001good evening and welcome the board concluded our executive session at 6 11 pm i would like to call to order the final budget hearing for the fiscal year 2023 budget on may 10 at 6 19. mrs brown we're ready for the final fiscal year 23 budget presentation good evening madam chair vice chair of board members community and colleagues we are approaching the end of budget season since november 2021 we have had consistent and ongoing discussions on the fiscal year 23 budget we have discussed the budget process budget priorities salaries and benefits enrollment positions fund balances general fund supplements state funding changes and bonuses last month the board tentatively approved the fiscal year the board is scheduled to approve the final fiscal year 23 budget and tentatively approve the fiscal year 2023 millage rate of 21
002at tonight's board meeting although the military will remain the same additional revenue is projected based off of a minimum of an eight percent growth in the tax digest we will not know the exact growth of the tax digest until the board of assessors approved the real estate value which attempted to be scheduled for may 20th after receipt of the tax digest from the county and calculating the tax digest growth impact on the school district there will be three public budget hearings on the military before the final adoption which is typically scheduled for june 21st the budget consists of four major funds the first major fund is the school nutrition budget which includes a 50 increase for all meals the increases in meal is projected to generate 226 170 in additional school nutrition revenue and will
003reduce the general funds school nutrition supplement by the same amount school nutrition revenue is projected to be approximately 3 million the largest revenue source is revenue from sales currently all students eat free through a federal grant program that is not anticipated to continue facility year 23. school nutrition expenses are balanced by the revenue at approximately 3 million with the biggest expenses being the purchase of food and salaries and benefits the second major fund is the special revenue fund special revenue funds are reimbursable grants received from the state and federal government special revenue budget is projected to be approximately 2.7 million and the revenue is balanced with the expenditures the special revenue budget has stipulations on how the funds can be used and there is not much flexibility in these sites the third major fund is
004the capital budget the capital budget for fiscal year 23 will consist of splastic which is a one cent sales tax from all purchases made in dekalb county the anticipated revenue generated from sloshes is approximately 40 million over a five-year period the fiscal year 23 budget for capital budget includes software textbooks building improvements including one million of the blocks of new year's 23 budget being allocated to building a running track inside legacy park pending the completion of the mutually agreed upon memorandum of understanding between the city of decatur and the city schools of decay anticipated expenditures for fiscal year 23 or 8 million which will leave an independent balance of 2.6 support and final it may operate budget is the general fund major revenue assumptions for the general fund includes our seriously being poorly restored military
005not increasing increasing school nutrition meals by 50 increasing ecsc tuition by 5 and a minimum of 8 projected growth in the tax digest general fund fiscal year 23 highlights include a six percent increase in instructional and future services budget the addition of three counselors gap increases for eligible employees 5.4 increase the bus drivers and monitors two thousand dollar increase to the teacher's salary scale increasing recruitment equity indicator career academy budget five percent reduction in most operating budgets and an increase in administrative support at lower elementary this slide shows the fund balance percentage history since 2012 as shown the fund balance is increasing at a record pace this slide is your fiscal year 2023 tentative general fund budget that was tentatively approved at april's board meeting and is scheduled for final approval at tonight's board meeting
006the military remains the same at 21. the end of unbalance is 7 which is higher than the minimum fund balance of 4.4 cents required by board policies this slide is your fiscal year 23 tentative budget and more than 25 and again we are above the four percent required as stated earlier the fiscal year 23 millage rate will remain at 21. this slide shows the military history from 2005. as you can see the millage rate varies depending on the economy and the needs of the district although we are not increasing the millage rate we do anticipate a minimum increase of eight percent in the tax digest the tax digest is the value of property within the city schools of decatur district for example an 8 increase in tax digest means the value of a house has
007increased by 8 when compared to last year and eight percent tax digest growth on a house that was valued at six hundred thousand but the currency of the year would mean the value of the house is now six hundred and forty eight thousand the school district uses fifty percent of the value of the house after assessed baggage any of the house divided by two to get the fifty percent assessed value multiply the assessed value by the twenty one military and this gives the school taxes per year before any exemptions so currently for house value at 600 000 the annual property tax is 6300 before any exemptions if the tax dollar has grown by eight percent the value of the house increases by eight percent and since the military is a percentage of the assessed value
008the amount of taxes you pay increases as the value of your property increase so although we are not increasing the military for a house value at 600 000 we will receive an additional 504 in tax revenue based on the 8 increase in the value of the product basically this will be an annual increase of eighty four dollars for every fifty thousand of assessed value for property with the eight percent tax digest growth this slide is your first year 2023 tentative budget for all four i just want to just make clear for the record the eight percent increase on the digest is including not just property value growth but also new construction and new taxable digest so what you're showing here the 504 on a 600 000 home is really an upper limit based on the
009tax digest it's probably some number below that because the native growth of the digestion and be in there all right okay thank you mr groom um dr fuhrman do we have any members of the community signed up to speak this evening at the budget hearing none have signed up online to speak at the budget hearing we will give members of the community until 6 30 if they have any questions for the budget hearing i would also like to say just this has been a challenging budget to put together i could see this broom nodding her head in the back i just want to commend you miss room and your team and thank you superintendent for guiding us through a pretty difficult budget cycle with you know bill for kobe coming due and all of that
010happening for us to arrive in a place and not increasing the millage and still able to uh provide some pay increases and benefits to the staff i think this is a real win so thank you thank you all right this concludes our final budget hearing for the fiscal year 20 23 budget we are adjourned at 6 30. good evening again and welcome i would like to call to order the regular csc board meeting for may 10 20 at 6 30 pm um this evening two of our board members are not in attendance james herndon and tasha white are after this evening um although i think mr um herndon is gonna um phone in but okay he's on okay um yeah but we do have a quorum this evening thank you for joining us at this
011time i'd like to ask for everyone to please join me in a moment of silence thank you at this time all that are able please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all board members are there any revisions to the agenda for this evening um madam chair i would like to just make a recommendation that we move our two discussion items up to the top of that part of the agenda so that our teachers that are here to present can get out and get home as early as possible as well as our special guests from malden going to be presenting our um financial audit okay so
012we're going to move the world language presentation and the audit presentation okay all right matt have a motion to approve moving the world language presentation and the audit presentation to the top of the audience for action uh i need to approve moving the world language presentation in the audit report to the top of my instruction thank you may have a second all in favor of moving the world language presentation and audit presentation to the top of the items for action please say aye aye thank you are there any other revisions all right may i have an emotion to approve the agenda for this evening mr proof remember second second thank you all in favor of approving the agendas for this evening please say aye the agenda for this evening is approved our next agenda item
013is the approval of the minutes from the regular board meeting on april 12 2022 and the work session minutes from april 26 2022 may have a motion to approve the minutes from the previous two board meetings a move to approve the minutes for the previous two board meetings thank you may have a second second all in favor of approving the minutes from the april 12 board meeting and i mean work in favor proving the minutes from the april 12 2022 and work session minutes from april 26 2022 please say aye thank you the minutes for the april board meeting and work session are approved at this time we will move on in our agenda to the spotlight session spotlight session section sorry this evening we have several items for the may spotlight i will ask
014dr furman to please introduce our spotlight presenter all right madam chair um some really great things to share tonight i'm really excited for our spotlight this evening but we are going to start off with our highlight from college heights um the celebration at college heights is they're going to share their teaching diversity and inclusion and equity in their preschool program and uh ms garland is not feeling well tonight so we are just going to enjoy her presentation hi i'm carla guzzok the instructional coach here at college heights early childhood learning center i'm going to talk to you a little bit today about some of our equity work that we've been doing here at college heights really proud of all the growth that we've accomplished this year our equity work has been ongoing evolving and adapting
015to meet the unique needs of our staff and students college heights prides itself on being a school family but just back away from transformative conversations with this in mind our equity teams set out to make things more empty take smart moves with measurable results we first did some research so we engaged in a book study of making each and every child teaching preschool within equity plan this book helped us have important conversations as an equity team and build our background knowledge from there we honed in on some of the equitable practices most relevant to early learning for instance providing students with texts and materials that expose them to people from various racial and cultural backgrounds as well as materials that reflect their own identity to be intentional we decided that we needed a walk-through tool
016so that we could visit classrooms and really take stock of our various materials and texts and how they're being used in the classroom once we vetted these different tools we selected one and we warmed with a team and then decided how our ratings were looking back then our fc team visited all of our classrooms to determine areas of strength and areas of product plastic area of grant growth we determined within the actual materials and books available for teachers and children in our classroom for the materials members of our equity team researched team curated multiple classroom materials that are appropriate for every age of students in our building for example we purchased outfits representing various races as well as places for various cultures in addition to adding these materials to our classrooms we also started to
017have conversations with teachers about most appropriate ways to introduce those materials this work is ongoing for our staff in terms of adding books to our collection to the more in-depth approach we used scully muhammad's hill framework where we considered how a given text would support children in building their own positive cultural and racial identity themselves and for others when children are able to notice and name their own identities and traits they're able to see them in others and see them with positive regards with the touchstone text that we purchased i led our teachers through a variety of professional learning sessions where we read that book considered points at which to connect this identity work and offer ideas on how to guide conversations with our young students that are affirming they encourage students to question our
018world i'm really proud of all the work our teachers have done to influence their curriculum in their own classrooms and to really broaden the types of books and materials they're exposing children to and to do that with intentionality we also include diversity equity and inclusion criteria checklist in our media center selection policy our classrooms and media center are rich with high quality literature that represents all our students and their world mental framework teachers create literacy experiences around our carefully selected choice we have a collection of diverse materials to integrate into the classroom and instructions such as books cooking projects and family traditions we use materials that enhance the representation of other racial and cultural backgrounds of the students in our class [Music] after reading books about different skins the children created their own authentic self-portraits
019we read about different hairstyles and the kids play in our majesty they walk with hair salons or they could try out different hair stuff that we learned about students integrate the learning of black history and cultural practices through art writing and play oh [Music] [Applause] clean [Music] [Applause] [Music] and what else did you do [Music] yes he did what did she do for her friends thank god she gave them all jobs through intentional reflection and action we are teaching our youngest children to love understand and accept themselves and others if we never expose the children the difference in the world around them how will they ever know thank you college heights that was a wonderful presentation so fun and spotlight this evening is um from fifth avenue upper elementary we have principal karen newton scott
020here to share the work and highlight what they have been doing under our three pillars in our district improvement plan for positive building and sustaining a positive school culture advancing racial equity and accelerating student learning welcome welcome thank you [Laughter] i'll talk but you all yeah okay good evening good evening i'm karen this is scott principal of faith and it gives me great pleasure to share the spotlight with this avenue upper elementary school so as you know the three pillars of our district and school improvement plan are positive school culture and climate accelerating student learning and advancing equity but what you may not know is that our ib program also has three pillars and they are the learners teaching and learning and the learning community so tonight you want to connect those two so that
021you can see how the work we do every day aligns with our district improvement plan okay so here you have the district improvement plan and our school pillars side by side and so the first pillar of the pyp is the learner and so we want to connect that to our work with advancing equity one of the things we have really done this year is we have looked at our mtss process i want to take this off because i can't breathe i don't have a problem sorry um and we really wanted to examine how our services were best serving our students of need so this year we've had an mtss coordinator and she's done a great job of identifying who needs to work and what um in addition to that we have done a close examination
022of our curriculum resources and our standards to examine as you can imagine that the standards are written from a one-sided perspective and so we have done a lot of work in teaching how the roles of different cultural groups impact history and how they are present their contributions are present throughout all of the work that we do in addition to that we've had parents and community members share about their culture and their personal career paths as well as as well as conducted staff affinity groups and we've had ongoing monthly scheduled highlights that focus on different aspects of the diverse cultures of faith so here you'll just see some pictures that illustrate some of the things i think i was supposed to let that just anyway come forth but there are pictures of different events and activities
023that we've done at faith that highlight um different cultures and what we do with students in order for them to present and be confident in who they are no matter where they come from or their background and we try to provide opportunities for them to do so on an ongoing basis was that me or you met okay can i go back okay the second pillar of the pyp is teaching and learning and it aligns with that district pillar of accelerating learning and so the pyp is all about inquiry and having students reflect on their own learning helping them to build conceptual understanding and ultimately teaching them to make a difference in their own lives their communities and beyond and so we really try hard to incorporate a learning experiences that students will be able to
024apply to the real world we connect it to um current events and what's going on today we have a weekly word on the app where we're building students vocabulary as well as introducing them to careers that align to their learning and then we're also asking students to ponder um their learning in these ways are their lasting effects of what you're learning are there any similar situations going on today that you can align your learning to um does this make you feel a certain way and then have the situation improved after this event or this piece of learning has happened and so that's a common thread in everything that we do and then lastly the learning community aligns with positive school culture and climate um in our district improvement plan and so we do a lot
025to lift our school culture and climate these are just a few highlights we emphasize the learner profile which is a part of the ib program that spans from elementary to high school and so we want students to become knowledgeable reflective all of those 10 attributes of course as every school in the district is doing we are implementing tbis our three agreements is to be kind engaged and responsible that's ingrained in your head um and then we reinforce that through our daily cast gatherings our school-wide cast gatherings and of course our ongoing honoring and celebrating cultural contributions to society and one of the things that we've really been pondering is how do we illustrate and tell the story of faith for many years faith has been four or five was the 45 academy and people wondered
026what do they do is it a mini middle school or a pit stop and now that we're the three five upper elementary school we really want to illustrate and tell our story so people get a better feel for what that means and so to that end we are sharing a video this evening of a day in the life of a faith falcon and this video is also going to be shared with our rights of third graders and their parents as they enter space this year so enjoy [Music] hey there future faith third graders we and they are so excited to know that you'll be joining us next school year i bet you're wondering what a regular day of maybe looks like [Music] get dropped off at the car line [Music] we are going to do
027everything we can have a fun day of energy and learning let's follow freddy's album as he shows you a little bit of his day at bank want to join them [Music] to stop this morning too she's always so happy to be always known how they're brave it's time to get you to head up to class you don't want to be lazy hey good morning friends the cool thing about fame is the tall students get locked don't forget to put that piece into your line for a few projects on homes your room is working on later today [Music] learned so many new things about math gla science fiction requests with a lot of hands-on activities so freddy makes a point to stay engaged and respected this learning has remained ready it's time for lunch [Music] whether
028he brings his lunch or picks up a delicious meal from our falcons eats like a bird i must say no butter is nice enough that we can eat outside but if it's raining don't worry we'll head indoors today looks like a wonderful day to eat outside what's up fellas today's friday is sitting with one of his favorite lunch bunches everyone here is talking and enjoying each other's company but most importantly they are eating their videos it's freddy's gonna do and i'll get another cool thing about fave is that we have true playground sunday friends played by the volunteer on other days he gets to play on the other playground with his friends freddie likes playing on both basic playgrounds although not aware breaking that recess he always plays with others on time and respect every
029day of the week special classes with your music [Music] hey everybody good to see ya well when you look at some of our amazing artists at work wow you all are doing such a great job [Music] then you are going to love our media business is always happy to see you and you're on the map for knowing exactly which books to recommend what a full day of teaching and learning it's about time to begin this simple come on freddy we have to get ready to go home just like there are a lot of different ways to relax there's also a lot of different ways to get home and dismissal you have walkers car writers students go to aftercare like this kids and someone should ride the bus even though freddy walks to school he'll we
030can't wait to see you tomorrow for another great day on the app [Music] oh [Music] thank you miss newton and shannon and lynn that was amazing you can tell how much love you have for your school i really appreciate that great okay so our next spotlight is actually a really exactly looking forward to this one for a while this is our good troublemaker award and so this year this is going to be so great we have been working and dedicating a lot of time to our equity work for many years and this year it's time to finally recognize the culmination of all that work with staff members that have been going above and beyond to um to to achieve our equity goal and this year we've all started talking about aligning our work with john
031lewis's extremely fulfilling command i would guess challenge to get into some good troubles and we have lots of staff members who have done just that um so there were different types of awards um submitted submissions and i wish they were all here and we could tell you about all of them but and so we can share the transformation and the work that our troublemakers do but we are going to let them speak for themselves this all started with our equity director dr banks and she is going to tell you about the award herself in a short video and then we are going to recognize our good troublemakers good trouble was implemented by john lewis and he was a legend of the civil rights movement a leader of the march on washington back in 63 an
032icon for many grassroots organizations and he did that for over 50 years he died on july 17 2020 and as a democratic congressman representing georgia he sponsored bill supporting gender lgb lgbtq rights and equality he was for he was a proponent of immigration rights as well as gun reform as well as voting rights and this man never stopped engaging in civil protest for racial equality he did it his whole life that's what he was about in his later years he was known to say speak up speak out get in the way and he would urge crowds to make sure that they did that and his actions spoke much louder than his words throughout his life and of what he had to say to the country to leaders to activists to all of us as a
033whole just can't be it simply can't be ignored we are honoring john lewis's long and enduring fight for racial equality in the us and proudly proclaiming that because of john lewis and because of his contemporaries um we're able to engage csv's efforts to achieve racial equality today the conversations that we have every day in this district every day in the classroom are all enabled by john lewis and his fight for our rights in his final address to the nation he encouraged us to follow in his mighty footsteps and helped build something that he called the beloved community which was a nation and a world at peace with itself imagine that for a moment if the nation and the world were at peace with themselves we really need that right now he reminded us in the
034process of doing this that creating beloved community is in essence redeeming the soul of the united states it requires profound personal and professional sacrifice and he told us to make that sacrifice by urging us to getting what he called good trouble necessary trouble there are many good troublemakers in city schools educator and these are people who go the extra mile to get in the way of systemic racism and help us pay our debt to students of color thus the purpose of the csv equity good troublemaker award is to take a moment to say thank you just thank you to those among us who rise above and beyond the everyday work we do toward equity here in our school system we're talking about individuals who never hesitate to speak up never hesitate to speak down and
035contribute to csd through their work through their risk taking through their sacrifice in a name of diversity equity inclusion and justice to announce the good troublemakers i'm going to ask madam chair if you wouldn't mind giving me awards and we call the good troublemakers up muslim we will start with our first one janelle copps [Applause] beyond my role and responsibility for teaching students and colleagues of their state as a student at caroline elementary school i have intentionally thought ways to impact change on behalf of the well-being of students with my eyes and ears open and knowledge of the educational inequities that exist throughout the district i challenged my energy and passion for student success into action i became certified in the courageous conversation about race practitioners so there are protocols for facilitating discussions about race
036i've collaborated with the pta to organize ddi initiatives to foster community building and engagement i served as chair of the ceremony team the last three years leading presentations about the impact of rape in the classroom commitment to racial evidence work requires courage coverage should have comfortable discussions with colleagues the difficulties i've accepted the discomfort of leading these conversations in favor of partially in equitable and exclusive learning environments for students [Applause] um no voice is more important than another and we have to make sure that we create that faith and especially acknowledging the fact that for many years in this country people who look like me didn't have a voice at all it wasn't what's acknowledged i won't say they didn't have a course we've always had a voice but not acknowledged by the mainstream culture
037and that is really how how things transpire here in this country and that's why we have to really make sure that we are doing work to interrupt that's how we see it and to correct um some of the wrongs that have led us to the iniquities that we see right now today in the educational system and in other systems in our country there are so many people who care about making sure that we remember the stories that we bring forth the voices that haven't been heard and that we continue to empower every citizen to be able to embrace different things that are common that desire for parents to see their children be successful dr huddleston please come [Applause] want to thank and recognize dr huddleston she's been the founder of our equity department and she
038has initiated a lot of transformational change in our school system thank you dr huddleston um [Music] oh [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] five [Music] amelia cox is she gathered almost 2 000 signatures against the recently passed legislative bill house 180 1084 that is intended to limit what can be said about race in our classrooms and discussions that can also possibly have a chilling effect on equity work at our in our school system though i don't think this country will ever be equal or equitable to all i do believe that the city school of decatur can i'm a woman who says what needs to be said never out of fear but out of the need for our school to be equitable to all especially to the students and staff of color all up mr
039pickney for her award um at a later date go ahead for teaching preschool through our equity diversity and inclusion lens i have also facilitated a protocol around the school's equity division to make it meaningful for our stakeholders i use data from the equity walkthroughs to curate a collection of diverse materials to integrate into classroom and instruction i also had the opportunity to research and find multicultural checklists to evaluate classrooms for needed interiors and research materials that would enhance the representation of racial cultural backgrounds of our students with the assistance of my peers i collaborated with an instructional coach to purchase diverse materials to integrate into classrooms to support diversity and inclusion for birth to frequent classrooms i've compiled a resource for college heights to celebrate black history month because of these words college of tights
040has incorporated black history into our curriculum for next year preschool will continue to celebrate black history month in february however pre-k will highlight black excellence every month many thought that it could not be done at our level here at college heights but it's about the exposure if we never expose our kids to the difference of the world around us how will they ever know what i do every day is a real labor of love no amount of money to be placed on my job the reward for me is knowing that i've made a difference in a child's you want life call that ms candace and some people think that young children can't understand the differences and they may not be able to handle the discussions about race but candace has proven them wrong that you
041can do it in a healthy and respectful way thank you we are ready for our next video as a child i didn't quite grasp the inequities that i was faced with until my junior year in high school i was reminded of those same inequities as a juvenile probation officer known to visit my probation meetings after school and witnessed how the inequities in schools built into the justices at that point i realized that it was a sense of urgency in order for me to be a part of the change it was necessary for me to get in the way by becoming an educator as an educator and equity leader i am constantly encouraging and engaging in courageous conversations with educators students and community members about their perspectives educational policies and programming that promote diversity equity inclusion
042and justice it is my belief that we are all good troublemakers we need to get in the way so that we can encourage the change that we want to see in education [Applause] thanks miss glenn for her work and dedication to our young ladies of excellence at renfrow she dedicates counselors hours and resources and time to support those students thank you miss glenn all cultures matter and we try and do facilitate an environment where you are proud of you're proud of who you are one of the ways to be paid the educational debt to black students is to make sure that we're always promoting positive interaction with all students but particularly our students of color who a lot of times have been underrepresented we like to let them know that to us they are everything
043we also like to look at the whole tile so when they come to us in a new school year we like to look at them with a blank slate um it doesn't matter what reputation they have here at the building with other teachers or staff members who like to um come to them with an unbiased perspective of who they are we also like to make sure that we are culturally relevant when we are doing our units of inquiry students are able to connect with it because we find things that are relevant to our black culture that they might not necessarily have been exposed to and and lastly one of the ways that we are change agents and we are the good troublemakers is that we like to foster those craziest conversations even though we know
044it's tough to navigate those types of conversations those are conversations that are much needed and we have made sure that we use the quadrant to help us to identify how initially we might be in the feeling quadrant however we move to the understanding and we like to make sure that when we see something that's inequitable we call it out this award was open to faculty staff admin as well as teams as we are expecting each school to have an equity team and we are excited to recognize these two women for their hard work nominator comments about miss newton scott were as follows since newton scott initiated the work with equity and in particular courageous conversations before it was introduced at the district level he's willing to have tough conversations about bias especially inflicted and yet
045he makes the person feel that it is coming from a place of love versus criticism her willingness to directly confront the issue of equity has created a more open workplace he supports the purchase and use of materials that represent diverse perspectives it makes a point to hire a wide range of teachers from different backgrounds and perspectives it takes time to read the latest research on equity in education attend training and take part in group discussions all students are at the forefront of this new discussion efforts but because of her connection to the black community indicator she is particularly adept at ensuring that their voices are represented and [Music] miss newton heard this newton scott's video and then the final ones we were having some technical difficulties but we want you to know that their applications
046were no less dynamic um that they also did amazing work i have a passion for history and bringing in voices and perspectives in my classroom through a variety of ways including diversifying my classroom library working on inquiry projects with my students sharing my love of learning with them and setting up my special environment to help them understand that representation matters and inclusion is a non-negotiable i plan virtual experiences for our grade levels to learn about extra sports justice while studying civil rights movement and our students researched a variety of fields like leaders that went beyond the future in our civil in our curriculum standards we are working to help students recognize equity and inequitable practices in the history they are learning and the current events to take the time to discuss justice and what it
047means to support equitable practices and opportunities for themselves and their family give me one i have two winners from fade because you can tell the equity work there is so entrenched in how they operate we've got two more and then we're going to announce our big our big winners nominator comments about miss cassandra black are as follows the black is the epitome of a good equity troublemaker she spends her days start to finish committed to justice nedwin her focus on diversity and inclusion can be evident in her efforts on the grading task force this school year her vocal input and evaluated critical eye brought clarity to the district-wide process of considering degrading tools and philosophies present within csv first in necessary debate regarding the culture surrounding grading and evaluation rather than access to the current
048culture and place she leaned into the necessary debate to present ideas and viewpoints necessary to expand the collected lens while maintaining classroom standards as an ap teacher and co-chair of the department cassandra black initiated researched created and eventually introduced and talked to the first black history course at dhs her innovation and initiative in support of diversifying the lenses of the curriculum have not gone unnoticed that she has taken as an educator has been in service to that historical education debt her primary goal is to serve her students with honesty love leadership and commitment not simply to the ideas of but to the full practice of justice equity diversity and inclusion [Applause] a lot of great strong nominees at the high school but cassandra stood out heads and shoulder above the rest due to her ongoing
049commitment to detolinizing our curriculum and many of the other lists of things that she is doing to help support our students and our last award is for the lower elementary school and pta csv lower elementary is it from kelly mary it says lower elementary pt oh the lower okay got it thank you so all of our lower elementaries have had very active pta dei committees and we want to recognize them for all that hard work and give them a shout out they've been the best they've been very supportive families in csd and we hope that that coalition continues to grow up through our middle and high school as oakhurst elementary's good equity troublemaker nominee could not receive a district award but it definitely deserves an honorable mention they are the csd lower elementary pta dei
050committees these individuals voluntarily came together to make things happen for students in city schools of decatur they plan together they organize together perhaps you attended some of their events such as a lunar new year celebration at lancaster park your child experienced some of the valuable teaching resources they shared to help decolonize our curriculum they have just been an invaluable resource all the way around and continue to do great work in the district so honorable mention and a shout out goes to oakhurst elementary good equity troublemaker we announce our good trouble equity our good our good equity troublemaker of the year i'd like to call one of our csc parents to the stage mr gary lowe he is a dad at claremont um and he is a relative of the honorable john lewis he and his
051family have started a foundation the john r lewis legacy institute and he was kind enough to be one of our judges for the award and he's here tonight to say a few words about the foundation his uncle's legacy and its connection to city schools of decatur welcome mr lower on behalf of the john robert lewis legacy institute the family of congressman lewis is truly an honor to be a part of the inaugural good troublemaker award started jrlli to encourage people to do exactly strive to encourage people to become change makers and to encourage people to have courageous conversations that's where change truly begins thank you dr banks for your commitment and leadership to bring awareness to csd in the pursuit of equitable outcomes each of the recipients are deserving this award like dr berman mentioned
052i had the opportunity to judge the videos and essays and was truly blown away by the passion be that changed member my son is the first grader at clermont elementary the best country by the way and i'm currently the co-president of the dia committee i've been able to have a fun front row seat challenges that we face in our community there is still a ton of work to do but this is just the beginning this is hope thank you again for allowing jrloi to be involved in this awesome process congrats again to the winners uh and congressman lewis always said when you see something that is not right that's not fair not just you have to say something you have to do something never be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble
053necessary thank you [Applause] if you don't mind i would love if you came and joined um with johnson davis to give out the final recognition um so drum roll please as mr lowe mentioned this was very very hard we were charged as a team to select one person from the amazing candidates that you saw coming before you today um and it was hard particularly as we are in such a pivotal moment right now as we look at our strategic plans we look at our district goals and who we are um and we decided this year to spread the love um this year there will be an administrator a staff member and a teacher who the troublemaker of the year award um so we are apologetic we did have some supply chain issues on getting the
054actual plaque and awards but we did want to we're really bummed about that but we did want to go ahead and recognize our staff our school winners with the beautiful baskets that they have um and they got lots of mini things and a nice little gift basket at their places they also got a parking space um so that you know that is kind of a coveted award for people at their schools um so the items that our troublemakers of the year will receive and then we'll get a plaque on our statue sometime this week if we're lucky they will get one thousand dollars towards an equity-themed conference training of their choice or towards expanding their equity work in their school or building they will be featured in the district newsletter and equity website and they
055for this is really a prize for us we will make have them go around and do a speaking tour equity work uh so we are going to call three people up so please hold your uh round of applause until we've got all three people up to take a photo um and i want to recognize our good troublemakers here tonight um the awards go to miss chanel hufka oh thank you so much i'm very much looking forward to continuing this tradition um going forward and one test thanks dr banks for her immense amount of work and time she put into organizing this award gathering the input on the front end getting the nominations going through all of that so thank you dr banks this is truly worthy of um recognizing the hard work for the people
056in our school system so thank you all right thank you yes at this time we will move on to public comments uh dr firma do we have any community members signed up we do we have uh eight people signed up all right so every meeting i read this statement it's a tad bit long but it's important an important reminder to the community about how we conduct public comments the following information is included in the board policy manual and members of the public also acknowledge this information when they sign up to speak this serves as a reminder for all speakers and members of the audience the opportunity to address the board during public comment is limited to district parents students residents employees businesses and organizations persons wishing to address the board during public comment must sign
057in 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 comments 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 unused time to other speakers comments during the public comment should be addressed to the board as a body and not to individual members at the chairs discretion persons violating this policy we will be asked to step down speakers should be courteous and professional speakers
058are 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 tears applause or shouts from the floor 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 during public comment however a member of the administrative team will follow up with the person speaking at the board meeting dr fuhrman will you please call our first speaker first up is maggie stern she's signed up in person she is not here so next up lauren parish do
059not here all right our third speaker signed up is patricia robertson had signed up to speak via zoom patricia on zoom nope all right so we're getting through these pretty fast all right our next person has signed up to be uh speaking in person jackson suttle with him yeah good energy some messages all right um thank you so much for taking a few minutes to hear us this is my son jackson suttle he used to attend the city of decatur schools while he was in first grade and it became clear he had learning differences he's now 10 years old and is going to share a story with you i would argue he's quite the change maker handle dear school board hello my name is jackson i used to go to city of decatur school now
060i go to the same people i'm leaving fully educated but other people aren't as lucky as me i when i first came here i didn't know how to read or write or even spell my mom thought i was dyslexic and she was right then i came here and they taught me how to read write and spell i never wanted to read and i didn't know how now after sync i read 300 page books by choice now you can help us discuss it by supporting the parents program at city of decatur schools so all kids can learn as easy as me it works for everyone not just just like not mexican kids like me now i have my confidence please give all these kids in my community community the confidence and the gift of confidence thank
061you jackson thank you the formalities i'm learning um okay perfect um so now i'll share my story in hopes of inspiring change so all the children in city decatur schools can learn to read with this phonics-based program literacy program one in every five people have dyslexia as a single mom i stretched my budget to move to the city of decatur so i could have a top-notch education for my two boys and be surrounded by a community that cares once it is clear that jackson was struggling with reading in first grade and second grade i went into problem solving mode i had no idea what to do but i knew it was formative years and if i didn't get this figured out soon his self-confidence would be impacted for the rest of his life like all
062moms when your child is in tears each night you go into action and do everything in your power to make sure they are set up for success i first figured out a way to pull three thousand dollars out of thin air to get a private psych ed evaluation to figure out the root of the problem then i set up intervention meetings through the school it was there i realized the school was trying to give the least amount of possible the least amount of support to help the most kids jackson was struggling with both reading and math because you have to read to do math problems city of decatur school psychologist told me that that her child didn't didn't read until the fourth grade so i had nothing to worry about another staff member in the
063meeting told me there were other students struggling more than jackson to which i said i hope their parents would be here having these meetings too jackson ended up getting a special education evaluation because i exercised my right as a parent to request one got the additional help he got additional help but it still wasn't enough we were really grateful for the extra support that he actually needed to be taught differently he needed phonics-based readings like orton gillingham his confidence was shattering and something needed to be done in a drastic way if the community wasn't able to teach him in a way that he could learn i needed to make a change i had no idea what to do or how to do it but i was going to make it happen i was determined to
064get him in an environment where he could thrive i had no idea how i was going to come up with forty thousand dollars to go to a specialized private school when i had an amazing school in my community i was determined to make it happen even if it meant selling my car renting my house or getting a second job three years later i i have now redirected college funds to elementary school to elementary school because there was no sense in saving for college if he didn't know how to read he's now an avid reader he is also an entrepreneur founding two businesses of his own as you can see justin has found his confidence again he has his wings and is ready to soar he is a kid that will change the world luckily you
065have the power to make a change like jackson not everyone has the means to pay for private school education there is a way to empower teachers to teach using orton gillingham methodology and give city of here give all city of cater students the gift of so they can sort you thank you hello my name is it's wonderful to see all of you i live in csd i'm the mom of a nine-year-old dyslexic we left the district two years ago in first grade because csd was unable to teach my son how to read i watched a happy confident little boy become withdrawn and label himself as stupid for not knowing how to read he was identified early as having learning issues and he received a highly coveted iep by kindergarten and no teacher learning specialist or
066school psychologist was willing to explain to me why and what was wrong with my son and why he couldn't read he received interventions first iep that did nothing to help him learn how to read as you know reading is fundamental but do you know what happens to little black boys who can't read they grow up in a less likely graduate from high school more likely to end up with low paying jobs and in a criminal justice system so i didn't understand what my son couldn't read and i didn't understand why the teachers weren't able to teach him so idea what you do when you have resources i hire orton gillingham trained tutor i paid for a private psych addie valve and ultimately he received a diagnosis of dyslexia i then said my son's escaped a
067specialized school for children's dyslexia and after less than a month in a school that uses structured literacy my son could read and now my son is confident engaging and loves school again but this came at a significant cost we have invested over 100 thousand dollars in four years to ensure that my son is able to do something that is so fundamental to learning in today's society which is to read and the fact that a top-notch school district like csd is not able to consistently teach bright smart kids how to read is embarrassing and the fact that children with dyslexia whose parents have limited resources will continue to struggle to read and fall behind academically is heartbreaking this is about equity a public school system should provide everyone with equal access to opportunities my son can
068read less than a month after leaving csc less than a month i want you to let that sink in there was nothing wrong with my son there was something wrong with our school system that is not using scientifically proven methods to teach reading providing all of our teachers with the skills and choose to teach reading and the expectation that it'd be done in a scientifically proven way must be a priority coc is currently selling many of our children and our teachers i ask that the board invest in a structured literacy program that is uniformed and applied in all of our classrooms so that no child will ever stop loving school or think that they are stupid because of the outdated practices being used to teach children how to read i am incredibly excited that my
069son is returning to tally next year in fourth grade now an excellent reader and i'm looking forward to working with you to make structured literacy a reality for csd and to serve our children if we are to close the achievement gap that we must close the resource gap and we need to provide all of our children with a quality education that meets their needs structured literacy benefits all of our children those with dyslexia and those without so i'm here to learn with you and i also want to thank you for your time and thank all of you for your service to our children and to the community thank you thank all right you up emily beard good evening i'm emily beer my husband john and i have lived in decatur now for 16 years and
070have two children a fifth grader tally and a first grader who should be at claremont but is also at the same school thank you um for the opportunity to speak to you again tonight um i wanna just hearken back to six years ago i was in this room this room was full of parents and kids parents just like michelle and tanika and i would count the stories of children who were failed our school system just like tonight there were tears and sadly not very much has changed the stories are exactly the same too many kids here are not learning to read um while the mission statement for csv speaks of helping kids reach their potential interesting since no less than five of us who've had meetings with leadership and special education have been told that
071we don't teach the potential of the child we teach to the standard five of us have heard that very very script when is this going to change when is it going to change i spoke at last month's meeting and shared the emotional account of our experience the time since i've spoke to dozens of parents have people reaching out to me teachers students sharing stories and experiences all of them heartbreaking we now have a tracking forum which documented 660 children from this district who have either left or are supplementing their learning with private tutoring kids with red flags that aren't being evaluated third graders not getting uh night at reading proficiently or at all when parent writing i don't think will ever recover her confidence about their daughter who who applied as a dyslexic learner was
072not identified in the school system teachers are doing their best but special education classrooms are maxed out one teacher told me that csd staff based on the number of students not the needs of students and so i'm here to call an end call for an end to this culture of alienating and gaslighting parents refusing services assuming that we will all just go away and pay lots of money to get our kids what they need this approach is eroding our community it's sending families out of the district and these families are spending thousands of dollars on evaluations and then more on tutoring the ones that can afford you what disturbs me most is that there are still so many kids with needs that aren't being met their parents their teachers their school administrators their board of
073education this is not success this is blatant failure and it must change we have three different accounts from different high school teachers and admins that at least 80 students in our high school are functionally illiterate more than 10 current csd teachers have reached out to me anonymously anonymously because they are concerned about being retaliated against if they speak out or sign their names to positions such as the one that you will be seeing that will be shared later we have a crisis of confidence on our hands and with it an opportunity to to uh respond appropriately and immediately and i'm here to hold you all accountable because this is where the book is going to stop so at the work session last month i heard upon inquiry about metrics and he asked how we would
074measure um the success of our new reading program in conversations with some of you over the last month i've heard loud and clear that the board doesn't make decisions about curriculum but that you will hold the district leaders accountable you've heard and we'll continue to hear many people ask stem women's science of reading the evidence-based strategies that we know successfully allow 95 of kids to become proficient readers csu simply isn't doing this in the work session we heard one leader say balanced literacy is the thing of the past if only because minutes later another leader backtracked and said that the approach was a combined strategy and this is a contradiction this is not complementary teachers are frustrated and kids aren't making progress so i'd like to know what the metric is what the timeline is
075and i'm hopeful as it was hopeful at the beginning of that april work session that our message and supportive structured literacy was heard um what i felt honestly was a tone-deaf celebratory self-congratulatory displaying just a disappointing display of professionalism there was getting laughter there was an air of a success that frankly felt like a slap in the face to the parents that have struggled to get our kids reading in the school district so please start addressing us please start addressing this you know i think the board should ask the curriculum leaders why are we so attached to balanced literacy i want to know what percentage of children are being identified at each grade level what screeners are being used and when will we the parents the public the taxpayers hear how well the plan is
076working what parent in the right mind is going to stand by and wait for their child to fail let me rephrase that what parent that is privileged and has the choice not to i was hoping to hear that the district would be taking a different task with special needs families that eligibility meetings would be handled differently that the approach to systematically denying 504 requests and deferring iep meetings would be stopped but none of that has been addressed what we got was a 40-minute celebration for a pilot park pilot program that is fairly out of the gate and has produced no publicly available data no evidence of progress to show that we are actually turning the tides in our approach to literacy so i'm calling on the board of education to hold the superintendent in the
077board of education along with the staff we want to know a support accountable for this i want to know what the metrics the board will be reviewing to know that the reading plan will work and when hans i really appreciated you asking the question in the work session and about measuring the progress and dr fuhrman in particular and the rest of the board i'll look forward to your answers to that question in the future thank you thank you our next speaker is patty nation uh swornwolf good evening i'm patty formal i'm the outgoing pto president at tally and mom to a fifth grader i've been on this learning to read journey now for six years but drinking from the fire hose for the past year since our son was diagnosed as a dyslexic i have
078a few points to offer for consideration for you tonight we also had to get external testing and tutoring and we're lucky that we can afford that we know that but i know that not everyone can do that and csv's reading instruction is fueling the inequities across our socioeconomics because right now the only people who can afford outside tutoring and schooling are the ones who are getting proper reading instruction so reading instructions it works for 95 percent of our students is the key to closing our achievement gap our current curriculum is a mash-up of balanced literacy with a splash of structure we must arm our teachers with the best tools and that means training and coaching them to choose better strategies and queuing and books with predictive texts the board must hold csv accountable to improve
079reading achievement including discontinuance of practices that have been proven unsuccessful or are not aligned with accepted research we have an opportunity to leverage the structured literacy programs that csd has already started to roll out but we must take it to the next step the next fiscal budget should provide funding for all page five reading teachers all special education teachers and key school and district administrators to be trained in a structured literacy approach like orton gillingham and letter training our kids deserve the best reading instruction and we all understand there's a cost to that the board must hold csd leaders accountable for allocating funds wisely into training core reading and intervention programs as well as other reading instruction purchases that are backed by peer-reviewed journals and science csd must serve children with learning differences and disabilities
080in accordance with the state and fellow federal eligibility laws and we are hearing over and over again that that is not happening the board should hold csv accountable for transparency into the request approval and denial statistics for all of the 504 and iep processes i mentioned the financial impact to families like us for all the additional instructions but there's an impact to the school district as well in lost revenue which is about 5 000 a child per year we can reduce that revenue drain csv needs to be held accountable for the loss of state revenue when families are forced to leave to access reading instruction that works research tells us that 95 of all children can learn to read when given proper instruction even those with learning differences we simply should not accept anything less
081than 95 proficiency and reading from the city schools of decatur there's a road map to make that happen and we should get on it as quickly as possible and stop off ramping our kids who can afford it into specialized schools equitable outcomes demand it thank you thank you copy of the petition yep our last week for this evening is dan basterville ebay chair board members madam superintendent good to see you all um and i am also here tonight to discuss the literacy issue um while my child does not experience um these issues luckily i became concerned about this issue when i learned the details of kids were struggling and not getting the appropriate assistance psd that they should have my concern over this issue is ultimately what led me to run for school board last
082year so it is a you know an issue that i continue to be very interested in and as if you've heard tonight that last month's meeting this continues to be a significant issue for many families i do appreciate the board and the superintendent spending the time you did discussing the issue in your last work session it shows you recognize there is an issue and the importance of addressing it however i think we have a long way to go to demonstrate that if your child has a language literacy issue that a parent can be confident that csd will adequately address it until we are able to reverse the trend of families withdrawing their children from csd and maybe even sending those children back into the system which is what we should want to see until we
083reduce the number of families having to see expensive outside academic support or worse not having the resources please assist or pay for outside support we will not have adequately addressed the issue and continue to fail these and future children you know this is a very complex issue i don't think it just has an easy solution and there's folks who have spoken who know a lot more about the substance of this issue than i do with kids who have um you know had to experience it and what they've had to go through but what i would like to ask you to consider to look at this issue is establishing a special advisory committee as the board did on the senior homestead center in the board's powers and the bylaws to establish something like a board advisory
084committee to look into the complex issues this you should include representation from all appropriate stakeholders and experts to develop a plan to recommend to the board and superintendent for addressing these issues my understanding is that there are other similarly sized school district city school districts in georgia that were requiring all their k-5 teachers the orton gillingham certified so why not csd that is the type of question along with other best practices that such an advisory committee could taper take a deeper dive into it i appreciate your time tonight and the hard work you do for all our children and i hope you will take this issue seriously as i know you all do thank you thank you all right thank you to all the community members for your comments um at this time i'll turn
085the agenda over to dr fuhrman for her superintendent's comments hey greetings everyone thank you for being here this evening um just a couple things i wanted to update uh the board as well as the public and anyone listening in um as i always do i give a general update of some things that have been going on on my calendar for the past month um so this month i've had the opportunity to collaborate with the directors from gsta to develop our work plan for our strategic planning process and policy review also attended the georgia superintendent association bootstrap conference for two days and had a great learning opportunity amongst other superintendents attended the legal update webinar and this is very informative and we'll be providing at the next work session a deeper dive into the legislative session
086and new laws that have been coming out that we're going to have to be implementing next school year um attended the second session of leadership in school communication training as well as first my first session in our um for just mike the courageous conversations about race practitioner training i had a great time this month meeting with the members staff and the rent for slt to gather input on the principal um what they wanted to see in the principal selection and then had my monthly principal check-ins i'm working with my staff uh lots of one-on-one check-ins with my staff working through the principal hiring process for renfrow and we will be announcing the candidate uh for the position later this week um and then also digging through and starting to work on the design process for
087the recommendations on our grading task force that we will be implementing in the fall um got around to all of our schools had time in classrooms saw amazing things in our buildings had a really great time at the tally tiger fest that was so much fun and then another great um opportunity to get out there and see student work was at the art exhibit at the solarium that was just a really great way to showcase all the talents of our students i do want to update the board on the strategic planning and policy work coming up with gsta um we've signed the contracts we are now in the process of setting dates and building the expanded timeline we have set the first date for the board to work with gsba and complete a swot analysis
088which is about strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats and that will be at their august 23rd work session so it's we were able to get it in an already scheduled session so you don't have to call another meeting so i thought that would be helpful i did want to share some recommendations i know in the community we've seen our code numbers spiking back up um and i'm making a plea for all staff members all students to wear a map when you are in our building um through the end of the school year we know that when you wear math you protect yourself you protect others um we also are really asking parents if you are showing any kind of symptoms to please go ahead and take a covet test we have daily testing here at the
089wilson center testing is the best way to help prevent those of people with covid from being in our school buildings and then also please please please if you are not feeling well stay home that is another huge way to help prevent any additional cases in our schools we know that the governor did pass a bill called the unmasked student bill and it basically makes instituting a mass mandate with this short amount of time left in our school year nearly impossible and very difficult to implement mandate and enforce so i would love to do that but is that a point in the year where really that is not feasible so just really asking everyone to try to be as compliant as possible and wearing masks when you are around others and we've heard the budget presentation
090at the hearing and i did want to point out some additional highlights we did do a very comprehensive communication plan for the budget this year i think we've been communicating about the budget i could do it in my sleep at this point also had enhanced opportunities for community input on the budget we did increase spending for instruction of people's staff by about six percent uh we increased counseling staff we added three additional counselors to our already set counseling caseload we did maintain the mill rate we are increasing the fund balance we are doing a step and or pay increase for every single category for eligible staff members we did increase equity personnel in the district as well as launch a new staffing plan across the district to help make sure that we are building as
091fiscally responsible with staff as possible also just a quick update i did present a lot of information at the work session last couple weeks ago but just a reminder we are in continuing in the research phase for two key areas in the recommendations that came out of the grading task force and that is regarding the grading scales and use of proficiency rubrics we'll be sharing a lot more information about that when we return in the fall after summer break to get teams up and going and give the principals more direction on how they're going to lead those efforts at their schools and definitely in the design phase of implementing and coming up with how we are going to roll out some of the changes um that are coming in the updated um screen book policies
092and i just wanted to highlight what those are um so some of the changes that will be implemented next year is how we approach zeros in our grade book um we are looking at ways of how to design that when i shared the work session that would be we are going to eliminate zeros yes but we also have to figure out how that gets rolled out to our teachers so that they have a way to do that and have some processes and procedures around that we are rolling out infinite campus as our main grade book reporting tool we will be embedding the georgia standards of excellence plus into our current rubric and i want to define gse plus because that is something that you're going to start seeing new as we move through the next
093school year and really what gse plus means is the georgia standards of excellence all courses have associated georgia standards of excellence some of them have ap standards some of them have ib stand aims that they use um so we want to make sure we're covering all those internationally approved standards that we use in our courses but then also in addition to that we are expanding our selection introduction and application of curriculum so that it doesn't really it doesn't elevate one voice over another one experience um and one way of being in the world so do you want to say that you're going to start seeing this gsc gse plus is an indicator of what we are talking about when we talk about what are our standards um so also eliminating inc um extra credit opportunities
094but we will have students have opportunities to retake assessments or redo work to make sure that we're gauging their mastery increasing the frequency of our grade reporting i talked last time about common assessment and formative assessments i just want to clarify formative assessments have been happening in the district that's i didn't intend for that to be the interpretation um informative assessments are happening and they are in the gradebook and they do not count um for the grade but do want to clarify that we are going to ask those to be at least weekly so that we can track progress over time um we are increasing our transparency and grading communication for staff and parents by updating our handbooks to make sure that those are readily available and we'll increase some more communication in the fall
095once all of the design processes are done and then we will be doing training for teachers and administrators and i did also want to share that we are not going to issue effort grades on report cards but we will communicate with parents through opportunities like parent conferences or one-on-one sessions so parents do know we are still expecting our students to do what they need to in the classroom we also will be tracking that through our pbis systems and how we look at students meeting expectations did also want to give a shout out we do have next wednesday is that next wednesday yes next wednesday we have a presentation from ellen hill the director of community engagement at the skank school we'll be providing a session for parents on what they need to know about reading
096so that is oh my updates any comments from the board no thank you all right so we will continue on with the chairs comments and last week was teacher appreciation week and i just want to say again on behalf of the school board thank you to all of our teachers um those three simple words carry so much meaning but they're not said enough and so i'd like to take this opportunity one more time to say thank you teachers um from the board we appreciate everything you do and we know that csd employees are what make this district truly special your compassion empathy knowledge and thank you for your commitment to our students may 1st was national principles day um i know we have some principles in the house we want to thank you city schools
097of decatur are so fortunate to have a team of highly qualified and dedicated principals leading our schools thank you principals for all of your hard work long hours and most importantly your dedication to ensuring all students in your schools are safe seen and successful thank you we received exciting news last week that city schools of decatur is fortunate i'm sorry the city schools of decatur has received the best communities for music education award from the national association of music merchants foundation this is a tremendous honor and a testament to the hard work of the music educators and students in our district thank you to our music educators students parents and supporters who make csd a special place for music education dhs students to i hope i'm standing right t o lyra was recently recognized as
098one of 216 graduating seniors from across georgia as a 2022 georgia scholars by the georgian department of education georgia scholars are students who carry exemplary course loads during their four years of high school perform excellent excellently and all courses successfully participated in interscholastic events at their schools and in their communities and assume leadership roles and extracurricular activities sponsored by their schools congratulations t.o on april 13th i had the honor of serving as a judge at renfrow's 15th annual stacey mama daniel poetry slam congratulations to our third place winner abigail lancaster second place winner nemaya howard and um for first place there was a tie nia batra and gabrielle domingo um shout out to dr don bolton on another phenomenal event and the way she continued to honor the late renfrow teacher and founder of the
099poetry slam stacey daniel callie street upper elementary media specialist ashley long received the american association of school librarians francis tenei award the award recognizes a school librarian with five years or less experience who demonstrates leadership qualities with students teachers and administrators congratulations ashley this university honors ceremony oakhurst principal tanisha frazier was awarded the outstanding doctor of education student award from the educational policy studies department congratulations to nisha please congratulate the decatur career academy stakeholders as they have earned college and career academy certification via the technical college system of georgia full college and career academy certification is the term used when an established college and career academy has fully implemented the cca model and met the certification standards and assurances congratulations to all the dca teachers students and stakeholders stan and stewart who was here earlier
100the faith instructional coach has been selected to serve as the city schools of decatur representative for the georgia department of education ela standards review teacher working committee she begins her committee work in may 2022 congratulations shannon who was also my classmate in the piedmont university specialist degree cohort we are all so proud of you glenwood westchester and the decatur virtual academy students welcomed former first daughters jenna bush hager and barbara pierce bush for a virtual author visit on april 12th the twin sisters were debuting their newest children's book the super power sisterhood the book will be released on april 19th this amazing opportunity for our students was brought to us by the little shop of storage and decatur and we always appreciate their support and partnership we are so grateful for them and that's because
101of their partnership that we are growing great readers congratulations to the advanced musical theater ensemble at decatur high school who were nominated for the best overall production at the 14th annual schuler awards which recognized excellence in musical theater in georgia there were they were only one of six schools given this honor great job dhs molly davis a 6th grade rinform middle school student is the state young georgia author first place 6th grade winner for her work title up in the air congratulations molly on april 22nd i had the pleasure of participating in renfrow's young ladies of excellence career symposium and we had miss um glenn who was who received one of the um good trouble awards who was one of the leaders of that um the symposium was an opportunity for yloe members to engage
102with women of color in various career fields the walo e symposium included a judge anesthesiologist entrepreneur former teacher lieutenant colonel in the u.s air force and a business analyst um thanks again to miss glenn miss shields ms singleton and ms q for making this happen it was a wonderful event dhs student tara smiley has been selected to attend georgia's 2022 work based learning top gun training in june this specialized training represents the best of the best based on their fiscal year 21 annual reports and recommendation from their ctae director congratulations tara decatur career academy students participated in this year's high school design competition sponsored by the atlanta chapter of the american institute of architects the competition focused on a design prompt to which individuals or groups created a solution using their creativity and architectural knowledgement
103and architectural knowledge career academy students aiden beasley asha foley michael wolff sam coblin and jackson lee were recognized with awards may 6 was school lunch hero day and we think our school nutrition staff are definitely heroes thank you for all of the healthy and delicious meals you prepare for students and staff each day spring has been a wildly successful season for decatur sports at renfrow and decatur high our teams competed and qualified for the ghsa state tournament in baseball golf lacrosse tennis track and field and soccer we are proud of our student athletes who continue to impress in competition and in the classroom thank you to all of our coaches who dedicate their time and energy to providing positive experiences for our student athletes and their families shout out to our girls soccer program whose
104terrific season ended last week the bulldogs faced neighborhood rival midtown knights in the final four of ghsa state tournament the game ended with a final score of 0-2 and thank you to all of the fans who showed up to support our team great job bulldogs while most sports have wrapped up we're excited to still have the continued opportunity to celebrate our dhs baseball and track and field programs good luck bulldog baseball and track and field the annual decatur high school poetry slam exhibited the many talents of our artists and poets here at decatur high school thank you to def for once again sponsoring this event special thanks to dhs student kayla evans who organized the event the event with the guidance from dr bolton at renfrow the second runner-up was seven baker first runner-up amani
105saleem and the winner was nashon smith our decatur high school concert band had their final performance of the year last friday as usual the night was filled with elegant music played by our talented students and led by band director tyler elrick the concert marked mr elworth's final performance and our dhs band with our dhs band we appreciate all he has done over the past two years to elevate the marching band and concert band to new heights last but not least i was asked by mayor garrett to attend the public meeting for alpha kappa alpha sorority's south atlantic regional conference in her absence it was my honor to represent the city of decatur and the school board this concludes my cheers comments a lot of celebrations [Laughter] all right so now we will move on to
106the consent agenda items which include personnel report school nutrition and financial reports can i please have a motion to approve the consent items one through three move to approve content one two three thank you matt have a second second thank you all in favor please say aye all right thank you the consent agenda items one to three are approved we now move on to our discussion items um for this evening and dr fuhrman will begin the presentation thank you and i want to thank our members that are going to present um from the spanish department as well as mr moses for malden and james for your patience we've had a lot on the agenda this evening but i want to bring up uh ask dr beam and her team to come up and present the
107program evaluation of the language program oh mr pereira is going to present thank you welcome good evening everyone thanks for having me here tonight for those that don't know me my name is grant pereira um ninth year here at city schools decatur split time sort of between renfrow and now at the high school um this year i've also been serving in the capacity of language leader as a part of that role dr beam and i and all of the language teachers of k-12 um says thanks to everyone who's been involved put together this presentation and this evaluation so we started out with our objectives what we wanted to accomplish as a part of this evaluation so we really wanted to define the k-12 program goals and indicators of success for our language classes review our
108current practices develop common units resources language learning targets assessments grade and course level standards and outcomes and develop program recommendations as we look to the future so let's start out with our indicators of success according to board policy our students will be proficient in one world language in addition to english upon graduation in discussions about what metric we would use to evaluate that we settled on a five a score of five or greater on an idea exam we currently don't have any ap language classes or a score of a six or greater on the stamp evaluation and we'll talk a little bit more about that when we get into digging into the data a little bit um so starting out reviewing our current practices i think one of the things that sets city schools as
109a patient to cater a part or has anyway is that we have supported world language instruction in elementary schools which we believe sets a strong foundation for our students um csd strives to develop students will build a better world through intercultural understanding and respect so to that end we believe that language learning encourages students of all ages to think critically and challenge assumptions encourages students of all ages to consider both local and global contexts for their thinking and also obviously develops multilingual students as an aside from that bullet point what we find in high school is that um kids coming up with language instruction by the time they get to the high school they have functional proficiency in one language and decide to take on a third and sometimes a fourth language advice as we
110began to review our programs um so speaking for the lower elementaries program goals here really are to begin to build fluency through input um input is is keying when it comes to language acquisition students begin to acquire basic lexicon or vocabulary and structures through songs and storytelling we also are introduced to cultural differences and work on basic fluency in reading and speaking um in a second language so here we have a message from senora kindergarten class i believe [Music] so you can see that um students begin to learn how to pronounce very well as a young age they have good pronunciation they also start to internalize fundamental structures that will help them your language ability so in continuation when we head into the elementary schools as linguists we talk about um the acquisition of language
111through what we call circling and if you can imagine circling being an oval that starts at one point and keeps coming around um we circle through topics and themes each time trying to expand the circle outwards so the kids for example they get tired of hearing about family every year they ask you like why do we have to keep talking about the family why do we have to talk about the family well when all of a sudden you're in 12th grade and we have to talk about your identity and family identity your cultural identity linguistic identity these things become more and more complicated to express as our language evolves so we have to circle through these themes throughout the 12 years of instruction so in the upper elementaries we're again circling through some of the
112um same ideas as the lower end of it i'm sorry it's about my bedtime guys so um we're circling through some of those things continuing with input and receptive skills um we're also beginning to introduce the ib schemes and we'll talk a little a little bit later and encouraging kids to think globally and act locally and here we have a few kids from tally about their spanish experience and i like spanish because it teaches you how to speak a different language which means you can talk to more people and make more friends or last names julia learn a new language go to different pages and still process people that you may not talk to if they don't learn new language well my name is reminder [Music] and i think that communicating is a big part
113of life and learning how to communicate with many languages different ways responsible is really important i mean this passion i believe spanish is important because i play soccer and soccer is a big part of spain and mexico so i can communicate with if i go there as we continue um into the upper schools into the nypd program the middle yields programs and diploma again we're continuing with input but it's king but receptive skills have to also at some point become productive skills so we continue with the listening and the reading but we're also trying to get kids to be able to communicate both in written and spoken language um we begin to introduce structures in the middle schools in the middle years program grammatical structures it's really important later on for kids to have sort
114of advanced grammatical structures in place to use iv does it lend itself a lot to direct grammatical instruction we mainly try to do this again through through comprehensible input and circling through themes um kids need to develop more of a lexagon again related to these themes so we're talking we talk repetition a lot in language acquisition and so we're asked why we're seeing these scenes come up and up again it's because every time it's plus one to review what they learned in the lower languages expand upon that learning by the time they get to us in junior and senior year um they're in the diploma program currently i i'm not going to figure out numbers because i don't know exactly have hundreds of kids taking diploma tests at the end of their senior year in
115language we expand upon these five id themes of sharing the planet human ingenuity identity experiences and social life organizations you can imagine that all of a sudden a junior in high school doing a theme on sharing the planet about say the effects of globalization on the planet i mean these are very um sort of academic and high-level things they're learning about concepts they might not have heard before and and layering the language on top of that um so we need these kids to come to us in junior and senior year with a very high level of language of proficiency um the two-year course at the end is evaluated towards the end of their senior year for example for us we have an internal component where kids are subjected to a 15-minute interview where they have
116to do a range of tasks ranging from describing pictures related to one of the thematic units they've studied over the last two years or um analyzing a work of literature students then move into a conversation with the with the instructor a very high level order of questioning related to the themes they studied and then just general discussions so for us it's really important for kids to get to the 11th and 12th grade with a high level of proficiency i feel like elementary instruction middle school instruction has really helped us to have a very successful program as we'll see in the data in a second um i'm also very grateful for the board and i'm happy to announce that we've linked them the runway for french and german and those languages are now represented at the
117middle school so i do believe that that's going to ultimately affect our outcomes for all the languages later on down the road so i have a couple of messages from a couple of our graduating seniors for you know [Music] and hi guys so my name is keiko i'm a graduating senior in the class of 2017. i just wanted to say thank you so much for these past 12 years of being able to learn spanish here in cities listed here it has given me an incredible confidence um speaking spanish it's open new doors and opportunities to meet amazing people and also appreciate a culture that's totally different from mine and so i hope it stays a flourishing program here indicators thank you just one more of our graduating seniors uh foreign [Music] so for me i
118think the most important part is that we can have real discussions even arguments um and we express ourselves and appeals genuine ways in a different language it's almost easier for me to have those conversations in a different language it kind of puts us all like a different level of you know comfort which is actually relaxing and then also i've learned so much about how spanish can help me in my life and open new doors for me my job and just in life in general usually obviously these two kids are you know at the top of the class as far as language proficiency is the sarah's the general question yeah how did he end up with a spanish actor so he actually um lived abroad in madrid for a year and caico the other students lived
119at argentina through the program that runs through decatur high school in the exchange um i will say all of these kids are at the top of their class as far as their spanish should be concerned if you enter one of our language classrooms standard level or higher level of high school and just hang out for a second all you're going to hear are language communities of kids that are really trying to express themselves to wherever they are in the language so um i would agree i've been in many of the language classes the french in particular stood out to me it's like what yeah i mean it's amazing but some of those kids have been in the hallway and passing they're talking to each other in spanish or you know um they're really trying they're
120also like they've they're really into all of a sudden the idea of i'm a spanish speaker i'm a part of the community i'm not a passive learner i'm an active learner of this i'm engaging in the culture i'm you know i watch the newest netflix series i looked at it to the new bad bunny record all that kind of thing all right so other than just student perspective what else can we say about the the current state of language in the district um i'm not going to bore you with too much of that so i know you like it um let's just let's just go over a little bit of it so we talked about stamps i think it's important to recognize the stamps one through nine scale ties in well with actual which is
121the american council for the teaching of foreign language their scale um we said that sort of as a base that we wanted kids to be at that intermediate high level and for us to say that they were actually proficient by the time they left decatur high school with the program so current stamp data and you can see that we've taken a step back over the last couple of years the the boxes i highlight for a specific reason um the majority so we tested in the seventh grade and in the tenth grade the majority of our seventh grade students are in what we call year two even though it doesn't really match up with year two um at other more traditional schools you can see that we're reaching up towards that six or heading halfway there
122um sort of at a novice high level you can also see that 2020 scores compared to 2022 scores to get this um obviously i have to put some blame on on endemic and on distance learning and everything that transpired over the last year and a half but i i think it's important for me to state that um the junior this year's juniors are the last group of kids in city schools of caterer to receive five days a week of instruction of language instruction at the elementary school so i suspect that as the years progress what we're going to see the downward tread in these numbers and these numbers continue because our kids are receiving less instruction at the elementary level um the the numbers at the bottom that are highlighted are sophomore groups most of
123our kids are in spanish 4 5 and 6. you can see that particularly the six kids and the the the kids at level six uh which is a fair amount of kids is a group of about 60 students um are approaching that benchmark of being um what we consider proficient um four and five so now most of our freshmen are in four most of our sophomores aren't five and spanish at six i think students are going to actually be enrolled in ib classes moving forward mainly because historically in city schools of caterer at the middle school we had an accelerated spanish program so we had kids that were in one level of spanish and then there were like there was a standard class there are other kids now we've just chosen differentiation and we have
124all the kids regardless of in sort of sixth seventh and eighth grade spanish so that levels the playing field for them which means that most of our incoming freshmen are in spanish four and most of our sophomores are the spanish five currently um i will be curious to watch this data over the coming years as language and instruction of the elementary schools seems like it's becoming less and less over time i think in 2016 it went down to three hours a week um and then now i i'm not aware of all the plans at all the schools but it feels like different schools have different plans for how much language instruction is going to happen i think that should be norms in some way but that's an aside so if we take a look at
125some iv data unfortunately we don't have very current ib data the last time that our kids stopped for examinations was in 2019 because of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 we sent internal assessments out um so that was that's the teacher interview part that i was discussing um you can see that we have very high tax rates both in standard level and higher level in 2020 and that was true for 2021 as well um the numbers where it says that only 94 pass rate are only 92 pass rate for us any kid that actually sat down for the examination in spanish they all passed 100 of them but when ib factors in people that don't sit like the kids that don't show up for examination they'll get considered like failures or kids that didn't do
126it but for us for any kid that took the spanish ib either sl or hl kid in 19 and 20 and 21 we had 100 pass rate so every kid scored a three or greater and you can see that our nhl line up with the world percentage which is i mean generally speaking when you talk to people from the ib um i dna especially kids from the united states since four way lower than kids on the international level so the fact that we're approaching a world standard i think um speaks a lot to the to the kids that did get k through 12 what we were able to do with them if we take if we look briefly at the french and german data um i think it's important to note how much less of
127a runway those students have and so if we look at that data to me that further indicates the need for strengthening and listening the language programs and the runaways that kids have um to experience to have experienced language so this year or i say this year really this is a couple years of work now but we've been working to create common units common learning targets common assessments across all the groups thank you dr b elementary people together this year and they i know they've been working on getting yale framework and common units and agreements done um with the addition of german and french the middle school we've been meeting to make sure that kids have common experiences of both languages so the units might not exactly match if i have a unit on the regions
128of spain that's all that's obviously not going to work in the french german class but just so regions of france regions of germany that way we have equitable experiences across the languages um also common assessments lastly recommendations and i really need some glasses right now so the diploma teams amongst all languages really need some time to meet and do the same work that the myth that the nyp teams are able to do in terms of making sure that the units match up and that the experiences amongst french german and spanish ib students are all equitable set aside planning time to continue to monitor and improve these units and the assessment types across all grade levels and languages um three five seems to be the three five groups seems to be the groups that are that
129are most different between the two schools and i think some time needs to be set aside um with leadership to sort of make sure that those those outcomes are similar between those groups um i think norming grading and working on integrator reliability across languages making sure that whatever we're using for grading what the standard we're using the rubrics we're using to address those standards that everyone's understanding those and using them in the same way and i really think that the board should relook and rethink about the amount of language instructions occurring at the elementary schools i know that funding is is always an issue and see um having that level of support all the way through really can really produces kids that are motivated to speak the language to learn other languages to travel and
130engage with the cultures um so if we wanted to continue success i i recommend that we reinvest in elementary language thank you oh yeah yeah this is the discussion oh i'm sorry um when when when students are testing at that iv level if they've focused on a particular language for example german but happen to be fluent in spanish or another language are they able to take across multiple languages or is it limited only to their classroom we certainly have kids in this 12th grade here in multiple languages typically the ib doesn't want kids that have been instructed in the language in another country like in the country of origin or one of the countries that origin is that language they don't want that kid for the examination as their language be in our previous school
131we had kids for example we had a huge population that spoke arabic and those kids were able to sit for language a arabic and actually take language b as their english course um some city schools of communicators certainly could get creative um in that way um so the metric i think is the amount of time spent is like actually formally educated in that language i do think that heritage speakers the people that speak the language at home that aren't necessarily instructed in the language can sit for that as their language be yeah i mean what struck me was that little diploma notation about bilinguality and whether that would be for the kids who actually have that if that was something right now i mean i feel like this year we could have that feel on
132you know diplomas is my question grant is the bilingual feel like do you how what is the process for that is that something you do on a regular basis or just when kids request it or no well in the past um in previous years um it was it was work that the instructional coach did at the high school um it was something that was taken on by that office it is a process there's an application process per student you have to have a bunch of information i can certainly forward you um emails that i've received from the state district person about this um but i wish i could say that it'd be something that i have time to like jump on and take care of for our students because they deserve it but i think
133that it's something that we should it should be a goal this is not like anything that has to be answered now just something i would like to understand um because i do know that we did reduce this instruction in elementary school i don't know that it's only budget related i think that there's like a limited number of hours in the day related but like so i would i would just like to understand the thinking that had gone behind that and what those trade-offs were yeah and i don't remember what year they actually did decrease the hour from the five days 2016 was the last year of full or at least that's what i understand from the elementary teachers yeah so i know that i mean if at some point yes we can get you that
134information i can see what i can find out um but i appreciate the presentation grant i think you guys did a great job thank you for all the extra time that it took to go into that and all the hard work you guys have been doing for that and it's got a little fan club here with you um but yeah i really appreciate that and as we look into strategic planning coming up i'm going to take your recommendations and put that i think in a work group for our strategic planning process and see what are the recommendations as they look through overall district strategic and planning going forward i have ideas for the conversation we'll invite you ask and you shall receive unfortunately thank you thank you all right well long at last we have
135um the doug moses from mauldin jenkins to present our um fy21 audit results correct all right well welcome up thank you for being so patient sir all right good evening and thanks for having me here today to present the art results and hopefully i won't bore you guys too much i'm trying to make this brief but hopefully you have a chance to look at the financial statements the splost performance audit report management letter and as well as this autograph discussion analysis which is what i'll be presenting from today and kind of touching on the highlights if you have any questions you can stop and ask or wait to explain just uh some quick information about martin jenkins um we actually opened um since last time i've um presented to you all we have added three
136new offices in north alabama so we have all three huntsville florence and athens uh alabama so that's a total of 12 offices across five states and we audit over 565 governments in the southeast so very proud of that number first the engagement engagement team again i was the partner responsible for the overall engagement with about 23 years of experience allison whitworth was the engagement manager she had five years of experience and then this year i had meredith lipson to do the quality assurance review and she has um 31 years of experience and we all spend 100 of our time doing governmental artists so we bring a lot of instructions to the field and then that belongs to other industries that we serve and other services that we provide other than your traditional we do have
137a governmental advisory practice as well that does a lot of consulting and assessments performance audits and things of that nature for state and local governments as well right as far as the financial statements the financial statements are the responsibility of the board and management our responsibility as your external and independent auditor is to give an opinion on the kind of statements and we've issued an unmodified opinion which is the clean opinion which is what you will hope to get from the external audit uh you can see that the audit report date was added february 28 2022 which means that it wasn't issued by december 31st which is the deadline um that was no fault to the district or marlon jenkins we ran across an issue with um the escher funds in terms of whether or
138not certain expenditures were eligible and so we had several meetings with the georgia department of audits the georgia department of education as well as reached out to the federal department of education as well to kind of make sure that everyone was on the same page so we had put a pause on issuing any of our school district's audits or audit reports until that matter was resolved which was after december 31st we also um had to perform a single audit on the federal war programs which was the esser program which was determined to be a major program and it was uh we issued a clean opinion on that program as well and then we also did a performance audit splash performance audit and there were no issues with that audit as the expenditures were for allowable
139calls and of course we referendum as far as our relationship with commandment we receive full cooperation from management staff and others there are no disagreements with management on accounting issues or financial reporting matters and we did have some audit adjustments those adjustments are reflected in your financial statements as well as in the district's general lecture and there are no past audit adjustments meaning that anything that came to our attention those adjustments were proposed and made to your financial statements main thing here i want to point out is that we are independent of the school system and its financial reporting process in accordance with aicpa professional standards there are no fees paid to martin jenkins for any type of management that will impact our independence that's right so all right the next few slides can kind
140of go over some financial trends on this chart here is looking at your governmental activities net positional equity over the last six years so when i talk about governmental activity it's taking your general fund your special revenue funds your capital project funds on a full accrual basis of accounting so it's reflecting capital assets and long-term liability and so you're in that position you see half decline uh from the prior year uh 2020 it was at 70.3 million it dropped down to 53.8 million as of june 30 2021 and that's about a 16.5 million decrease and the reason for that decrease is you all had an increase in your um trs net pension liability as well as the uh opera which is the other post-employment benefits for your proportion share of that state health benefit plan
141and so uh the opel actually increased about 11.7 million dollars of the prior year and then also your pension liability increases about 12.7 million dollars so that's the reason why your net position actually and most governments saw that um last year uh this next slide is looking at your general fund as well as all of your governmental funds combined fund balance as a percentage of total expenditures again this is a snapshot in time doesn't mean that you're at this percentage throughout the year but as of june 30 this is where you're at and a good rule of thumb is to have anywhere from two to three months reserved or you know 16 to 25 percent and you're all seeing right at 21 as of june 30 20 21 which is comparable to the prior year
142it was at 22 so you right at two and a half months reserved which means that you all do not have to issue a tax anticipation note uh to get you through those subsequent months into the property taxes next slide is looking at your general fund and other governmental funds fund balance over the last several years and your general fund uh fund balance went from 17.3 million to about 10.6 million as of june 30 2021 and the reason for that decrease is that you had an increase in staff and benefits as a result of the increase in enrollment and then for your other governmental funds it went from 8.3 million in 2020 to about 12.2 million in 2021 and the bulk of that increase relates to the increase in fund balance for your district-wide capital
143project boss funds uh last chart here is looking at your general fine revenues and expenditures over the last five years and your general fund revenues were pretty consistent and just a slight decline from 76.4 million in 2020 to about 75.5 million in 2021 while increasing your expenditures going from uh 77.9 million to about 81.6 million dollars um in 2021. all right so we didn't have any findings so hats off to management staff and others were working very hard to ensure that the district's records were in great shape to be audited uh we did have two um management points or recommendations for improvement this first one deals with the federal programs fund anytime you have a grant fund or multiple grant fund which is a pressure revenue fund you typically don't expect to see a surplus
144and fund balance or a deficit and fund balance because those grants are on the reimbursement basis so you're going to have you know the matching coming from transfers and general funds so basically your revenues and transfers in normally will equal your expenditures and then you wouldn't have any fundamentals so we did notice about 230 of a deficit fund balance and so we did propose a journey entry to show a transfer fund to the federal program fund to make that deficit we just need to make sure that you're in that we're looking at all your grant activities and make sure that you know if any transfers need to be reported uh within that fund to what the investment that's done and then the last management point deals with bulk purchases of capital assets i think we
145had this as a management point a few years ago um so basically um there was some inconsistency as far as governments how they recognize book purchases so your capitalization threshold is five thousand dollars so any individual item that is five thousand dollars or more you're going to capitalize and depreciate that asset but if you have individual items less than that you weren't capitalizing but this whole implementation guide says that if you have a material or significant bulk purchase of items that individually is less than your capitalization threshold but still material then you need to capitalize those assets and so we did have to uh make um some entries to actually where you got purchased some chromebooks laptops that were individually less than five thousand dollar threshold to go ahead and capitalize those amounts are you
146recommending that we depreciate them individually or has that both purchased you can you can do it as a bulk yes that's a lot of yeah a lot of work okay yes um next slide is kind of showing new gatsby standards uh that are constantly being implemented so gassy is the government accounting status board they set the accounting standards for you know governments are following honors to fall as well um you know we have a former partner joe black who actually left the firm he is currently the chairperson of gaston so i've always told him please just try not to implement we're almost approaching 100 when i started we were at 34. um but the main one i want to point out here is gas and statement number 87 dealing with leases and this is applicable
147for the current year that you're in between 22 and so it's going to require governments to evaluate all of their lease arrangements and more than likely all of those weeks arrangements you're going to recognize the liability in an asset having classes about this in the last three years to make sure that our clients begin the last thing just want to talk about that we still offer free continuing education classes to our clients we try to do it four times a year on this past year we probably had about 14 classes a lot of that covering the federal funds and the lack of guidance and all that and so we want to make sure our clients stay aggressive all those issues and so we have more than our number four classes throughout the year so you
148see the various topics that we uh teach and we actually had one last week to cover um you know gatsby updates so that kind of concludes my presentation it was an honor and pleasure to provide auditing services for the school district and uh pretty good any other questions thank you thank you good to see you have a good evening thank you all right we will now move on to our action items for the board this evening our first action item is the final approval of the fiscal year 2023 budget may have a motion to approve the final fiscal year 2023 budget including the school nutrition budget the capital funds or e-splash budget the special revenue budget and the general funds budget i moved to approve the final fiscal year 23 budget including the nutrition budget
149the capital funds response budget the revenue special revenue budget and the general fund they have a second second all in favor please say aye thank you all right the final fiscal year 2023 budget including the school nutrition budget the capital funds or east boss budget the special revenue budget and the general funds budget is approved a second action item tonight is to approve the fiscal year 23 tentative military the tentative millage rate for fiscal year 23 budget is 20 21. can i have a motion to approve the tentative millage rate at 21 for the fiscal year 23 budget i moved to approve the 10 of the candidates millage rate of 21 for the fiscal year 23 budget thank you man have a second okay the tentative millage rate of 21 for the fiscal year 23
150budget is approved oh i'm sorry all right um all in favor please say aye hi hi thank you thank you honestly the tennessee millage rate of 21 for the fiscal year 23 budget is approved thank you for attention that yeah our third action item this evening is to approve the new name for our middle school first i'd like to ask dr furman to share a quick review so all the way back in october the board approved a new naming protocol for our school building um and that is what has driven us to go through this process of updating the name for retro middle school um so we did some public input sessions and gathered some names from the public we took the names that were submitted from the public and gave those to our school
151system charter leadership team to review and propose three names to put before the board and the three names that the system chartered leadership team put before the board were beacon hill middle school beacon middle school and trinity middle school all right thank you dr fuhrman would any board member like to make a recommendation for the new name of the middle school i am deeply honored to recommend the name beacon hill middle school for the board's approval thank you um may i have a motion to [Laughter] all right is there a second second no that was the recommendation so wait we need them we need to yes i i have a recommendation and then a motion to approve that name right right so may i have a motion to approve the name beacon hill for our
152middle school motion to approve the nickname for middle school beacon hill middle school thank you may i have a second second all those in favor of changing the name of our middle school from riverfront middle school to beacon hill middle school please say aye hi thank you i'm proud to approve the new name for our middle school as beacon hill middle school all right the board was provided monthly data reports for each school as information only this month the board was also provided two additional reports one from the finance department and one from the information services department summarizing the state of the department including required annual reporting on various items as identified in the current board manual so any questions about any of those things okay all right we will move on to future dates
153um we have future dates listed on the agenda for upcoming meetings trainings and retreats um board members do you have any questions about future dates for the work of the board no questions okay all right well thank you all for joining us this evening as this meeting is adjourned at 8 52 p.m