so we know that next week i mean next year implementation of the digital learning academy is going to look completely different from the
077year after and so we we want to continue to revise and make sure that we provide the very best digital learning experience as well but like ms franklin stated uh having our teachers to do dual that's one of the most important lessons that we i've learned this year is that it is not sustainable having them to teach both in person and virtual and it's not sustainable for our students either to have their teachers doing both as well well and i completely agree i just i want to be very clear for me and for the public and that that the dual forms of education that our teachers are having to do right now that will end and that this would be potentially the the way that we carry on offering digital or virtual learning um so
078the other question i had was and i think i wrote it down word for word but it said regarding asynchronous learning it's an access curriculum purchased by their schools utilizing a learning management system um i will tell you that from back in you know last spring when we suddenly had to come back home and do do virtual learning and then as we moved into this year one of the most consistent forms of feedback that i heard was that they that families wanted content provided by their lrsd teachers and not um canned or packaged content that was purchased um and so i just wondered if you could speak to that because you know ultimately whether we deliver it digitally or we deliver it in person we are signing off on the quality and you know the
079level of education that we are providing and so i have concerns about purchased content so i just want to ask you to speak on that dr owen may i yes yes okay so um director nolan unfortunately the video is not one that i could edit and add that it would be a balance um we are not planning on purchasing um prepackaged content and pushing that out the plan is to dedicate both synchronous and asynchronous district certified teachers who will use some supplemental supports like lexia like perhaps and this is a perhaps the nsync which is a digital um offering that win wisdom offers to provide support for virtual learning not by itself but as a supplemental instructional resource that teachers will design lessons create and video record of themselves and provide for our asynchronous learners
080so hopefully that answered your question and i'm sure dr earl will add too if additional detail is needed mrs franklin you uh you hit it uh right on spot home we want to make sure we have resources for our teachers only to use if needed but our teachers will just like our in-person teachers will actually be doing lesson plans using multiple sources of instructional uh resources so that they can address all learning styles within even the virtual learning environment and i said i had to i'll be very quick i'm so so sorry but are people already able to enroll in this um and if not because it you know it's a presentation i believe that is asking for our approval and vote on um what is the plan since we are we're talking about this
081for next year and students may not have been able to choose this option yet so how are we going to to make sure that's available so mrs nolan the process would be and and it's not available now because of course you all on our board will need to approve uh this instructional uh delivery next month uh and hopefully uh early in the month uh but um that's at your disposal but um but so it would be subject to your approval and um and so the students who would like to or the parents who would like to opt in uh to the digital learning academy for their students they now are assigned to their home schools and then they will be able to in april once approved be able to choose the digital learning academy and
082then they will mrs heatherly and mrs franklin will provide uh the next steps with those parents for the digital learning academy for next year all right um sorry before we continue the discussion i just want to make it everyone aware that president hatter is back on and so i'm passing the meeting back to her thank you vice president um i totally appreciate you for stepping in well i was having difficulties um i i do have a question well let me look at the board really quick to see if there's anybody that's in the queue so i don't jump the queue um director mason then i see director callaway director adams and then direct the wood and then i'll follow in behind director wood okay i just had a question question couple questions regarding uh it
083was mentioned that there were several other school districts that were involved in the digital learning academy what are those school districts and and give me i know teachers doing dual uh digital learning and in in class learning is is a hard thing for the teachers can i get a pros and con on the digital learning academy for the students sure i can say um if you don't mind mrs franklin i'll step in and director mason thank you for that question um as far as now i can't i will not speak for miss franklin and their committee but for the secondary committee i mean we did um look at um pulaski counties um we looked at springdale has a as it has a very uh it's a it's a robust program that's been in place for
084a while um um bryant has has a program in place now that they've looked at and approved um and i believe we looked at rogers as well um school district and um i said all of those have plans that are already in place and approved um and um so those are the districts we looked at um and as far as uh if you uh the pros and cons of now of the digital learning um and all and and and i'll kind of go back to where you had brought up uh teachers doing duel um and we know there's there's the pros and cons to that um but you know i can say as as uh speak from the teacher side and i'll speak a little bit from the student side as well um from the
085teacher side obviously it's it's very it's hard it's very hard to try to manage both at the same time um because you know you want to be able to deliver your lesson in a certain style to your your to your students in person um and make those connections but you're also trying to connect with these students that are you know um somewhere else and it's hard to you know it's so hard to do both because you can't make the same connections and obviously and it's hard to offer the same type of lesson um now i will say hearing from teachers that um you know we have our strictly virtual days they'll say gosh it's just it's so much easier to make connections with those students um when that's all i have to think about you
086know if i can concentrate on how to teach digitally i can do that so much better than if i try to concentrate on how to do both um and i can see i've heard from families and students who would say who kind of who will say the same thing from the virtual side it's it's you know i'm i'm on i'm on and i'm listening to my teacher i really need her attention but i know she's she's helping someone else on the other side of the room um so there's a big benefit to being able to hone your skills and really focus on one area so if you know if you can focus on just being a teacher of virtual students and really learn how to do that well um which is you know part of
087our plan as well is to make sure that when we when we post and we hire these quality teachers um that we look for those teachers who who can do it well who know how to make those connections with those students because we can't lose that personal um that personal commitment and connection with those students so i hope that helps and uh director mason i will also add that we will create a list of the pros and cons and share it with the entire board so that you all will have it prior to the next board meeting when we come up for approval sorry uh just so everyone remembers it's a director callaway then it will be director um adams director wood and then i'll follow behind him director calloway go ahead you're recognized thank
088you uh simple question uh will the students be able let's say able to change from virtual to regular school if virtual doesn't work to end up working out for them is there an option for that yes ma'am director calloway there there is an option now it's different for elementary and different for secondary at elementary we're asking parents and students to make a semester commitment so that we could ensure skills are being taught there's a an obvious transition between the virtual environment as well as the in-person environment now if there's an extenuating circumstance then just like what we've done this year will i will address that extenuating circumstance and make that transition happen now on the secondary level because we're dealing with credits we're asking parents and students to make a year-long commitment because we want
089to make sure that that students are receiving their credits that they're currently enrolled in and when you move because classes may be different their schedules may be different in the digital learning academy versus in person learning option and so we want to make sure there's a clear transition between the two and so we're asking parents and students to make that year-long commitment now just like with element elementary students in parents if there's an extenuating circumstance then the principals will meet with the parents and address that moving forward so it is possible but we're definitely asking parents and students to make those commitments because it has a lot to do with uh assignments teacher assignments available resources and so when we have a lot of movement between the two then that causes a ripple effect with
090personnel and then supports and resources that are being provided in both learning options thank you that's what i you did answer my question thank you thank you may i add one um additional uh comment dr owa for the elementary students yes okay um director callaway it's good to see you again um i don't know if you remember that i taught your your son in elementary school but to further answer your question grandson thank you thank you but to further answer your question i would like to add that at the elementary um level there is a plan in the plan it details providing support should a student start struggling academically because we know that a semester is a long period of time of learning for any student but especially foundational skills in elementary and so if
091a student is demonstrating that they are not successful in their learning path option asynchronous or synchronous then there are provisions in place to provide intense support for those students prior to just an automatic decision to switch them back thank you i appreciate that director adams thank you ms hatter um so is there any sense of of um an estimate of how much interest there is like what kind of numbers you would anticipate for this coming year and and where you see this might go if we have a really successful program in the next few years at this time mr adams it's hard to tell exactly the number or the level of interest because we have not provided uh students or parents um we've received some qualitative data parents who are saying that they would like
092to have this option um and but it's not um we don't have the quantitative data because we have not pushed out a uh an application process yet we were waiting before the we wanted to wait for the approval before we uh make it seems as as if to our parents and students that we were providing that we didn't want to put that ahead of this approval that you all would have to make so so doctor oh well this you know and i appreciate that it's brand new it's really hard to know but so we could be looking at in the first year so dozens or hundreds or anywhere in between is that would that be fair that's that's that would be fair and um and here's the reason why the committees uh are ready to
093uh to get rolling as soon as they receive approval just because we want to make sure that we staff accordingly and as we continue to move forward and progress through the school year we want to make sure we have and be fair to our staff and make sure that they know if they're teaching in person or with the digital learning academy and so uh so as soon as we can move forward we'll make sure we post those job descriptions for the digital learning academy uh provide the option for parents to select that uh that option so that we can have those numbers and so hopefully may june we can have some numbers for you all if we're allowed to move forward with this process thank you and of course thank you to the committees for
094the hard work on this uh one other question so i'm trying to understand the kind of the administrative structure for this if you could speak perhaps some of that i'm guessing from what it's described that you could have students who were who could be from several like in the third grade you could have a group of third grade students who would be from multiple elementary schools and they might have one student teacher or there may be more than one teacher depending on the how many and so if if that teacher if that um if that parent had a concern or something about how it was going would they go to their home school principal and to deal with that and and i'm thinking too about the teacher's perspective does that mean that that teacher would
095have you know six bosses you know six people to be accountable to answer to or or you know how would that work in a practical way mrs heavenly or mrs franklin do you all want to uh sure okay sure absolutely so um where the discussion has been centered around is that um um as far as that the teachers of course will be on different the secondary is on a different campus than the elementary but all the secondary teachers would be housed at one campus and one principal would oversee those teachers now the students are still tied back to their home school but if a student is struggling or having issues the first place to go would be like you said to that teacher and then the prince of the one principle that's over all the
096virtual school teachers um let's say for secondary um really where the principles or where the admin for coming into play um at the individual schools will be to help organize maybe some elective options or the extracurricular options um that's kind of where the uh the principles at the at the outlying schools um come into play if that makes sense does that help it does and so what would you have a counselor for that secondary virtual students or or would there be when the counselors come from each of the different schools depending on their home you know school zones right and we've had two different discussions um um i believe in our plan right now it's written as that the counseling supports come from their home school their brick and mortar school but we have had
097a discussion about a a counselor potentially at each virtual campus but i think right now it's going the counseling services come from their home brick and mortar school and i'll add that at the elementary level um there would be a counselor dedicated to servicing all of the virtual students that choose um virtual paths in the elementary setting and mr adams i would like to just remind you and our other board of directors that this presentation tonight is to gather your feedback so if something comes out that you all would like for us to research or to think about to bring forward uh next month then please share that and so that we can uh we can go back to the committees and and discuss those items thank you just first impression i i it makes
098more sense to me like you what the way you all have presented it that you have an administrator you know to do that and i if it gets enough numbers the the same principle seems to make sense to me for their counselor to you know you know maybe move in that direction i mean that seems to make sense to me thank you very much director wood thank you madam president uh so director adams took took the uh the topic that i was going to focus on the administration of pulling this off but i will ask this will will this uh virtual academy essentially digital academy will it have its own lea number assigned by the state no sir it will not and that's the reason why the students will be tied back to their home
099school so that they could participate in their extracurricular activities both at the elementary level and then of course our aaa extracurricular activities at the secondary level i can imagine you know a little bit of friction to figure out how accountability might work um if you have students being taught by people in one building and and the you know the accountability in that building being one chain of command but credit being given or accountability accountability being held in another building under a an lea number i can imagine where a principal over there might want a little bit of control over what the delivery looks like for students that are you know under their accountability tree but you know obviously this is the beginning stages and so i hope y'all will work on fleshing that out well
100i would offer this suggestion the the use of the words synchronous and asynchronous uh that that's hard for even me to understand the first blush as i read that so i would encourage you to come up with some uh some words to describe those pathways that might be a little more easy to uh to consume among the public and then i would i would say this to my fellow board members regarding other school districts that are currently doing this i know that we have some competition in this their pulaski county school district is a step ahead of us on on setting this type of a delivery up and their vision is to even take this to offer a a digital academy to homeschoolers throughout arkansas to have them plugged into robinson high school and so
101it's a real recruiting tool for them to to expand their reaches far beyond little rock and i'm not saying that by any means that we should do that next year or the year after that but as you look to the growth of a platform like this and where it can go it can go far beyond little rock and it can make us really competitive if we you know have our ducks in a row and and make it a competitive product uh has a real chance to uh to set us apart and maybe win some families out in the far reaches of arkansas so anyway but uh y'all might like that perspective on that that's all i have madam president thank you well thank you um my comments will be pretty short because um my fellow
102directors have touched on administration and growth of the program i was going to talk a little bit about driven which is over in pulaski county but um you did that and you already touched a little bit on brian by bryant by mentioning their name so um i'm gonna dow my um question and comments down to um students um signing up i i want to appreciate and commend you guys mrs franklin and mrs heather lee for uh in the committee no one for putting this together this is a a very good plan um initial plan um that that you all have brought to the board um my question is um about students enrollment i i do appreciate the thoughts that have um gone into this um particularly um challenging families to look at their student and
103um what type of student do they have because to be a independent learner which is what this is um and a self-starter you you have to be disciplined enough to carry through uh being being a distance learner um my question two questions one is with staffing which i know um you we will get into that later but will the um current uh teacher pool that we have um will will will they have first dibs on the positions and then right when they come available yes yes ma'am we will open up the job postings for the digital learning academy to our teachers so it would be in-house postings uh based on the job descriptions of the virtual learning academy i mean digital learning academy okay and my other question is we will still be in the
104land and world of kovitt and for those um families that um are still not comfortable with sending their children um maybe back in the building and and the virtual option isn't because hey my child's a self-starter uh they really don't want to deal with all the extra just give them the work it's more of a safety issue how will we handle uh those those things you know um president hatter i think mrs franklin uh started talking about it she did mention it and mrs heavily about the supports and so we know that we have students with multiple uh learning styles and so for those students that you just spoke of who may not be successful right out with the digital learning academy we will make sure and that's another reason a positive approach to have
105dedicated staff for our students in a digital learning academy because one the professional development for them will be completely different it will be geared toward uh teaching and and learning in the uh digital learning platform or environment and including with the supports the social and emotional supports that come along with that and so we want to make sure we provide those for those students and then as we stated uh earlier as well just the extenuating circumstance we know that uh this as in any learning environment as educators we have to monitor and adjust and then if there's a spike in numbers we may have a spike of students uh or parents who want to choose the learning environment a digital learning environment and so we'll need to adjust that i told the committees uh last
106week this is a a great opportunity this year while we have the extra funding to really uh make adjustments we have some flexibility uh and to make this actually work and benefit our students and our staff members and so we're looking uh to really have those discussions on what if what if this happens then what would be the answer for uh for that and so we'll continue to have those discussions on if if numbers are high and parents just do not want to uh send their students back to the uh physical classroom what would that process be for those students and uh and hopefully they will still commit to those timelines because it's really more uh to their advantage for our students to uh have reasonable breaks and instruction versus the back and forth okay
107and my last question is the ver this also um will play into our um school of western innovation options and then this is just for those that may not be aware um listening uh this is also that virtual academy that is a part of the west school of innovation and so right moment right when we get later down into our agenda and we're talking about hall high school in the west school of innovation and it says virtual academy this is it um and so uh just so you guys understand how you guys love this program and and and love the direction that we're going to um to meet the needs of our current students and uh grow um potentially grow our district beyond where it's at in different ways to bring in possibly bring in
108those homeschoolers and those ones that have left out left out of our district this is a part of that that plan so uh with that i saw that um vp uh wilson un but you went back so are you good or do you have something no actually i did have one comment um one i do second jeff's um comment about the synchronous asynchronous that's those are big words and a lot of people i think will find that very confusing but also i want to be sure the committee and the administration are thinking about how we're going to measure student success in the digital learning i know we have seen in my job and a co-worker actually brought that up is that we have some students who are really really struggling academically and are not learning
109the concepts and things they need and i don't want to say the parents some have chosen it for safety some have done it because it's easier they don't have to get their kid up as early they get to stay late they get to wear their pajamas the kids happier they get to eat breakfast in bed and watch their teacher on the computer um and that of course is not across the board but how are we we need to have a pathway and a way to handle those situations where kids are not getting what they need um and how we're gonna address that because i don't want kids falling through the cracks thank you mrs wilson and our committees have talked about that we understand that uh completely and that's we are prepared to have those
110tough conversations with parents uh we we've seen it this year where teachers have and principals have asked parents to send their kids back uh their students back to the building because the digital the virtual learning was not working for them and so we talked about having those committees that social emotional committee uh ready for and our counselors ready to have those conversations and monitoring how our students are doing academically emotionally during that time and and which is another positive of having dedicated staff for our students in the digital learning academy but you're right you're you're definitely spot on is heavily discussed within the committees on making sure that we make sure every student is successful and growing in either of the learning environments thank you thank you uh okay so we're gonna move ours do
111you mind if i ask a question please yes please i'm gonna say this say this um we're gonna move our agenda along we have two more directors that will um speak i will and so and so the next time you hear from me i will be making the very last a comment and then we will um wrap up uh the discussion on uh this great um presentation that have been um presented so director johnson will will will be recognized first directly after director johnson uh mr uh director mason if you can just begin speaking and then i will speak after you uh johnson yes thank you for the presentation it was great right now we can also identify students that are already struggling they're behind and some may be even be failing how will you
112address that if they want to continue to be virtual will you say hey look to the parents and you have a component in there where you tell the parents look if your kid wants to continue to be virtual these are some things they have to do because they're already struggling and i know we can already identify quite a few that are struggling and behind so how will you get those caught up and what will be your conversation with the parent if they want to continue uh into the digital uh academy well and i know mrs franklin is about to say something i will say this mrs johnson and board of directors our principals our teachers uh students support staff have already started to address building programs to address the learning laws and so our students
113who have struggled academically and even emotionally because a lot of our schools are providing that social emotional support even this summer as well but those learning loss programs and most schools are even starting fourth quarter to get our students back up to uh grade level where they are supposed to be but not just those interventions they also are providing enrichment uh for our students who need that additional learning uh to be prepared for the next grade level in their classes and so you will see those presentations of the learning laws and they're called summer academies enrichment academies they're not called summer schools so when you see those uh that that's what those uh will be focused on is really making sure our students are prepared for the next grade level and we're not having to
114retain our students because of the effects of the pandemic and so uh we'll make sure that that happens uh mrs franklin did you have something i wanted to share that one of the benefits of having a dedicated digital academy is that in the contract and the plan you'll see at the elementary level and secondary level you're gonna front load your parents with a training and orientation on the platforms that are used and provide them guidance on how they can support their student as well as a student orientation to what it means to be a digital student so you're going to have consistent norms for video conferencing you'll have opportunities to practice using the learning tools um and the platforms prior to delivering content and this year we had to fly we had to learn to
115fly the plane while it was in the air but now having had this year experience and having the benefit of knowing who the student bought what the student body is or the numbers of students and being able to have contact with them you'll be able to provide um a front loaded opportunity for them to be more successful and i'll add to that when we make those staffing decisions you also will level the playing field with the ability of the staff members that are so um selected to be at the virtual academy so you will have some consistency in the strategies that are used as well as ongoing professional development to build their skill set i hope that helps as well answer your question dr just uh if you don't if you don't mind addressing the
116uh the possible i know we have a digital divide would you address uh the possible despair uh impact that may have on this digital academy well one of the things that we want to make sure mr mason and thank you for that uh question is that uh there's not a digital disparity and so we will continue to provide the technology devices uh the hot spots uh that are needed the meals for our students who are in uh the virtual learning uh in the digital learning environment and i apologize to keep saying virtual because that's what we're calling it uh this year but the digital learning environment and so any issues that our students are having parents are having with during when they are in the digital learning academy our staff will be ready to address
117those so if there's an academic concerns if there's social emotional mental uh concerns we'll make sure those supports and resources are there but this disparity one of the reasons why we want to provide the digital learning option is to give our parents and students an option uh based on their needs at that for next year and so but because we know our commitment to instruction our responsibility to providing a sound instruction we'll make sure that they have working technology to access uh their assignments like i said we will continue to utilize schoology so this won't will not be a new platform for our students and our teachers to learn for next year and we'll continue to provide the hot spots for our students as well yes i have one question is tutoring automatically built into
118the digital academy if a student needs some extra tutoring after hours is that something that's built in already it is uh mrs johnson it's also even included now uh right now we have the academic hotline um from uh three to six uh on monday through thursday and then four to seven uh for all of our students uh both in person and uh and virtually for them to access to talk to licensed teachers both little rock licensed teachers and we also have teacher interns who and city year personnel members who assist with that academic hotline and we started that at the beginning of the school year and we'll continue it that's one uh support but each of the digital schools will also have their instructional support as well that's dedicated to all of our students in
119the digital learning academy at the elementary level in the secondary level up to this point do you know how many phone calls have been received or how many have tapped into those services around roundabout number i can get that report and share it out uh for you all dr mckissick and her team i keep that data and they gather that data so i'll send that report out to you all as a board tomorrow okay thank you all right um again um thank you for this uh very detailed report that like you that the entire committee have um put together and um for both of both of you all um mrs um franklin and mrs heather lee for um presenting and uh dr ola we'll throw you in there too for um being able to answer
120um all of our questions because we because we ask a lot of questions on this board and um and uh that's just part of what we do and that's our makeup of who we are um i'm gonna close out our discussions um however dr owa in the i'm going to lead with this question um i noticed in in the report or that you provided um the the funding impact it will come out of our our normal budget but do you know what that impact would be uh with the um platform that we will use um to deliver the instruction the overall opera how about i say this the overall operation cost do we have a dollar amount on that not not an exact uh dollar amount right now mrs hatter but we can work on
121getting that to you i will say um as soon as we can move forward to have the students to register and and have we we are working to streamline our staff members that's another reason why we need that commitment for a semester uh at the elementary level and a four-year at the secondary level so that we can maximize our staffing and not overstaff moving forward that's going to be instrumental for us to say within budget and to make sure that we're not exceeding uh costs and and having a high uh ratio of uh cost students to teacher or students to staff members can i add into that miss hatter real fast because i think this is really a critical question uh remember that the the staffing comes from the number of students that choose the
122option and so it's just a normal course for us to staff principals being tied to an existing building also helps so the home of an elementary virtual delivery will have um also an in-person responsibility and we'll just use a building that's a little underutilized and you've already highlighted the fact that at west school of innovation that's where this digital school will go so the final thing is on a budget piece is that the supports that you're talking about that have come up in numerous questions that can also come out of our estro funds to support learners that are challenged or behind or need extra support so that extra amount of money and remember we still have an s or three yet to come uh that is supposed to be more significant than esther ii hope
123that helps thank you yes it does thank you and my last question uh dr owen this may be for you i'm gonna pack it together to make it one question um my last question is um i noticed in the plan uh there was a 72 hour grading and turn around um and so um will that be monitored closely my my follow-up to that is um because um our children will be our i call them children our children but our students um they are our community children but anyway um because they will be um taught out of the virtual academy however their grades and their assessments will be tied to their home school i believe director woods and director adams touched on this how will that accountability piece be um done or else the working relationship
124to ensure grades and credits are transferred uh correctly um be between the two to eliminate any and all confusion i just had a quick answer one our principles will monitor the expectations that's the reason why we want those set expectations so teachers will know that the 72 turnaround 72-hour turnaround is the expectation and they'll monitor to make sure that that uh that's taking place uh second question um just speaking with um miss uh tracy young um and and this is an ongoing uh discussion that we'll have to have but the teacher of record will be those teachers in the in the digital learning academy and so they will actually have their grade books uh with our students in there so now the assessment the summative assessment state assessment will be tied back to their home
125school because that's where the lea is um the digital learning academy will not have an lea number which all uh schools currently have and so those state assessments will be tied back there but the teacher of record would be those digital learning academy teachers okay all right well you guys um thank you so much for those answers and thank you guys for your um presentation i'm sure we will have fridays this as this roll out and and and it comes before us again i i hear um most likely next month so we can move forward we might have more questions um right as we we continue to read and learn uh more about this so um i appreciate you all for being with us and sharing and all your work uh okay so one thing
126i failed to do is look at the agenda when i came back on so give me a second uh it looks like we're going to talk about our preparatory school our k-8 which is ja fair we do have the little rock school district um we now have a preparatory school within our fleet of schools so um i'm not sure who's presenting on this so i'm going to give it over to our superintendent mike poor you are recognized thank you and just want to celebrate that we have um well it's not the first deployed but the third avoid ever to be hired for uh ja fair preparatory and miss stroud you all made that possible by hiring her as the assistant principal uh in our our meeting so we want to welcome her and thank her
127we also have dr sadie mitchell who's been the project manager uh on tonight and then of course our two principals um who is melinda monica and then michael anthony and so we're going to turn right over to the principals right now to give their update um so that you can uh see exactly where they stand and where they're headed doctor oh go ahead you all you guys are recognized so begin speaking as you will got to o thank you dr mitchell um board of directors today you will hear from our principals melinda modica uh and michael anthony as well as dr sadie mitchell our project specialist as they share with you the nate uh the newest and the most recent developments of j a fair k k a preparatory school uh one of the things
128that i would like to share with you is that uh this is dex uh actually in line with our blueprint community blueprint as you will remember in november of 2018 the little rock school district met with the community obtained ideas met with staff members received recommendations and concerns about school learning environments choices and improvements and that served as foundation to the facility's master plan and from that the lrsd community blueprint was developed the three big goals in that blueprint is to improve learning environments expand choice and amenities and boost staff salaries so last year the first phase of this land his plan was implemented rockefeller a rockefeller k-5 moved to washington allow allowing space to expand the pre-k at rockefeller and then there was a ninth grade added at pinnacle view and then j affair
129and mcclellan students moved to the new southwest high school and then hall high school received program enhancements and of course you know became the steam magnet so including this presentation you will find a historical perspective of each school that those documents was provided to you and then also a map of j.a fair high school which will become the g8 ja fair ka preparatory school and so now we will hear from principals melinda monica and michael anthony good evening i'm so excited to introduce to you fair co-principal and my thinking partner mr michael anthony mr anthony is currently the proud principal at henderson middle school he's originally from louisville kentucky mr anthony did i say that correctly that is correct miss monica thank you mr anthony attended the university of arkansas at prime love on a
130basketball scholarship where he obtained a bachelor's as well as a master's degree in social science education he later obtained educational specialist degree from the university of arkansas at fayetteville mr anthony has been in education for 25 years and 18 of those years he's been an administrator prior to being an administrator he was a social studies teacher as well as a school improvement specialist he enjoys playing and watching basketball as well as playing tennis reading and spending time with his family thank you my illustrious co-principal and colleague miss melinda monica for the warm introduction now i would like to share the many accomplishments of miss monica mrs monica is currently the proud principal of god elementary school she grew up in the small town of smackover arkansas after graduation she went to henderson state university where
131she earned a bachelor of science in education she has worked tirelessly for the little rock school district for the last 17 years with five of those in administration she has been a reading teacher school improvement specialist literacy instructional facilitator as well as an assistant principal mrs monica furthered her education at harding university where she obtained a master of science in educational leadership and i am so honored to be a co-thinking partner with mrs melinda monica thank you mr anthony we have two students who would like to share how excited they are to attend fair prep next year miss talia shaw good evening my name is talia shaw and i'm a fifth grader at dye elementary i would like to thank you as well as my principal mrs monica for allowing me to speak today to
132tell you how excited i am to attend ja fair k-8 preparatory school the three main things i am looking forward to next year are trying new activities which are volleyball basketball drill and cheer i would like to thank all board members superintendents for executive directors mr anthony and my principal mrs monica for creating a space where students like me can prepare for the future [Music] you go mitch michelle [Music] we have a student from uh henderson who is just excited to share with you so i'm not able to hear on my end i'm not sure if anyone else is having that same issue should be isabella porsche yes is miss perez her mom ms janine perez able to yes mrs mr jean-luc perez is on i see her are you able to hear us now
133we can hear you miss perez yeah okay there you go good good evening my name is isabella porch and i am very happy to attend new school j.a fair k-8 preparatory i don't know my day will be like on the daily but i'm sure it will be great and me and my mom feel very supported by the staff and administrations during this transitioning next chapter into my life so well said very good very good next you will hear from a parent from david o'donnell elementary okay perhaps you may need to say her name or is it a video it's a video okay hello i'm demetrius parker i am a parent of students at david o'donnell i am very excited for them to be going over to the fair laboratory i think it will be lots
134of opportunity for them to grow both socially and academically i am glad that they're going to continue with the leader in me and continue to build and mode leaders for our next generation i'm also excited that they will be stem oriented i think that would be great for my nephew so he can have the hands-on opportunities to learn i am very excited to look forward to working with the school next year in continuing years [Music] thank you mr parker for your support and our last parent miss perez hello everyone i'm janine latrice perez proud parent of isabella porch and definitely a proud parent going to j a fair okay hey we're gonna do this i just want you to know bella is exhausted and she's been on here since five o'clock so she's been ready
135and she was just a little bit sleepy so y'all just give her a pass on that but um the staff over at henderson right now because that's where we're coming from and going to ja fair have been phenomenal um and very supportive of my daughter um on a virtual platform as well as in the classroom and so i know that all the the amazing things that j.a fair k-8 is going to bring to her life is you know whether that's music because she's in choir whether that's being a part of the east lab whether that's being a part of sports in some capacity whatever it is i know because of the level of care and concern that her principal and the staff at henderson has for her she's going to do phenomenal things and plus
136i'm a proud parent of the little rock school district you can tell me nothing that part so go forward go forth i am super excited i'm a henderson hulk but guess what i'm getting ready to be a what what what what say hey thank you miss perez and please inspire all the parents thank you for your support will do yes mrs perez is a long just so i'm sorry this point of privilege but um miss mrs uh perez is a long time um lrsd parent she also served when her oldest daughter was was at henderson a long time ago and then when my son was there as president of the pta as well as a very uh main thread of the school so it's always great to have long-time parents involved with within transitions so
137thank you to all of you guys okay back to you guys sorry for jumping in oh no problem mr anthony and i have learned a lot from each other as being co-principal we have we don't always agree on everything but we make sure that students are at the center of every conversation that we have so you may be wondering what has mr anthony and miss monica been up to well mr anthony and i along with our transition team went through every nook and cranny at fair and made notes of all the upgrades and repairs the building would need to transform it into a k-8 school we also went through and tagged items that needed to be removed or discarded as a team we wrote job descriptions posted a position so candidates could apply and also
138started the interview process we are extremely proud to welcome miss denisha straub to the fair prep teams she has a strong instructional background and is an exemplary leadership skills that will help to move bear prep forward uh the fair prep team has also spent countless hours promoting our school along with the help of dr mitchell and the communications department now mr anthony doesn't know about this little teen bit but the most important part was that we felt was important was that we go and interact with our students our future students so i want to show you a little video of what i like to call kindergarten versus mystery surprise she did not yes she did [Music] let's see if he can hold his title oh what fun we have had a working together um and
139making sure that we get to know all of our students oh you miss monica i know i know i know you're gonna give me i can't wait transforming j.a fair school-level transition teams were involved in decisions about the school's name and mascot with community input being solicited through surveys and feedback from the various schools websites and official social media pages our mascot proudly is the war eagers maintaining the proud and war eagle as we continue to soar to infinite heights let me share with you why we support the k-8 concept true vertical alignment will allow for a valuable curriculum building from kindergarten to eighth grade becoming a family-oriented culture with students as we watch students develop and learn emotionally socially and academically our unique culture allows us to provide and support a strong holistic and
140academic foundation for up to nine years the ka concept allows all stakeholders to collaborate in a mentoring and nurturing environment student teacher leadership capacity is fostered through sustainable learning development across the ka curriculum the k-8 concept allows parents to stay actively involved and engaged longer as a result from student transitioning from one grade level to another students like ms i mean teachers like miss i'm sorry parents like miss perez i'm sorry building and sustaining collaborative relationships with all community stakeholders is something we value uh shared accountability and ownership and teaching and learning among all and as embodied in our name there was really never a thought about changing the name of j.a fair because of the many contributions that mr james augustus fair provided to the communities of pulaski county in the city of little
141rock the distinct pride that the former faculty and alumni carry with this name will always be cherished however preparatory was chosen to illustrate the commitment to excellence as we strive to prepare students for entering high school and post-secondary learning i want to talk a little bit about our student population as of march 9th please note the current number of our students enroll from the elementary feeder schools for the 21-22 school year the enrollment shown after the enrollment of transfer students outside the district attendance zones and the parents who opted for school choice as of today enrollment projections fluctuate around a thousand students however we are optimistic that our marketing and promotional efforts throughout the district and city will attract an appeal to more families beyond the i-30 630 corridor next miss monica will share how
142we have been busy seeking and selecting the best educators and support staff for our students thank you mr anthony superintendent poor and his administrative team met with teachers from roman henderson and to outline the hiring process and to provide time for staff to answer questions about the process we would like to thank superintendent poor and dr owa for allowing us to hire what we call our dream team we are we were approved to hire in two phases we have heart the assistant principal and we are in the process of entering interviewing the project lead the way teachers counselors parent coordinators special ed team and technology specialists phase two will begin in april and that's when we will interview core teachers as well as classroom teachers and support staff now we're going to move to programming
143and curriculum all students at ja fair ka preparatory school will follow the little rock school district approved curriculum that has been created for kindergarten through eighth grade students in addition to following the district's rigorous curriculum students will also engage in a transformat transformative learning experience called project lead the way project lead the way launch for elementary students and project lead the way gateway for middle school students project lead the way creates and engage engaging hands-on classroom environment and empowers students to develop in-demand knowledge and skills they need to thrive the learning experience at ja fair will equip and prepare students as a transition to southwest high school and engage in project lead the way engineering and project lead the way biomedical and robotics course this past friday we took students on a tour to southwest
144high school and it was so cute one student offered mr burton two thousand dollars to let him come to southwest high school right then and there but we told him he had to attend ja fair preparatory school so that we can prepare him for the wonderful education that he would receive being received at southwest high school now let me tell you a little bit about project lead the way launch project lead the way launch is designed for kindergarten students through fifth grade students students use a structured approach like the engineering design process they will apply stem knowledge skills and habits of the mind and discover that trying different approaches in solution is an essential part of the learning process as teachers and students learn to discover together education becomes more engaging and meaningful for everyone
145mr anthony thank you miss monica as we promote a seamless transition i want to talk a little bit about the project lead the way gateway grade 6 to 8. through topics like robotics aerospace and forensic and crime scene analysis middle school students are able to engage their natural curiosity and imagination through creative problem solving the gateway program is a strong foundation for further stem learning in high school and beyond the research indicates that a hands-on approach to relevant learning and solving real-world problems is a highly effective way of learning and i also want to just take note that we are one of a few elementary middle schools to be afforded the opportunity to be palleting a jobs for arkansas graduate course in the state this will allow our students to explore the current demands of
146career and industry and those soft skills required by employees we will also engage in a whole school transformat transform transformative model and process develop in partnership with educators and empower students with leadership and life skills that they need to thrive in the 21st century and that program is the leader in me now teachers at romaine henderson and dodd have already started engaging in the leader in me process those foundational uh trainings um of the leader in me the leader in me uh will be implemented in grades kindergarten through eighth grade at ja fair preparatory school mr anthony the extended time allocated for falcons and staff will be much needed for professional development and the cultural collaboration as we transition into one large community tentative dates have been scheduled for professional development leader in me june
1471st through june 4th and project lead the way training june 7 through june 10th ongoing professional development for adult and student learning practices is key if we want to provide and sustain a safe supportive and collaborative culture it is imperative that we continuously make sure that all of our staff have the training necessary to support our students next i want to talk a little bit about parent and community involvement and the many many activities that we have planned and continue will continue to plan to uh seek input from our parents community and parent involvement started in 2018 and continue with phase one of the blueprint plan last year during that school year advisory transition teams were created and meetings were held until the plan was temporarily placed on hold the excitement of the blueprint plan
148involving j.a fred going forth has allowed henderson died in roman to create school level advisory committees which parents and community members currently serve firms previously we held several parent and community zoo meetings we look forward to engaging our community stakeholders and families more as we now have identified the population we serve we are ecstatic to learn from dr mckissick of the federal programs that funding has been made available to hire a full-time brand coordinator this person will serve as a liaison between the school and community our partners we are presently working on partnerships for project lead the way and we will continue to seek additional partners each school has received a continuous commitment of support for ja fair students from his existing partners now ms monica will share facility upgrades it was a monumental task
149to walk through the building affair and make recommendations to transform foreign fair into a k-8 appropriate environment we created a spreadsheet of what updates needed to be completed by the district and the district has committed to some of those recommendations they're in the process of removing old furniture materials and equipment that's not needed for k-8 for the cave school the district is also removing lockers from the hallways as well as portables and once affordables are removed they will construct a playground for kindergarten to fifth grade students landscaping will be added to the campus grounds as well as pink colors to reflect our new school colors lime green blue and white we want fair to be a place where students excel academically however a learning community should be a place of enjoyment please note the following
150sports and extracurricular activities that will be offered at ja fair preparatory as either district supported or aaa sanctioned sport now i want to share with you a little bit about the benefits of students who participate in athletics and extracurricular activities students are more likely to be successful in their classes attend school on a daily and regular basis have more active engaged and involved parents less likely to have major discipline infractions and have the ability and opportunity to work as a team in building self-confidence and leadership skills the counseling department will continue to inventory our students to seek what other interests they may have for the 21 22 school year leadership recognized that athletics and extracurricular activities is one of the cultural fabrics of a learning community so we attempt to have as many as our
151sponsors and coaches housed in the building we are looking forward for our teacher coaches and sponsors to be fully invested in our students throughout the day now you may wonder how will younger students stay actively involved well miss monica is going to share exactly what they can look forward to thank you mr anthony we also want students to enjoy their new school and be able to think creatively as they have fun learn and grow from grades kindergarten through eighth grade some of the extracurricular activities we will offer at fairprep is listed on the slide for you to view now we're going to move on to that school spirit dr mitchell and miss pamela smith have been working diligently with us to ensure that we communicate and introduce to and with parents in the community j.a
152fair ka preparatory school stakeholders voted on the crest and that and you will see the crest at the bottom of the powerpoint slide that would best represent our school be on the lookout for banners as well as a billboard that will be placed at colonel glenn and bowman and it will tell you give you information about fair prep a web pages has also been uh established and go to our facebook twitter and instagram pages for more information about j.a fair ka preparatory school you can tell i love saying our name esko principles we have been and will always continue to promote our school in the community dr mitchell thank you co-principals uh so mr foreign board members as you can see a lot has occurred since that november uh board meeting that when we did
153our presentation and transforming um the school into ja fair ka preparatory school has been a monumental test but we've had so much fun along the way and you've just heard from two outstanding and dynamic co-principles these leaders i swear have exemplified impeccable leadership skills and as they've modeled and they've exchanged ideas with each other and they've argued with each other and you know they have just done an excellent job and it's been easy for me to work with them and they have you know built a sustainable and seamless program from kindergarten through eighth grade that i think is going to be very strong and one that the district can be so proud of you know they have two distinctive leadership styles but one vision that will promote academic excellence for all students i want to
154take a few times just to talk about the k-8 schools that you see on the screen in front of you i'm so very proud of both of these schools eight schools will have and have qualified teachers who will be committed to the program in the school and they have both have uh some pieces of project leave the waste down but not both of them have the same same modules and the same units they have excellent administrators who have a passion for the k-8 concept and i do want to say to you that foreign stem academy is one of the schools eight years ago the district acts that i create a ka school at forrest heights gym academy and i'll tell you i am so very proud of amy cooper the principal at that school who
155has taken that school by leaps and bounds and is now it's an award-winning school for the little rock school district we have the opportunity to go to hartford connecticut to look at the anna fisher magazine school there and that's the school that forest heights is modeled after but the one difference that you know between forest heights and j far as heights is a school of choice where students can apply from all over the district and attend there and j.a fair is a community school and and mr anthony just talked about the schools who will be attending there so it's a community zone school for those parents who live in that area and i know those parents are going to be very very proud j.a fair will be the only school in the district to combine
156two powerful models the leader in me and project lead the way and by providing both students will receive a solid foundation and problem solving the discipline of goal setting and and the engaging stem curriculum that they will be involved in from kindergarten through eighth grade the students in the upper grades will engage in the early engineering and the uh the biomedical project lead the way courses that will introduce them and prepare them for the project lead the way at hall and also at the southwest high school if they choose to go into those career academies and so fair is a preparatory school so you can easily see how the name and the designation kind of falls together and getting the students prep to go to our high schools j.a fair will be the only k-8
157school in the state with an uh athletic complex and the smaller kids are going to really be excited about that i know i am and there um will be the only school modeling the co-principal concept this is uh was an ideal of mr poor's and it has been very very successful they have less administrators but two principals there and uh one assistant and i think that they have a pretty uh dream team that's going to be pushing that school forward so um the 2018 blueprint plan really outfitted an outcry from parents wanting more k-8 schools and we're trying to respond to that outcry now the district have two very i will have two very successful k-8 schools that our parents can have a choice that they can go to and we are so excited about
158that dr owa uh charged me with the responsibility of creating uh quarterly reports i've done two of those and those are available for you if you need additional information to know what we've been up to but i just wanted to say congratulations to the little rock school district uh i am enjoying both ph schools and i wish you had more parents are really asking about an opportunity to leave their children in one school uh nine years and that's exciting dr o thank you dr mitchell uh mr anthony and mrs monica uh president patter now uh where the team is available for questions if you if the board of director directors have any okay thank you thank you for the um the presentation um in its entirety okay board members board directors do anyone have any
159um questions i'm seeing that if you completely unmute yourself because i have half of half of a screen and begins talking and i will direct the traffic so whoever i hear first um i would like to ask uh are you going to have any type of family consumer science classes for your upper grades will that be integrated into anything that you all have planned for that school we have not um we have not uh attempted to put in place family consuming science classes although our children went over to southwest high school and we got to see the wonderful program that they have over there but we are excited about the opportunity of implementing a very robust little rock school district curriculum unfortunately that was not one of the classes that we are implementing on the
160middle school level prior to dr mitchell every middle school and or junior high school had family and consumer science and i know that there had well i guess you're getting rid of all of that equipment and so it was not even considered uh at some point when we did have a uh the greenhouse we used uh fruit and vegetable the vegetables that were grown there in our classroom from one to the next so i you know i just really kind of found it hard to believe that you all didn't even think about adding that to uh your curriculum i mean because it really fits in with everything but you've answered my question no director um wilson vp yes um thank you guys so much for that presentation your enthusiasm is infectious even on the zoom
161so i can only imagine in person it seems like you guys are really going to work great together really my question is simple is the j.a fair preparatory school going to have uniforms and what are they if they are um thank you that is a wonderful question because a lot of families probably would like to know the answer to that question at this time we will not have uniforms but we will have a dress code policy yes ma'am and that will be outlined and uh in our handbook and we will also put that on instagram facebook and twitter once we get close uh to the opening of school so that parents will know the expectation for um ja fair ka preparatory school i have a question for johnson yes hey that was really really a
162spiritual ed i mean i was here with my people going i couldn't stop my feet from pat i have a question how many students can you accommodate and how many classes will you have per grade that is a very good question and thank you for asking ms johnson um our um on the elementary level we will have and we will send that it is it was probably in the board packet uh we'll send that to you the breakdown of each grade level uh if i can remember off the top of my head it will be for kindergarten i will have three classes second third and fourth grades we'll have uh three classes and we'll have one class of fifth grade but those classes can fluctuate uh with the numbers as the numbers go up and
163down but we'll we will send you um the breakdown um as soon as possible thank you for asking that question mrs monica may i add to uh director johnson we're currently having our housing a projected enrollment around 600 our largest grade level at the middle school is is the sixth grade level which is around 250 students uh projected enrollment around 160 180 uh seventh graders a hundred and seventy hundred eighty eight graders but our largest grade level tends to be the sixth grade level and currently uh director johnson currently we have a thousand one thousand and three students enrolled and the capacity of the building is 1075. okay thank you keep spirit alive it's ma'am director nolan i have one comment and one question so um the comment i'll just say and this is kind
164of aimed to the people who are watching um our meeting is that going back you know when we started talking about this what was that a year two years or more ago um i was pretty resistant to the idea of a k-8 model and over time hearing from parents and teachers i've really heard some very positive feedback about this model and i'm you know kind of slowly and maybe resistantly becoming a believer in what y'all are talking about here but i know that there are other people in the community that do also have some of the concerns that i had and and so i just want to encourage you know clearly we have people here who are involved and care about this so um if there are people watching that have those concerns can they
165reach out to you all and and talk you know through some of those issues with you for next school year yes ma'am and i do want to say that the elementary school will be on the south side and the middle school will be on the north side and those students will be separated um there's an office space as well as the cafeteria that divides those two spaces we have a wonderful uh admin staff as well as um security little rock school district uh security who is always there to help us so that we can be visible in our building that is what we mr anthony and i always talk about is being visible in our school to make sure that our students are safe so on our web pages on the little rock school district
166web page is it has been created and established so you will see the numbers the temporary numbers if parents would like to reach out to us it's a number for mr anthony if you if they have a middle school uh child and there's a number uh there to call me if it's an elementary student thank you for asking that question and may i add that now that we have identified our our parents that we will continue to have more parent-focused uh talks and community meetings for our parents to have the opportunity to really really have input and express their concerns and and really seek clarity on uh what the ja fair ka concept is really about okay thank you um and then the other thing so i don't want to derail this meeting because we
167do have people that have waited to talk about the plans for hall we have you know people on here that are that are waiting for us to get to other topics um so i was going to suggest maybe for a future meeting if we could ask um mr poor in the administration to give us an update on the plans and the status for the buildings that the children will be coming from and what our district plans are for those buildings and where we stand in those plants so but we need to probably move on tonight and not dwell on that at this point right yes and those are um actually topics of a different topic but on the topic um and superintendent do you want to share at least about romaine as that is is
168that still on track for an early childhood center it is and so we will have pre-k students going towards real mind and we do have plans for henderson and and uh knots do not have any defined plan for dodd but we will come back on a future presentation and also just some some written things that we can provide you thank you um you guys thank you so let me clear the board really okay a director of wood you are recognized and i will follow behind you and move our agenda forward great two quick questions i'm not sure exactly who this is directed to can you tell us can you tell the community a little bit about the retention of students from all of the student bodies that are being combined into ja fair does it
169show i mean obviously we see the the grand total number but how does that compare to the total number of all the students in all the schools that are combining into jay fair director good you stole my question but i'm gonna reframe i mine not hearing an answer i i i i really that wasn't one as far as community communities embrace of the k-8 concept in that corner of town and so uh how how does the enroll next year's enrollment compare to the total enrollments of the schools this year well yes i'll start out and i hope somebody will jump in to um uh add on uh this year has been kind of different uh for us because we were in the middle of a pandemic and also when we looked at um started talking
170and looking at all of our students and we got a spreadsheet of all of our students um there was a great spread of students that came from roman dodd and henderson as well as the other fifth graders coming from um mcdermott bale and uh braden um i see dr fields is there and he make him jump in but i know that if we probably could send you a breakdown of those uh numbers uh and have that ready for you and put it in your board package may i share with director wood um i can definitely tell you director wood that um the enrollment has increased over the past year at henderson uh as we're leveling around 520 530 students which was up from 450 and we're projected at just the middle school level just to
171have 600 so we're very hopeful that our enrollment trends continue to be upwards but uh definitely you know dr phil's which is over student registration office can definitely tell you what those numbers look like in comparison to our other schools currently uh mr wood we have 907 students total in those three schools at henderson 196 that died in 197 at roma minus pre-k and of course pre-k will stay at roman's campus so uh compared uh this year compared to last year's close to almost 100 additional students and that 907 total comes from a march 1st pool from our current system and then of course the thousand three comes from the students who have enrolled um during open registration that we've just had okay well that makes it sound as though uh the neighborhoods right there
172around fair are are supporting this and are are are coming to it if if next year's enrollment is larger than this year's enrollment i suppose this year's enrollment could have been affected by covert or something but nonetheless it's uh encouraging that that next year's numbers are are going up mr reporter this will be a question maybe for you um could you describe a little bit and and this is you know by no means any offense to either principal y'all both have a lot of energy and i love both of y'all but can you describe your just the the thought process on a co-principal situation in a school that seems pretty unique and one that i don't even know of at any other school in little rock but maybe i'm wrong on that it is unique
173to little rock and uh probably not a model that you see in very many places in the country but in this situation um one of the things that became apparent as we started to talk about quebec and the blueprint was just these two had personalities that actually were fed off each other and they both brought different things to the table and especially in terms of developmental stages of kids it really worked and you know if you look at it miss cooper who is at forest heights actually had both of those types of backgrounds of being in middle school and elementary prior to being moved into the foresight situation so with having these two we get the that whole thing about age appropriate we also get male female we also get strengths and weaknesses as in
174terms of what they bring as instructional leaders and they offset each other it to me it just made so much sense and i think it also gave a sense of security to the families and that might be one of the most important things that the families could see two leaders that they really trusted and maybe that's a part of why our numbers are so good thank you thank you all for the hard work you're doing to get ready for next year it's obvious y'all are headed in the right direction with us thank you thank you so much okay um okay okay um so um i will close out our discussion with um with our preparatory j fair preparatory i do have um my question uh director wood did uh lead in with it around the
175enrollment numbers i did hear um miss monica speak about um schools that are even outside of the zones that are making up our uh numbers at the preparatory however it seems like from mr anthony's uh answer that that the bulk of our um students are being made up at the sixth to twelfth grade um level it did i hear you correctly mr anthony and so a lot of um henderson um families they they they are following you over to uh the preparatory school that i hear yes ma'am we currently have 514 students uh that is eddie henderson which was up from 450 470 uh and a lot of parents uh have shared they love the opportunity of having the um middle school students being able to you know mentor and and look after their younger
176siblings we've also had um faculty in the district who has really expressed an interest in um having their students attend ja fair you answered my second question as far as uh sibling so i appreciate the way you answer uh director i'm sorry doctor owa i was just gonna say that uh to put some numbers to what mr anthony just said he currently has 514 for this current year and he's projected to have 609 for the middle school age students next year okay great um with that i at this point i don't have any um thing else outside of at some point um the board uh or a suggestion uh for us to uh walk um take a tour of j fair um and then if you haven't been in the building it's a very large
177building it doesn't look that big on outside um but it it it's really a large building that separates and fans out and do all this other stuff but um i appreciate uh you all for uh your presentation um and and it's good um seeing you mr anthony it's good meeting you mr uh miss monica and dr sadie you know it's always a pleasure um so with that uh we are moving our agenda forward and thank you for being with us tonight thank you thank you so much president okay so are you um bored board directors i have a question for you are you guys good on time do you guys need to get a sip of water or do anything you need a break okay you guys are ready all right so moving forward with
178with our agenda we will uh speak about uh the charter expansion my uh myself and superintendent uh poor will take on this topic um so the district have um shared shared with you guys a article um pertaining to uh the intent of new charters coming within the state it pretty much is what the article talked about uh we have a couple that are coming into little rock that have found intent letters uh to come into the southwest area as well as just little rock in general uh the two that i'm gonna highlight uh really um uh quick uh is the military uh types type school as well it's called little work little rock military academy um they are looking to serve as many as 600 of no one of our lrsd family or little rock
179students as well as um well as i and then i want you to i'm gonna pause because i want you guys to pay attention to this this charter name as well as the southwest innovation leadership academy um which which obviously will come in in the southwest area uh they are looking to serve 300 of um little rock uh students there in southwest little rock uh it is a sixth through eighth grade charter and the little rock military academy is a 9th through 12th grade academy what i do want to say it is not to um bash or belabor or get on a charter kick because they are only utilizing avenues that the state law have allowed them to use however i do want for those that may not know in other places the traditional school
180district will have a say on whether or not charters are able to come within uh the district boundaries um in the state of arkansas uh that protection or that um approval was removed um a long time ago several years ago in the early 2000s and so now it falls on to the state board of education to approve incoming charters so the point of bringing up this article um is to talk about a little bit about um the impact that um particularly on mom and pop charters um those are the ones who just kind of pop up um will have right on our um student population and um i also wanted to highlight one of the charter operators comment when they said that charters in charters and return will be held to a strict a stricter
181level of accountability for student learning so um i just thought that was um something to highlight no one in our board right in our board meeting the district and i particularly the superintendent have been talking about the the effects of um charter schools uh within our area and then on a broader break base how um looking at innovative ways to uh market our entire uh district so tonight we've we've heard about the many different the the new options that like we are presenting to our families um to where they will have a different type of fleet of schools to um right to choose from and so i'm going to pause there because i i definitely want our superintendent to weigh in on this and see if you guys have have any um thoughts about it
182but i do um you know agree that we need to make sure that we are um and writing director woods whereas it is competing with um our incoming um competitors um in the one in the space of student learning uh superintendent woods i'm sorry super forgive me uh superintendent michael poor pay raise hey thank you um just a couple things that i want to share with all of you that's in the article that also for the public who may have missed it um there is currently a cap of 34 charter schools that can be made available to the families in the state of arkansas the process that charters have to go through is that they have to share a letter of intent initially typically i i always do receive any charter that's coming into pulaski
183county i made aware that that's a part of their legal responsibility is to make the surrounding school districts uh that we have we have to be made aware that they're applying all their formal applications have to be in by this summer and then at that point they get kind of a technical review and then they would come in front of what's called the charter authorizing board the charter authorizing board can send it back and say we're not we don't approve they can approve it if they approve it then it goes to the state board of education state board of education and their review can either accept it or send it back there the this set of schools that are looking to come in um out of the eight charter schools that would impact our region
184six of them would impact the little rock school district potentially and the other thing that i'll leave you with is that we did a a little bit of a study using uh my school information and dr ola helped me uh look at this so you can go on to my school and then you look at the charter enrollments instantly enough many of the charters other than the virtual charter for the state lost students just like the little rock school district so it's kind of an interesting time period to be thinking about it because everyone has a loss of enrollment and we're all kind of in a in a precarious place obviously some of that will play itself out over this summer and this fall but it is something to be aware of because it's not
185just a little rock school district that's lost students so it's pulaski county so as north little rock scholarship so have um the the charter schools other than the virtual school so uh just wanted to to kind of point that out uh the of the impact of the pandemic thank you miss howard thank you thank you and thank you for um highlighting other um portions of the article as well as sharing the process that they um will have to go through that um the purpose of of us bringing it to the board is just so we can um one be aware and two uh right when we're talking about um direct student services um and and and our student and family experiences within our district um for us to be aware that other um i guess
186charters are come coming in and providing a level of competition um to pull from um are already student based uh director nolan director nolan i'm i'm gonna make a suggestion here um i looked at that article and it said that the charter applications for these these were intent um to file an application the applications are due in july i would suggest that between now and in july so maybe pretty soon we put something on our agenda that we would actually vote on that would be potentially either an authorization for mr poor or miss hatter to speak for the board um to oppose these charters when and if they be they go before the state board or potentially um another resolution or something like that that that we could actually speak with one voice because often
187we go and say i'm not speaking for the board i'm just speaking in my own personal capacity this would be a way that we could speak together um but if we're going to do something like that i would suggest we go ahead and put it on the agenda for a future meeting so that we can devote the time to it and vote on it correct and and that was that is part of um the reason on why it is being brought to to the board for um for a bigger um icebreaker for a larger a discussion i'm also looking at a moratorium on charters and visiting with the city to because they also uh did a moratorium a couple years ago and so this is um a way to bring it to right to the
188board to put it on the board's radar um for further discussions for a larger action if if if voted on by by the board i saw director adams yes thank you thank you miss hatter and i'd like to offer maybe a little different feedback on this i this really part of me this really concerns me and and disturbs me um that this that the state's policies allow this to continue and um and it was especially apparent you know shortly after the state took over the district and took responsibility for the district saying that the district was not performing well enough and then on the one hand and on the other hand then continued to approve new schools and expansion of schools which increased the burden in the challenge for the district and i can recall
189being at the state board when one of those discussions was had late into the night and not once did any um was there any statement from the state board which which expressed any concern or acknowledgement that the decisions that we made could have any create any challenge for the district or for students who remain in the district and um and there was a time when the district was asked to weigh in to whether or not we approved of a charter school or whether we disapproved it that didn't um win the day but we had a chance at least to say it so i wouldn't be opposed to to saying something but but i don't think but i would not want to use very much time and energy because i have no faith that the state
190board uh takes anything we say and the concern for this school district and how it may impact us and our ability to serve the students that it makes any difference at all and so what out of principle i would i would not object if when they say something but i but i really think that that i would want to spend 99.9 of our time on what we can control and what we can do and that is maximizing you know the quality of the schools we have maximizing the community uh communication to the community about what we have to offer and um because we can control that and we have some influence there and i think it's sadly to me it's been proved that that our concerns no matter how worthy make very little if any
191difference at the state level thank you director adams thank you um for your words and i echo that and um i i again i just wanted our board to one recognize that and recognize the state that we're in and make sure that right when you know moving forward that we're highlighting our entire district and everything that our district has to offer um i think the virtual academy is going to be a great benefit to our district as well as some of the other um school focuses that we have um moving forward so um i'm going to leave it right there but i appreciate both comments um is there any uh director wilson or were you just breathing okay okay sorry okay uh director nolan i think director callaway had something a director okay sorry my
192screen director and then um after director uh callaway finished director nolan if you could just go ahead and move right on in and then i'll come back and close it out and move our agenda forward director callaway um in that the state department has stated that we we don't have a voice in whether or not any of these school districts any of these charter schools come in why are we talking about this because we don't have a choice you know what they're gonna do is take what they want and what's going to happen is we're going to end up with like if there's an empty school let's say david o'donne and they want to put a particular type of uh or any building that's going to be empty in the very near future and we
193don't have we don't have a voice in that and i i i did not know that that was the case i i've got to admit i didn't know i thought we had a voice and until uh director adams and director woods you know really talked about that and i did uh see that you added that to the agenda and and you're adding that i thought we had a choice but we don't so what's going to happen i feel is the eventual destruction of the entire district if this trend continues my opinion so um dr adams i just wanted you said you were offering kind of a different point i completely agree with you on that point um and i'm actually suggesting something that i think would allow us to you know keep going and not
194expend a ton of time and energy on this topic but acknowledge that when and if there is a hearing on these applications we want to be able to empower either mr poor or miss hatter or someone to go and speak against them on behalf of the the board and on behalf of the district so what i'll suggest is that we go ahead and move on i am happy to go ahead and draft um some sort of language i'll send it to uh miss hatter and she and mr poor can decide if that's something appropriate to present at a future meeting but it would just be about making sure that they were fully empowered to address these issues um not necessarily giving much hope that that will change the outcome but we you know we should
195do what we can okay so again again i'm glad the conversation played out the way that it has moved along again this was to bring awareness to the board as well as those that may not have known um the process is not to say that we believe that um then sbe the state board of education will um change course or that laws will be uh changed to um uh give districts across the state a say it is to um just put it on the radar and get some feedback from the board so i'm glad to hear the conversation with the way that it did so moving forward we are moving into the meet or larger um part of our board meeting which is the recommendation for hall and west school of innovation it is an
196action item the district will present a will do a presentation we will have public public hearing and of course we will have our board uh a discussion and um action um after uh we hear from the public so uh before this session starts is everybody okay do you need do you need a break for any reason okay i'd like to have a break yes ma'am um we have a motion uh director callaway is that proper to call your request a motion can you make a motion for it well i moved the week i so i moved the retake afraid because this has been a lot yes ma'am we have a lot to go yes ma'am we do uh do we can can we have do we have a second okay director woods have just seconded
197it all in favor okay everyone's in favor um so we will take a 10 minute break and we'll be back at 10 52. hey callaway director calloway yes you're on you're i just wanted you to know that [Music] all right you guys welcome back everyone we're just holding on a few more people i'm here okay amen um okay there she is okay well thank you little rock for um and families and students from everybody for staying with us through our break and now we will move into the next part of our agenda which is um item number seven on our agenda the recommendation for hall and west school of innovation this is a action uh item and again uh it will cover a presentation by the district as well as public hearing and a board
198discussion for um action so with that superintendent okay i don't see our superintendent superintendent are you here can you just speak yes ma'am i am here and i see you yes okay super superintendent you are uh recognized uh to uh present the district's um um uh presentation thank you so much and madam president i i'm gonna have to take another moment of privilege i guess i just became aware that coach eddie boone has passed coach eddie boone is a legend within our community michael mason as one of our board members played for him miss calloway uh is someone that taught with this gentleman uh we not more than less than two years ago we recognized coach boone uh and and renamed the field house um as in part of a way to honor him this
199is a man that won multiple state titles this is a man that was um a rot within our community and one that loved to come to games even after he retired he still he still was there as a part of the little rock school system and and therefore he loved being around his ex players i mean it was such a kick to get to know him even though i'm new to this community in the sense of five years this was a a gentleman that it was so easy to say yes we want to pay tribute to coach boone by name in the field house after him and i know michael mason took great pleasure uh at the community advisory board meaning to be the person that got to make the motion to say that we
200were going to honor him and uh so this is new news that just came out this evening but this is a legend this is a man that has been huge in our community we currently do not know of the arrangements although we do know that the family is already working with ms rousseau and mr daniels our athletic director to potentially have a part of the service or some form of recognition through our facilities uh and so we'll share more as we learn more but uh mr mason do you want to say anything and miss cowboy do you want to say anything and then then maybe we take a moment um eddie boone was my neighbor and um i uh i i thought something was wrong and uh he just lost his sister last week i
201don't know uh she was 81 years old in pine bluff and uh this is so hard and disheartening to me because like we have been friends for over well over 40 years and i've taught his kids uh ex excellent coach central won everything they went after when i was there and uh it would be nice if something were done to recognize this this guy because i tell you what it was simple on the map as far as basketball was concerned and it's it's it's it's kind of hard but yeah she's a good guy yeah um the director calloway is right he was a good guy i was i was uh on the first team uh the championship team in 1975 that won the state championship with him uh his uh his sister was my my
202mother's sister's best friend they used to play cards together uh she was 89 director callaway um maddie maddie matty b collins yeah um both uh both very good people uh and i'm getting a bunch of texans from all the um to all his players uh all all our our team were texting me all the way from california so um yeah it's a very sad very sad day for uh for the community that it takes for miss son thank you both for adding to my words and and um as a community if you didn't get to know coach boone you really missed an opportunity to meet a wonderful gentleman um and uh let's just take a moment to uh hold him and his family and our prayer and our thoughts thank you okay uh thank you
203so much it's tough to have two that we've had to do that for tonight um our community is gonna be hurting a little bit right now and all of us in terms of our own leadership will uh need to show itself in different ways so thank you for that you know as we go into the the presentation ms hatter really laid it out well that's kind of a three-parter this is the first time we've done something like that with you to do a three-parter but it does seem to work because it really allows the people that would like to give comment directly to you or present questions for you to think about as you get ready to take action on this item to have a public hearing we actually have four people that have asked
204to speak tonight i'm sorry that i missed one uh and did see that so we have four people that will speak that that will come after the presentation and one of the things that i i do want to share with our public more than just the board is that our board has actually been involved in you know giving thought to this in multiple ways not just in presentations but also in tours of the campus and then of course with individual conversations with us as board members to our central office tonight dr ola and mr rutherford are going to uh do the presentation um we're going to try to you know you know we've given you this presentation in advance but we are going to try to highlight some of the things on those individual slides
205that we think are really impactful and finally we'll share that when we do get into the question and answer segment of this we also have miss heatherly and dr roberts available to help us address any questions as well as other staff within our group our team so dr ola and mr rudford i'll let you take it from there thank you superintendent poor again good evening everyone um as stated earlier we wanted to make sure that we provide instructional options a variety of instructional environments for our students within little rock school district because we know our students have different learning styles and they excel in different instructional environments and so this presentation will cover uh what our educational teams at the school level and district level have done so far where we currently are and where
206we would like to take both campuses uh little rock steam as well as little rock west school of innovation so as stated these will be our recommended instructional options we want to highlight that since 2017 all of our community members students parents staff members have been collaborating and developing the next phases of little rock school of innovation but we don't want to stop there we want to make sure we continue to have input feedback as we move this school of innovation forward also for almost three years the staff that little rock calls steam magnet has been collaborating and working together on the high reliability schools framework and there's has also been ongoing work on re-imaging and rebranding of the little rock hall steam magnet high school and so we want to build on that and
207continue to provide instructional environments that are conducive for all of our students and so briefly i will cover uh some of the great work that our little rock halls team team has done this year and even prior to this year so that you have that as foundation for your thoughts of course new staff academics and academies excuse me they have two new academ academic academies engineering and healthcare and you know based on that that's part of the steam steam s-t-e-a-m magnet area and then of course they selected staff to ensure the highest level of rigor uh is applied in those courses and so we wanted to make make sure we match up skill set with the actual course requirements as well they've done an excellent job in providing esports for our students there our students
208are excelling in that area and then of course new programs that they would like to offer is archery bowling and sign language the a of course starts with arts and so i definitely want to share uh what great arts that are available you will see art woodwind band visual art brass band ap art design jazz band digital imaging marching band graphic design choir the full band magical percussion band music theory and theater and so not only do we want to build up on the science technology engineering and math but also art because we know students excel when they are part of these fine arts programs and so and it also provides them options and opportunities beyond their 12th grade year safety update we continue to rebrand along with the staff the staff has been really
209working hard to make sure that our community our students our families and communities at large understand that we have made and turned the corner with the safety with discipline with behavior at hall steam magnet there's a decrease in the number of behave behavior referrals as well as behavior incidents compared to last year as stated we know that community engagement and feedback uh is important and so the staff have the staff members have met with community members staff members july september november to get their input in fact they just had a parent and well family night which was a huge success as well and so we want to continue to make sure community members have input as we develop the next phase of paul's dean magnet of course continue to make sure we have the parent
210and student outreach they started that with sending letters and communications home to incoming 8th graders as well as developing coast guard mailers to send out it as well and have they've had a strong social media push as well tours they have scheduled tours in fact they have developed a an email designed for the community members and future families to email them so that they can obtain tours and so they've been actually providing those tours throughout throughout the school year and have some planned now and so we want to continue to make sure that those are provided so our community our families potential families and current families will see the great things that are happening on that campus we're moving towards the facility upgrades uh definitely with technology making sure that we have the latest technology
211since that's part of the magnet program and so we want to make sure our students are being created and innovative and being provided the state-of-the-art technology that will prepare them for either the workforce when they leave 12th grade or a two-year four-year institution and so the technology has been upgraded painting the aesthetics because we know the aesthetics definitely influence how our students and staff members feel about their instructional environment and so those things have been working our maintenance and facilities teams have worked with the hall staff to make sure those things are taken care of and uh as mentioned before there's a strong pr campaign uh with um the assistance of mrs pamela smith and we'll continue to do that hopefully you've seen the billboards heard the radio spots i've seen the yard signs of
212course there are some yard signs or there were some yard signs in front of our building here at the district office but they're going to continue to do that to attract more families to that campus and so that leads to the hall stem proposal moving forward so in the spring of 2021 we want to establish a steering committee and advisory board to get more input from our staff members from our families current families and future families and community members as well as alum on what this would look like and so ongoing communication is going to be important for us to move forward and of course you will see the uh make up the suggested or recommended makeup of the steering committee if we are able to move uh this proposal forward and so you can
213see there's a variety of stakeholders who would be involved in that communication or that steering committee as well as the advisory committee that would extend past the school year who would continue to review the landscape of the campus the instructional landscape opportunities uh of engagement for our students for our families and you will see the partnerships that they would have of course ford ngl which is the parent or the umbrella of the academies of central arkansas as well as parent communication and input partnership with exxon mobil ualr and then uaptc stem department and of course since we know to be an effective instructional environment we would like to uh look at the restructuring of the staff not reconstituting like the um the staff went through a couple years ago but restructuring based on the job
214roles and expects expectations that must be in place to share uh to ensure complete implementation of the steam uh or stem magnet area and of course providing professional development opportunities and then looking at streamlining the staff so that we're not overly staffed with excess staff members so looking at all of those aspects as we moved forward and then of course as i stated earlier curriculum and alignment so that uh that is aligned with the steam focus and uh the academies that will be involved in that school setting as well as marketing uh continuing to do that making sure we showcase our uh our students and the work that they're doing the opportunities the internships uh and externships that they would have and then of course continue to provide several ways of allowing our community our
215family our students to provide and staff members to provide feedback as we move forward and of course registration we'll have a registration timeline we'll continue to do to do that and lastly for a little our call steam we want to recommend adopting the k-12 instructional model for little rock steam so that it is in conjunction with forest heights stem academy and then have a three-year commitment to the instructional implementation to ensure that we have efficiently and effectively implemented that instructional program and provide an opportunity unlike any other school district our size of providing an opportunity for our students to be in the same thematic instructional program from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade and so that's an option that's an instruction option that's innovative and created and we know that we cannot make that
216decision alone without the input of our community mr porter do you want me to pause there before i go into little rock west or move to little rock west the only thing that i would add is um and dr oh you may want to follow my my words but you know some of the questions that we have received from the the community in the public is that students at forest heights it's not that they're mandated to go to hall the students that graduate from forest heights as an eighth grader literally have the option to go to any of our high school options in the district they could go to west school of innovation they could go to southwest they could go to parkview central and of course they could go to hall but what we're
217hoping is that the combination of the interaction of planning in a more thoughtful way between these two campuses it will lend itself to staffing efficiencies and also program opportunities for kids and i think that's really a key thing that we've heard from some of you as board members as well as from some of our community doctor do you have anything else to add to that no sir and board members what probably would work best is for us to go ahead because of the the setting on this is to save your questions and allow the next presentation to occur and then we go to public hearing the public hearing could even generate more questions for you and you can just kind of keep adding on and then we'll dive into everything that you want to bring
218up so let's go ahead and move on to the west school of innovation okay little rock west uh high school of innovation um where we've started of course in the fall of 2019 we had 70 9th graders and 11 teachers uh of course taking a chance on a new idea in an innovative way of educating our young people and so where are we currently uh in the spring of 2021 we've had exceptional growth and excitement uh currently we have 140 ninth and tenth graders with 134 incoming freshmen for the 2021-22 school year so innovative scheduling is what little rock west provides personalized learning opportunities for all both with uh in-person hybrid or digital options tailored to meet individual student needs and that's the true essence of personalized learning it's making sure we factor in individual
219student needs and create a learning opportunity that's ideal for that for him or her moving forward and of course the a b schedule with an advisory period each day so that students will be able to check in and and get and receive support throughout their instructional experience at little rock west the vision moving forward is to continue to grow in size preferably by 20 22 23 having grades 9 through 12 and having approximately 400 in-person students now if we're able to include the digital learning academy option that would increase the number of available students who would be able to attend be assigned to little rock west and those additional students would be unlimited based on the fact that they are in the digital platform so we continue to look at full day students and families
220have options which is great and that's what our parents that's what our students would like to have options for their instructional environment for their education and that allows them to take ownership or have ownership of their uh learning so they have the option of the full day in person learning environment monday through friday or they could be a hybrid learner where students could potentially attend two to three days four days in person with the remainder of the week digitally students attend half days a.m or p.m to allow other allow students to have jobs or help at home if needed and then they could be a digital learner where students attend all of their classes classes digitally but i do want to explain this this part out even if the students become digital learners digital students
221are still resources and supports at the school site that students could take advantage of uh by coming on site to receive those supports or they can depending on what supports are needed they could receive that virtually as well and we did explain the av schedule which allows flexible fridays for our young people continuing on with innovative learning of course project-based learning supports hands-on real-life application of content and standards and then of course our freshman seminar prepares students for high school and provides exploration of career pathways which prepares our students to find to learn their interests engage in their instruction and chart next steps as they matriculate through their high school experience so they have a more informed pathway during their upper grade levels of their high school career as well as life after uh 12th
222grade and then college and career courses for 10th and 11th 12th graders which would prepare them for that next step internship opportunities for our seniors based on their career pathways and of course the opportunity for students to receive community service hours which not only benefit our students because they they're providing that service and getting that experience but it also helps the school and the district as it pertains to the essa school index rating index course then of course multiple ap courses offerings with more added each year so we've continued to expand the ap program there and then innovative choices for english for 11th and 12th graders and you can see film as literature mass communications will be offered there these are the three pathways plant and animal systems and i would like to make sure
223that we point out that little rock west school of innovation is the only high school in central arkansas to offer plant and animal systems we also offer digital marketing and entrepreneurship for photography and graphic and design graphic design this is more information about the career pathways on campus that we just covered as stated daily advisory uh is available to support interventions and to support student personal growth and so you can see weekly grade checks and portfolio creation and so even though our students will be in a digital platform they will still have that support from their little rock school district teachers on an ongoing basis so in order to as stated to prepare our students to be college ready career ready and ready for life beyond 12th grade so our recommendation for you board of
224directors to continue with the little rock uh west south i mean school of innovation instructional design and add the digital academy instructional option and then of course have a three-year commitment to the instructional implementation so that we can ensure that it's a solid effective efficient program in that instructional environment and this time so what we'll do it now is that we actually move to the public hearing part of our our meeting to allow the patrons who have signed up we did put this out members of the board just like we do with any time for open comments folks to have a responsibility to reply by one o'clock on the day of the meeting and we have four patrons who would like to speak tonight i'm going to share all four names the names that i'm
225sharing this will be the order and these are the way that they came in in terms of the sequence of timing so dr anika whitfield will be the first individual that will speak the second person will be miss elizabeth dear the third individual will be mr malik marshall and the fourth and final person that's a part of the public hearing is mr greg moore as we do on all of our public comments patrons have three minutes and i know miss uh hatter is the one at least previously has been keeping track of that um or it could be our secretary the one probably of monitoring the time and so at this point i am going to have dr nico whitfield introduce herself and share her comments thank you mr poor again my name is dr
226anika whitfield i am a graduate a very proud graduate of hall high school 1991. um i'm coming before the board today um primarily to remind you that the little rock school district is a public school district that is comprised of people like myself who have been paying and into the district not just with my tax dollars but with my sweat equity and that we deserve to be heard uh the community the taxpayers the people that volunteer in the public schools deserve to make this help to make the decisions and when we look at um a private school and i want to only compare private school not to say that it is something that is better because we know that private schools were created to get away from african-american students to separate to segregate schools and
227so we recognize that that the formation of a private school in and of itself is morally wrong however we know that in private schools parents have the options parents have the decisions or are able to make decisions because why they directly pay into their child going to that school and i just want to offer to the board that our parents in the little rock school district they might not have the type of wealth and income that a lot of private school parents have but they're certainly paying a high cost and a high price for their children to go to public schools and they expect the school administration they expect the school board to include them in decision making processes and that has not been happening when we look at hall high school for example hall
228high school if we roll back the clock mr poor when you first came into our district hall high school had almost probably i can't remember what the the population is now but but let's just say uh close to seven times what they're what it is now right we had a significant number of students in that building and so i'm asking you as the superintendent what did you do to our school that we have so few students in that school building now and i i would submit that there has been a lot of mismanagement a lot of administrative hiccups and disappointments and a lot of them have been caused because the people the community in the little rock school district have been not allowed to participate in decision-making processes and that is why to me it
229is so important when we look at who's a part of this advisory committee i cannot imagine what exxonmobil has in mind for my my high school my alma mater i don't understand why they're even on the consideration board but i do know that there are parents who attended and students who attended and teachers who supported hall high school for years and those persons understand what that school has been and what that school could be and if we were again to invite the people in the community to help make decisions for hall high school i think we could go forward with not only a progressive school but we could go forward with a sustainable school when you invest money in the junior high school down the street or the middle school down the street from us
230and create a stadium that has our signage our school colors you are already telling our community that you're thinking about some type of merger with the junior high school with the middle school that was insulting especially when you did not consult the community within the school and ask where did we want a new stadium built how would we like to use some of the land space in and around our area how can we become more integrated with the community with which the school resides none of those questions were asked okay i just can i just wrap in the sentence by saying we need some real community involvement that involves us making decisions thank you thank you dr whitfield good seeing you next next up is a miss lizardry is is elizabeth on the line miss
231dear oh miss dear i'm sorry i wrote down a different name is is miss dear on the line okay uh we will move to mr malik marshall hi can everyone hear me yes yes this deer is on uh she unmuted her mic and her uh i think her video is showing now i'm trying oh yeah she's right well she's in the middle of my screen okay she's uh okay well if she if she's able to unmute and start talking um i will work oh i see her there she is okay she's she's on my second screen miss dear you are recognized for three minutes miss dear you are you are recognized okay okay well then we will go to mr malik and we'll come back uh to a miss dear if that's okay hi everyone
232my name is malik marshall i'm an alum of little rock central high school and a member of central arkansas dsa uh thank you to the board for all the work you do and for letting me speak i typed out my comments so i'm just going to be reading them and they're about the west school the where we begin where we are now section in the agenda mentions countless times that the west school plan was built with input from parents teachers and students it's not a reach to say that this is probably the main focus of the document it even goes so far as to explicitly claim that this plan began not as an initiative spearheaded by the administration but is one that arose directly from community asks and continued as such every step of the
233way uh this is a pretty bold claim and yet uh it's described in very vague terms uh and it's curious to me that this plan was implemented uh was was only implemented after the community asked for it uh yet it's also exactly in line with the chamber of commerce arkansas learns endorsed forward ngl program that the district recently adopted uh and uh if we're to believe this is this was a community-led initiative i believe personally that we need more information about these meetings with parents students and teachers uh thank you mr owa so much for your presentations like uh seriously uh but i just uh like a comment about it um you described a few zoom meetings with 15 to 20 parents at hall but there were zero meetings at all related to the west
234school um and again if you look at the accompanying documents to this presentation you're describing a plan as if it was like invented by the community and so my question is just like when did these meetings happen what was attendance like how were the people selected how was information about them disseminated uh what steps did you take to ensure that the voices of underrepresented groups were represented um and uh yeah i just uh you know with all due respect it feels like there is a lot of rhetoric around community and teacher input um but a lot of times uh it feels like the plans don't go quite uh as far uh as some of the rhetoric might suggest uh and uh it just feels like a lot of these fancy innovative plans never have input
235from the educators who dedicate their lives to the and uh and their time to raising our students and uh i'm i'm really you know i again i appreciate the work y'all do and i hope that uh you know we part as friends but uh i i ask these questions because i really care about democracy and uh i really believe that every person deserves to have a say in decisions that affect their lives so thank you all so much and uh that's i'm done okay mr marshall have have you uh concluded your time are you finishing my time okay uh well um thank you great use of time um thank you good seeing you next sorry i went mute next up we have mr greg moore miss dear is going to call in so we will
236uh circle back to uh miss miss dear mr greg moore are you on there you are yes okay you're recognized for three minutes hi um i want to thank um i think the board for allowing me to ask a question i've prepared a short question um my name is greg moore i'm a community member a also a member of central arkansas dsa i'm uh i'm planning on having a family so i'm very um interested in the condition of the schools um i'll just let's see read my my questions okay uh given mr key's recent statements um having a balanced budget will be the single determining factor when determining um when determining whether the school board will be released from the state's guard rails in such an environment i believe it is unreasonable for the plans
237to be introduced to the board for voting when the public still hasn't been given access to the budget when will the public be able to see a detailed budget for each of these plans has the board received such a budget and if so uh when is the information going to be shared with the public and that's all my questions i'm i'm done thank you okay well thank you mr moore a great use of uh time thank you next we will have we will hear from miss dear um all right can you hear me are you able yes we can okay sorry about that okay you are you are recognized thank you so much for having me my name is liz dear and i'm a parent of an lrsd student and i'm also a member of
238the central arkansas dsa i just have a quick comment uh the plan for these schools has clearly been shaped by this county-wide implementation of the ford next generation learning initiative this program has been adopted at a time when one of the biggest concerns by teachers about how little input they have in the plans made by the district we need an educational program built by educators many teachers have already voiced concerns about their lack of input on hall's transformation the ford ngo plans describe multiple large meetings with dozens sometimes hundreds of parents students and teachers giving feedback this is listed as the central tenet of the plan it was released in 2019 when we had no democratically elected school be school board so did these meetings actually occur if so does the board have access to
239whether or not it was as well attended as was claimed um i saw a couple town halls with some teachers but not community um how were members of the meetings chosen and more generally how does the board plan to show the community that teachers will have a real say in how their educational programs are implemented according to their website the consulting and expertise of the ford ngo program is paid for by the district so how much does this cost if our tax dollars are going to this program we deserve to have a larger say in how it is implemented other major parts of the ford ngo program are funded by grants given by the entergy arvest regions union pacific and at t past superintendents have wondered about the efficacy of relying on programs funded by
240grants so what can we do to ensure that these programs are sustainable thank you miss dear um bye for your comments uh good seeing you um so let me make sure that i covered everybody we had dr nikki whitfield mr mr marshall and mr moore so those so we have we are now concluding uh closing out our public um comment for this piece of for this part of the agenda and now we will go into a board a discussion and and then after that we'll move into um a action so the board where oh the this that load the discussion is open um so please unmute your mics what i will do this um uh this time around is i will direct the traffic um um if people are speaking over each other i'll let
241you guys know um and we will move forward from from there so so far the first folks that have unmuted is uh dr wilson director adams okay director wilson uh go ahead you're recognized and following you will be director adams and i'll come behind director adams okay um so again um i know i'm biased i'm a horse heights parent but what does the k-12 mean you're talking about a k-12 what does that mean what is going to be different at both hall and forest heights um i got lots of questions about that and i don't know the answer and i still don't know the answer uh dr ower our superintendent yeah i'll start and then allow dr ola to join in really when you look at the k-12 model um one of the things that
242we have in both these groups of staffs and communities have come together to create their plan but the plan doesn't overlap or have the right progression so that they have the continuity that should be in place so that as an eighth grader leaves to go to ninth grade that that has that appropriate kind of ladder effect of being able to elevate what is next for the student that's a piece that is missing right now in addition we also feel that there can be um an opportunity of developing a a school culture uh it's interesting tonight dr whitfield may not like that i take a part of what she said but she brought up a private school model and you think many of the private school models do have a k-12 type system and it does
243create that continuity and the culture effect of having a delivery that parents can rely on i want to reiterate because i know ms wilson you were one of them that brought forward the concern that forest heights parents are well do we have to go to hall no as people that are leaving middle school within any of our middle schools they have the opportunity to go to any of the five high schools the final thing that i'll share and then i'll let doctor oh or mr rutherford add to my comment is that we also know that the talents of those two staffs can also create some efficiency as well so it can create positive programming for kids and it also can create a little bit of an efficiency for us in terms of support towards those
244students mr dr ola or mr rutherford you want to follow looks like mr rutford's going to go good evening board miss wilson i think the best way to put it because you are pulaski or i'm sorry forced heights i've got pulaski heights on the mind because of the move that may be coming down the road forest heights apparent as you know one of the foundational things that forest heights is project lead the way and what mr four mr poor is referring to is we want to make sure that that curriculum alignment is the way it should be for those kids that want to keep going using project lead the way in other words a seventh or eighth grade student that takes a project lead the way class at forest heights does not need to turn
245around and take the same class again when they get to hall if that's part of their uh pathway and so really it is taking a deep hard look at where are we at forest heights curriculum wise and you know this probably better than anybody else on the board even those core teachers teach through the lens of that project lead the way well the same thing needs to happen at hall to make that connection if that makes sense so i think you you will probably understand that better than everybody else will but even with that and i know we heard a lot about ford and gl but that really just to remind the board as we talked about ford ngl all teachers core teachers try and teach as much as they can through the lens of
246those pathways for the kids well it truly happens at forest heights and i know you know that as a parent and so that's that's really what we're talking about when we're talking about really true curriculum alignment and making sure that those pathways are not courses taught again and again and again but new meaningful things and obviously the rigor bumps up each level that they go i think mr before said it right and that's not just in project lead the way i want to be clear that's really all facets of it ramps it up to where it aligns very well and again it doesn't mean that a student coming out of forest heights has to go to hall but i think it does and i think the board i think people will get it that it
247does line up well curriculum wise when they understand that pathway is going to mean something for their kids and i i'll add just a few things or a couple things after that it's also just the same benefit that we've had with the k-8 model of the relationship building the rapport that the teachers have built with the students and the parents and vice versa and then the continuity of the instructional model would be enhanced by moving it to a k-12 model with nine through twelve because the students if they choose uh uh uh to move on to the high school they will still be with their core group of uh students they will have and it's less transition because they won't have to start all over at a different high school if they choose to stay
248in the k-12 model and then we'll have the same leadership which will ensure that continuity of instructional themes the steam and stem projects and instruction will continue k-12 and it provides another learning option for our parents and our students who want an additional learning option within the district so will there be any changes to the administration i'll tackle that one and we will create some efficiencies on that in terms of uh you know creating a situation where we have uh administrators um that we think can can best deliver this model and um so yes there will be some changes and uh we we want to even use uh some of our executive session tonight to share that with you all so that you can hear that plan which we believe will end up being a
249win-win-win for both communities and for leaders okay thank you director adams thank you miss hatter i don't i'd like to since it's open for discussion i'd like to make some comments i don't have really questions at this point because ms wilson asked a question that that applied to me too and and frankly because i'm really appreciative of the time that the administration and the leadership at both the west a little our school of innovation and and the hall have provided to answer a bunch of questions and we've had a chance to tour both of those schools and talk to the people there we've had a chance to uh discuss this in several meetings and had a chance to um talk with administration about our specific questions so that has really been very helpful to me
250and i really appreciate the public interest we've heard people have heard from a lot of people i appreciate the folks who spoke tonight and who are concerned and are engaged in that and i but i do want to respond to a couple particular things one is that um you know i i heard the me the desire to hear more from the teachers and i can't speak for everybody but i know that the teachers that i heard from from hall were saying give us a chance make this happen keep us going keep you know don't don't pull the plug on on hall we've invested so much we want to keep on going and we think that that we're primed for something special and that's what i have heard i also heard the concern about budget and
251i'm and i think that it's a fair concern for us all but when i think about budget i think about those numbers that we were presented recently about cost per pupil with low numbers at both west and at hall and one of the ways that we improve the budget is to attract and maintain healthy numbers of students at both of those schools because it's not sustainable to have the calls per student that it is this year but i i think that there is good reason to to hope that we could have a sustainable budget situation um and at both of those schools and certainly i'm encouraged by the increase at west and and and encouraged too by some of the increase they've had at hall and i think there's there's much more potential there i
252also think that we have heard some of us have heard maybe a lot but you know we've heard from folks at parkview who are concerned we know what's the side effects of putting all the emphasis you know on hall and i would want to say just for myself and but my guess is this would be true for most if not all the board you know parkview we hear that and and we are not going to forget that and uh we but we also respect that there's great strengths of parkview and and that we can build on that and we can listen to and see what park what what is needed for parkview to to keep it a thriving and healthy choice for students and for places to go and i think we really have an
253opportunity in the district now that i've never seen before to where we could have a whole menu an array of positive in reality and in perception positive high school choices all across the district each of them offering something different and the risk that we're being asked to take you know for instance go to the k-12 model which is different and and it could feel a little risky is certainly not as big of a risk as we did when we when we approved the k2 8 model there at forest heights that was a much bigger step and and uh has been so pleased that it has gone so well and it has been an inspiration for doing something like what we heard about tonight at uh j.a fair and um so i'm really encouraged by this
254and i think it's worth the step to make the commitment and that i think that in a few years that we could look back and say that that this this commitment and this investment of time and energy will really pay off and will change the narrative and the story of high school in the little dark school district thank you on director adams and uh wilson um seeing that no one have there it's okay director nolan a music go ahead um so i've i've been contacted by many forest heights stem academy parents um just as i'm sure many of you have been to to reach out about their concerns and thoughts about this plan and i'm gonna use um the language that they use with me which is fairly blunt which is you know this is
255essentially a quote they said you know we we feel like you are using our school to rehabilitate hall and what's in it for us what's in it for forest heights stem academy parents and so i've really thought about that question a lot and i i want to kind of respond to it but then also throw it either to mr poor dr ola in case you have other thoughts to add but for me i want to say first of all i don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing one it benefits everybody for a call to succeed it you know it benefits the entire city including forest heights stem academy families for hall to succeed so i don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing that we are um you know looking at a very successful
256school to help um us with hall so then the second thing i would say is you mentioned continuity i think that's really valuable um one point that was mentioned in here that i think maybe needs to be touched on a little bit more is this really provides forest type stem academy families a seat at the table to shape a high school to fit the needs of their kids um and i would love it if y'all would talk a little bit more about that process and what that input is going to be um to make sure that that's a real like meaningful process so that they really do get that opportunity thank you director um oh thank you thank you oops sorry uh late uh the lag on my end superintendent poor thank you miss hatter
257thank you miss noland and um i think probably mr rudford and dr oh and i all wanted a mute immediately we appreciate your comments um and and one of the things that i think is the ultimate form of flattery is to say we do want to replicate the success of foreign sites you know we do want to extend it and we want to do it with you as you just shared miss nolan of having them help shape how we align and how we set up kind of that that progression of skills and levels of confidence uh for those learners as they matriculate up the ladder uh through their high school years so i think there's a whole lot in it for the forest heights family and you know one of the things that was a
258part of the the slide we may have went too fast but we we know that you know this three-year commitment that really means that we've got to engage the staff in a different way with that advisory team we've got to engage our parents in a different way and we have to engage the kids in a different way too one of the things that really helped in particular at west school of innovation is that their students and families came into rooms to work and map and plan and think that happened as they developed pinnacle view and it happened again when they did west school of innovation and miss heatherly has taken that to another level of creating even greater ownership when she came on board last year in the late spring unfortunately for hall they did
259not have a freshman class this year so you know some of that whole thing of shaping what the steam looks like with kid input it was a much more difficult task but now we have approximately 60 students that are coming in we actually think that there'll be more that will join that group over the next month and we think we can really create a dynamic that uh not only the forest heights families will choose from but others uh in the district and out of the district mr rutherford do you want to add i do miss nolan and it's a great question and i understand it from the forest heights parents i mean they want to know what's in it for them well first of all part of it is we do want to ask those
260parents why did you send your kids to forrest heights down what what do you love about forest heights stem we need their input and really that's the only way that you're going to have the opportunity because of choice when they go to high school is to shape that and still go back to what i told miss wilson which comes back to even the course selection part of it and making sure we're not teaching the same thing over and over again but but again i think you know we we need to know those parents we need their feedback that's the best way i can put it is because we want to know what was the drive what keeps you at forest heights because they have options every year they could leave forest heights they could go
261to another middle school but obviously we want their we want to use their knowledge of what's going well for them at forest heights and i think mr poor said it perfectly we want to try and replicate that but again i just want to be clear and i know i've said it twice already nothing's forcing a forced heights student to go to hall high school but we would like their input the parents of that and not only that the staff we would like all that and both staffs working together on it overall to figure out how do we replicate that to carry it on in the high school so the parents will have a large voice as we move forward in the transition i hope that helps a little bit thank you um i would not
262i'm sure what excuse me director nolan did you have a follow-up or what were you finished or you did um it is it is on this topic it is not a follow-up to that question um but it was just simply there were some year like there was a slide and it had some dates or actually just years um in there and i i was a little bit confused because it had like ribbon cutting and i think that was 2022 or 2023 um and maybe i'm way off but since we do have students that are enrolling for next year i mean we're not we're not talking about not moving forward immediately are we are we what's that timeline look like well um mrs nolan those days are in there were just designed to to have a
263framework of how we can move forward those are actually flexible and and we can based on the steering committee uh feedback of all of those stakeholders that that were listed in the advisory committee to continue to move forward with that but we plan to continue to have the students in the schools yes create the k12 model with them there that answers my question thank you director um director calloway uh you had i saw you on muted you started to speak the only thing i wanted to make a statement is that i agreed with the parents that spoke and having come late to this dance uh they should have been allowed to have a voice the ones who uh were talking about they felt like they needed to have a voice in that now i agree
264with that but i i i just had to voice my support on that i'm not saying i disagree with anything that else is going on but they needed to have a voice everybody else had a voice and and and that's really all i have to say director wood thank you madam president um i wanted to respond to the the point that director nolan brought up from from a parent i probably the way that as i think of this endeavor on our part is that this is i think a better truth might be that this is not using forest heights to improve hall i i really see this as us building a high school for forest heights in a lot of respects and then trying to use it to attract other students from around the city
265to that campus so i think it's an opportunity for for forest heights to uh to own the fact that the next generation for their kids the next uh part of the educational process is theirs and there's going to be a lot of ownership in this i would say that i hope mr poor i hope you hear tonight that there's a lot of discussion about having more of the community involved in the process this was talked about a lot last winter whenever the original decision on hall was being made i'm going back to i think december 2019 melanie fox talked about this lot and she described the committee that made up the forest heights transition committee and that you know the committee that met probably september through january they were even you know september to august
266uh prior to forest heights opening and and i think and i i believe that there was probably some some good intentions on the administration's part to to move to that but then then we had a global pandemic hit that i think put a lot of brakes on things and just disrupted a lot of plans for for what hall would have been um i think this is a chance to kind of hit the reset button on that and and i would i i see your advisory board and even though there were there were some criticisms of that in the public comments i don't i don't think that it's a criticism when you're going to have a steam high school that you would have fortune stem companies uh contributing to what what that would look like i
267think that's a good thing but i think that there might also need to be a either a separate committee or more inclusion of regular folk on that advisory committee parents from forest heights just regular taxpayers that are concerned about the value of their you know investment teachers administrators on that to to build a transition to create the comfort level that clearly is missing a little bit over on the forest height side of the street and we need to we need to bridge that with as much involvement as we can also understanding that this isn't just about forest heights but that they they have an opportunity here to really own something special and the last point i'll make because i think this is important especially as i you know think about you know west little rock
268a little bit but that we we have a few schools in town that they they get to eighth grade and then when they go to ninth grade they split and splinter a bunch of different ways and forest heights falls into that trap i'll call it that they don't have a net they don't have a natural cap of their feeder pattern for them to maintain those friendships and relationships through high school and i think there is something special that can be built when kids can recall you know that their their senior class buddies and their junior class buddies were also their third grade buddies and um i think that that creates roots in a community uh and and some depth to community that i think this gives us an opportunity to to to help build those
269long-term relationships for those kids as they're leaving eighth grade that they get they have a great chance to stay with many of those kids should they all choose should many of them choose and i think that when you look around the city the opportunities that we can provide for those kids to have those relationships i think that's better enrichment of those kids lives and their futures so i'm in favor of this i hope i hope for a little tweaking on the the involvement of the community i kind of agree with miss wilson that i don't fully understand the the full impact of what k-12 means but i also understand the administration trying to create a culture of bridging eighth grade to ninth grade and and making something great so i i think it i think
270it's certainly worth the effort that we're putting in here and i appreciate all the work that everybody has done and all the things we've heard about it thank you director wood um everyone is muted i did see uh director johnson unmute i did i had a comment um you know miss johnson is all about learning and teaching and to me it really doesn't matter where a student gets that and i know in the past we're going to make mistakes we're all going to do it but we have to sometimes just kind of bury that and we have to just push forward we have to do whatever it takes to make it work i understand you're absolutely right parent involvement community involvement now i don't know the whole story behind why they did what they did
271but what i'm saying to everybody we still have to push forward we have to put students in those seats so they can learn we got 1400 students that are not on reading level and so we don't have time to slow it down we got to keep pushing and wherever those students are then that's what we push for learning we have got to do it now mr port i'm not really sure can you just give me a brief summary of why the change was made at home or was there some data disturbing data or what was the process just a brief scenario of what happened and why you guys made the change well that's a little more loaded question than you think i think but i will do my best this is something and all of
272us probably lived it in our own lens so i i will share that that i'm probably sharing it for my lens and you know hall kind of came under a microscope really for more than just during my tenure there were concerns because enrollment had dropped even prior to my arrival and it has dropped over the past several years it dropped the most significant amount this year when we decided to take away the intended zone that was a decision initially made by the state board to say that they wanted to reconstitute the school so when it came to being reconstituted everyone at that hall staff lost their position and had to reapply to become a part of the new hall steam magnet when that occurred and i know i'm missing some gaps i apologize to anyone
273that i'm trying to give a good overview but when the decision was made to go to a steam magnet we did start to work with a group of educators and community leaders and then took that out even further with dr roberts and his team of meeting with with more teachers and families to try to you know understand how to create the documents that you have that show here's what happens at hall from a freshman sophomore junior senior year that was a lot of work to put all that together and we had didn't try to go sell it in the fall and you know the good thing is that right now we have uh just about just under 60 students that are ready to come in as incoming freshmen we've got another 10 or 11 that
274are wanting to come in as sophomores that we didn't have so we actually are a little bit ahead of enrollment of where we were with west school of innovation at the same time when west school of innovation started their first freshman group so there's some positive there um the the thing that happened with hall is that it was a dramatic shift right about this time where employees had to understand what the new steam magnet concept was there was a reconstitution and the reconstitution also impacted fair and mcclellan as they as we opened up southwest high so there really were kind of multiple things going on that really modified and change the school cultures and change the student population one other thing that i will say about enrollment is that our enrollment actually at the secondary
275level has now gone up two years in a row so that's a positive for the overall district but again hall had a significant enrollment decrease at the start of this year when they did the reconstitution and the new steam concept didn't take hold with the freshman class and we delayed it and that meant that there just weren't any freshmen hope that helps okay thank you director director adams thank you miss hatter i just wanted to say something because i wanted to be in in in all respect to people who work have worked at hall for a long time because we all high school has been a concern for a lot of people particularly for the people who work there for many many years and and we have tried lots of different things to think as
276a district there i don't know how many principles they've had in the last 20 years how many different you know approaches and models we have tried and and and some folks have been there and they've been doing faithful excellent work with those students whoever was there whoever their leader was whoever the students were and and i really want to i think we owe them a debt of gratitude for their faithfulness you know to continue to work in some pretty trying and sometimes unstable circumstances but we we owe it to those people who've helped me who have held that light going get that light on to keep on trying for those many years well to those students who are in the in the building now and the building and the students who would like to have
277another choice out there we owe it to we just have to keep on trying we can't turn around and say no but i think while we do that i don't want to say to those people who worked with hall before that we are um this is any kind of implicit condemnation of what they have done they're just been incredible folks who have been there and kept on working and trying and some of them are still there and um and so thank you to all the folks who who keep on trying and and we're going to try to honor that by doing something that's that's special and really um that will work in ways that everybody hopefully will be able to be proud of thank you thank you is there any other um directors who wouldn't
278want to speak i i'm going to speak last so we could um that would be a signal moving into the next directive i'm going to be very short but this has been in my heart for a little while even previous meetings and i just feel like it's important to say it and i think we can and should probably hold a little bit of space for the fact that um disparaging comments about what hall has been can be hurtful for people that were part of hall you know whose families and children attended hall at that time and while also recognizing where we are now and what we need to do to move forward for the best of our district so you know i just think it's important to to recognize that there has been for a
279while now you know some level of tension whenever we talk about the reputation of hall and you know all of those things like those those were real people and kids and families that were at hall at that time and so we just need to recognize that that that kind of conversation can be hard and but we also need to move forward now and focus on what we need to do to you know to address what happens next so i just i wanted to take a moment and say that madam president i have a comment please my apologies my i was muted director johnson yes please go ahead and excuse me you're absolutely right uh director uh nolan and you know that same hurt goes for when they close schools so you're absolutely right it's very
280very hurtful so it's a i don't know if it's a what it what it is but you're absolutely right we do need to move forward are there any other directors that would like to weigh in on on the discussion piece questions comments concerns okay um i'm i i will start this is not how i was going to start but i will start by saying i'm glad to hear that um directors are um taking into consideration um either past comments or comments now about not only the staff that was at hall but also the students that that was at hall so it is um our words mean something in our words have lasting impacts on people particularly students um because um a great deal of students that went to hall live within my zone and a
281lot of them are in just like southwest makes up my zone um southwest high school and so i've heard from past teachers and students that that our families that felt um hurt by you know what by having their children called low low achievers or talk about the violence and and then or else to say that things are different now um when the enrollment is extremely um low compared to what it was before and so just moving forward regardless of what school on body we're talking about we have to be mindful that like students do not fail themselves they they come families bring their children into an educational system to educate their children so if we have failing students we have a failing system because we are in an educational crisis so nationally not just locally
282or statewide so what i i do want um moving forward to be mindful of that i know it's great ways to you know attract people and all that greatness but at the same time we're dealing with humans and we're charged with um providing our students with um if we call them password pathways now to go into the lane um after um high school whether it's college votech career workforce wherever they decide to go we are charged with equipping them with that so um with that i will but i am appreciative to hear um fellow directors um highlight that and speak on it and um for past comments that may that was hurtful uh to those students and families and teachers and community members um i will take the liberty as the board president to apologize
283for that and um hopefully um each one of us will govern ourselves accordingly you know when we're talking about our students and families and teachers um the other the other thing i wanted to talk about is um or not talk about because i'm not going to talk but i do have a question about west school of innovation the virtual students um that will be at west school and how will they do the virtual academy and um and uh be at their home school and take part in that how how will that work since uh it seemed like they they there will be some overlap his head oh mr brother i was going to say either one doctor or we both have miss hatter good evening and thanks for the question but again one of the
284main reasons they're tied back to their home school the brick and mortar as it was referred to early on is for extracurricular activities and when we say that i want to be clear with the board that is not just athletics that's drama that's debate that's banned that's choir all those things we consider extracurricular activities and so there will be some master scheduling to be quite honest with you with those kids that are involved in those because of the virtual component and again i heard you very clearly that we need to come up with new terminology regarding our digital learning and we're going to do that for you but with those kids in the virtual world how about if i just say it that way there'll be some unique things because kids may still have to
285go to the brick and mortar school to get those extracurricular activities and be able to participate it is very hard right now if you've got a band student that is in the virtual world how really do they tie in with band and so we i hope that helps to answer a little bit now there may come to a future date miss hatter that we come back to the board we're looking at virtual school and the virtual things as we grow this it may look completely different than it does during coving which means maybe kids truly choose a pure virtual or digital world and the school evolves itself a little bit to offer that as well where then they would be west students that you saw that were on there that are purely digital students that
286are assigned to west and use that lea but in order for extracurricular you have to time back and well i think it was said earlier but for triple a reasons they have to be tied back to an athletic program or something along that for their and i will include band choir as you all know drama debate all that's covered under the arkansas activities association as well so they have to be tied back to their home school so that's where we are right now future may look a little different and we're going to grow that and see what the public wants and obviously get community input on what that may look like i hope that helped a little bit yes it has and and west school of innovation they're in the third year correct if i
287remember correctly our second year we're in our second year second year okay got it um dr oyc have a muted do you have something to add oh no no ma'am okay um okay my my my next thing and last thing um forrest forest heights is um it is being talked about more publicly about um making up the new if you will steam hall high school however a lot of forest heights students would typically go to parkview or central but mainly parkview for steam i mean yeah for steam um because not only because of the fine arts that we offer and i'm a parent of parkview but also because of the rigorous high rigorous um science program particularly engineering and without parkview um having a a piece of parkview and if you know parkview you know
288everything is so intertwined arts works with science science workshop art art is science sciences art um you will we wouldn't be able to attract a force high stem because the engineering was taken from part view and put it at steam at hall so i do have a request and emotion um because and due to parkview being a it's not a new school it's a legacy school it's a high performing school it's it's a school that people um come come to i would like to ask the district if if um you all would be willing to add a three-year commitment to parkview um fine arts and science um that way we will be able to stabilize parkview and give part view the needed recognition and branding and um support as far as instructional right as parkview
2892 is under um we have to revamp how things are done now so um that would be pretty much my my motion is to add parkview to the three-year commitment because parkview is taking a direct hit miss hatter i heard you ask the administration's point of view and we uh i think we would wholeheartedly agree with this and um i think the parkview staff would be appreciative of the parkview community and i think it can make us stronger and i think it's an excellent suggestion i know it's kind of coming on the fly i don't think it has to be something that freaks out quite a few parents it actually ends up showing that a commitment to them as well to have resources and support whether it's in the ford ngl model or publicity in
290pr like you said uh so i think it's an excellent idea thank you um i appreciate that because parkview parents we have the same questions as forest heights parents like we don't want to be sacrificed just for one for the other but that's me speaking as a parent not as the board director or a board president but um at the same time thank you uh for that and i imagine since that have been since the district has now amended their three-year commitment uh to parkview which is a now a part of the ford ngl model as well as the fine arts and science um fourth so when we go into action board that is part of that three-year commitment is is now school of west innovation uh hall steam academy and uh park parkview fine
291arts and science for a three-year commitment miss hatter can i make a just is that how it miss how can i make a recommendation yeah um you know you've made a really good suggestion and that could end up meaning that you formalize it through a motion or one of the um other board members could take the motion that the administration had put forward and just add parkview so it could come from any of the nine board members um and then a second would occur but you wouldn't want to be intentional about adding parkview if somebody wants to make that a part of their motion and that really needs to come from the board yes okay so do we have a motion or director nolan well um i i am happy to make a motion i
292just wanted to touch on this i believe in a previous um presentation we heard about and it may have been forest heights stem academy when it um was redeveloped we did see a temporary impact on some of the other schools and then that equalized and and it actually helped the district as a whole and so i think with this proposal for part view that makes perfect sense because we would likely see a similar temporary impact and then some equalization and so just having that commitment to make sure that you know we understand that there's it's going to take some time to to level that out and would be very smart about it um but as far as emotion if we are adding part view to emotion about hall and west i'm just gonna go ahead
293and say that i would probably you know there was a mention earlier about getting more information potentially through um an executive session or something like that about this hall plan and so if we if we're going to do that i would rather do that before we make the motion just so that we have all the information on the table director um adams and then director uh well director wilson and then director adams oh okay um the thing i was gonna ask is all these motions gonna be tied together are we gonna vote for a three-year commitment to west a three-year commitment to hall are they gonna all be together and superintendent may have to clarify but from what i understood is it's it is just one one motion for both superintendent did i speak out
294of turn that's correct that was our intent and we're also saying as an administrative group or as a superintendent that i would have no problem adding the parkview onto it okay because i just have a hard time voting for a k-12 when i don't know what that means for forest heights or hall like you guys gave an answer but you're saying you're gonna tell me more later wilson what we're trying to say is that the the combination has to be done together with those entities that it's work that's even if you delayed the motion we would not have the work that you're asking for is going to take all the way up through the summer for that group to work together and probably even into the fall so you know in some ways you're you're
295you're in some ways making a little leap of faith probably that you believe in the concept and believe that the district will execute this work with the different constituents of patrons because if you want to wait for what you're saying for a map out then we've got we've got months we basically say hall's not going to have a any plan other than you know where we're at right now with 57 kids and there is no connection to forest heights and for the record i do really like the curriculum at hall just fyi when we do the enrollment up that's why we've got to work together because there is a good a good template for both schools but now we've got to mesh that and that will take some time director adams thank you miss heater
296i'm i'm prepared to make a motion and i would move that we approve the administration's recommendation for a three-year commitment to hall including a k-12 model that we would um re that we would approve the recommendation for the the west clear rock school of innovation for a three-year commitment including the virtual academy and that we would approve a commitment a three-year commitment to parkview to make it the healthiest and best school that it can be over the next three years a secondary motion okay so we have a motion on the table with the second is um all in favor or okay i'm so sorry open it okay so we have a motion on the table with a second um so we need to more discussion more discussion go into this it's open for board discussion
297um i fully support the concept of the k-8 i share director wilson's concerns about um specifics i will say though that i have um probably had most if not all of the specifics that i've asked answered except for potentially um staffing and like leadership and so i just want to say that those are probably things that we're we we have to address before we can approve it or vote on it and i don't know i wonder um actually staffing and leadership falls under operations and and at least to my thought because because then we don't get into the operations of buildings because we we kind of look at it from a district level now granted i could be mistaken on this so super 24 will you please um weigh in on director nolan and answer
298those ques that question i thought i can actually clarify it to help i'm actually talking about structure not individual staffing decisions but you know what does the structure of a k-12 look like in terms of you know what are the actual positions that are gonna be there those sorts of things um and i just i really hope that we can you know make sure that we all have all the answers we need before we before we vote on it well oh mr if one second director calloway miss dolan if i can reply to you um you know this is a little bit similar to miss wilson's question or concern because a little bit of what you're asking for we're not going to know what some of those things are the connectors and the staff efficiencies
299and the programming until our students schedules all come in mr ruthford is receiving all those actually over spring break and working on that he has no spring break okay so you may see a tear come out of him but he is working on schedules all spring break for all high schools all middle schools because we just now have all the course registrations in place and that's going to dictate a lot of some of this structure and some of the things that we may be able to do to help create unity so some of those pieces will be coming and then of course we would like to share an executive session a little bit of a road map that will help get that kick started um on on how we would do at least the administrative
300functions and may i do a follow-up to director nolan um it's a conversation or not a conversation about comment then what was at force heights it's coming back where um the district was saying that like they just need for us to give them the okay on the model to where they could start building out the plan to move forward and and i guess this is part of it and two it well we all have these same questions and it's and it's faith it's like we are doing the right to give them a directive to move forward for them to come back uh to us but nevertheless we we are trying to save a school too and running the same breath um director would but i'm sorry pause for doc director wood director nolan um i
301see your wills attorney do you want me to come back to you keep go on to someone else right now okay dr wood and then it's director calloway it's no no that's how it was in the queue the director would you defer to director callaway thank you all i would want to say is that whether we approve you know the blessing of a k-12 label my hope would be that that tomorrow when both administrations go to work at their school buildings or monday or whenever or the next monday that uh that they would implement the same plan i i see no reason whether we call it a k-12 or a k-8 in a high school that those two high schools don't work together better than it those two schools don't work together better than any
302two schools in little rock they they absolutely should um and so i i don't you know i don't know whether i'm speaking to mr poor here or whether i'm speaking to miss wilson but i i suppose that if if we if we give it the k-12 name i think they're gonna go do the same thing in preparation for next year and the year after that at hall that they would do if we didn't give them the k-12 man in blending experiences for students to to have interactions with high school staff and uh to have the opportunities to to compete in in in competitions on the hall campus and we're trying to create a steam school and we got this fantastic steam up stem elementary school across the street they've got to work together and and
303so i i don't i don't know what that's worth to to either one of you but but i but i hope that regardless of the name that ends up after tonight i hope that the vision for cooperation and synergy uh carries forward either way thank you director with uh director calloway i want i wanted to ask uh director of nolan what is what you what are what you asking for is the tablet maybe you're not asking for that well no and i'll be even you know more direct or what some of the parents that reached out to me from forest heights were concerned that if we create a k-12 leadership structure that hampers their school's ability to do what they've already been doing that it would put more red tape more bureaucracy over forest heights
304stem academy and you know as long as we can address that concern directly and just say that you know that they will continue to be able to do what they're doing or not gonna you know impose multiple levels of additional control over a school that is already succeeding and doing very well and i can move on i just want to address that because it really was a concern that was brought up multiple times and it really hasn't been addressed yet and that's that was it well you guys this this is this topic is is as we are as a board we ask very deep thoughtful forward thinking type questions and we all most of us have shared we share the same exact concerns um but i also heard as most as all of us have
305the district presented five options to us it was and i will recap them just so we know what we're dealing with we was presented with do nothing and let it stay the same it was presented with um a ninth grade academy and it's not in disorders just as it comes to my brain um so leave it as is a ninth grade academy uh eleventh and twelfth grade go ahead and finish out close the school or a k-12 option um that's what was presented to us a few months ago or whenever it was and and just as a whole before probably before many of us even sat here we in the community and when we were community members or advocates still advocates then we were saying what's going on at hall that's a closing school look
306at the way it's going i mean we was all saying those things um and this is right where this is a tough one when we're just gonna have to trust our district leaders to continue to build out and it goes back to the beginning when i said this school is being built while operating um and that's why they pulled from parkview and force to to get the buy-in because those are great schools you have fine arts which is a steam art park view is a steam and so is force heights so to come into another scene um and so i think that that at this point and and this is this is this is tough because because we're dealing with our our children not only from from not from forest heights and the families from
307forest heights we are creating a school not for the entire city what is best for the city to come to come um that will entice them to come to hall the same way they go to force heights and parkview they're they're from everywhere i'm not i'm i'm just expressing how i feel just personally um i don't my questions i have them but i already know the answers to them they won't be able to answer them until they start moving forward and we're gonna get the same answer so i'm gonna pause and if we need to sit for a moment and then go into the um motion to to to vote on this but we we are going to have to make a we're going to have to vote on it so if we need 60
308seconds we can get it but if not we are ready to do something director adams yeah thank you miss howard before we call the question and and vote and uh i just wanted to speak to the concern that's out there and and speak in favor of the motion um and part of it is frankly i think a matter of trust i think that the folks who who managed and set up and have maintained a successful school of forest heights the folks who have started a successful school what appears to be a successful start of an innovative school at west little rock high school the folks who made who have helped coordinate the impressive presentation we heard tonight about the j.a fair k-8 school i trust that they're not going to come in there and mess
309up a good thing at fort heights that they're going to build on strength and and make it better for the whole district now do i know that first third and of course we don't know if though for certain but i but there's no reason for me not to trust it from based on what i have seen so far and by based on the answer that i've got and i and i it makes sense to me that there's some details about what has to be worked out that we're just going to have to be worked out thank you director adams you've summarized it very well we're gonna have to trust our leadership and i mean and we need to move forward on this to where our families are able to if they choose to because some
310families are holding on what the boards decide because they're looking at us for leadership so we need to we've asked all of our questions and you know us we will monitor it and continue to be in the inboxes on phones with our our leadership team and and they know it and we know it um i'm gonna pause right there you guys and um and when you're ready to make a motion on this let's make a motion director nolan you're recognized we have a motion we do but we need to make a vote we need to make the vote on it so i'm just going to say this for the record and for the people who are watching i'm going to vote for this motion and i'm going to do it because i trust us to
311continue to do what we are doing and i trust the people who have worked so hard in these schools and and so i agree that there is work to be done to develop this model but i think k-12 is a logical and smart approach and that as long as we continue to be involved in in addressing you know the rest of the development as it comes up that we are on the right track so and i i understand the frustration with not having every answer right now that's how i am so i get it because i want all those answers but um so i'm just putting it out there that i i am voting for this and that is why does anyone else have have any comments and two we have um four parents on
312the board i mean we and and we have in investors on this board into our community so we take this very seriously uh grandparent oh and we have grandparents amen we have grandparents and excuse the amen for anybody that might make offense to that but um and so we take that very seriously um do we have anybody else that yeah i just want to say uh president i i agree with director adams um that's why a second emotion not and and like uh like i just said i you know i'm a grandparent of four so um i see the future uh and and and one of the major reasons i'm on uh i wanted i chose to run for the school board it's across my four grandchildren and i i see the future i want
313the little rock school district to win we have outside agitators coming at us but i believe in the district i believe in the administration i believe in us as a board to keep them on their toes to make sure that they do what they say you're gonna do so uh that's why i second the motion and i uh that's all i'm gonna say thank you director mason and thank you for the second director wood um and there i don't see anyone else that have um immediate outside of him and after him um we should go into the vote director would please just briefly for some historical context i think director adams might could speak to this and maybe director johnson as well that the the last elected school board almost did the same thing when
314when forest heights was reborn and it was a heavy discussion uh immediately after forest heights and and i i think there might be some who wish that they had just gone ahead and and made that change and then ripped the band-aid off and you know we'd be we'd be seven years into uh a hall stem high school and and this wouldn't even be a thing but um this is not a revolutionary idea this has been around a while and talked about in the community for a long time it made a lot of sense then and was almost done i i think this is our chance to pull this across the finish line and uh you know seven years from now be excited about what we did i mean make a comment please director johnson yeah
315i've seen the right uh director bullets it was it was high priority on the list and of course it didn't make it to where we wanted to go but how was paul was a big big issue and you're absolutely right sometimes looking back you do you're like well what if we've done that or what if we've done this where we'll all be or we'll never know but what i can say now we know what we can take call now so we have to just go ahead and bite the bullet and believe that we can make it work and just go ahead and get it done i'm just one of those individuals just go get it done if we screw up let's straighten it out let's restore let's repair let's fix it but we've just got
316to move on we can't keep beating the dead horse i understand how parents feel and i promise you understand how teachers feel but you know what we have to stick together we can't we just have to be together on it whether you like it or not we just have to make it work for the kids we're talking about the children and sometimes we have to make personal sacrifices and sometimes we have to make professional sacrifices we just got to get it done for the students because if we don't then we're putting their education on hold and so to them that's a life sentence if they're not educated if they can't read that's a life sentence what can they do they can't even do what we're doing they might want to be the next elected board
317members but what they can't read so we have to just continue to just keep pushing forward it's okay if somebody screw up it's okay if you think they screwed up it's okay if you don't feel like it works we can make it work we just have to believe and we have to push forward and sometimes we just have to bury the hatchet and just keep pushing and that's just where i am yeah i sit here and i listen and i'm saying to myself you know what we can make this work let's just do it and that's me that's me and sometimes i'm not real gentle in my presentation because being in the military when you're training young men and women to go off to war you can't be gentle with that you have to tell
318them look this is what we need to do let's do it and get it done and so if my presentation seem a little a little rude or whatever i do apologize but that's just coming from my background let's do it let's get it done let's take the vote let the administration do what they need to do let them come back to us let's tweak it and let's move forward all right thank you directors johnson we're about to move forward green and gold and our beautiful blue and orange um did i miss a color uh i am are we we have a motion director nolan i see you've leaned in go ahead do you have something i'm you no okay she is just ready yes um so we have a motion on the table we have
319a second we have a motion by director adams for the record and um this is all for the record to make sure that we capture this so that was for our notetaker so um we have a motion on the table from director adams to move forward to direct the district to move forward with the k12 motion option for a steam i'm sorry y'all for little rock hall steam high school uh it was seconded by director mason we had discussion and now we're ready to vote so all in favor okay i'm going to say it one more time and if everybody could raise your hand because we have two people that i didn't see um say i'll raise hands so all in favor aye okay so i have six i'm counting six of us uh okay
320i think you're not counting i'd like to stay for this vote okay well um for school boards we are not able to abstain it's either a yes or no so uh we will what what we will do we will take a roll call and each of our votes will be cleared that way to where we know whether or not this passes or fail just for our record and our notes please be prepared to jot down our votes we're going by zone zone one yes zone two yes zone three zone three come back to me zone four no zone five yes zone six that's me yes zone seven yes zone eight yes zone nine yes zone three no okay it the motion passes yeah it's seven yeses and two notes yes do we need step so
321the motion path and uh you guys again um i appreciate us working through this and um this is just part of being on the board we are not going to always have unanimous decisions but we're still on the same team but we're all in the same team in the opinion we're all going to make sure that being held accountable and this is what the board had decided to do okay um moving forward on moving forward on our agenda it's superintendent poor do you have anything to add before we move forward now appreciate the uh the support it allows us to move forward and i know that i believe the staffs will be excited to hear the outcomes so thank you thank you okay we're moving into the eighth port the eighth item on our agenda
322which is the finance and support services with that that is just our monthly financial report and our cfo um mr uh kelsey bailey will uh present again um and he'll highlight this as well uh this budget just for those um that have questions or are maybe um don't know the budget report that mr bailey is presenting on it is a a approved budget already um the board will not approve the 21 22 budget until the fall so when he's um presenting he's presenting on what have already been approved and i'm gonna pause there and turn it over to our cfo mr kelsley kelsey bailey good evening again my name is kelsey bailey i'm the chief financial officer and chief operations officer for the lorac school district uh i'm going to share my screen here real
323quick with you know y'all been waiting for this exciting portion of the agenda yeah we'll jump into it so we've got a brief little power point to show you here as well uh won't take too long here are y'all able to see it okay but pretty much what we're doing we're going to do a board financial update so like president hatter said uh this is pretty much just a financial update our budget was actually approved it has to be approved by september every year so uh the monthly is just to keep the board uprising the public price of where we are as far as you know as far as our financial reporting so but pretty much on the financial report that has three different parts on here and i'm going to add a fourth tonight
324but you have what's called a summary of revenue status report which is typically pages one through three summary of the expenditure status report which is pages four through seven and we'll go over that as well in a detailed statement of changes and fund balances is pages 8 through 13 on the attachment we also have some additional financial summary so everything that we typically show you all the summaries there are quite a bit of pages so if we didn't do the summaries you'd be looking at probably close to 1300 pages out there but going back to we've talked about budget quite a bit we know we have to sit down and we got to do we have to uh do a three-year non-deficit spending budget and some of the things and basically just in layman's terminal
325budget is basically is how you determine how much money you have coming in which is your revenue and how much money you have going out it's just as simple as that if you you know how many if you work a job you know how much money you have coming in if you have to pay bills you know how much money you're going out so that's pretty much in a simplistic fashion that's all the budget deals uh but in calculating the budget must be have realistic expectations and estimates out there and we'll show you some of those as well so we typically try to be as conservative as possible we don't want to oversell you all of the public on the budget at any time and this is one of the conservative years here especially with
326covert hitting us so another aspect of the budget we wanted to it ensures financial silence basically your financial ability to cover obligations and that's what really the state is looking for in our three-year plan is our ability to actually couple any financial obligations we have out there short-term and long-term uh in that we have to look at right size and uh and then the right size and that's driven by a data driven decision so what does this data want us to we can look at those past uh enrollments we can look at past you know different financial aspects of it and making decisions based on that data out there and i actually stole this from president had i believe this in the january board i mean we have to look at the reality of what
327is so we look at the past we can uh plan for the future but we actually have to take action on what we currently are experiencing right now it's a little bit different with you know in the pandemic so numbers are down somewhat but we also have to take stock in what the reality is where we are right now uh it also assists us in setting financial goals of becoming sustainable and at leads to what's called fiscal governance so fiscal governance impacts the whole aspect of operations just not the financial reports out there it's the whole operations there so and when we're looking at fiscal governments we're looking at program additions uh salary enhancement facilities reserves so all those things are goal setting that it really that that's really the board's uh standards that are
328actually you know looking at the program what additions or programs would you want to see out there if we're going to be doing any salary enhancements or improvements and looking at facilities and reserves of baseline fund balance that we keep out there for a rainy day so looking at right size in the budget these are typically revenues are generally fixed we talk about revenues it's really nothing we can do to improve our revenues after that the given uh data has come in because it's based on your previous year assessed value which is not going to change for the last year and it's based on your previous year three-quarter average out there so those things are set so you see people talking about a fixed income we pretty much have a fixed income when it comes
329to that now there are some additional categorical identification that may come about based on esl testing and different other things that may improve your budget a little bit but it's not the major portions there so our concentration primarily has to be on the expenditures so i mean that's the part that we have the autonomy to change so of course the biggest part-life spenders are personnel so we have to look at those personnel look at benefits as well but also we have to look at our programs to offering our course offerings our scheduling where we're scheduling how to look at the number of facilities and uh like i said data driven decisions it needs to be based off enrollment projections uh if we do that we can you know look at some economies of scales and
330redundant reduce the redundant support services and i'm just using support services these are my support services report to me so uh i take this i'm gonna put in layman's turn for the public so if you have just say you have 10 you have 10 kids and yourself young uh each one of those kids has a thousand square foot home that you have to maintain it's easy to maintain a ten thousand square one ten thousand square foot home or ten one thousand square foot homes so when all those if you the person have to maintain that you have additional transportation costs transporting between all ten of those units you have additional in our situation we have food service calls because the redundant services custodial security in the same way with the school district so if you
331have too many buildings out there you have redundant of support services that you really could combine if those populations were combined there so this is pretty much uh has been my focus statement since i've been here i've been here 12 years and two more weeks so and uh when we're looking at budget it's more than just the financial aspects we're looking at human capital we're looking at the way we use our facilities and anything else that we have as far as our resources but we have the fiduciary responsibility to be great students not good students but great stewards of the resources we have available in doing so we provide our children with the greatest educational opportunity to ensure they achieve their maximum potential and educational opportunities including the classroom athletic venues and everything so all
332those are actual resources out there so any questions so far we'll try to run through this fairly fairly quick here exit out of that one pull another one up real quick so i know we had a mention about budget so all our budgets are actually online so you can go out there and look at several years but this is our our budget we actually went over uh we got approved in september so i mean this it has uh typically two years of actual out there and what we budgeted for the previous year and i just want to bring your attention to the 1920 year if we've combined you'll see we still are on your powerpoint right now i thought i was saying i just i guess i was just sharing my actual powerpoint there thank
333you let me just share my screen let's see sorry about that go all right are y'all able to see it now okay good deal so this is the budget we actually had approved in september 2020 and based on this like i said we typically take a pretty conservative approach so we went into this budget cycle and these are major revenue sources up here our current taxes which we break them up by half of a fiscal year so from july 1st through december 31st of the given year that's one half and from january first to uh to uh june 30 for the for the second half this was broken up because in the past we could only recognize a portion of that revenue but due to accounting standards and changes we can recognize 100 of that
334second half uh so based on this if we were to combine these two together that would come up to roughly about i think 153 million uh 153 million dollars there for a 1920 budget we had what actually came in on those two sections about 149 million uh and i'll go back and show you another thing we were experiencing about three percent growth so we should have been able to make that but of course kofi hit in payments uh declined in that second half so you can tell here we did not make that projection about four million dollars so we had two consecutive years of three percent growth so in actuality uh we should have grown this by three percent uh over it should have been actually coming in as what we had budgeted and growing
335another three percent over here but in reality we actually came in at a little bit less so instead of budgeting one uh say 160 million we're currently at 152 billion which is about uh probably seven million dollars under what we would typically budget in this given time frame but we want to make sure we're conservative we're not putting numbers out there just to keep from you know to keep questions down i mean when you put a deficit budget out there raise eyebrows out there so but it's looking looking pretty good so far so hopefully we won't be in a deficit state as far as our local revenue but we still have you know some expenses to look at as well so if you scroll down i mean this is all online as well you all
336have seen this in the past but it gives you some summaries as far as the different categories here and when i go to the regular monthly report here you all see all these salaries rolled up it rolls up into these categories right here but you all get to see them individually so i think i was talking to president howard you may see where the overtime is over by a little bit but on this report you wouldn't see it because it's all rolled up into you know this category that includes salaries and then you have benefits and i'm gonna stop this share real quick and jump to that we good so far i'm going to jump down to the second portion just that's actual revenue up here so like i was saying uh that what i
337just showed you summarized everything in salary so all these accounts that you see over here that start with a 6-1 rose up into cyrus all the way down to this this one right here so if you look over here you can see there's available balances in most of them so that that's positive when you have on your expenditure salary on your expenditure uh status report when you actually have available balance over that means you're under budget at this time if you see a negative here that means you over budget on that given category but when you combine all these together i mean you're still under budget so i wanted you always to see the most detail that we could actually display out there and i guess to kind of back up i don't think anyone
338expects you all to be accountants or budget managers but just have a good overview of what you know the revenues and expenses going out there so don't feel pressured to have to know all these different accounts and all these different function codes and everything else you can always lean on us and ask questions so it's our hope that i don't really use trust in financial terms because trust is usually based on the belief that of something but you hopefully you will one day one day gain your trust but have confidence and confidence comes in by looking at those past reports looking at what we spend our money on financially looking at the audit reports out there so hopefully you can at least have confidence in the reports that represent our accuracy too so i'm going
339to stop the share one one second i'm gonna cover quite a bit here i'm gonna share one more thing i think that will be it and going back minimize this this is one of my spreads you can kind of use here for the upcoming year so like i said our income is fixed so our income that we're actually getting in for the 2021 school year was based on a assessment so uh for the upcoming year it looks like we're going to have about a two and a half percent increase of our assessed value so like i said proceeding two years we were looking at about three percent growth here only thing we did on this upcoming uh this year we're currently in we did about a one and a half percent factor rate so we
340took about half of that growth and put it out there so we wanted to be very conservative because we weren't sure how uh payers taxpayers actually gonna be submitting their taxes so uh their payments out there so i think we're going to be in good shape uh hopefully we'll continue to grow uh as far as assessment the company is still looking uh fairly good as far as in the different real estate and personal property and utility public service pieces out there now i did i told you a story i do want to share one more thing with you i'm covering quite quite a bit let's find this other one [Music] you have one more document i can't seem to find it right now i have to go back and find another document exactly a summary
341sheet i had for you all but i can't can't seem to locate it right now any questions so far yes we have one from director adams you are recognized thank you miss heather mr bailey i i in the past have always and i continue to appreciate you and and how you answer all the questions and explain things and are very patient and are thorough and that the financial reports now are many pages less than they were in the past however a request it would be really helpful to me and perhaps to the other board members if along with uh the documents that we get every month if if we could get a one-page executive summary of for from your perspective tell me what's the most important things tell me about our about this month about
342our whether it's a revenue trend or an expense trend or something like that but i know you may have to tell us more later but if you could on a one page give me the most important things from your perspective that would really be helpful yeah most of my reports are fairly boring except the months of november maybe december and may and that's when a large tax collection come in so of course october 15th is a deadline for you to pay your taxes without having a penalty so we get a lot of payments in that month along with when mortgage companies actually pay the escrow payments uh in april and may so we'll get a large amount but i do have that that's one thing i want to share with you real quick i did
343find it here well it may be mr bailey that in some months you only need half a page to tell me what's important because it may be a routine but that but i would really appreciate your take on the most important things okay and these are some of the reports we've been working on as well so been working on it for the big part of this year to really try to normalize and make sure are y'all able to see that okay but this gives a roll up i can't see your faces and i've got it hidden but this gives a roll up about our local revenues i mean it shows our prior year year-to-date uh and actual based on our current given day as well our revenues uh i mean this is some different things
344we're working on these and hopefully i can have this finish before the end this fiscal year i mean there's a lot of different reports that we'll give you all some summary so you all know don't have to look at each one of those actual uh account codes out there but i'm still gonna attach that because those are actual board reports that are generated through e-finance but i mean we have things like this that will be available very soon i just want to make sure all the information is accurate as possible because there's a lot of different forms that went into actually to create those different documents out there but i understand what you're saying missed adam so if i ever seen the red flags out there of course i'll bring that to your attention and
345those when i i covered like a revenue portion i told you a negative and i'll pull it up for the public to see as well well i really like that you had the graphs on there because that that is helpful to me to have some things there you can see some trend trends in ways that sometimes it's easier to understand and grasp so anytime on the summer revenue if you see a negative number over here it's always a good thing so if you look here we budgeted about 9 90 million dollars we've actually received 96 million dollars so that made a minus six million dollars so that's good so that means we receive more money than we actually budget in that category so uh that's just fy because i know there were some questions about
346that you know i think we answered most of those so any questions you have that pretty much concludes my presentation at this moment um mr bailey i have a question um so and this one may be a hard question to ask but i'm i'm just gonna kind of get in the habit of asking it pretty you know frequently or periodically at an early meeting we talked about fund balances and we looked at several of the preceding years and there were some dips in the fund balance and we talked about you know some of those were big planned developments um but i really do want to keep an eye on that and so what is your analysis of where we are you know what is the likelihood right now that we will end this year at
347a fund balance that is lower than what we started the year with or i don't even know if that's the right way to ask the question but i think you understand that's correct so we budgeted to come in six million dollars less in this year so that's called a deficits spin so based on this second half of how revenue comes in it's all going to kind of be based on that because the first half we was up 6 million so we can say we back it far if we can come in at par based on where we budgeted right now we'd be pretty close hopefully we'll come a little bit above we had plans to actually spend a portion of our fund balance this year anyway because of the southwest high school we had to
348buy the furniture fixtures and equipment so that was a dip we had already planned so we planned on after the building was finished anywhere between seven and ten million dollars to actually you know furnish the school so uh but really i mean from this point i find balance i think it's maybe seven percent i need to do the math on it but uh we scheduled to have a deal it was budgeted as a dip so hopefully we can we can get out of that that mode so that's something we really have to address well let me follow up with that so we talked about this at an early meeting because our exit criteria say a balanced budget with no deficit spending and so we flagged this i think it was about six thousand dollars or
349something that was deficit spending in this year's budget i'm sorry it's me six million i'm so sorry it's light it's very late six thousand we might not need to be talking about as much but um so when we talked about that earlier at a previous meeting i believe an explanation was given that was about you know well we have budgeted it this way but we actually expect to collect more you know that we would be able to not really dip into that um that's still the hope uh like i said we budgeted conservative about five to seven million over where we typically would have budgeted based on uh but we have to look at based on last year collection rates so we couldn't go for 100 collection 100 collection rates out there when we came
350in 4 million under you know the collection on the last quarter last year but looking at the first half of this year we were up six million dollars so hopefully the taxpayers will you know come out and actually make their payments as scheduled or as budgeted and we will be in much better shape so so but we still have we still have to address a lot of personnel and different other portions i talked about as far as the goals out there and i i pulled some uh i don't know if i shared this or not but i pulled the enrollment from when i started here in 2009 we had enrollment of approximately about uh 25 900 and last year we're down you know 21 600 i believe so we've lost about 4 students over the
35112 years i've been here so but we hadn't made those significant reductions in overall we've made some good reductions but 4 300 students it's a lot of students to lose um i just i guess i want to flag it for the board or for mr poor you know we really are facing this this need to have the balance budget for the exit criteria and the deficit spending that we have right now would would be a problem for that so um i don't know i don't have an additional question about it right now but i think it's something that we need to to really be focused on ms dolan i want to add in to mr bailey's comments remember what he said about us being up in semester on collections our next collection that will be
352a place where you you should see it mr bailey can correct me if i wrong is may and june are key months to finally show where we're at on collections next the sr-1 and sr2 and now sr3 funds are going to help offset some of our costs so a great example is we spent nine i think i'm saying this right nine hundred thousand dollars on instructional materials out of our operating fund this year to deal with the pandemic and that nine hundred thousands on the books right now but eventually it's going to be wiped out by s or 2 funds so there's a million dollars back towards the positive in addition you've heard us talk about how we've been very deliberate about modifying our staffing approach during the year and moving pre-k teachers elementary teachers
353not hiring back uh employees when we could reduce staffing so we're we're doing a lot of things that is in the mix right now that it should lend itself to a i think a positive outcome and so i'm i'm actually uh you know the only thing i'm not sure is you know what does the tax collection look like in in in may but you know every other thing on collections that the state does has been above i think um in in the quarters that they've reported and that is correct so we do have opportunity like mr ford said all set some are operating expenses this year uh some sub calls the additional uh textbook calls and maybe some of our transportation calls out there uh we're still waiting on some additional guidelines to come out
354as far as any additional flexibility that may be uh given on so2 we don't really know all the ins and outs of sr3 right now so that's going to help in the short term but long term we still have to look at sustainability and make sure we're right side so are there any other questions for um mr bailey okay seeing that there are none thank you mr bailey for the budget report appreciate it moving forward on our agenda is the board policies and regulations so uh we are going to hear uh the first um read of our policies and i will turn it over to mr walker let me make sure that's what i'm turning it over to yes and and just so you guys will know the first thing um is section one of
355our board governance um what i do want to say about our board governance is that uh this is a um first we read of it so we can hear it and then um of course there there are um uh comments and and pop and changes that probably most likely will be made but we'll hear from that and then the other thing we'll get into is the staffing um preference which is section 4.5 which will be a second read and then um there's a personnel uh policy manual for teachers which is the first read and that's where it's at okay i just wanted to give you guys um an index of what that included hey miss howard can i can i jump in and i'm gonna tag team with mr walker a little bit and and
356on the board one the section one board governance obviously this has kind of been a model there as you've got your training and this is where your board norms would come in but we do appreciate the review and i think mr walker i hope you're ready to share the screen a little bit um we know that there are several things that have been brought up that we think we want to make sure you're you're aware of um one of the the first one is on section 1.14 if mr walker will go to that in your board packet that might be around page appreciate mr adams bringing this up and this actually became kind of a topic of discussion for us on you know setting the agenda you know one of the key things for all
357board members to remember is that you can set your agenda when we have our pre-agenda meeting to bring in topics that you think need to be discussed and then the entire board gets to weigh in on that that's the easiest and best time but we also realize that there's a place and time where you know something may come in late that you want to bring up and in that um and i don't know mr walker you can highlight this but there's a section in the first paragraph where it says that a date has to be set by policy we actually need to talk about that as a group so that we can have a better feel for when a board member might be able to bring in a topic kind of after the fact so
358this is a placeholder and one that the staff will round back to you on so that we can better understand it of how to approach that um and as you can see we had a very full agenda tonight um in terms of you know what we had to accomplish and and so there's always that kind of balancing act of maybe something that's really important but that needs to be added in please know that that we're listening to what people are saying in terms of you as board members and and this hatter and i take that very uh we're very uh aware and want to do our best to represent what you're wanting to talk about as well as moving forward on the business of the district but this section of policy that mr adams brought
359up is definitely one that that we need to come back to um and so we just want you to earmark that in your your book and think about it and it will help us as we discuss this at the pre-agenda meeting mr adams also brought up section 1.6 this one won't take very long to cover but 1.6 is really just the language that's used in this policy on page 116 in your your packet i guess is there's some gender language partial gender inclusive language related to abstaining this also would cover what even happened today about abstaining of making sure that you understand when you can abstain from a vote or if you just choose not to vote it's counted as a no okay so this covers that in the policy so it's kind of appropriate
360that we had mr adams call it out for some language change that needs to happen but it also fit into our reality today as board members when you choose to abstain it's really abstaining because of you have a conflict of interest that's the key thing so with that i'm gonna stop because mr walker correct me if i'm wrong but those are the only things that we've heard on section one and we do know that we need to come back to it in conjunction with some of the training we've done with horace smith and steve percival that is correct i did not get any other additional changes for section one at this point i'm sorry i'll i'll hold i'm sorry can i make a just a comment miss heather uh do we want to wait until
361he's finished with the with this presenting or do we here sure i thought maybe in the time but i'll be glad to wait if it's on section one now would be the time to talk about otherwise we should move on to the the next item okay is it on i i thought we had more on section one no we're done with section one in terms of okay director adams uh you were recognized and then i'll follow behind you thank you miss hatter and i'm not making this as a suggestion but i want to i thought it might be helpful for the board just to have it as something to think about as we think about these issues in in the past the board policy was that if if we got to a meeting and and
362there was a desire to add uh something to the agenda that you voted to suspend the rules and then if you owed it to suspend the rules then you could add something to the you could have a vote to add to whether or not to add something to the agenda but first you had to vote to suspend the rules and that vote was had to be a unanimous vote so it was a high bar in order to change the agenda that it had been agreed upon i'm not suggesting that that's what we necessarily want to do but i i thought that was at least something that may be something for us to think about as we think about the the whole issue of the agenda is if if we come to a time of a
363meeting where i may want to or somebody may say let's change the agenda do we keep that do we make that a high bar or do we keep it the same bar and i think it's just something for us to think about for later as we're thinking about the whole issue of the agenda thank you director um adams um yeah that that is another um thing about our current policy now compared to um the policy manual when you were um um sitting on the board and so uh we will at least i i will because i'm going to to to look to see how we could bring bring back in some other things that are not in there particularly around equity and the powers and and stuff like that but um i i do agree
364with with that that's the uh director nolan i think miss callaway had she she had something before me director calloway actually mute it first i've been unmuted the whole time but that's neither here nor there but on uh the section about agenda items is is that where we are or am i just that tired no we're on section one and um okay this is section 1.4 where agenda items uh must be okay by you and the and the uh administrator in order to be placed on the agenda and uh but how does something get placed on the agenda the day of the meeting i mean you know how does that happen is that a question for myself or for mr poor either one well the um and ms support could follow up the president and
365the superintendent is able to place items on the agenda if it's extremely pressing the way the current policy is written is that the superintendent set the agenda in concert with the president so um superintendent i just decided to um condense it all the way down do you have anything to add to that no and i think we've been pretty true in terms of being putting out the agenda at the pre-agenda meeting so everyone can see what the topics are but we also realize that there can be a new item come up and that's where this section that mr adams brought up which is uh 1.14 is one that you really need to look at miss calloway to determine how you feel that might need to be amended well let's just be fair uh it makes
366it it makes it seem as if some people can and some people can okay uh and and that doesn't seem fair in that policy the way it reads if uh i can't add anything or anybody else can't anything after agenda meeting and i really really i made a mistake because i was thinking that i should i know i should have done it before the enemy but i've had a lot going on and i didn't i just didn't see a min uh before the agenda meeting when i suggested those uh items be added but i was really surprised when i found out that something else had been added to the agenda the day of and if that's what this means i think that the wording needs to be changed or or or it needs to be
367applied to everybody does that it doesn't make sense to y'all miss cowway i i will just respond that i don't believe anything got added to the agenda uh when we posted it last friday with all of our our information the only thing that got added was the executive session so that may be what you're talking about and that that executive session ties in really directly to the the thing that you approve tonight related to hall and west school of innovation and parkview so you will be able to see that connection once we get to executive session i don't think that's what i meant but go on i'm tired okay it's midnight y'all i think we are i don't want to talk about calories are you no but like okay it's time i'm tired we're all
368tired but we have a lot to go through this is a lot you know i can't see us finishing because i have like written a lot of questions in the next packet how are we going to get through all this is there any way that we could extend this meeting or or just keep pushing on to three o'clock we are gonna keep moving until the meeting is it's done okay and honestly miss uh hatter and members of the board i think we probably exhausted this this category we can move fairly quick i think we have not heard of anything on 4.5 staffing preference mr walker i think i'm correct on that it is now a second reading and so if you decide to move forward you could make a motion to move it forward or
369you know that's that's next topic i'm i am so sorry and i'm i will be so quick but i had something on one point yeah we i was letting him have his letter finish their comment and then i was coming back and to you and he wasn't saying that we was moving on he was giving or sharing what we could do director nolan okay very quickly um i won't even go into the who sets the agenda i think we've covered that i have thoughts on it but we can address it later but there's another part of 1.14 um that at the bottom there it says the superintendent shall be responsible for board members receiving copies of the agenda with all accompanying pertinent information at least three days prior to the meeting and it is my
370understanding that in previous um iterations of this policy there were differences in the time period before the meeting and in what was actually provided so i'm not making a motion tonight i'm throwing this out there um that maybe we can take it up next time but potentially more than three days and i would personally like to see not just the the packet but um all the you know the power points if there's going to be a power point put it you know those sorts of things the presentations that we're going to get so that we can have that information to dive into in an earlier date so i'm going to put that out as a potential change to 1.14 agreed um earlier on in our meetings uh talking with the district um i have talked
371about having it out for us for a week but um but again this is what this this this is for um for us all to look at these um policies because there are very different from our last set of policies right when we had an elected school board so um definitely look at the policies and so we can make the necessary changes that we need to make mr walker um do you want to go through i i know that there wasn't any um feed feedback on the other ones if i heard mr um poor correctly that's correct i'll move on to 4.5 a the staffing preference we talked about last month uh and there were some discussion and questions and um in the end i don't believe there were any suggested changes during the discussion
372last month and in the interim between last month and this month there haven't been any suggested changes and i believe this is the second reading and it is up as an action item tonight if there are additional questions or discussion we can do that or um someone can decide to take action on the item all right um i closed my window uh can you refresh my memory is this the the the added year probation one no this is the one where um it enumerates the practice of the student assignment office where uh you know how people are getting being assigned to schools and it pretty much codified what the student assignment office does with a couple of additions and the staffing you know preference for area school staff members and um the preference for magnet
373specialty schools was added to the selection process after the initial lottery and dr field spoke about some of this last week and i think this was the one that uh ultimately was initially requested by uh mr wood and there was discussion about uh you know a student being assigned to where a parent may work for us okay yes and so probably for others um people memory as well this was a practice that i guess the district is already doing and you could jump in if i'm about to summarize this incorrectly but a practice that like the district was already doing and from what dr freddie field said this just um makes it official pull put putting it in in policy um to where there's a process to how it's done that's absolutely correct yes director
374wood do you have uh i see you a muted did you have anything to add to that i'm just ready to make a motion oh please i i welcome you to do that all right i move that the lrsd school board approved the policy 4.5 a staffing preference okay i will happily second that motion thank you director wilson for the record seconded director wood um made the emotion all in favor aye aye any opposed okay so the motion passes thank you all thank you the last items are the procedural manual for teachers this is the uh the items that were recommended by the ppc and members of the administration met with and and agreed on the language there was some discussion kind of about the name human resources uh kind of tweaked the initial name
375and miss austin referred to that during her some of her comments uh so we'll continue to talk about that however the three items employment of certified employees certified employee responsibilities and lrsd building procedures for certified employees is up for a first reading tonight i understand uh there were a couple items mr core brought to my attention that a board member raised um in regard to some of the language for bereavement leave i believe that we're going to go back and look at and discuss with the committee and the ppc and an item in regard to doctor's statement when when someone is ill we're going to go back and look at that and language as well but this is before you as a first reading and uh would be happy to answer any questions i got
376from mr rutherford and okay so um thank you mr walker uh board member board directors do you have any questions on the first read this is the first reading so um you guys will be able to answer those and of course have um comments um even after um the meeting a director i don't know who um muted first i heard miss calloway miss callaway you are recognized okay on teaching assignments procedures um our coach is hired in the same manner that is outlined in in in uh section a of procedures i have to defer that answer to mr robinson mr robinson are you on i do see this box that is muted at the moment superintendent poor yes thank you we do use the same process for um really all of our positions one of
377the things about the little rock school district coming in was that found out that we do a really good job of everything from vetting the candidates and then having a process that is very inclusive of having multiple people on the committee parents staff administrators for coaches or for and then we we do this similar process for administrators we we really have a good process and uh i give credit to you know the entire district and we do this extremely well director calloway does that um answer your questions do you have any other questions or comments now we're going through all of this tonight right so uh is there okay let's go back let's go up to uh number three it's on the next page uh the building administrator should consult with the continuous improvement committee
378in regards to tentative master scheduling for the following year is there a district of continuous improvement committee for every school because we didn't have this back in the day so this is new for me and that's the reason why uh i'm asking that uh who should and if that's not the case who should they uh contact if if there's no you have to be there okay uh when and and prior to i have been in situations where uh i we were asked to help with the master schedule according to your department and uh i was just wondering and about that it doesn't say that and then they're they're talking about that each secondary teachers can be required to teach four classes a four uh four courses okay four preps is what i we used to
379call it and that's extremely difficult is that what i'm reading here i'm on forward now yes ma'am i'll start and mr rutherford may want to jump in um we have an obligation to um share with teachers their assignment we try to do that by may 31st that's the way that this language is being proposed we know that there could be some instructors and this could be picked up even let's say in august that we have to have a teacher pick up a fourth prep if that happens they're going to be compensated for it and that's what's covered in this particular section 5 no it says ten percent okay i got the wrong paper because it says five percent of the daily break for each audition of course on the copy i have it shows ten
380percent oh what's the title of your page that you have mr walker could go to this it would be on um the procedure for notification of assignments it's number four miss callaway director callaway what's the title of your page i just want to make sure the same thing is the procedure for notification of assignments and if it's ten percent i'm glad that it's ten percent but mine said five uh percent teachers assigned to teach more than one course in a single class period we compensated at a rate for um five percent for instance if i had four if if i were teaching child development parenting foods and clothing that's four preps where you have to write all of the lesson plans and plan all of the lessons that's extra duty and what uh and mr
381poor was saying that that this was uh five percent uh ten percent but mine said five and i guess i'm looking my i don't know where i got five from the says five and i think that's where i had paused is this five percent the five percent is a mistake friend uh coach i mean culture elephant i mean mr roloff sorry about that miss callaway i was trying to unmute and couldn't get the unmute button going but in the negotiations that we worked through with the ppc regarding this particular area first of all i want to start with the cic ms callaway it works on the the it would work just like it did when you and i were together again at fair the department chairs really helped lead that as far on the high
382school level as far as again determining the master schedule components the thing that's in this document says the cic will be notified as to the overall master schedule for the school just to make sure that once again that it's not negatively impacting teachers in any way shape or form they and they have an opportunity to give input beyond that but i want to be clear as you if you were the department chair for example family consumer science in your department you would help determine who in your department taught what inside of the master schedule itself so that that i hope that helps with part one of what your question was and then i'm gonna need mr walker's help to pull up the section you're talking about now because i don't have it on my hand
383as soon as i get to it i think i'll be able to okay it's number four procedure of notification of assignments see right there where it says thought five percent of that daily rate of pay for each additional course looking at it says temperatures i know what that is now mr walker and i can give you an example there miss calloway that a good example is like in foreign language for the board sometimes we have like a spanish four that may have very few students in spanish four but we also may have a spanish five group that is very very few students again but in that case to get to help those kids to be able to take what they want that spanish teacher may take on both spanish four and spanish five inside of
384one period on the block and teach both groups some of it some of it blends naturally but i hope the board understands it really gets to those real exclusive classes that numbers are just very small but yet we also want the kids to be able to and the students to be able to get what they want to take and in our natural thing in a master schedule to be honest with you with the board that class wouldn't make normally it was individual classes because there's so few students inside of one of those so that's that's what they're referring to there ms callaway is really it's those real upper level classes that make it very very small that you may have to teach and really it happens and just to be honest with the board it
385happens in foreign language more than anywhere when you get to that that upper upper level of foreign languages you can combine the class and teachers do it just just so the board knows it's not something new that's where the five percent came into play okay oh and i see that but still on the uh the what i what i downloaded does not have 10 percent on it and um and then i'm gonna leave this alone but uh on the next page on uh predictable absences notifications of absences okay um in the case of any use of regular sick leave or extended leave whatever uh pregnancy and writing that i have to have in writing at least 30 days prior to the expected commencement of such leave and anticipate they have returned okay uh there are
386exceptions here right to that yes ma'am there are there are definitely exceptions to that and again i won't go through all of them but they're i mean the biggest thing is just notification again for an extended period of absence and again a lot of them are going to be medical related for the just so the board knows but that yes ma'am that's there are exceptions to that uh because i had no receptions twice for me because i had a preemie and i guess that's the reason why i highlighted that and i was like oh my goodness i'm gonna take i i wouldn't know and uh that's unpredictable right okay but it has pregnancy up there and that's what caught my eye because pregnancies are very unpredictable uh then it says number two it says unpredictable
387absences and uh employees are uh reciprocates emergency when certified employees are physically or mentally incapable of meeting these criteria you list two things i don't mean you but i mean there are two things listed that you must do uh the lrsd design self system must be notified of the use of sick leave at least two hours before the start of a certified employees work day and uh the building administrator or destiny must be notified of the use of sick leave days by phone call email or text at the certified employees school at least two hours before the start of the certified employees work day i think those i think that's redundant uh director uh calloway um for the good of the board and to move our meeting along those um questions i think could be
388um answered and clarified uh working directly with the with mr walker and particularly mr rutherford since that's who the conversation is with um try to get those things um uh understood better and then to uh write when we come back because this is then an action item um and then and then we're able to make those uh have those questions answered and we could do that and then in the either email or also or they could do it in an email or a phone call okay this is the what reading is this the first first reading of the personnel mr walker yes ma'am it's the first reading so um in theory i could email you my questions absolutely yes yes ma'am okay so i'm gonna leave y'all alone because i do have quite a few
389questions after reading this because uh i think that who made this up did you have any uh teachers or employees help you with it well it was about as sorry mr walker but as just as a reminder to the entire board this is the personnel policies committee which is 42 teachers myself miss ruffins from cloverdale as an administrator and mr robinson so there are 42 teachers that represent each one of our schools and then the three of us that are classified as administrators and so i i do think miss conway if you want to send those to myself and and mr walker and and to be honest with you we will engage the ppc with any questions you all have as well because they are part of it was us working together on this document
390and so we'll be happy to do that miss hatter and miss calloway if that's okay well that's that's absolutely fine uh but those were questions that i had after i read it and says this is a procedure that i need to go through is to write my questions and direct them to the two of you and that's fine uh but i guess i just needed to know how do you do that yeah typically the um that is right when the district supply us with their pac with the packet for right for the business of the district then we go through it and most of most board members will um set up a time or really just call or email um the district with our questions and now answer a lot of our questions um prior
391to reaching the meeting um because really the meeting should should be to add to to be for any new information we may hear to where we can ask those questions but some of the more in in-depth uh nitty-gritty questions um most of us ask um through calls or our meetings uh with them okay i've never seen this before you know uh and and prior to when there was a union uh that was something that i think that was done during negotiations and all i'm saying and since we don't have a union i was asking who who did that this is the first reading i do have questions but uh and concerns so i will do that uh coach and and and mr walker no problem but i needed to know the procedure because i don't
392want to waste my time asking questions that cannot be answered you know in this in this big package so i did read it and then having done this before uh you know a lot of it i haven't had a lot of these policies because i did teach i would probably have more questions than anybody here and so i know everybody's tired and let's not get irritated here but i'm only trying to be fair to uh my uh to the people who followed in my profession and what i saw here were some things if this would not a book i i questioned let's say i'm not trying to prolong it but then maybe i am because i just wanted no it's not personal okay i just want to know how do you do that okay thank
393you thank you director adams you're recognized thank you i just want to make a very brief comment about my concern about the on page 152 but it talked about that the board had a role in requesting or requiring an employee to to get a physician statement or physician's exam um it concerned me about that that didn't seem like an appropriate role for the board to do that seemed like an administrative role and if we had an employee come up to us in a in a hearing and we were already involved in determining what they had to do or not to do that that felt like that was out of our our area so anyway i appreciate mr walker you're gonna go back and look at that but i just wanted the rest of the board
394to know that that was my concern in case it came back again for some reason okay i'm doing a quick scan i have two pages one second three pages two pages miss hatter if you don't mind if it's all right i'll share with mr adams and the rest of the board on that anything that you're highlighting in this or any questions that we get i just want to be clear what we'll do we're going to go back to the ppc with any of your concerns or suggestions just like mr adams had because again i've been mr robinson i work with them because we do want to work with our teachers group and that ppc represent representation and so uh we'll we'll take it back to him and then we'll try and clean it up for
395you and bring it back if that makes sense director wood do you have anything to add to this conversation we're on the ppc policy just yeah very briefly i would just like to ask that is it possible that this could be blasted out to every uh you know every employee that this applies to and and invite comment now that you know the ppc has done the work of compiling it i just like to give everyone the up i understand there's a democratic process to electing representatives to the ppc and all that but just to know that everybody was notified of it and given the opportunity to read it and make a comment if they want to would make me feel good about making a decision on it next month and this and two for everyone
396and correct me if i'm wrong but it's a public document um everybody's able to view it every single school has a ppc rep and it's made up mainly of you know our union members so um so um i would definitely encourage um everybody to look at the policy is your question just just just so um i could understand it and and for him for you to repeat it and direct it towards the person um that you're looking to to push it out for the person to push it out to and i could have missed it seriously oh it you know i i i don't know that i'm sending it to a specific person just whoever so if we could be told next month hey we sent it to every employee that this applies to and
397invited comment you know and whatever it would just to me that that that would be an important check in the check box that everybody had a very easy opportunity to review it but i mean if i'm told no we can't do that then i'll just sit back here just stand director i would superintendent poor can we have a follow-up or director anyone i think that mr rutherford covered it well that you know when we receive comments like from ms calway over the next really week or two comments that came in from mr adams um all those comments will be taken back to the ppc and and then they'll make a decision whether they want to adjust or not if they want to adjust it it'll become a new redline version so that everyone can see
398the tweets that have been made and then it would come back in for a second reading so we will work with ppc and we will bring up what mr woods shared and just they'll be able to comment of of how they've executed get that out to their their their staff okay a director i'm sorry mr walker i see you just raised your hand and no other directors at this moment have any comments okay no no have anything else i think that's all all right well you all if you would mind i'm just going to remind you we're trying to go to executive session which would require an action by the board to uh move to go into executive session to discuss personnel if you still want to do that i think i can do it
399fairly quickly depending upon all of you yeah um and then we will move the board comments to the end because the board commented before the executive session do you guys have any comments that you just want to say that been on your heart and mine directly yeah i do have something i want to say yeah you know um the first quarter of the year we've uh the the city of little rock has experienced a couple of violent acts uh we've lost life um some of those persons those individuals that participated in those violent acts were were formerly our lrsd students and i think um you know i think we have some great talented students in the literary school district but some are following through this cracks some are falling through the scrub through the cracks
400uh those were black males now they are not some of them didn't graduate from high school uh solomon didn't graduate but now they're potentially headed toward another brick building for life you know so i think and and i've had some discussions with the director callaway and the superintendent about metropolitan vote vocational uh career center so look forward to for me just to push forward something for students that that can't do stem they can't do steam but maybe can do something with their hands because some of these students are falling through the cracks and like my dad used to say falling by the wayside so absolutely you know we i think the liberal school district needs to do something maybe the city all the entities involved need to help change some of this violence these violent
401acts that's happened in the first this and it's just now getting a little warmer so it may get a little worse but um that's all i had to say mm-hmm yeah and and and you know there are um talks and collaborations that are forming now between uh different uh local government agencies particularly like you know the city is is really working on um the the conflict resolutions and um how do you deal with conflict and then also looking at youth and providing options for them because we already know it it's going to be another hot summer like it was several years ago um so totally in in in agreement with you on that and um hopefully uh we will be able to come up with something and then partner with our existing partners to come
402up with some um incentives and some um opportunities for our youth to uh put to put their minds to work in their hands to work giving them a skill so definitely understand because the zone i live in is affected by that um so do we know that director i'm sorry director what i need you have unmuted you're our last comment before we go into executive session and i don't even have a comment to make i was just prepared to make a motion to go into executive session great all right so i move that we go into executive session do we have a second a second director johnson second okay okay so we have a second and all in favor can i just real quickly i'm sorry we do need to make sure it says executive
403session to discuss matters of personnel just as a point of clarification director would all right i'm a move that we go into executive session to discuss uh personnel matters a second nap okay we have a second all in favor aye someone grab some chocolate so we can pep up and go into executive session we are now in executive session hello little rock and and welcome back board directors and everyone um listening under the sound of my voice just to give a couple seconds to make sure that people are coming back to their monitors if needed and that we're back live superintendent is there a way to tell nineveh back um live okay got it all right so uh thank you guys for uh staying uh with us as the board uh went into executive session
404we discussed the personnel matter and no decisions were made in an executive session the board will meet again i have a special meeting on march 31st at 5 30 p.m and you guys can log on and watch us via live right as we proceed with our special board meeting on march 31st at 5 30 pm so you all this one this meeting this meeting is for yes this meeting is definitely in the books um happy friday friday thursday one day it's friday friday happy friday y'all good morning um we have had a a really good uh meeting a long one that covered a lot of the business and a lot of information this is seven hours it's where we're at um so with that you guys i'm not gonna prolong it anymore or say anything
405else do we have a motion to adjourn yes we do in a second we have some seconds and then um all in favor aye aye we're all in favor that's you now and you guys have a wonderful um evening and i will see you all later good night everyone good night good night happy friday happy friday