001gave you a call okay the board concluded our executive session at 6 20 p.m and there was no action taken during the executive session i would like to call to order the regular csv board meeting for august 9 2022 at 6 32 pm thank you for joining us this evening at this time i'd like to ask everyone to join us in a moment of silent reflection thank you we're all everyone who's able please stand for the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance to the right of the united states of america and to the republic of which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice at this time we have two students from decatur high school who will lead us in the family um i'm sorry thank you [Music] lastly [Music] is [Music] and
002[Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] see thank you that was beautiful thank you for joining us when they say they pitched down for this room yes thank you all all right are there any revisions to the agenda this evening uh yes uh madam chair i'm going to request that we move the budget amendment to the discussion item section instead of the action item section all right so may i have a motion to move the budget item the budget to the discussion section instead of the action section move to move the budget amendment to the discussion section instead of the action section thank you may have a second second all in favor please say aye aye all right and madame chair can you just explain our superintendent what that means uh yeah so i will give an
003overview when we get to that discussion um we've got some more looking into with the budget and i'm gonna outline what that is but um it's not that it's not not gonna happen it's not now it's we're gonna extend the runway for that a little bit okay and i'll go through more details when we get to that section thank you any other revisions to the agenda all right so may i have a motion to approve the agenda for this evening listen to the perfect agenda thank you man i have a second okay all in favor for the approving the agenda for this evening please say aye aye thank you the agenda for this evening is approved our next agenda item is the approval of the minutes from the previous board meeting and the joint work
004session from the city of decatur the joint work session with the city of decatur i'm sorry may have a motion to approve the minutes from the july board meeting and the joint work session with the city of decatur motion to approve the july work session and the joint meeting with the city of decatur may have a second second all in favor of approving the minutes from the july board meeting and the joint work session with the sea of dictator please say aye aye thank you the minister for the july meeting and the joint work session with the city of decatur are approved the decatur career correct academy is our spotlight this evening um welcome mr sproul good evening lord dr vernon thank you for having us here today um i'm super excited i've been looking
005forward to this um so it may have a cool name i'm gonna come speak shortly and this morning he's smiling i wonder honey coordinator fresh off the top gun train and they will leave her back there because she rolls our stuff up uh shortly so we'll try to keep it to that 10-minute window for everybody and then a lot of questions at the end so first of all some of our highlights from uh last school year uh we did receive our career academy certification the actual date we actually will get our certificate and and the ceremonies in general is that jones county uh career college and career academy on september 29th we got that word yesterday uh we also had a monitor and risk assessment last year that went over very well i want to
006give a special shout out for the monster risk assessment to our to our teachers and athena and to anita for their help and making that run smoothly when they you know they put on the spot with some questions and they were able to come through for us um uh our top gun award winner uh smiley there's only about 30 or so teachers from around the state each year they get awarded this and i got to give a special thanks to dr firmer because she uh she funded this there wasn't in the budget and one of those boxes on that google form said will you pay for your teacher to come if she selected and dr fuhrman agreed to that so thank you for that dr furman i mean i'll let this body talk about top
007gun a little bit more shortly um we had 129 students passed the independent assessment so much like our in the course test we have in the past when students complete three years of a pathway and then they set foot is down to 65 percent it usually is around 75 to 80 so try to work on that to get it back up during the pandemic one positive about that is that we had 48 students that received the adobe certification which is which is recognized by the industry and i actually see uh being here and then he was one of the students he emailed me and he has his his tag at the bottom of his signature in the gmail account that shows his certification so we have 48 students about 129 that earns what we call
008industry recognized certification which is far above what the state requires but it's recognized by industry-wide and that's in architecture and graphics 17 students completed the early summer early college program and against one of our equity initiatives to make sure that our our uh our black students are getting opportunities that we're doing enrollment at georgia state university and everybody who started finished so that's a good thing and then uh we have a still award winner i'll let her talk about her experience and know students experience once he comes up in san diego this summer along with her teachers and then we have two teachers computer science certified one at beacon hill middle school and one in decatur high school miss pearson miss bolton and that's one of the state initiatives that we offer computer science curriculum
009at different levels you know courses at the high school opportunities at middle school and opportunities at elementary school so we're getting there with that so that's that's a big step for us and i was so excited i emailed everybody real fast when they they both like within a day said i passed i finished so this is a comment from kathy myers one of our uh visitors and so the career academy visit is based on technical system of georgia come in and evaluate your career academy where the monster risk assessment is the cje uh department of the dod coming in this was her her uh statement about about the visit when i say all stakeholder groups from our slt advisory committee board member came and and uh he uh and showed out um our parents we
010had a uh alumni came back uh via zoom an interview with our current students it was just a great experience and they really enjoyed our career academy and the biggest thing that touched me about that visit was that uh our reviewer frank he's an old you know he's a good old boy from rome and he said to me um we know educator is different but you're doing really good things so that was uh that was like the most such a moment i had what's new with the career academy uh we're finalizing our d2 partnership and that's decatur and drew charter and uh this came about because we always struggle with having enough students in a particular program for the college to run it as a dual role program you have to have can and um
011as you know you know just like us killer preachers that have anything new it looks hesitant to try so we partnered with two programs with new charter one will be hosted at the emery nursing school in downtown decatur which is brand new um and it wasn't a discount but to use our facility and our students to be able to go over there and be in that environment with professional nurses on a daily basis to get that certification and then early childhood education at the college then uh mr pierce one of our computer science teachers applied for and received the amazon future engineering grant and uh that will include field trips curriculum and uh resources for our students so that's kind of what's coming up in this school year all right i'm going to turn to
012our slt member to talk about his experiences all right thank you very much everybody good to see you everyone again uh welcome back [Music] so last year um i reached out to mr scroll i had some relationships at the georgia people technical college and i think you guys like the big advocate of the career but not and i i was able to organize the student visit um to the technical college and uh memphis rule uh well i think i may have spoken about it here audio engineering they've got uh the mechanical auto repair there's just so many phenomenal things going on there i think our students are i'm glad that we continue to support them so thank you to the board for continuing to support the career pathways thank you okay thank you and again
013dr berman thank you so much for sending me to um for giving me the opportunity to go to the top gun training um when really that should have been for the students if you look at the numbers our students are doing phenomenal um i did put the dollar amounts here collectively 105 students um earned a lot of money but more importantly even with those who were un unpaid our students worked for collected um 20 000 powers and that's in part due to the partnerships within the school district we were able to have students work in different departments nutrition is onboarding um this year but we have several students with milton and the actual students of courtney so i'm appreciative of all those things and so all of that is why decatur's work-based learning program is
014top gun we had a record-breaking economic year and you see the economic impact there another big thing is that we got 12 new employers to join us as official business partners so this is above and beyond our students coming back saying hey miss molly i'm working at xyz these are partnerships and we've been able to um secure over the course of several years and they are now asking for students on a regular basis okay we also were able to um this has been long coming as part of our equity initiative offer job shadowing opportunities to those students who just don't have the faith for whatever reason in their daily schedule to participate in workplace learning in this first cohort we have students shadowing we have about 10 students mr school our maintenance department and they
015went every friday shadowing different areas in the maintenance department that worked really well we plan to do that again this spring some of the opportunities that we saw um and set as goals for ourselves this year to secure more architecture and computer science partnerships because those two pathways have grown tremendously so we would definitely like assistance [Laughter] uh those two programs are turning out kids who are certified uh and ready to go and have some type of impact in that workplace so we're definitely looking to grow those areas we want to have more shadowing opportunities in other departments in the district and then finally one of my biggest goals is to host a spring retirement event for interns summer jobs that way all of our students are placed before we leave and make a larger
016impact in them and then i don't know if you were able to see this i did put a little more information up there with some numbers thank you thank you hi everyone my name is nick galentine and i'm a junior at decatur high school at the beginning of my sophomore year i decided to join a club called sapla which stands for family career community leaders of america fccla is a national club that gives many students just like me opportunities and events to choose from to compete in i chose fashion construction where i was able to design sew and create my own pattern for the structured bodice and fully bottom event gown this dress took me to regionals where i placed gold and got the opportunity to represent decatur in the georgia state competition um i
017was able to travel with my amazing teachers miss black and michelle cost it was amazing i did so many experiences and i ended up winning both i got drunk got to represent decatur and the whole entire state of georgia bishop conference and not all the way in san diego california i had so many amazing memories and i ended up placing silver and winning a brand new sewing machine has given me amazing opportunities for my future and amazing memories i've become a better community member leader and definitely a better public speaker i can't wait to spend the next few years engaged in this club and i'm excited thank you no questions but just thank you for all that you do congratulations to maize um and my son had all my younger son had all these experiences
018he had the adobe certification he was in the work based learning program he was even a member of sccla so i know firsthand the benefits of those experiences so thank you thank you you let 50 year olds sign up i just wanted to also share my support for the college and career academy at decatur high school i've been working with mr sproul for several years and his passion and dedication to the program as well as his staff is second to none it's an amazing program they do really great work and i'm always happy to support that program because i believe that our career academy will be created we'll be helping train our students for their tomorrow and the jobs that aren't even invented yet so thank you guys for that and um i think someone
019made you sign up for project runway that's my favorite [Laughter] thank you at this time we will move on to public comment dr fuhrman do we have any members of the community signed up for public comment yes we have several in person um we also have an email that is going to be read into the um record and then we have one person on zoom so let's start with the email that was um sent and we will read that onto record um we were requested to add this to the record by um community member richard malerba um i'm prompted to write due to a thread on nextdoor i read some very concerning things regarding a proposed budget amendments it seems that some information that appears to be factually incorrect is prompting an outcry from citizens
020across decatur one such point was that the budget represents a 17 million dollar increase over the past three years which as you know is not the case i believe that figures from five budget schedules other information about the district comparisons and the amendment i also believe we're not on point i'm concerned with the line of thinking that the map that was presented in the comparison illustrated and overspending at csd for students my read of the amendment is that comparable schools of approximate size and scope were selected and not the money spent per student it is difficult to compare city schools of decatur to other regional districts on this point because it is so unique it is one of the reasons so many folks have moved here through years however i hope to clarify my position
021somewhat i believe the question of comparability is on the percentage increase within each district during very trying times csv did a commendable job keeping costs down in an adverse environment csd had a 3.5 percent increase compared with 6.5 to upward to 10.5 in other districts with inflation running near 10 percent i am quite amazed the proposed budget isn't even higher as far as the discrepancy between our district and the others on the student basis there are many factors i'm sure on the face it would be location if cost of living indexes were i applied it might give us a better picture then again each district has its unique challenges so that approach is far from perfect if the board is concerned about the expenditures per student then perhaps the line-by-line audit of the other district's
022budgets would be revealing i imagine you will find lower facility costs as well as salaries in general as well as indicating the post i read the marietta system is closest to us and overall expenditures this will make sense since marietta has the more expensive cost of living of the other two mentioned areas it should be noted that with the economy of scaled marietta 8 000 plus students enrolled over 55 more than csv it is not surprising the calls for lower per student adjusting for cola and the economy of scale looks like we are more most likely far better than marietta and our per people expenditure comments about teachers salaries and exceptional benefits were also made well i believe csd does a good job offer teachers competitive pay i did not believe that they are overpaid
023especially in this inflationary environment and the expense of living in or community to decatur i mention these items because i'm sure you'll hear about it tomorrow if you have not already in conclusion i am unequivocally expressing my support of the budget as amended proposed by the superintendent and cfo i also fully support the expenditure of three million dollars of splost money for the track and field i believe that deal with the city will provide our middle and high schools with badly needed facilities for basically half the cost it is a win-win i appreciate all you do safety striving to be the best to beat that is not an inexpensive endeavor thanks for this time kind regards richard miller thank you i forgot to have you no that's okay so at this time i'm going to
024read a statement from our board policy manual this serves as a reminder for all speakers and members of the audience the opportunity to comment is limited to parents students residents employees businesses and organizations persons wishing to address the board during public comment must sign in before the public comment period begins and in doing so will be asked to state their connection to csd and or the city of decatur to allow time for the board's other business public comment will ordinarily be limited to one hour or 20 speakers at the board's discretion the comment period may be extended for a specified amount of time or a specific number of additional speakers the time limit for all speakers will be three minutes persons speaking during public comment will not be permitted to yield the floor or transfer
025unused time to other speakers comments during public comment should be addressed to the board as a body and not to individual members at the chair's discretion persons violating this policy may be asked to step down speakers should be courteous and professional speakers are not to list complaints about specific personnel or individuals connected with the district in a public session the board will not allow abusive language threats comments gears applause or shouts from the floor disruptive persons will be asked to leave the meeting room the chair may terminate public comments that are profane vulgar defamatory or disruptive speakers may not address confidential student or personnel matters but may submit such concerns to the superintendent in writing members of the board will not address persons presenting public comment or speak to the substance of any comments made
026during public comment however a member of the administrative team will follow up with persons speaking at the board meeting dr fred would you please call our first speaker let's start with our zoom speaker this is hobie stocking thank you as you mentioned my name is hobie stocking i'm a resident of decatur and i also lead a citizen advocacy clean energy group called decatur 100 and i imagine that you've got many challenges so thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight i wanted to add one more challenge to your plate and it deals with student health and our students future and that is the issue of electrifying our school bus fleet i want to underscore a couple reasons and some of the things you may not know about our current diesel school buses the first is
027the impact of diesel on the health of our students diesel buses emit a very fine particles of carbon and a toxic mixture of gases including benzene which is known to cause cancer according to dozens of studies the air inside the bus is 10 times worse than the air outside and over a 12-year school career this is 90 days of 24 hours a day of exposure for our students a recent georgia state study links diesel fumes to lower test scores and i don't imagine switching to electric buses will get kids to skip two grades but it can't hurt other studies link diesel fumes to increased asthma rates and we all know what's going on in that area so i am assured by one board member that we are beginning to look at this that we've applied
028for a federal grant for one bus and as a reminder the department of transportation fund of five billion dollars is available but grants have to be submitted by august 19th tonight i wanted to challenge all of us challenge you by asking that you consider not the minimum goal of one bus but what is possible there are plenty of studies around and what might be new to us is not new to others and we can leverage that knowledge the city in which i was born and lived until four years ago just applied for funding for 25 buses second i'd like the board to develop a plan that gets us to electrify our bus fleet by 2030 and i know putting a plan like that together might take some time but i think it's a worthy goal
029to have and would like to see some action in that area and i know each and every program has demands and we tend to look at things like this as costs but i want us to begin to look at this as an investment an investment in our students health and our students future and looking back i believe our students will thank you they're going to ask how did you have the wisdom the courage and the foresight to not only give us the best education but also care for our health and future in the process uh thank you and let me know how i can help thank you okay our next speaker is in person that's brian barnes sorry about that so i'm beth burns and my husband henry and i have lived at 1010 claremont
030here in decatur for over 33 years our three daughters attended school here and now we have a grandson who started in kindergarten and he's at beacon hill middle school now i'm also president of our neighborhood association claremont gateway and asking president of the claremont garden club my neighbors and i want to know why if the city rolled back the millage race the school system did not to keep our taxes down and exactly where are you spending the approximate 4.5 million overage from last year since the tax digest is increasing at a rate that far exceeds the rise in income for many decatur homeowners without a reduction in the millage rates and the spend and the overspending by csd more people will be taxed out of their homes for all the increase in spending by csd
031we've not seen any real increase in performance in our students and it appears that maybe our central office is very top-heavy we the decatur taxpayers remind all of you that you do work for us we expect to have a superintendent with extensive budget knowledge and experience and a school board who reigns in the out of control spending and sticks to the budget all the while keeping our taxes down we are not an endless money pit and we're pretty much done thank you [Music] next is amanda uh jolie thank you and good evening to all of you my name is amanda jolly my husband dale and i live at 9 41 claremont since may 1995 when we moved from east atlanta with our infant daughter we were excited to find a home in a neighborhood with
032reputation for amazing schools her daughter began her school career at westchester in the kindergarten class she graduated from decatur high school in may 2013. she was active in band through middle school and part way through high school we were present for all of her school performances but working full-time we didn't take the time to be as involved in pta and other school related activities as we should have shame on us for that except for a couple of teachers with whom she had problems connecting our experience with decatur city school system was extremely positive and we felt our daughter was exposed to things that interested her had great teachers and was well adapted and prepared for college all in all decatur city schools excelled at what we had hoped for and had come to expect when
033we purchased a home here living in decatur for these many years we've appreciated our ever increasing home values and the fact that people are interested however we all recognize the tax liability associated with those increasing values over the past few years it seemed our taxes were increasing at an alarming rate due in part to the increased value of our home but upon further investigation it was obvious that the bulk of those expenses were and are tied to the school system at first we chalked it up to the reality that we were in fact paying for a benefit we no longer received that feeling lasted a couple of years but after the reality were off we started paying attention to neighborhoods buzz and reading more decaturish articles we realized we weren't the only ones who were
034recognizing the increases and were likewise concerned it was revealed that many of the costs were being generated by the prior superintendent himself and expenses he was charged with overseeing these expenses had very little to do with the core responsibility of educating our children increasing school performance or for the benefit of the teachers school board rather than taking him to task enabled him at least from our perspective frankly we all knew funds were mismanaged and directed misdirected that was abundantly clear to all of us in this room if not please read some of those old decatur sharks furthermore a pet peeve that we and others share with the profound lack of communication the superintendent was offensive and cavalier disgustingly his dismissive attitude in the openness of his office spilled over to a few school board members
035to seem more interested in finding a way to justify their own ineffectiveness rather than be responsible and stand up to the nonsense dale and i are in the twilight zone of decatur taxpayers we no longer have a school-aged child whose presence impacts the school system and yet are too young to benefit from any school tax exemption as fully burdened taxpayers we are asking you school board and superintendent furman to underscore and reaffirm your commitment to be willing to do what it takes to be effective administrators sadly some of the issues particularly when runaway costs that impact the school budget appear to be holdovers from the last administration lessons have not been learned i guess i'm out of time so thank you all for your attention we appreciate you thank you uh up next is sally
036and coleman king [Music] educator and a parent of two children and cmc i've heard many parents come forward over the past several months to share their stories and i felt compelled to share hours in the hopes that it will clarify that there are systemic issues within the csd special education process that needs to be addressed um my son was diagnosed with dyslexia in the third grade he got some minimal school support for a few months but as we watched him struggle it was just horrifying um he became a shell of himself and we felt totally hopeless and helpless the boy who once had big dreams suddenly was falling apart in front of our eyes his standardized test scores fell dramatically he was suddenly having a hard time in school and he was acting out just
037out of absolute his love for learning and for school it just evaporated overnight but he wasn't failing enough to get much school support we had gotten psycho-educational testing and after being provided in this dyslexia diagnosis we began searching for help i guess to say that we were very fortunate our school did agree that we can take him out of school for two hours every day and i would rush up to school grab him take him all the way across town to lyndon we felt where he would receive services and intensive remediation for three hours a day four days a week cost of about thirty thousand dollars really hard to get into a better place for third grade we had to find the floor plan but it was generally a minimal support and really focused on
038executive function and it was simply not enough we survived elementary school and then had our five before meeting a phase where many of these small items for his 504 plan were taken away against our wishes it is the reasoning that he was doing well now he continued tutoring at this time two to three times a week and received summer boost programs for dyslexia all the way through the fifth grade when we started peeking hill it was time to renew his 504 in our first meeting they suddenly declared him ineligible for a 504. i have to admit we were in the middle of pandemic and i was doing um all of the support he was doing all of the schooling remotely he'd never even met his teachers and i just lost it i started sending the
039emails to everyone i could find detailing all the additional support he was receiving the additional tutoring at home and i started joining groups of families who are unfortunately having similar issues with cfc i then began talking to attorneys and then suddenly my case was reconsidered and i'm not entirely sure what i'm a physician and i'm physically capable of advocating for my children incredibly hard the meetings the terminology the rules for the schools five of four plans it was disney and i can't even contemplate how parents with less support can jump through all of the hurdles for good support it's been a struggle but we've been incredibly lucky he responded well to remediation he's maintained strong academic performance and standing and even more importantly importantly he remains his confidence and his love for learning um uncertainty
040that if things had gone differently it would have meant that we left this whole system because he was absolutely not getting what he needed to be successful even though we've been lucky i remain haunted by the fact that there are so many other students within the school system who aren't as lucky as we were and the fact that this process and these children's futures should not be relying on luck let me share my story thank you thank you up next megan single hi i'm megan twinkle a cfc parent and a prank school parent of three boys ages 10 11 and 12 one of them start school tomorrow i'm gonna have to duck out um right after these comments uh over the past several months we've heard from many parents at board meetings and via an
041open letter signed by hundreds of csd families expressing our concerns about csd's arc core tier 1 reading instructions we've also shared our dismay that so many educator families are spending thousands of dollars for private tutoring or outright leaving our district after being unable to secure appropriate evidence-based interventions and special education support for our children with dyslexia we want to sincerely thank dr fuhrman for taking the time over the past two months to meet individually with many of the parents who have shared these concerns even over july's vacation break we want to continue to work with the district collaboratively to improve outcomes for all students to summarize some of our discussions in these meetings we shared in more detail our concerns regarding the three queuing balanced literacy lessons that are common in arcore we shared several
042examples of three queuing lessons in current art core materials and discussed why this method of teaching reading is harmful and reinforces guessing words not decoding them we dispel the misperception that parents are asking for a phonics only approach and clarified that the evidence-based structured literacy approach we are advocating for would be inclusive of all five essential elements of reading and instruction which are phonemic phonics vocabulary fluency and comprehension we shared our stories of being denied special education services for our children while spending thousands of dollars on tutoring to make up for what our schools have been unable or unwilling to provide we've told the stories of far too many families who have left the district completely to find the support our children need after being denied 504 or iep special education services we've expressed our
043desire to see csc embrace our neurodiverse children and find a better way to work with parents to make sure we're providing a free and appropriate publication public education to all we shared gwinnett's comprehensive literacy plan to train all administrators k-5 reading teachers and special education teachers in orton gillingham and letters and fully align their classroom instruction practices with the science of reading we express our belief that if the largest school district in the state as well as school districts closer to our size like city schools in marietta can make these transformative commitments to evidence evidence-based staff training and classroom practices for confident csd can do the same throughout the course of these meetings we have felt very encouraged that our concerns have been heard and acknowledged as valid and that the district has committed to
044continuing to engage in with parent stakeholders on these issues of such tremendous consequence for our children going forward we would like to keep working together with bsc to improve literacy outcomes for all students specifically we would like to see csv develop a comprehensive plan for improving literacy outcomes for all students including timelines for fully adopting evidence-based reading programs and providing letters and ot training for all administrators k-5 reading teachers and special education staff secondly we would like the district to form a task force made up of parents educators and administration officials to look more closely at the special education process and develop recommendations on how the district can better support families who are going through this process families should not have to hire cosplay advocates or attorneys to ensure their child's right to safe a
045free and appropriate public education as outlined by the idea individuals with disabilities in education app thank you again dr fuhrman for taking the time to meet with us and for your commitment to working with parents in the strategic planning process we look forward to continuing to make progress together thank you thank you uh we have one more mr michael black thank you commissioners and superintendent for letting me speak i'm michael black csc parent and decatur resident uh i'm here with the ib learner principle of risk taker as i much prefer to be in the background getting things done and not presenting publicly in front of others the urgency of climate change requires that i'd be a risk taker i've been working to help the city in our soil system to act in accordance with the
046urgency of the climate change represents we as a school system have to act quickly we've already started actions to address this by building the lead standards as the city requires maximizing the space the buildings we have lighting retrofits solar installations at beacon hill and tally middle schools we've also looked at roofs and knee replacing and possibly putting solar on those roofs when they're replaced we've also installed electric vehicle charges i've also heard as you heard earlier from hobie that we are applying for an electric bus grant unfortunately for the scale of the problem none of these will meet the challenge we need to do more uh where we are is nowhere near where we need to be the best scientists in the world using the best day that we have have told us we need
047to reduce our emissions by 45 from 2005 levels by 2030 that gives us eight years uh that's a tight time window that is when our current fourth graders will graduate from high school but csd has proven again and again that we're up to the task the city of decatur has set its goals in draft form for addressing climate change and made a climate resilience plan we in the city school system need to do the same and work in partnership with them over the last 30 years decatur residents experienced an average of 20 days above 95 degrees fahrenheit yearly that is expected to increase the 90 days by 2050 that's almost a quarter of the year above 95 degrees fahrenheit as an example of those who will be impacted by that you have students walking and
048biking to school and all of our students in athletic and band programs practicing and competing outside all impacted by the extreme heat events that are increased by climate change the number of students is far more than the population that's going to benefit from the 3 million park in part because everyone using that traffic legacy will also be impacted by the extreme heat i'm not saying we can't have the track at legacy and address climate change but i do think we need to make sure that the investment to address climate change is on your radar and that we're planning for it since we only have eight years this is also an equity issue and we have to address things quickly but also mindfully with equity in mind among decatur households close to considered severely energy burdens
049nearly 800 households north of west howard ave and east college have already experienced severe energy burdens climate change is in the curriculum in our schools but not at the level that it should be to address the issue and not with the solutions that students should need to know that can be implemented many students don't recognize the urgency of the issues and others are anxious because they don't think we're going to be able to meet the challenge there is hope among others of our students almost 40 high school students canvassed to get feedback in developing a decatur clean energy plan and many more middle and high schoolers helped push the city to address climate change and make a resilience and climate action plan with the city's 2020 10-year strategic plan with congressional allocations to address climate
050change there are likely funding opportunities coming in the near term not just this electric bus but other ones and we should prepare for those and take advantage of those not to mention funding by foundations to address climate change just writing these grants takes lots of people power never mind the on the ground needs to be done scale of climate change and its threats are too much for sergio and his staff to address in the time we have remaining it's going to require all of us the more we do early on as leaders the better prepared and the less we'll have to spend when the urgency becomes greater more importantly we model and fix the problem that our generation created and protect our children and inequity the children of the world that we are responsible for
051uh to protect them from the worst effects of climate change on their future we can do this and we need to i'm solely here to prompt your continued thinking and urge your prioritization in addressing climate change in everything we do thank you that concludes um people that have signed up for public comment okay at this time i'll turn the agenda over to dr fuhrman for superintendent's comments all right well welcome um good to see everyone welcome board members madam chair vice chair members of cabinet members of the public thank you for being here this evening i'm gonna go through some announcements and some updates first i would like to commend the csv staff for a great start to the school year i met with principals on friday and they shared that it was one of
052the smoothest starts to the school year that they could remember this is a huge shout out to all csd staff for making things happen for our students we know that a smooth start to the school year will help our students be ready for learning and i want to thank all of our staff all of our operations people buses nutrition nurses teachers parapros every single group of employees for making that smooth start happen i also want to commend all of our schools and departments for making opening day one of the best opening days ever each school and department shared their school spirit their department spirit loud and proud congratulations to claremont elementary for winning the spirit stick back from miss newton scott and her fave falcons it was great to be back in person after two
053years of cobid coven opening for opening day at opening day i challenged all csd staff to identify their why why they get out of bed every day to teach the students in our community so just a reminder to all of the staff that you have homework and don't be surprised if the next time i see you i ask you about your why i also shared that our theme for this year is to energize sorry to engage energize and empower all stakeholders i believe that when we invite our stakeholders to join the conversation and we are deliberate in bringing a diverse group of stakeholders that we can find the answer to any problem facing our community and since i believe we are playing the long game we need to be energized encouraged and inspired to keep
054going whether through recognition celebrations or just pats on the back i want to make sure that all of our stakeholders have the energy to sustain the work that is ahead of us and finally i am empowering all stakeholders all stakeholders to be decision makers as i mentioned at opening day a great leader once told me that you that you need to know when to get out of the way and i'm going to move to the sidelines and be the coach and the cheerleader for our staff our students our families and community partners as they support csd in achieving our goals so it was interesting that um ms swingle was here this evening to speak because i did want to also reflect on um the conversations that i had with the parents over the summer um
055so over the summer i did schedule follow-ups with the parents that had spoken over at the board meetings about their concerns with readings and interventions and it was just great time over the summer to meet with them to hear their individual stories and i was able to take my armor off as bernay brown says and really listen and learn from these parents and hear about their experiences i and throughout even though i enjoyed sorry throughout i enjoyed meeting with each parent that i met with i took away several key learnings to further improve the learning experiences and outcomes for our students not just in reading but with our intervention programs and how we support students the whole way through their learning process i encouraged i followed up with dr beam and her team to share
056these key takeaways we've had follow-up meetings with several of these parents and i am really encouraging us as a school system to partner with these parents who have great who have a great deal of expertise and experience to share also the missions uh our reading program talked about supports for students okay so we are starting another year with covid impacting our schools and as i shared in the friday's follow-up coc will be using the mitigation plans from the cdc i'm then hearing that the cdc is about to announce some new changes for school mitigation plans and as those are released are released csd will adjust our plans accordingly i have received several emails from parents about their desire to eat lunch outdoors i've reviewed the cdc guidelines and i can find no language in their
057guidance about requiring outdoor lunch so along that along with the heat index during lunch i believe that this is not a time to have our students eat lunch outdoors parents that have concerns can contact their principal and make some individual accommodations for their student but at this time we will not be implementing outdoor lunch as a school system and the last thing i wanted to talk about for this is um if you hadn't heard our principal miss frazier left csc over the summer for an amazing opportunity to continue her equity leadership work with el education while we will miss miss fraser immensely and wish her luck in her journey um we are sad that she is not with us anymore we're going to be looking for her full-time replacement and i did hire a retired
058principal miss sharon gay to fill in at oakhurst and if you haven't met her yet she is very reminiscent you will thank mary mack the first time you need her she is fitting right in with our oakhurst owl we are in the initial stages of hiring the hiring process for the principal at oakhurst the position's been posted we've got a good group of highly qualified candidates already sitting in the pool we'll be scheduling input sessions with the staff in the ocrs community in the coming weeks and my plan is to hopefully have a full-time principal hired october 1st if not sooner wanted to also quickly um share an update on our strategic planning time along with our engage energize and empower initiative so i'm so excited to roll my sleeves up and really engage with
059our community the board staff and students to build csu's new strategic plan this is an opportunity to engage energize and empower all of our stakeholder groups to come together and set our course for the next five years i think one thing that we have learned through covet pandemic is that csv can be nimble responsive and innovative our first community engagement meeting will be september 6 at 6 30 pm at beacon hill middle school this meeting is open to all staff students parents and community members this will be one of the this will be the main input meeting to gather stakeholder input to share their vision for what csd can become in the next five years including what we can do to make sure we are addressing climate change and innovative practices so we encourage all
060to come then on october 25th and if we need the date of october 27th the smaller group of stakes full day and if we need it too to set the big goals for the school district to achieve followed by that we will break out into smaller working groups for our csd staff so that we can achieve the all the goals that have been set forth by the community in february and march the action teams will share their final action plans with the board for the charter renewal and our strategic plan and hopefully the subsequent board meetings after those presentations we will have those approved and ready to go another huge initiative underway this year is the rewriting a rewriting of the csd board policy manual so several years ago the board adopted a policy manual
061that uses a very different governance framework called called the carver model well the carver model is in itself not bad it does that this board wants to follow this means that over the course of this school year the board will review and adopt an entirely new policy manual i am thrilled to be collaborating with gsta on this project is they have a great deal of expertise and resources to make sure that our policies are aligned with state regulations and the law last month the board adopted our first the first of our new policies and later in this agenda we will review and discuss several more policies after the board has had an opportunity to review and discuss these policies that have been drafted by gfca we will update the policies based on that input from
062the board as well as share the policies with the public for review and then i also will review all of our proposed policies with csv's legal team and once the policies are finalized we will be updating our policy manual with the new policies in sunset the old policies i'll be keeping track of all the policy updates on a crosswalk that we will be posting on the webpage so parents have one easy place to look for all the new updates and changes and when things have been sunsetted and i'm looking forward to completing this process through the collaboration with the board in the community as ibra kennedy kennedy x points out the power to dismantle racism lies with the policy makers and i have the full confidence that this board will adopt anti-racist policies so csg
063will be a school system that disrupts the pattern of inequity for our students of color and that are all my comments for this evening any questions or follow up from the board okay thank you dr furman i'll now move on to the chair comments um welcome back again to all csd students teachers and staff we hope that you had a fun and relaxing summer the board is excited to have everyone back in the buildings and we are looking forward to a great school year i had a great time attending csd's opening day festivities on july 28th the energy of csd staff is just incredible congratulations again to claremont elementary on winning the spirit stick for their incomparable display of school spirit all schools should be so lucky to have a leader who can surf and
064swag like dr curtis he was amazing during the opening day celebration the extra mile award was given to eight outstanding employees who were nominated by students congratulations to labria pearson bus driver greg prather fifth avenue nurse beth lewis dhs teacher shonda moore school health coordinator debbie lester oakhurst teacher kelly nichols talley street teacher and sarah taulton buck beacon hill assistant principal and candace jones boynton college heights teacher congratulations to everyone every year at the start of the school year we recognize our employees for their hard work and dedication to csd employees receive years of service or anniversary plans at the annual opening day celebration for five years 10 years 15 years 20 years 25 years 30 years and beyond i want to give a special shout out to our employees that were recognized for 30
065years of service in csd this is a tremendous achievement and we are so grateful for their service so the employees who received honors for 30 years of service are anthony colbert stacy jones anita robinson charles starr clarence strickland and pamela white so we thank them for their service on july 27th board member james permanent and i met with dr sam king from the georgia school board association and csd's courtney burnett who is serving as the liaison between gsta and csd during the superintendent search process we met to discuss dates and a format for the community engagement sessions that the board will host as part of the search process the community engagement sessions will be held on september 14 and september 28th from 6 to 7 30 pm more information will be shared with the community
066in the board's newsletter this thursday please be mindful as dr furman just mentioned that in september we will also host community engagement sessions on the development of the new strategic plan so make sure you check your notices and your calendars to make sure that you have your dates and you're attending the sessions that you want to attend and attend and we encourage everyone to participate in the strategic plan community engagement session as well as the superintendent search session the board and csu administration has received a number of questions regarding its recently adopted procedure for complaint that certain divisive concepts are being taught in city schools of decatur with the help of our legal counsel wilson morton and downs we have written the following statement that will also be included in thursday's board newsletter csd continues
067to be committed to its racial equity initiatives and will continue to teach about diversity equity and inclusion csd was required to adopt this policy and create new procedures by new state law that went into effect on july 1st the new divisive concepts law prohibits all public schools from teaching or providing training on non-specific divisive concepts about race the new law also requires schools to adopt a procedure for addressing complaints alleging that a school has violated the law as a charter school system csd is entitled to waive certain state education requirements but the new divisive concept law specifically prohibits charter systems from waiving these requirements for further information the new decisive device at ocga 211 in city schools of decatur our vision is to build the foundation for all children to be their best achieve their
068dreams and make the world a better place in csv we believe that this is achieved through our commitment to in our unwavering support of csd's equity work we embrace the critical examination of current and historical events in a way that honors and gives voice to those who have been silenced and or marginalized cse has always been a district that supports our teaching staff as high quality professionals and we will continue to do so do this even more so now also in accordance with the new regulations csu was required to change its policy requiring concerning transgender athletes the georgia high school association which governs georgia's high school athletics has now changed his rules in response to a new state law to state that a student's gender is determined by the gender noted on the student's birth
069certificate for more information please see georgia high school association bylaw 1.47 cse remains committed to addressing the needs of students who are transgender or gender diverse over the summer as we've heard recently um early in the meeting miss black um chef fowler and miss shelkoff had the pleasure of taking three dhs students to the fccla national leadership conference in sunny san diego california we got to see maeve galentine um and her um construction um competed in the fashion construction and won a silver medal she also received a new sewing machine as she stated alicia jones volunteered her time to assist in evaluating the early childhood education competition kyra johnson participated in all the leadership training sessions we are so proud of these students way to go bulldogs the board is thrilled to have students walking
070the halls of our newly named beacon hill middle school we look forward to watching the many ways that the students matriculating through beacon hill carry on the rich legacy of beacon of the beacon hill community speaking of beacon hill i would like to congratulate the beacon hills center bass bass chorus and the decatur high advanced treble chorus they were two of only eight middle and high school ensembles selected by competitive audition to be featured performers at the georgia music educators association in service conference in january 2023 this is a tremendous honor for these amazing league talented students it is also another shining example of why decatur received the best communities for music education award from the national association of music merchants foundation last spring congratulations again to those students and their teachers and finally i
071want to encourage the csd community to join us regularly for our monthly board meetings the board will have a lot of things going on this year and attending the board meetings in person or virtually is a great way to stay informed if there's any information that is shared during the meetings that you don't understand please don't hesitate to email dr fuhrman for clarification of more information thank you and again just wishing everyone a great start to the school year that ends my chair's comments we will now move on to the consent agenda items which include personnel report school nutrition financial reports and the intergovernmental agreement between the city of decatur and the city schools of decatur to build the track at legacy park may i have a motion to approve the consent items one through
072four i moved to approve consent agenda items one two four thank you man i have a second second all in favor please say the consent agenda items one through four are approved we now move on to our discussion items for this evening and um we have four discussion items dr frum will you please introduce our presenters this evening yes our first presenter um for a for questions if the board had questions about safety and security updates is uh mr sergio perez so the board received an overview of those and if there are any questions or comments about those this is um did you have anything you wanted to share i just want to highlight um that they worked diligently over the summer to make sure that safety security things were updated and enhanced over the
073summer um and sergio along with matthew d'amico have done a great job making sure that we are keeping our students safe that is a top priority for us and one of the great things is this is actually kind of funny i was at oakhurst and they were doing an active shooter drill and i was coming out of a meeting and getting ready to walk out and i was i stopped and i was like oh i'm not going to go down that hallway and the police officer goes no you can you can walk out so i start walking down the hallway and they have their you know fake guns they're orange but they're like you know threat threat i was like oh my gosh it was interesting but they um i appreciate that they're doing that
074they're getting to know the outlaw you know the footprints of the schools the layout of the school so if there is any type of dangerous situation they're ready to respond [Music] any questions no all right all right next up uh dr lilly huddleston provided the board with an update on the code of conduct as well as um and so some changes on that and then there is also some information about barc which is a way for us to do threat assessment through artificial intelligence and if the board has any questions or comments dr huddleston is here i just wanted to thank us for considering and using the bart program i use it in my home it's a fantastic program it tracks social media that the kids may be on and it's really great at identifying
075if there's any kind of issue and elevating it to someone that can potentially intervene or help so i'm i'm excited to see how that rolls out and how that and that program gets adopted in the system i want to thank dr hudderson and mr rodney thomas for their community engagement with updates to the code of conduct really taking the input from the community the students the parents the staff as they make those revisions going forward and also a huge shout out to mary banks who has helped us immensely with our restorative practices training as well as a suspension prevention program at the high school middle school okay [Music] all right so there's two more items um so we did move the budget to discussion so i did want to share some information particularly the reason
076why we moved this to discussion from where it was so let me see i'm gonna [Music] okay um so i wanted to talk about first usually like where we were where we are and where we're going but i wanted to kind of just make sure i shared with the board and the community kind of where we are right now and what led us to move that budget amendment into discussion instead of um action so we've been digging deeper into the budget um you know just been looking at the numbers trying to make sense of them and got up to a point where miss broome our chief financial officer and i were like this really is not making sense to us um so we did a deeper dive into the budget and what we identified was
077is that the budgeting program the financial software program that we are using has some kind of programming error and it is double counting staff so it over inflated our budget numbers counting additional staff that are not shouldn't be counted in our in our in our budget we got on the phone with the with the system administrator we walked through you know the process and she as well was baffled why those numbers were still impacting our current budget when they should not be so we pulled the budget amendment because we really want to go ahead and dig deeper into that and make sure that we've got that correct in the budgeting system so we know exactly where we stand so we pulled that we just need a longer runway to really look into that i think
078it will impact the budget in a positive way meaning i think um where our overall budget is will will go down um which is is huge so as we identify those errors but also wanting to look at are there other places for if we need to make a budget amendment that we can find um places to pull some of those monies out of different places and one that i think board member hans shared is really talking about prorating our staff um so we if we post a job and we hire a person we have in the past always said we're going to budget a full year salary for that staff member so let's say that staff member only ends up working let's say nine months because of when the job is posted and that staff
079member is hired we don't need to budget a full amount so looking at those opportunities to find some extra funds where we can kind of pull that back into the regular budget instead of trying to allocate a full salary um but i also wanted to talk about where we've been and i'm sharing just a quick i'll show this quickly this will get posted on our web page because one of the the things that i think is helpful is for there to be just a quick one-page document for people to see our previous budgets our current budgets any amendments that are out there and what that looks like so um this room and i have kind of compiled some information here and we pulled from our audits first the past five years and have presented this
080information here directly from our audits and we will put the data source up at the top so people know where we're getting that information so you'll see several lines here we look at the initial budget that was um presented then we'll look at the uh that's initial revenue initial expenses also want to look at percent change in the budget and one of the things you can see as we were dealing with covid we did have some significant increases this is sorry really small upon these screens but this will be public access for people to look at also putting in there the final budget we know that as we go through the budgeting season as we're implementing our budget we time to time have to make amendments um and then taking a look at so what
081did we actually bring in as revenue what were actual expenses expenditures and then also giving some information about the difference between that the carryover fund so what did we end up not spending and then some information here about our fund balance the millage rate and enrollment and also per pupil cost so wanting to make sure that we just have very transparent information in an easy to access location for all stakeholders um in the district so as i said kind of where we were looking at a trajectory we had been spending about eleven thousand dollars per student um to educate our students and then covet hits and that jumped up significantly to thirteen thousand dollars per student and fourteen almost almost 14 and a half thousand dollars per student um over 20 20 over 2020 and
0822020 21 budget to the point of adding significant amount of staff and that's the last piece that we'll add to this report or the number of staff that we have employed during a school year someone that has been on on the books for us um so that is kind of where we were for covid so then talk about where we are and where we're going um so this i also put in here um this was during covid we had an initial budget presentation and as i started digging through and really examining there was for 2020 22 and 21 there were lots of different numbers everywhere that's why i felt it was important to put where we're getting that information um so the initial budget that was presented to the board for 2020 um was looking
083at an overall operating budget of about 85 million dollars and um looking at raising the millage rate to 22.25 and that's when i came on and transitioned to the superintendent role and one of the priorities that i talked about with the board was getting a handle on that military so that it wasn't so extraordinarily high during this year what we ended up doing was transitioning several positions that were being paid out of pairs funds into um are being paid out of the general fund that we could pay out of cares funds so we took about 2.3 million dollars of salary paid for it out of pairs funds and we knew that that was going to expire at the end of 2020 um and that we would have to encumber that as we moved into the
084budget for this year um so i've provided with a very detailed overview here of what our initial budgets were all the amendments and down at the bottom sorry this is really false um here but you can zoom in on it is the explanation for the budget amendment so that you know why we amended the budget what those values are and if it was cool if some of the data was pulled from financial um financial reports that data is in there as well but one thing that we did look at is our ending um actual revenue so we did earn um about 81.7 million dollars in 2020 for that budget we spent 80.9 right now so we have unspent funds of about three quarters of a million dollars um which does put our per pupil spending
085at 14 000 300 which is just slightly lower than where we were the previous year but i am eager to look at how we can further control that um dollar amount so then as we look at where we're going for 2020 23 um our current operating budget as i mentioned we pulled that amendment because i do feel like there is some information we need to clarify through that budgeting software so that we can really have a really detailed look and understanding of what those numbers are for our salaries and benefits um but then also i will continue to track this information share this with the board as well as with the um with all of our stakeholders as we go forward and just want to let people know i am committed to making sure that
086we are operating a fiscally responsible budget and i'm looking forward to hearing from the board on what their thoughts are on how we can enhance that effort and then i'm also very um strategic planning process because that will finally give the school district really good direction on what are the things we need to be funding how do we need to gauge what we're spending on what because we've really been kind of what i feel i've been trying to develop a budget to budget instead of a long-term budget so i feel like this strategic process will help us identify some of those core initiatives and things that we want to accomplish as a school district to really enact a very fiscally responsible budget so with that i'm going to just allow the board to comment questions
087um so um i want to first start by just thanking the administration for pulling the amendment and so we're not voting on it tonight i do believe it's a step in the right direction um i've been very vocal about my concerns uh with recent budget increases um and despite what we had heard earlier uh even according to some of the numbers that were up here right here in 2019 our budget was in fact 72 million dollars this year's budget would make it 17 million dollars have we approved the amendment today uh 17 million dollar increase since so in fairness i need to acknowledge that covid is exceptionally disruptive it's a bomb detonating in the middle of a budget and it isn't possible to be efficient when you're worried about saving lives and continuing to deliver
088quality in a virtual environment without any road map or any path for how to get there it is the reason why in fact in all of my criticisms i have looked at 2019 numbers and not 20 20 21 or 22 numbers because those numbers are going to be all over the map that is the nature of what it means to try to respond to a crisis a lot of the increased expenses that happened over covid though were in emergency response to covet those are by nature one time or temporary expenses we're now 18 months really passed kind of the peak part of the crisis and i do firmly believe it's time for us to start going into the budget and identifying some of those one-time increases and pulling them out of the budget to drive
089a little bit more efficiency i was concerned about some of the numbers and the justification and timeline that was shared with us to the administration and i believe that's what thankfully led to the little bit of a deeper look into the into the budget and the decisions to um pause for just a second before we do any kind of increase i want to emphasize that it's not while the financial software issues are correct it's not just financial software i think there are plenty of other opportunities in the budget to pull out more expenses and i say this not as a parent or as a lay person i say this as someone who has built far more complex and difficult budgets than this professionally for a living i have uh every confidence that we'll be able
090to meet our objectives with this budget without an increase in fact i firmly believe that we can actually meet those objectives and still find a decrease much like the city of decatur did this year if we want to be able to invest in things like expanded dyslexia programming if we want to find increased dollars for teacher salary if we want to invest in climate resiliency carbon reduction or any other significant program as a part of our strategy going forward we have to start with taking the things out of the budget should be in there in the first place the inefficiencies that are locking up tax dollars that are not being used our budget last year was 4.2 million dollars more than we needed that is approximately three hundred dollars per taxpayer on the average home
091indicator that we took in and did not use so i am firmly confident that working together will be able to pull those dollars back out and put an efficient budget together and i really look forward to working with the administration to accomplish that over this year thank you um a couple questions with pulling this amendment that the the nature of it was well to back up a couple of months or a couple of goals some of the reason that one of our goals back before we adopted the mill rate was to increase the fund balance so every school board meeting this broom would show us that very distressing graph that showed how the fund balance was almost non-existent so one of our goals here was to get the fund balance back up so i think
092that that is a point worth making so one of the goals here and kind of how we organized the mill rate was to get the fund balance back up so in trying to reorganize our staffing model by reorganizing our staffing model we were trying to get the fund balance back up so by not voting on this amendment today how can we achieve that goal in some form or fashion but to be sure that the teachers that are still working are still able to get their paychecks on time yeah um good that's a great question so we've got enough operating budget to that i feel comfortable with so the amended um the fund balance is sitting right now i think one needed about 10 million it was about 10 million which is great um we would
093like to see it a little bit higher to get us closer to that 10 or 12 percent i think it's a little over 10 right now um but we want to keep it at that rate um but the reason why i felt comfortable pulling the amendment is because i'm confident those teachers salaries are already in the budget if not all of them probably 99 of them so the real we looked at that is counting extra staff as we looked at the actual numbers we're looking at here's what's in our budget prep but in the ledger line it's less it's more what it should be so i'm confident i would not make a move that was going to endanger a teacher's paycheck so 100 confident that they so i think that's a point that we need
094to clarify and emphasize is that even by not passing this amendment or by delaying it the money that is already that the teachers already need is still yes built into the budget yep right um and that one and i think it's also the case i think it was written in one of the public comments there that there is a lot of rumor around about how these numbers came to be so i think we should encourage community members to listen to the recordings from this school board meeting from a lot of the school board meetings from the springtime with the budgetary hearings where all of the numbers were presented um and so that we can be clear about what what numbers are rolling over what the fund balance is so for clarification can you tell us
095what you estimate the rollover will be and then what the fund balance will be because those are two different yeah sometimes those get get confused yeah let me let me pull this up and i will give you those exact numbers right now so for our current budget from 2022 um we um having were we had unspent funds of about 750 so 750 000 in between revenue and actual expenditures that is we're rolling that into the fund balance um there is a difference as um board member was mentioning a four million dollar difference between what we budgeted and what we actually used so that is the big discrepancy of why did we up the budget to that 85 million when we probably didn't need to because and i know we didn't need to because we only
096spent 80 points um totally 81 million dollars so that is the you know looking at that budgeting process and how do we make sure that doesn't happen again that our budget we're projecting is what we actually need and i think that my last question is do we have some idea as to where that rollover came from or could you explain to community folks as to where that rollover came from when you close out the budget at the end of the year you may see a surplus and i think we've maybe discussed it or at least in my mind i'm thinking that when you close out the budget you realize that there were surpluses somewhere and you know but maybe maybe we need to clarify where it's nice that this is in the financial reports that's
097in the board of gender the board packet for this meeting so the board agenda the financial statements that are in the packet for june they're from june but they're in this but in this packet that always gets confused on the june it's like two months later um it tells you exactly because the june report is the closeout of the 22 uh budget so it tells you very detailed how which budget and it's line by line who didn't like where to be over spend where did we understand most of the overages coming that we you know the rollover is from unspent salaries and benefits okay because if we do continue to have an overage we we should consider rolling back that mill rate that's what we should do going into the next vegetarian cycle that should
098be in the forefront of our mind but there were some other things that we talked about increasing the fund balance investing in raising teacher salaries or giving teacher bonus those are all things that we know over in our minds but i think i think that the rollover was something that we talked that we that we found out about or discussed at in the late sprint or early summer in the early summer time so if that's where if that's in an easy accessible place then you want to make sure that taxpayers if possible i'd like to to quickly clarify that it doesn't actually require us to wait until next budget cycle if we actually are able to find excess funds within this budget we have that i forget where it was dr fuhrman maybe it was
09920 20 20 i can't remember the exact year that you showed it but we actually do have a point where we actually in mid-year reduced the budget which results in funds going back out so i think that there's the opportunity if we are if we do bustle down and tighten down on this particular budget and identify where some of that 4.2 million dollars is i don't i i would encourage us to consider in year what we want to do with it we don't necessarily have to wait until the next budget dr fuhrman can you um go into a little more detail when you were just talking about the cost for students and more specifically why um why our cost per student is a little bit higher i know we spoke a little bit about the
100elementary school and um what we offer as a district for our elementary school students that other districts do not and so i just wanted you to maybe elaborate on that just a little to give um some some um context to why our uh per child is worth it um but of course and don't have any numbers right in front of me so this is going to be kind of general and kind of give people an idea but our lower elementary schools are quite small there is a desire to have schools within our communities where kids can walk to school have that community school feel that being said our schools are small we have three schools that are sitting around 160 students when you have schools of that size you have a school nurse you have
101a school counselor you have you know all the things that come with this school and instead of as the bigger districts put those together into you know one big elementary school we've got them spread out amongst five schools so five principals instead of one five school nurses instead of one five media specialists so that is an opportu that is one of the reasons that we have higher costs per student because we have more personnel per student particularly at the lower elementary level the other mitigating factor there for trying to decrease cost is there's this tipping point that we found as we were trying to implement the new staffing model particularly at these lower schools where we allotted the school to teachers in a grade level well that created class sizes of 28. well if we
102then gave them three teachers in the grade level their class sizes were like 16. so it's like how like where's our comfort level with class size that then we will say we'll go ahead and pay for another teacher to be in this building to keep the class size down when they're smaller there's a it's a pretty drastic change between two and three teachers so some of those reasons make our lower elementary schools a little bit more i would say expensive to staff because we're staffing that also looking at our special teachers we have um pe arts spanish and music teachers we can split those as much as possible between two schools if necessary but then when you're trying to split all the teachers amongst all the schools it becomes a very difficult to work the
103schedules out so we were not able to do that as i shared last month with westchester we thought we'd be able to split the teacher but then we were like there's just no way we could work that schedule out for that one so we had to add that cost back into the budget thank you yeah i'm going to start off by saying once said kobit was a bomb in the middle of a budget um i've never seen anything quite like it over the last two years helping people where the states said we're not giving you money we told one in the middle of a need to hire staff to deal with what was many are predicting would be a generational level of learning loss um i am to anyone who is dumb enough to sit
104still to listen to me learns there are so many problems with the way education is funded in this state um the qbe only not providing a nurse at all at the lower level not providing mental health for more than one to five hundred um teachers being paid next to nothing um teachers per classroom being one to thirty um not providing any sort of dyslexia identification it's not even on the mental health stuff so you have to fail to get there's so many places where we have to provide funding to step in and then the state comes in and says you don't get that money and then we don't find out until april of this year that some of that money is coming back with the raise for the qbe level of teachers and local communities
105and so i appreciated the chart that you shared dr fuhrman that said yes decatur funds have gone up it is inarguable that they have gone up exponentially across the state they had to have they have they will continue to do so until we do something about that state level i also just want to say that i appreciate you being open and willingness um i don't want people to think that the board is silent on like let's make the budget better that has not been our position that's not in your position whether it's finding money floating around because of poor software which um a point i want to clarify and correct me if i'm wrong that is why the gap between what we have said we will spend and we will spend every year one of
106many has been hard which makes it difficult to plan difficult to appreciate what 12 to 15. the state requires us despite not funding it to keep a certain amount of surplus to maintain our system and yet they won't fund it and then and then we have to steal you know i was accused of being a thief via email this week um people's money to fund our children and our schools and and that's not our intention no one here wants anything except for the children who we represent that have the most quality education they possibly can and the last thing i want to say is part of the superintendent's requirements to look for efficiencies in the budget to continue to go down and where there are increases today to be justifiable mental health more pay for
107teachers equity reading intervention providing for future and learning training for kindergarten if that part is good that doesn't mean our job is done and the only thing that pains me is the notion that we're not doing anything we're not that's it thank you dr fuhrman um did the software company give any type of time frame when we can expect uh so anita had a follow-up call with him this afternoon she and her team have to go back in and do some work and then it's got to go back to their programmer to run some more tests and we'll go from there i will tell you i have never been a fan of this software program and i have given lenita full range to start looking for a new software program it has been a pain
108for us to use for a long time and it's time for us to i think part ways with that software system and find something that works for us can i ask do we have a sense of roughly how much of the issue the software system is accountable for is it like a million million dollars peter do you have any idea you showed me that earlier on that one chart i think it's about at least one point three minutes 1.3 so that by my calculation means there's probably another 2.9 still in there that we can go and look and identify so so i do appreciate it the pin in the neck when the software doesn't work the way that we want but that is definitely not the only contributing factor to the role all right okay
109okay all right so we move on to our final discussion item tonight which is a review of ford policy um so we've got four policies that i shared with the board for discussion this evening let's go ahead and tackle unstructured break time [Music] so the board policy and i also provided the board a copy of our current um policies or which is an administrative regulation and um this board policy is very much a draft from gsta which they are trying to keep us as close to policy written by the state legislators as possible which i fully agree with but i think we need to make sure that particularly with unstructured break time that we keep it within what we believe as city schools of decatur and i got quoted indicators today as being a fidgety
110person who needs to go out and take walks so i am very much that kind of a person um and need to get out there and stretch my legs and appreciate that most other people like to get up and move around as well and i think our students definitely need that as well so we do want to protect that time for our students and not let it be taken away um so within this policy um i'm just curious if the board has any questions and then i've got a recommendation for what i think is an appropriate edit that we would make and then put out for public review i will share my top level thought which i did versus email today which is on all of these board policy things where we're taking a recommendation
111from gsba from the state where they say this is our policy and it is not as favorable to the caterers we would like like i i much prefer our current ar to this one um and we are not necessarily considering taking this one but that clarification kind of be included probably more than anything because this is not an unstructured break time i understand why gsba wants us to discuss this there's a recent law passed by the governor and the state legislature to think of for many systems this is an improvement on unstructured break time for sure um for a decatur it is a factory yes and we all recognize that but that's fairly obvious and so um i'll shut up and listen to what the actual recommendation is but that's kind of like a top
112level how these things are disseminated to the public maybe yeah say some things yeah and i was sorry that the public you know a lot of folks weren't informed about why we were discussing this because you know to to think that you know break time can be taken away from a student because of you know academic or disciplinary actions um it's not the dedicated way and it's in conflict with you know um tbis and so um i'm anxious to hear your recommendations so that we can address some of those concerns that we've been hearing about over the past two days um so my recommend is any other comments from the board so my recommendation is that um the first part is just very much you know some legal i think the very last sentence that
113breaks may be withheld from students for disciplinary academic reasons if prior notice is given to such students so i think we need to alter that last statement to say refer to the csv procedures if um considering removing unstructured break time for a student and then we attach our current administrative regulation as that um refer to procedure so this last census will come out uh-huh so in fact just so it's transparently clear to parents that may be listening the new policy will have all of the same parameters that the current policy does around unstructured right now yeah okay so then i think the next best policy to talk about would be policy development so okay sorry so the current policy because i pulled this up is principles will provide a minimum of 20 minutes per day
114ubt on average for each student so this policy on six through eight the second paragraph if you will is is i think new for decatur mm-hmm what we did unstructured break time through sixth grade sixth grade was a little less than 20 minutes okay but we did it at sixth grade as well okay so what will the what what are the changes then is it just has it always been principal discretion and it will remain principal discretion i know our policy includes a list of like pretty extreme reasons why it would be taken away right okay yeah is there language in there about timing or how much time they get at six seven eighth grade i thought there was so i thought sixth grade had um ten minutes or fifteen minutes it was a little
115different is there room for the principal to increase that if he's so desired or does it have to say if we're if we're attaching our policy to this does it have to stay in ten minutes for the systems in eighth grade no i guess what i'm saying is that if it if we have here that it's at the discretion of the principle in one line and then we attach our board and see what you're saying okay um would it have to say it's like 10 minutes then one criticism is that um you know a sixth grader and a fifth grader still needs some time yeah so yeah and i know it's general practice sorry i think it's general practice for the sixth grade team to take their kids out and give them some unstructured break
116time that's kind of been a if it's not then in our balcony is the gym it's a practice that's been going on there and i don't think they were getting they were ever going to think about taking that away no i i think i think we've been clear that it was not it was never our intense takeaway at all um i just didn't know if the language is consistent between it says here which is for sixth through eighth grade is that the discretion of principle and it also says that our policies that the discretion of the principle both the timing and however once you begin this is it is the same both places am i being clear with my questions yeah she's asking a better version of the violence which is which is if this
117is inconsistent with something in our world we prefer our rules can we make sure that it's yeah yes 2018 before before putting this forward yeah so if we're gonna let the if we're gonna let the beacon hill middle school principal decide that he wants to give the sixth graders 20 minutes then we should it should be the same we should modify this language yes as well or we should modify our language so that red has that discretion yes they do the modifier yes you got it yes okay okay so let's um look at the policy development and i think this is an important one because this will really structure how we move policy development going forward as we approve additional policies um so the the cfa basic i mean summary of this is that board
118policies can originate from anywhere either an employee a parent a concerned individual that they could raise hey i think you need a policy about x um so we have to have procedures about how we will review policies and that's the procedure piece but we just need to say that we can bring you know look for a policy um take input about policy anywhere there's a superintendent um it's authorized to establish administrative processes that will enforce the policies i recommend we keep that but that we also review policies periodically um it's a pretty general practice for a policy revision to be kind of calendared out so that over the course of three or four years you've looked at your policies at least once i think we can once we get the new policies adopted that we
119will calendar that piece out then it adds that the minimum requirement from g from the law is that we post our tentative policies as a draft policy in a board meeting and that at some there's no time limit to when you would have your next policy when you the board would be able to adopt the policy so i think what we need to make sure that this that our board has a conversation about tonight is how much time do we want to provide our community for input and review of policies once the boards have an opportunity to review them so i think to me minimum would be two weeks preferably would be like a whole cycle of meeting to meetings regular meeting to regular meetings okay oh yeah i was thinking which would be a
120little longer than two weeks a little yeah i mean it's about a month yeah okay i i think understanding this is actually important to the previous thing that we just discussed the paragraph and this starts with except for policy actions to be taken on emergency the vote shall not take place at a meeting until it's brought up so when something shows up in information maybe even just clarifying that it's like if something shows up in information it means that someone somewhere in this case gsba has made it a recommendation that we add to our agenda i think that's good clarifications that have clarity yeah that's right the board shall not vote on this i mean the point is discuss it and then then if you see something on an action item and you haven't heard
121it that's a red flag right point of clarification or would would the board ourselves count as employees when we say no it may originate from employees parents or other concerned individuals does that make us other concerned individuals you're the board and you so should we create out that the board can also reform policies i just didn't see a place where the board is actually allowed to edit behind the scenes right the first line is the government bodybuilder oh you're right it just says we establish an estimate not that we can come up with ideas yep but to me established policies is that you would say we're we need to establish a policy on x [Applause] i can just it would make sense in that second sentence saying proposals regarding school system apology but the policy
122may originate from the board employees parents or other concerned individuals where it was something that's on the second sentence okay then we want to do at least four weeks of public review okay in all cases proposed new or amended policies shall be submitted and writing to the superintendent or designee who will be the designee in this case it would be courtney okay but typically there is uh someone who you know the superintendent has like a policies person in bigger districts okay but okay so do we do we put a title there or you can keep it in general designated because it could change year to year and is there a place on the website where some for our community members or what is this a simple email or phone that's an email or phone call
123is there any reason why we would want to consider the board share also as someone if there's a reason why it could also go through the board chair i don't want to add work to you i'm happy to add that and then again this will go back through legal review okay so there's a reason that that can't be in there okay anything else with policy bd a uh student attendance policy this one is pretty much exactly the same as our current attendance policy the addition to this one was a new law passed by the legislator to add 4-h activities as an excused absent so um my recommendation is that we don't make changes to the attendance policy that we post this for public input and then revet this with our legal team and then put
124it out for board approval at the next meeting pending any possible changes okay and then the last one is very similar to the divisive concept one we approved last time um which is basically just a mirror of what was in the in the law that we um are i would recommend we adopt this policy and accompany it with procedures to clarify the processes for some of the ways that does um parents in the community could bring forth their concerns but they'll be different than the procedures for devices concepts it's different timelines so we've got to make sure we align it with the timelines that are set in each of these we will get these um edits out there we'll post these for public review and we will see these in an upcoming agenda for the
125board to review one more time and at that time vote for approval and that concludes discussion items all right we have future dates listed on the agenda for upcoming meetings training and retreats for members are there any questions about the future dates for the work of the all board thank you all for joining us this evening this meeting is adjourned at 8 19 p.m oh it's nice i went through the career academy you