001um all right good evening and welcome the board concluded our executive session at 5 33 p.m i mean i'm sorry at 6 30 p.m um and there was no action taken during executive session i would like to call to order the regular csd board meeting for july 12 2022 at 6 33 thank you for joining us this evening at this time i ask that everyone join me in a moment of silent reflection thank you at this time i won't ask you to stand but if everyone would please um join in um for the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you board members are there any revisions to
002the agenda for this evening okay hearing none may i have a motion to approve the agenda for this evening move to approve the agenda for this evening thank you may have a second second thank you all in favor of approving the agenda um for the meeting this evening please say aye 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 the final taxpayer bill of rights hearing and the specially called board meeting may i have a motion to approve the minutes from the june board meeting tax bill taxpayer bill of rights hearing and the specially called board meeting i move to approve all the items that you just mentioned to approve thank you may have a second second all
003in favor of approving the minutes from the june board meeting taxpayer bill of rights hearing and the specially called board meeting please say aye aye aye thank you the minutes for the june board meeting the taxpayer bill of rights hearing and the special call board meeting are approved at this time we will move to on to public comment dr fuhrman do we have any members of the public signed up to share comments this evening no ma'am okay and is um miss tasha white on we i don't think tasha's made it back on okay no i don't see her on here okay but we could we can continue this never form okay someone want to try to reach out to her and see if she's having trouble getting on i'm doing it right now all right
004thank you all right so since we don't have any public comments then we will um turn the agenda over to dr fuhrman um to share superintendent comments this evening okay thank you madam chair good evening everyone good to see people's faces and um thank you for um tuning in virtually since we're not in person today um if i did have a couple things to share i wanted to update the board and the community we've been talking i talked last time about our district improvement plan and how we've re-envisioned um how we are going to implement and support the equitable outcomes through students through what we teach how we teach it professional learning and growth for teachers and systems of support so i wanted to dig a little deeper into this um each these four areas
005so for standards plus this is about what we teach this is making sure that we teach our students rigorous content that elevates marginalized voices and that's just a quick little summary and what i wanted to do this time around is just dig in a little bit deeper on what we're doing for that and what that will look like in this upcoming year so i want to make sure that we are providing an academically challenging environment that both aligns with and enhances the georgia standards of excellent through our standards plus content and that is making sure that we are looking at multiple perspectives supporting our students elevating marginalized voices and embedding historically accurate information um implementing an anti-racist assessment practices that is re-looking at how are we grading making sure that we are using equitable practices
006for grading an assessment all that transparency in grading making sure we're communicating in a timely manner and really assessing our students on how they're performing on the standards um this area also makes social emotional learning and healing-centered pedagogy a focus of our instruction we want to draw on our student culture to shape the curriculum and we want to make real world issues a key focus for the content when we think about high leverage practices that we talked about standards pluses what we teach high leverage practices is how how we teach that's the use of scientifically based instructional practices and literacy culturally relevant practice that is universally used across the district for this goal we are going to focus this year on implementing warm demander and caring and culturally mediated instruction we want to interpret our
007instructional practices that produce independ or interrupt sorry instructional practices that produce dependent learners and make sure our students are really motivating themselves and coming to the classroom ready and eager to learn consistently communicating our high academic expectations for each student and empower students to achieve those expectations and continue to implement our literacy plan and address live lived experiences and engage current events and challenge the society through a social justice lens and a key focus of instruction and we're also going to be deepening our systems of support and this is that support for each student to make sure that they have the opportunity and individualized supports for what they need to excel in this area we're going to be modeling and promoting respect anti-bias and appreciation for student differences implementing a student-focused change implementing student-focused changes
008within the school system the classrooms and paying the educational debt to our historically marginalized groups providing the comprehensive services and supports that will foster behavioral social emotional and mental well-being and then also implementing culturally responsive and restorative discipline practices and the final area professional growth this is about investing in our staff through high quality differentiate differentiated training for every staff member in our system we want to engage in learning and action and growth related to professional racial identify um personal racial identify um identity um anti-racism and bias we want to develop cultural humility as a system identify how our personal cultural lens influences perceptions of students and work to eliminate deficit perspectives and making sure also that we are establishing relationships and collaborating with our families caretakers and local community so those are the four
009kind of little more information on those four and then we're gonna have some specific goals that we will share next time the next thing i wanted to update the board on is the strategic planning process um we are still kind of in this working on the final calendar in conversations with uh lanita from gsta on fine-tuning all of these states so nothing really new here to report to the board just that we are still working on this um and we will have for the august 9th calallen um board meeting our final calendar and be able to share with stakeholders when they can start signing up for being part of the planning team um and when we will be having our stakeholder engagement session so just an update on where we are with that i also
010wanted to share with the board um the calendar for our policy manual revisions um so a lot has already been happened i've done a lot of work on this over the summer it was a great time for that um so we um we did our initial presentation to the board agreed on the process we had our initial planning meeting with gsba um and then went ahead and they had we had gsba draft um an initial set of state required policies so we have those in hand we're starting to look through those but what we needed to also talk through was how are we going to communicate with our public and with our um our stakeholders and our staff of which policies are where so we created a policy crosswalk which i'm going to pull up
011and we will put this on our website so that people will have a very clear understanding of what we have um and where they can find it and once we start embedding things we can put links in here as well so what i did over the summer is i went through the board the board policy manual we had way back before the model that we have right now and if there's an x in the box it means there was a policy back when we had that old policy manual in place and then we right now are operating under this carver model so if there is a policy in place under the carver model i put it here or an administrative regulation i put that there and then this third column is 2022 manual which are
012the new uh the new manual that we will be building um and the policies are organized in a kind of a very different way than what we have right now so they have um like the letter a is anything about our school district organization school board operations is category b and then each of these topics has its own category um and what you'll notice as we kind of look through this is there's some of these lines are orange the orange lines uh the cells that are highlighted in orange are the board policies that have already been drafted and are the ones we are required to have by law um through um through the title 20. so these are correct already drafted we've got to start you know going through teasing those out once the board
013has had the opportunity to review those and approve them we will start um that process in august but um just so that there's a place for people to look so someone says well you know there's the old manual we'll have that linked we'll have the new manual people will be able to access all of these tools but we want to make sure they're finding the right place so as we finalize new policy we will go into this spreadsheet and kind of cross out the ones that are old that we're not going to use anymore and and put insert a link for the new policy so that that is accessible um so that's the crosswalk that we did i met with our legal team to review our initial draft of those policies talked about the crosswalk
014um and you're really working with our legal team on what are the next steps as we go through this cycle of policy review adoption and approval hopefully for the board um so today we're doing the presentation of the timeline of the draft so the next step will be august 23rd at our work session uh we will be digging into what are the reform policies that the board wants to select and the the reform policies are those really needy policies like our equity action plan that to me is one of those things where we want the board to really lean in and help us frame what is our approach to equity what's our policy around equity um what are with our policy around um like promotion or how our student you know what students may need
015to graduate high school so we'll start working with the board on selecting a few of those working with the board to draft those and then every time we finish one we'll pick another one up and kind of keep something in the hopper so that we can must muscle through and get all of these approved throughout the year so this kind of an ongoing process that'll work like a cycle um let's see did also want to update the board on current enrollment numbers we just updated these this afternoon um so this is our current enrollment that we have at each of our schools but i also want to show you on the our total enrollment is 5444. and this is the difference on projection so the green cells are where we are over what they projected
016we would be at and the red cells are where we are below and in total we are over total projection by 136. um and you can see the trend is we're under enrollment um in our lower elementaries above enrollment and upper and high school and still a little bit below at beacon hill um so that's the process um those are the numbers where we are we're continuing to get new students enrolled every day um and some kids are some families are moving out of our system every day so it's we're still in a very flux situation but i do want to update the board on our current enrollment numbers and we're watching those uh weekly did also want to update the board on where we are with renaming our middle school to beacon hill so
017we have gone ahead and submitted the name change to the department of education um and this leads up to the update with nces in the fall which in turn affects a lot of other third-party storage stores most internal data systems have been updated highly visible ones and online resources social media google maps businesses have been updated web page changes have started with the goal of having all the changes made by the start of the school year the marquee and the exterior lettering proofs have been approved the company is manufacturing them and we have an estimated delivery date in july but hopefully supply supply chains stay steady and we are able to get those and installed before the first day of school that's our goal um they are also working on changing the name on the
018gym floor that will happen the last week of july when the floor is refinished also in the gym there's a big there's a big sign in there that has renfro and we have a plan for a custom item that we'll we'll put up in that space the vendor is scheduled for a site visit to determine the dimensions and specs and put a plan together for that school leadership and our pta have been working on logos and other name change projects as well as a school dedication event so i wanted to give the board an update on where we are um and we also want to share with the community and the board if you see places you think we haven't caught and should be updating and paying attention to please let us know so that
019we can get those things updated and changed um so that is those are my comments for this evening any questions from the board no i don't have i'm good i did have one comment dr fuhrman i think there was a question about a recent report regarding an incorrect millage rate that had been reported i want to know if there was a correction there yeah thank you i'm sorry i meant to follow up with miss burnett she was going to reach out to the ajc on that um so courtney do you have an update on that i'm muted do you think i've learned how to do this by now a correction has not been filed yet but we're working on it okay and hans thank you for letting me know i haven't seen that story that
020the ajc reported that we raised our military we did not raise our military um so we are working on that to make sure that they can make you that correction thanks for that clarification and thanks um hans for bringing that to our attention all right we will move on to the chairs comments and um kind of brief this evening um but i hope that our district administrators enjoyed their recent break um i hope our students and teachers are enjoying the remaining few weeks of summer break dr fuhrman and her team are working hard to ensure a smooth and exciting start to the school year while the board is priming itself to engage in the superintendent search the development of a new strategic plan and the revision of our policy manual manual as dr fuhrman just
021shared as we all prepare for the work of the upcoming school year i'd like to challenge the csd community to remember to be present and to appreciate the moments of today for me that has been one of the biggest lessons of the pandemic so hope everybody will keep that in mind to just you know be present as we continue prepare for all of these big things that we have coming up um and speaking of lessons despite the fact the school is out our csd teachers and students continue to excel congratulations to the decatur students that competed in the dekalb county branch of the naacp's axo competition decatur high winners for the local competition include gold medalist salman kane smith chamade anna villavaso and sultan zaid these students are also dhs 2022 graduates rising junior audrey
022ferguson brown rising sophomore jackson jeffrey and rising senior aisha foley were all bronze medalists along with anna villavasso and salman kane smith shimade who all who both also earned bronze medals for other categories so congratulations guys congratulations to the claremont crew on their el education credential renewal the el team shared this about claremont this milestone recognizes your school's continued incredible work and impact for students claremont elementary school continues to demonstrate excellence and equity for students through the implementation of the el education model keep up the good work clear my crew congratulations to mrs vashonda bolton from beacon hill middle and miss deidre pierce from decatur high for completing the computer science endorsement requirement for georgia professional standards both teachers took on this challenge when they were hired by csd and they have been excellent professionals
023in the short time that they have been with us so congratulations again miss bolton and miss pierce that concludes my chair's comments all right so now we will move on to our consent agenda items um which include the personnel report school nutrition and financial reports may have a motion to approve the consent items one through three move to approve consent items one through three thank you may have a second second thank you all in favor please say i i i thank you the consent agenda items one through three are approved we will now move on to the action items for the board this evening our first action item is a budget amendment for the fiscal year 23 budget dr fuhrman can you please share an overview of this amendment with the board yes let me
024share my screen [Music] okay um so we are at the point where we are closing out um have closed out fiscal year 22. some things kind of linger for a little bit and it takes a little bit to process all the final payments and close out any payments for staff that have separated so there is still some um changes that will be happening from the budget in fy 22 but that's the part of the normal process um and then we have built our budget for fy23 we take the tentative budget from the that's approved by the board we put it into um actuality and build all of our independent budgets so i've got some updates that i'd like to share with the board on that on both of these things so first of all um
025just a as we looked at our overall ending budget for fy22 we did have unanticipated additional funds um that were reflected in our budget which when we have additional funds that come from things that will also increase our expenditures just depending on how that hoses are spent so we did have the austerity reduction refunded and that added about 1.3 billion dollars to our budget for fy 22. we did also have funds paid from the state to give a two thousand dollar bonus to full-time staff thousand dollar to part-time staff um and then thousand dollar um i shouldn't say bonuses i should say one time salary adjustments um for various pays so it was not a uniform two thousand dollar bonus for every employee but i think our staff was so thankful that the board did
026approve for us to pass off um that bonus of two thousand dollars to every single employee i know that made a big difference to so many of our staff and they're very thankful for that but that was an influx of 1.3 million dollars from the state um in last year as well but what we had to fund some out of general fund to give all employees that two thousand dollars bonus um held harmless um on enrollment for qbe so even though we did not meet expected enrollment last year um that the state had projected us to be at they did not deduct any of that on our qbe formula so the money they sent us was equal to two years ago um but they will be adjusting it this year so we do anticipate and
027our upcoming budget has reflected a decrease in enrollment um and a decrease in our qbe allotment um so then as we look forward to 2023 this is just a reminder of the priorities that we had set at the beginning of the budget process in the area of equitable outcomes for students we wanted to increase the number of counselors and increase equity personnel with our equity coordinator and the game changer positions and then we also wanted to reward and recognize staff making sure that we are attracting and retaining a diverse staff of exceptional quality so there we were addressing competitive compensation and staff development opportunities and then also with operational excellence ensuring that we are good stewards to the resources were provided from the community and the state and then making sure that we continue to
028invest in safety and security so these were the initial fy 23 budget changes that we had proposed and there's two i'm going to talk about in a little more detail on the next slide but we did add counselors at decatur high school beacon hill middle school and fave um we did implement a new staffing allotment formula but we also said as a priority for the board was that we wanted to retain all staff that wanted to return to city schools of decatur and talk about how that's impacting our upcoming budget or our current budget i should say pay enhancements to address critical pay or competitive pay and some critical positions and align salaries for equitable pay decreasing our operational budgets to help burden some of that decrease in student enrollment and just making sure we're
029operating very as efficiently as possible we did pass on step increases for every eligible employee and a 5.4 raise was um decided on at the state level for bus drivers monitor school nurses um and then that two thousand dollars increase in pay for teachers and counselors also media specialists principals assistant principals um so let me add a little bit of information i just like to make sure that we are transparent and sharing uh what we find out as we go through this process so when we created the new staffing allotment i shared that with the board in january and i shared a comparison of where we are on the qbe formula which is the formula at the state level that address decides how much funds we get based on our student enrollment and services and
030at that time i shared that we were about 119 um fte over which is a staff member over what we earn from the state and that's okay but we have to understand that if we want to staff over what the state gives us in any category at schools or at central office we have to make sure that we are doing that in the i and with the understanding that that is going to impact the funds we have to raise locally um so we did make a small adjustment to class sizes to help stave on some staffing points and when we were looking at that new formula we anticipated that we would be reducing our overall staff in the district by about 26 positions um and but we also only wanted to eliminate positions that were
031vacant due to natural attrition and so that was one of the caveats as we were implementing this new stepping allotment so we finished stuffing our schools um at the end of the day we realized that we were only able to eliminate 10 positions instead of that 26 that we had initially anticipated um to the board when we shared this information and i think what i um missed for me was as we realized we were not cutting as many positions as we anticipated i should have been sharing with the board some of these updates earlier on so that we could adjust the budget as we were going so it's a conversation that we're going to have with the board here in a moment um so we can kind of talk about what are what are the
032next steps that the board wants to see going forward um so as i said we've got to about 11 positions um that we had initially planned on eliminating from the budget will still potentially be in our fy 23 budget can i actually ask a real quick question on the page just a clarifying question if you're saying that we anticipated that we reduce by 26 positions and we only eliminated 10 by my math that's 16 positions how do we get 11. sorry that's a typo that should be 16. sorry thank you for catching that haunts as i was reading it i was like oh typo sorry okay so it's 16 positions that are in the budget now that we did not anticipate having in the budget yes okay thank you yeah no thank you for catching
033that um but then i'm also in requesting an amendment as we um kind of finalize look at our operationalized budget with everything built into the system so i had spoken to the board earlier about a communications and public relations coordinator i shared with the board that i think that is an essential position that we need to fill to help make sure that as we are working towards um creating a system where there's transparency in communication there's accountability in communication we really have the need for that staff member at the central office an equity coordinator that is one that again as i mentioned when i talked about our priorities it's one we identified very early on um and for some reason it was between kind of changing with the staffing and looking how things were allotted
034in one place and positions some this one did not get put into the budget but it should have been um the westchester music teacher had resigned or retired i should say and we this is one of those positions that we had anticipated not having to fill um so we were thinking okay we'll split a teacher between two lower elementaries but then as they were building their schedules in june there was just no way to create a sp to split a teacher between two schools so this is one of those areas that as we look at staffing with small schools and creating and trying to find the best way to create the most efficient use of personnel this is one where we thought we would be able to and at the end of the day we
035were not but the good news is is that the um this position would also be able to support our 3-5 orchestra program so i think it's a win-win for us as a school system to give make sure we are having a music teacher at westchester to give those kids that early music experience and then also supporting our orchestra program at our upper elementaries the other remaining budget adjustments are some operational um adjustments for some upcoming projects um one being the superintendent search contract uh we also wanted to increase our transfer or fuel adjust the budget for our transportation department because the fuel price is going up and we did get an increase on our premium um and our insurance so we had to make an adjustment for that and um the custodial contract there is
036um a request to um to implement that custodial contract so the total request for the board would be about 640 000 as an amendment to fy 23 budget so this is the amended budget proposed to the board for discussion um and we also also wanted to point out that the there was an increase in revenue our tax digest came in higher than anticipated so that did um impact our major revenue source for taxes but also this increased expenditures for salaries and benefits professional services supplies energy and equipment we did decrease expenditures in our maintenance and grounds area but then you'll also notice our fund balance has increased part of that is the one million dollars from the tax digest that we want to put directly into the fund balance and then at the end of
037every year we have unspent funds typically um so those at the end of the fy 22 budget they get sucked all back into the general fund so and that was about 2.1 2.2 million dollars there but you can see our overall projected fund balance there um so that is the budget amendment um and just wanted to also update the board and share um the information about the staffing allocations and what that change was and then um open for the board discussion on this amendment are there any questions from the board for dr fuhrman yes this is this is the first of two we still have there's some amount of funding that's going to be required to cover personnel going forward that we're going to see in august is that correct yeah and that's that's hopefully
038what we can discuss tonight so that we can look forward to what that second budget amendment is going to be in august so those 16 positions that we wanted to try to eliminate we were not able to eliminate uh because we just had to replace the staff that were leaving and then we were not able to find another you know positions that could be eliminated um so as we wanted to keep staff in our school system that want to work for us we have them coming back um so that is the that's a discussion for the board on you know what are we doing in aggregate sorry dr fuhrman go ahead oh go ahead you're fine uh does it say in aggregate in aggregate that dollar amount is roughly two and a half million dollars
039i just want to have something in the back of our heads 2.1 million okay so for this budget amendment which would take our budget up to some million dollars we would be talking about about an 88 or 89 million dollar budget with that with that included okay so so if we look historically the last year that there was no effect of covet right i mean that that's 2019 right if we go back to the 2019 budget we were operating a school system with 5600 students so a little over a hundred more students than we have today um and so at in the 2019 budget we had a something like a 72 million dollar budget so three years later we're talking about an 89 million dollar budget right it's a 17 million dollar increase in the
040budget in three years and we're teaching a hundred fewer students now so yeah i'm i'm uncomfortable with where we are and and i think that we need to have some tough conversations about looking at where we are with expenses it's hard i mean it's almost a 20 increase in the budget over the course of three years and i understand disruptions due to covid i understand some of this is related to federal funds coming in and then us having to give some of those federal funds back but but if i'm uh you know this is a year where seniors are getting hit with tax bills for the first time in a number of years uh large you know six thousand plus dollar tax bills for the first time in a number of years i i i
041just uncomfortable looking him in the face saying that we're being as efficient as we possibly can 17 million dollars is a huge increase over three years and so i'm not comfortable unless we're talking about finding dollars in this budget to cover some of this moving forward expending some of these funds in in in this way um one thing i do want to add is as the um influx of you know funds came in from the state for 2000 that's going to be you know add to our overall budget so as we increase teacher salary by 2 000 per teacher and administrator you know that's going to overall increase our total budget so that's part of that i think i think we have to put that into context as well and as you mentioned cares funds
042there were personnel that we had hired through cares funds that we had to put back into the budget this year that was over three million so there we're talking about already an increase in our overall budget by about five million dollars so i think that accounts for some of this growth i do agree student enrollment is decreasing that's why we adopted the new staffing allocation formula to try to decrease operational costs overall um to address that um like i said i was very um i think eager or you know made a you know a prediction on what we could decrease the budget this year obviously it was not as impactful on our overall budget as i was hoping it would be but we are looking at um adjusting our staffing allotments to address that decrease
043in um decrease in enrollment um the other challenge that i'll be having for my cabinet members this year is really looking at their budgets and identifying some similar districts that have similar student enrollment similar operations so that we can make sure we are operating within an acceptable parameter of a budget for let's say operations teaching and learning so those are some things that are on the agenda to talk about with cabinet to make sure that we are having those tough conversations about what what are we spending per student in this department okay what do they spend in that same department in another school district and if we're way high what do we need to do to get it back down to that kind of reasonable level and one of the things i mean so i
044i understand that i'm going kind of hard on this point i want to acknowledge that a lot of this stuff happened in the previous administration and so we're kind of picking up some of those pieces uh one of the reasons that it got to where it got to frankly is that we spent down the reserve rather than seeing it on a on a year-to-year basis and so part of what we're attempting to do right now is shore the reserve back up so that we're in a healthy place so i do understand all of these the other thing is that there's no way to fix you know if it took us three years to create an issue we're not going to fix it in one budget i do actually also understand that but you know if
045it took us three years to get us in this place i would want to see a clear plan on how to get back out of this place within three years and i would also want to be extraordinarily disciplined about what we hold the line on now thank you go ahead um to add to that hans um i think i would like to see if the board rest of my board members agree a breakout of the items that contribute to that 17 million and so that we can really look at the parts that we really can't do anything about and then where where are the deficiencies of any because i don't want to throw that whole 17 million in that pot because as we were just talking about that's not really what we're working with so
046what what is that number that we really can work with to bring down and what were the other numbers related to covid and the cares act and promotions that we can put in a separate bucket that we can't touch so i would just love to see that broken out at some point and i think we'd be able to tackle potential inefficiencies better okay agreed dr sultan you have any questions no i think it is it is worth noting that uh on a positive note the fund balance has gone up um i think with some of the uh noteworthy changes that we've made like the adjustment to the teacher salaries those are things that we were committed to investing in and despite that we've seen an increase in the fund balance so that's a noteworthy achievement
047but there are kind of to piggyback off of tasha's point there are some areas of the budget that are one-time expenses and there's some things that we're investing over multiple years so that might provide the community some context as to where their tax dollars are where they're going uh kind of what they're investing in over multiple years where they may see some things in the budget uh for years and years as opposed to one-time increases um and that might provide a little bit more context when we're talking about um large investments or amendments so just a suggestion for when we come back next time some more long-term investments that we may be that we may have there as opposed to one-time expenses i agree yeah i think that'll be really key to look at okay
048if there are no other um questions um you may have a motion to approve the budget amendment one for fiscal year 2023. i would i would actually like to request from the administration that we uh adapt the amendment to uh i'm okay authorizing some of the positions but i want to see the positions i want to see those efficiencies found in the budget and so uh adapt that you know we can authorize the positions but not fund the positions or fund the positions out of savings that we expect to see in the budget um so board members what are your thoughts about that given that we have two and a half million dollars coming our way of additional expense that's about to show up after sultan were you gonna say something no i i think
049i don't think that's unreasonable i think um i think it's i think we can we can we can approve the positions as they stand i don't think i don't i don't think the positions as they're funded is an unreasonable amount of money i think maybe the question for us over the next month between now and the august meeting is is do we need to approve do we need to expand the budget or can that amount of money be found in the budget as it stands now um so that's maybe a question for maggie and lonita furthermore the consult the the custodial contract which was pitched to us when we approved it a month and a half ago was pitched to us as an efficiency the reason why we were doing it was to drive efficiencies
050so it boggles my mind that it's going to cost us 160 000 incremental dollars it ought to save us money that's what an efficiency does if it's going to cost us more money then i would rather us not do the custodial contract and so i'm also willing to authorize moving forward with the custodial contract presuming minimally it's budget neutral preferably it drives savings but i'm not comfortable authorizing 160 additional thousand dollars for a contract that's supposed to be saving us money for apartment can i can i chairman on that yeah please do sergio so uh so we are anticipating will be budget neutral once we reach to three more vacant positions so that 166 000 is about the cost of three uh 3.5 positions of custodians today we have about seven bacon positions and we
051have additional four custodians that we use as a substitute for recovering sick leave personal time fmla vacation time but we also have a very difficult time trying to hire and keep a reliable staffing so based still we still have to keep our buildings clean and disinfected moving forward we're going to see additional savings on workers compensation benefit retirement thicker taxes and also the workload for the hr and finance department so my projection is probably before november we're gonna see a budget neutral and that and we can present a report to the board where we can demonstrate that we are there so um i know that uh attorney wilson is is online with us and i just want to get clarification um do we take a vote on the amendment as it is presented now and
052then if it doesn't have the votes then there is a motion made to for a different um amendment a different vote uh mr wilson if there's an amendment proposed well i don't believe there was a motion made and seconded uh if i recall correctly for the amendment i think there was a call for the motion and then mr ooch stepped in so whatever he is proposing if he gets a second would be the primary motion on the table if there was a second of the first one and i don't think there was then his motion if it gets a second is an amendment and it would be taken up first okay so do i need to oh sorry go ahead was there a second to the to the motion i don't believe there was a
053second to the original motion was it okay i didn't really i don't think i really got a chance to get it out right so it would be up to someone to either make a motion to approve the original motion or mr oot to uh make a motion for something different if it gets a second that is what would be on the floor okay so i'm gonna so i'm gonna start over all right um may i have a motion to approve the budget amendment won for fiscal year 23. motion to approve the amendment for the budget fiscal 23 fiscal year 23. second we need second right yes second all right thank you um all in favor please say aye yeah hold on a second if there's a motion to amend if there's not then you vote
054on that motion if there's a motion to amend that emotion to a men would with a second would take precedence but if there's no emotional men you do go forward with that motion so that was to approve the amendment i haven't made an amendment though i want to i want to make sure i'm clear on what i'm proposing as the amended motion so i thought the first vote was on whether we want to approve the motion the budget amendment for fiscal year 23. that's what i was you can vote on it if there's not a proposed amendment but you can also amend it after voting on it so there is a proposed amendment no no no no no okay so i guess the question is right now there's a motion that has been seconded on
055the floor to approve a budget amendment one but at that point a motion to amend takes precedence if such is presented and seconded if not then you vote on your motion even after it is passed there can be a motion to amend what you just passed got it i move to amend the amended budget proposal in front of us now to include funding for the communications and public relations coordinator position funding for the gsba superintendent search fuel cost increase an increased insurance premium furthermore to approve the position but not fund the equity coordinator and the westminster west chester music teacher and 3-5 orchestrator program director positions that will be funded out of efficiency savings that dr fuhrman will identify the custodial contract will also be funded out of efficiency savings that dr ferguson will identify
056okay so now i ask if there's a second for that motion is there a second maybe i haven't sorry may have a second for that motion without a second the amendment proposal fails does not have viability at this point so now you're back to your original motion to approve the proposed budget amendment okay so now i can all in favor say aye or unless there's further discussion yes ma'am okay is there any further discussion so the only the only difference between hans amendment is that he's saying that we need to find the the funds the funds need to need to be found for those positions in the existing budget right right for the for positions other than the communications position okay and and i'm and would it be an understanding if we agreed to that
057if the superintendent and the cfo were unable to find the funds within the budget that we would then not be approving those positions that's not what i'm understanding is that what you were proposing in you that's right yeah so that's what i'm asking if we if we um motion and we get to the point where we are unable to then fund those positions through the existing budget what then since we're not approving if we potentially did not approve the funding for it right now mr utts no no i the the positions will be approved and at the discretion of the superintendent to fill presuming that she would be able to find the funds to fill it i want to point out that we have an 85 86 million dollar budget the funding for the positions
058that we're describing is less than 0.15 right it's a basis point of the budget so that you know based on my expertise with budgets the money is going to be able to be found from those positions presuming that they're a priority my concern is potentially what would have to be cut um to fund those positions and so i i my concern is what will be cut and you know um i guess that's it that's it um so um attorney wilson there has been no second of the proposed amendment so that takes you back to the original motion okay and do i go ahead and so now i can call for everyone to say i or nay or or do we or do we second so we're voting now because we already second original motion but
059we're going back to the to to vote on the occasion because we had our discussion so now we can go back to okay all right so all in favor um of approving budget amendment one for fiscal year 23 please say aye aye all right okay all opposed hey all right thank you um how does board chair vote i i'm surprised about that uh all right so the budget amendment one for fiscal year 23 is approved our second action item this evening is the approval of the new board policy kbb divisive concepts complaint resolution process and just for clarification i asked what that ikb stands for so it's part of the naming convention of um policies um that the state gives us and so dr fuhrman will you share an overview of this new policy for
060the board yes um so this new policy is one we are required by law we cannot waive this as a charter system so we have to put this policy into place um and this policy is very much mirroring um the what was proposed in the bill that was passed at the georgia legislator about allowing a a community member a parent i think actually sorry a parent to file a complaint saying that they feel that one of these six divisive concepts was being taught in their student their child's classroom um it's a very clear process for how we would handle those um as a as a school system um after the board approves this then we have to create a procedure for what that how we would operationalize this policy um but basically it sets up
061the time frames it sets up um how we would handle and what any kind of consequences would be put in place but then we've got to operationalize that with a procedure which is um something that we will get to work on as soon as this is approved this policy was drafted by gsba um so i am recommending that the board approve this as written um as it was shared with us from gsba and very much mirrors what we need to have in the policy thank you are there any questions from the board all right is there a motion to approve board policy ik bbb divisive concepts complaint resolution process [Music] move to approve uh divisive concepts policy i do i have to say the exact one or is that sufficient that's sufficient okay thank you
062have a second second thank you all in favor please say aye aye all right thank you board policy ikbb is approved um there are no items for information um this month uh we will now move on to our discussion items for this evening dr fuhrman your team provided their state of the department reports for the board's review this month we receive reports from the equity and student services teaching and learning and state and federal programs are then any questions from the board on these reports all right um [Music] the next discussion item is the academic calendar for the upcoming 2023 and 2024-2025 school years dr fuhrman will you please update the board on the academic calendar options yeah so what we um what we did is we put out some options for review we had
063each school go through a protocol to provide some feedback and some review on these proposed calendars and there were several options provided out there to the community and to the staff and then we did a survey with our community to gather feedback from our families and as we have been reviewing and assessing that information there is very much to a two-sided take on the calendar so our our parents um want to keep the current calendar kind of organization that we have um with two early release days um right before the breaks um the teachers very much want additional early release days built into the calendar for professional development so what miss burnett and i are gonna do is take a look at all the feedback again and come up with another option to put out
064there um for consideration so we think we're able to kind of meet what the parents want um while also providing some time for teachers to get that much needed professional development while not extending their work days um trying to really be reasonable about that so um just want to let the board know that um we're gonna go back and create another option and get some more feedback on that and then bring that to the board next month for review and discussion board members are there any questions all right now final discussion item this evening is the new math course of options for acceleration um dr bean will be leading this presentation hey dr b hello how are you i don't know if i'm sharing my screen or if um can't see your screen yet yeah
065you want me to run the presentation for you christy yeah that would be great oh wait no i'm i'm a co-host now all right go for it thank you let me get back to the beginning here sorry about that well hang on one second okay now we're ready okay well thank you so much for having me tonight um the purpose of the presentation tonight is to inform you about some upcoming shifts in the math pathways in city schools of decatur and this is upcoming for the 23-24 school year so plenty of time to help our community understand the rationale and talk through the changes so here we have how we move our faces here so we can see everything so here we have the timeline um that we're looking at and actually this process began
066in 2020 when we were during our closure for covid when we were in virtual learning we started talking through this process and in august of 2020 our city schools of decatur district math team which consists of school and teacher leaders and school leaders throughout the district from kindergarten through 12th grade really began looking at a math program review and as they began that review process one of the recommendations from the team is that we look at our policies and practices around math acceleration and you'll hear more about the reasons for that shortly but again throughout this past school year the 2122 school year our district math team we met several times and we read research and we looked at the data both student achievement data and our the input from teachers from teacher surveys and
067such and we discussed how we could best improve our policies and practices around math acceleration well in the meantime at the same time throughout this school year the georgia department of education has released new courses that will be aligned with the new georgia standards uh the new georgia math standards that are being released and then they have also recommended new math pathways as well so that was great timing okay there we go so what you're seeing here um is our current hold on sorry so let me back up just a little bit so again this is not a recommendation beginning now this is a recommendation beginning in 2324. so our recommendation for the upcoming school year the 22-23 school year is to communicate to our community to gather feedback and to prepare for implementation and
068so you know what we would like to know from our community is what information they need to understand um what questions they have and how we can best support the transition um and so you can see that you know we want to start out with our teachers um of course we've included um our teacher leaders as we mentioned and our our school leaders at decatur high school and beacon hill middle school throughout the process um but we want to engage all of our teachers um in this when they return in a couple of weeks then we will start rolling out the information to families um roll out informational sessions to slts and then start having parent sessions and then continue the process throughout the year until we um you know start signups for sixth grade
069students coming in in the spring so this is our current math sequencing starting um in sixth grade um and so it's a it's a little bit complex as you can see and so um for a few reasons um there are some recommendations again from the district math team to make some revisions and there's a few reasons for that that i'd like to talk through first reason which again aligns with with many other areas in the district is that who is participating in accelerated math we see is disproportionate so we can see that the number or the percentage of black students that are in accelerated math especially at beacon hill middle school does not align with the number of black students that are in our district and so we need to look at the criteria um
070why is that why are black students not being um you know not not um participating in these higher level courses and so we want to encourage that so we can see the numbers at the top we can also see the total number of students at decatur high school we have about 1680 students i believe at decatur high school so about half the students are currently in some accelerated math um so that is one of the reasons but there are some other reasons that we really need to dig into and first of all um math leaders at the national council on teachers of mathematics and leadership in mathematics national leadership councils um are really recommending that we you know detract math that we um really provide these higher level opportunities for mathematics for all of our
071students and so that is one of the recommendations again we also have the recommendations from the georgia department of education and their position statement um on acceleration and then finally we want to better prepare our own students for higher level mathematics it's we are starting to fall behind other districts and offering higher the highest levels of mathematics in those upper grades and we want to do that when we look at our ap exams for example we can see that we are not even meeting georgia average um pass rates now there's a lot of factors that go into this and as we know we tend to emphasize iv over ap so the many factors that go into this but we want to be leaders in all areas so there is no reason that we're not far
072exceeding the state of georgia averages much less not even meeting them in calculus scores for ap and then when we look at our ib scores um now these are a little i don't know how much we want to put into these scores i'm i'm very excited to analyze this year's scores and look at where we are because 2020 and 2021 we did not have the typical assessments um so we have to take that kind of you know with a grain of fault but um we do we do have world averages to compare to and um you can see in 2020 we didn't meet those and that was in standard level and then in high level we exceeded i was trying to get the number of students that these are our highest level math students so
073i was trying to get the number that participated but i wasn't able to get that right off the bat um and then here we want to see you know so what are the recommendations here for going forward so for the 2023 school year we will continue our current practice and then you know one of the reasons for that is that we need time to implement so we need time to get you know all of our stakeholders to understand the recommendations we also need time to make sure that our teachers we need you know to make sure our teachers meet the certification requirements we'll need more we'll need to work with our 8th grade teachers on getting certification we'll need to work with have more geometry certification at the high school so that kind of thing
074so we need to make sure our staffing is where it needs to be and that kind of thing so we want to make sure we have a solid communication plan for our families this year and that we're ready to implement these these changes going forward when students sign up for classes in the spring of next year so this is the recommendation from the doe from the georgia department of education and you can see that now there are three decision points so starting in seventh grade students make a decision and now instead of us using this criteria to decide whether a student will go into advanced mathematics the students and the families themselves make that decision we will provide them with this is what a student is going to need these are test scores grades readiness
075that a student needs to be successful but ultimately um the families will make those decisions so they'll have decision point one then after ninth grade they'll have decision point two and then after tenth grade there will be decision point three so you see it's like one a one or one a one b and two but it's really three decision points so you can see that um there and then when we break it down specifically to the courses of um beacon hill middle school and decatur high school this is what it will look like so this is where it's very important that you know we start with our teachers when they come back in a couple of weeks so that we make sure that all of these courses at our advanced level courses in 11th and
07612th grade are properly placed and that we are having all of our students you know everything's where it belongs before um you know we start rolling it out to families but you can see those three decision points are there as well so students have it's really nice because you know we're not getting students kind of on a track or or you can't get on to that track it's like students can can make those choices so if i'm not quite prepared when i get into seventh grade we can have some options and some supports moving forward so that i can be prepared when i get to ninth grade or tenth grade so one of the questions is what would happen what's going to happen to students who are currently taking that algebra 1 geometry a class
077this year so we do have to have something because that's going to be kind of that gap that we're going to have to fill and so we've we've come up with three options for that that we can support those students with to get them uh set to move into the new pathway and so one of those is that the students can take the full geometry course the the following year and ninth grade they can take geometry b over the summer virtually or they can take geometry b the following year um through dba so either way they can take it virtually um you know either either over the summer or the next school year one of the other things that we need to prepare throughout this year is again those clear guidance documents so that we
078are giving families good information that we are helping them understand what it is that they need to know to make these decisions so they're making well informed decisions for their students again that staffing is going to be really important that we make sure we have the right people in the right spots and that we give our teachers you know the opportunities to get get prepared to support the students that we're making sure that we are supporting the under um our traditionally underrepresented students in these programs so that they are getting the support that they need so that they are successful in these accelerated options and making sure that they are considering these accelerated options and then we want to be sure you know and then the other thing to consider is so we we know
079that we have students that need acceleration or that are ready to engage in higher level mathematics prior to eighth grade um one thing we have to always be cautious about in mathematics and one one thing that's always um it's always something that happens in math is when when students are young and they're um catching on very quickly and they're learning algorithms very quickly and they're adding subtracting in their head and they're doing things and you know parents want to quickly accelerate and even sometimes teachers want to quickly accelerate um but then what we find is that without those firm conceptual foundations and without those deep understandings what happens is they move through rapidly and they don't develop those real firm foundations that they need to be successful in higher level mathematics they're grazing over learning
080kind of skimming the serpent surface and so while they're learning those algorithms and and just being able to run through those steps they're not learning really what they need and so we have to be very careful that we are supporting them and so that's why we see those students not doing as well in the higher level mathematics that we would want them to see so that's one thing but we know we do have those students and we do have students that are um very highly talented in mathematics and so how do we support them we support them through the mtss process the mtss process is is designed to support students that need that are performing above grade level just as much as it is designed to support students that are performing below grade level so
081we have a screening process for all students and we um screen students that are um you know performing above grade level expectations we use triangulation in that data meaning that we don't just look at one piece of data we look at if the student is performing above grade level but the student is still growing in their class well then that's great that shows that that class is meeting that student's needs so we have to look at several pieces of data to see is the student performing at a high level but is you know and is the student's needs being met if not we develop a tier two intervention plan we develop individualized learning we use online learning we use enrichment opportunities with the classroom and the gifted teacher um if that's still not enough then
082we move to tier three just like we would with a student that might need um you know in remediation supports so we move to a tier three intervention for these students that means that again we we amp up those supports now they might be taking a separate course they might be taking um you know some we might develop a individualized learning path for them or what have you at some point we would meet with sst and then we would determine if that student needs a single subject acceleration or something like that um that would come into play again that would be determined through a student support team through the mtss process again differentiated learning within the classroom should meet the needs it's designed to meet the needs of 97 percent or more of our students
083so what we're talking about on this slide is a very small number of students who whose needs are just so extreme that they cannot be met through grade level instruction so we do have a plan for that as well so in summary there's no changes until the 2023-24 school year this school year is designed to inform this is our first step getting you a sneak peek so we're here to inform the community and prepare for implementation and the reason for this plan is to create more increased equitable outcomes increase um allow our students greater access to higher level courses and to better prepare our students for higher levels of mathematics so thank you are there questions this may not be particularly answerable but i i actually think there's probably a mental health benefit here like
084you're reducing some of the stress by providing multiple on-ramps and some potentially off-ramps uh so that you know students that are in the process of it aren't necessarily as um pressured yeah i think is the right way to say it i don't know if you can speak to that at all but i i mean i i appreciate the fact that we're actually providing multiple points of entry and some potential points of exit that allows students to kind of self-adjust as they mature yeah i i think so and i hope so and i think you know it also provides um to that point you know if there is a student let's say that expresses interest um in seventh grade but maybe it's not a good fit and we meet with that student and um we say
085hey you know what if we take this year we we do these extra things we provide these supports and then we talk about it you know so we can meet with the families and we can counsel the families and we can talk about you know where a student needs to be and again you know they can ultimately choose but we need to have those supports in place because what we don't want to do is set students up for you know we want to we want to set all students up for success so um while you know it is ultimately the students um and family's option you know we do want them to be successful so we want to be sure there's the supports are there but i think yeah i definitely think having those on
086and off ramps is definitely a huge um yes stress reliever that's what that's a great way to put it dr beam can you clarify for folks a little bit better you may have said this what the qualifying factors are and kind of how standardized test scores like maps are going to fit into this a little differently from where they do now is this all kind of based on student interest in parent referral um or teacher referral our standardized test scores kind of going away onto the accelerated math uh yeah so the way i'm sorry i didn't interrupt yeah so the way it's designed now um yes so the way the new pathways would work is it would be um we would give guidance we would say you know students that are successful in these courses
087typically have these test scores these grades um et cetera et cetera so we would give kind of a profile of the student that would be successful you need to have this level of readiness you need to have mastered xyz um but ultimately there would not be a gatekeeper there you know the gatekeeper would be the parents and the students um willingness to to do it now one thing to keep in mind you know once you get to ninth grade these are four credit courses so the courses have to be successfully passed in order to get the credit so um again you know we want to be sure we're setting students up for success so it's not going to be necessarily designed for everyone but we want to be sure that all students that have the
088desire and you know the the readiness to to take these courses are able to take these courses so yeah i just wanted to thank you for your presentation dr beam um that was very thorough and i especially appreciate you um going over the timeline and what um parents and stakeholders can expect now and what they can expect you know going down going down the road so um thank you for putting that together and i look forward to you know this kind of opening up and getting some more feedback from stakeholders on how they feel about this particular pathway so thank you well thank you thank you dr bean um the next agenda item is board training um i believe each board member received a transcript of their recorded hours for the year um as a
089reminder all board members need at least 10 hours of official training each year and first year board members need 15 hours of training linked to the agenda is the gsba course catalog board members are reminded to complete their training hours by the end of this calendar year we have future dates listed on the agenda for upcoming meetings trainings and retreats board members are there any questions about future dates for the work of the board no um i want to say i neglected to mention that mr james herndon is not with us tonight um because he lost his father yesterday and i would ask the community to you know please keep um mr herndon and his family in their um hearts and prayers um i also wanted to mention that a community member emailed i didn't
090see it until we were too further along in the agenda but that the public comments had closed before um they were able to make a comment so i just asked dr fuhrman if you could look into that um for um our next meeting to make sure that you know if members want to talk that the timing of everything is correct yeah i'll look into that thank you thank you thank you all right if there are no other questions or discussions i want to thank everyone for joining us this evening and um this meeting is adjourned at 7 50 p.m thank you and have a good evening good night thank you good night everybody good night