February 8, 2022, Board of Education Meeting

001good evening and welcome the board concluded our executive session at 6 25 pm and we have one action item from the executive session agenda that the board will take action on later in the regular agenda regarding dr fuhrman's contract i would like to call to order the regular csd board meeting for february 8 2022 at 6 35 pm thank you for joining us this evening at this time i'd like to ask everyone to join me in a moment of silent reflection 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 the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all what members are there any revisions to the agenda

002i'll have one um just one ask um for the board is when we get through miss broome's presentation um if we're in agreement if the board's in agreement on which option to take for the um adjustment of this fy 22 budget that we do a tentative approval so that we can move forward with planning okay all right so can i have a motion to approve the agenda for this meeting thank you all in favor of approving the agenda for this evening please say aye aye thank you the agenda for this evening is approved our next agenda item is the approval of the minutes from the regular board meeting on january 11 2022 and the work session minutes from january 25th 2022. can i have a motion to approve the minutes from the previous two board

003meetings i moved to approve the agenda for the last two board meetings can i have a second thank you all in favor of approving the minutes from the january 11th 2022 meeting and the january 20 25th 2022 meeting please say aye thank you the minutes for the january 11 2022 board meeting and the work session on the 20 january 25th 2020 two meetings are approved at this time we will move in on our agenda to the spotlight section where we will hear from the staff at winona park elementary as well as ms gail rothman from the executive director of the decatur education foundation i will ask dr fuhrman to please visit our spotlight presenters thank you madam chair um we are going to start this evening with our spotlight presentation from gail rothman executive director

004from the decatur education foundation she's going to be sharing the results of a partnership that def did with vox vox atlanta to hear from decatur youth on the topic of mental health over the summer should they host box hosted listening sessions with teens from city schools of decatur to solicit their input about mental health needs a current assessment bar current assets and barriers and their hopes for the future um gail welcome thank you i prefer to leave my message while i speak okay um thank you and good evening it's so nice to see all of you in person for a change and get out of my house i'm really glad to be here tonight to share with our elected school board members our superintendent and staff and also the public about what we learned from

005youth um through our partnership with box atlanta but i want to start by sharing a part of my job that may not be widely known it's the hardest part of my work but also the thing that is most sacred about my work for over a dozen years i have sat with grieving families who have lost children and listened to them share about the lives cut short as i work with them to find ways to channel their grief into some kind of legacy or memorial for their child in too many cases these stories have a mental health component this thursday two days from now i will once again sit with a family a little more than a year after the tragic suicide of their daughter i'd like to ask us all to observe a moment of

006silence in memory of too many students we have lost to what is now a mental health epidemic in our country in light of the topic of tonight's spotlight i would also like to ask board members to allow me more than the usual five to 10 minutes as i know you will be truly interested in what our teams have to say about their experiences and i hope you will be moved by what you hear to make even better decisions for our youth in this upcoming budget year so i want to give a little bit of history and context for those of you who this may be review for some of you but um you may not know how def got into the business of behavioral health and funding and advocating for our kids mental health needs

007in may 2016 joe bodine who was a resident of decatur and had graduated from the city of schools of decatur the year before in 2015 lost his battle with addiction he had mental health issues and heroin addiction and unfortunately uh his life was ended in 2016 with an overdose and his mother began and his family began to fund educator education foundation joe's fund at that point lori heyman joe's mom started on us on a journey that would end um up with the decatur student center which i know you have all toured and ribbon cut and we're all very proud to finally have that level of support in our high school and you can see since then there was a lot of work that went into getting us to where we are now the student center

008was created after much input from the community a position was created in the budget which is a huge um was a huge win um diane andre is our director of the student center and you can see um we had a behavioral health committee and we made the decision to invest and rent for middle school 100 000 for the expansion of the center to the middle school where we see alarming rates of mental health challenges and substance misuse um we've redesigned and renovated the tata student center and and and now we are realizing that we need much more input from our use of where to go next so box atlanta has been doing um is in the business of youth development and used voice for a very long time over 25 years and um this is

009just to give a little bit of context there was a there's a 900 person um study that was done a survey with youth across atlanta included dekalb county fulton county um and the area and this just gives you a little context beyond the 30 kids that we were able to speak with about what's going on with our students more globally and as you can see by far the biggest cause of stress in students lives not surprising is school followed by life after high school which also part of school body issues and family challenges and you can see that there are some good coping with stress some ideas there that we can learn from creative outlets sports exercise writing things that allow kids to express themselves obviously high on the list very very observing trends here

010on the suicide ideation we've only seen those numbers go up um you know we our community is not the only community of course grappling with this and covet has made it worse these numbers have gone up significantly in just one year um and that's on suicidal ideation and also knowing someone who has had suicidal ideation a little bit of good news is that on the stigma side of things this generation coming through now um peer-to-peer there's a lot more conversations if you're on social media with any kind of youth component you can see kids are talking about it they're out there with it they're sharing it with friends and there's a lot more acceptance and the peer side of things we need a lot of work on the adult side of things i would say

011so i would encourage everybody to um when he's listening and also the board to really look into this surveybox atlanta.org you can get all of the information so what did we do we wanted to hear from you um vox has a really interesting methodology because i think when adults want to hear from youth we typically do a survey i know it's easy we have google we google survey everybody and then it makes nice little charts and graphs and things and that's how we get information but vox really is gonna say that's really not the way to get used to feel valued and to have them participate and so um we contracted with them it was not cheap they have years and years of expertise we were lucky enough that there were two decatur cities uh

012decatur high school students who had been working with vox and were trained leaders and facilitators um dinah rogers and sophie remember last name but it'll come up in the slide and they really spearheaded the project to design and facilitate the sessions for youth they met with me extensively to find out what does the ef want to learn from this and then they crafted sessions that use trauma informed which they told me is now called healing centers i'm saying it's a positive way but i'm using healing centered practices to make teens feel heard and comfortable and set ground rules so they put a lot into this also a big difference is we pay use for their time this partnership a lot of the money that def spent is we say to kids kids we value your

013input and we're willing to pay for it because you know that's that's we should value their time so this really it worked the kids had a lot of good positive things to say i'm going to email each of you the more in-depth report that has all of the raw data and share with you tonight sort of the higher level themes so i'm going to play the video so part of what vox does is stock started as a a newspaper if you've been around atlanta a long time you may remember they used to drop off stacks of a youth driven youth written uh youth produced newspaper and now they've gone more multimedia and all different they have blogs and videos so that the team that vox took um the information that our kids gave during the

014sessions which were videotaped unfortunately they were on zoom because of covid and they went through all the data and created this video for us um and which outlines the course i was young i know what it's like to be 18. i know it's like to be 14. we all were there and the world has changed completely and we can't know what it's like nor should we be speaking for other people and so over the years we listen to teachers about what do teachers see as needs now we ask principals what do principals see as the needs of our kids and we ask parents what do you think are the needs of your kids and then you think oh wait a minute what about the kids we partnered with ces and heard from the service video

015beginner teams throughout a variety of visual tools and for listening sessions to hear what they think would enhance their mental health growing up together and heard a total of four main scenes the first of those themes would just be the need for more interaction between students and the faculty and counselors in their school they sent out a survey if you said you weren't hearing about the only response it wasn't to me how the time of the counselor from you it was i think you should go to this time management seminar i said facebook last year it's a decatur high school club and it's basically it all is geared towards your counseling meaning you talk to other degree or high school students just about stuff that's going on this year another would be that they want

016braces designated places and times to work and to not work for the stress management it could look more just like a quick like just keeping it clean especially on like the weeks like the last week before break or the last week of every semester i feel like those are big stressful moments for people i understand some people they have sports and they have clubs and sometimes like i feel like those they see as okay all this time needs to go to just this in this only so i think there needs to be a lot less focus on just academics because that's like the only important thing for our mental health another thing we heard emerged from these opening sessions is that medical health resources need to be more accessible in together and less voices there

017was very little advertising for the student center no teachers had ever mentioned it to me the first time that i went was for not going to a pep rally and i really enjoyed it i think it should be somewhere in one of those areas where everybody knows where everything is and then if you have the advertisements around that area people like oh it's right there and i can just go there's something really really valuable about having a physical space like leave your home and also use the computer to go talk to someone and then our last main theme that we heard from these is that mental health education in high school will help to reduce the stigma and feel that's kind of surrounding it now creating exercises talking about muscular bullying and stay calm and

018not get overwhelmed i don't think it's very helpful it's more like a chore than a check in on you it takes too much effort for kids to like try and go find it themselves and they probably don't want to put themselves out there to like feel like that therapy is already kind of scary to put yourself out there in the first it's really important for people to feel like they are in a space where they're being supported and like people are are genuinely listening and trying to understand this requires a more systemic change than just like isolating out like what they can do for mental health like labeling and mental health initiatives and but in reality like dictators approach to academics and approach that like how we teach and how we integrate mental health education

019into more general education needs to change maybe like being on a more holistic fully integrated mindfulness so i'm just going to touch on the four themes that they outlined i think they did a good job there again is a lot of raw data the way vox put this together for it to rise to the level of a theme it had to come up in all four sessions and the four sessions had totally different ages and diverse groups of kids in each of the sessions they were different kids so if it came up in every session then it became one of those high level themes there's a lot of other things that didn't maybe rise to that level that you can see in the raw data and some of it is painful to read um i

020think the some of these are things um that i'm going to say in a few minutes um we're already doing and there's been great progress those sessions happened in the summer the project was supposed to happen in the spring it got in june and july and so the good news is there are there is a lot of things that are already were in the work and are continuing to be in the work um more interaction with faculties and counselors a lot of those comments were really about what we know that relationships with adults in their lives and in their schools they do better they do better on in all in all ways and especially on their mental health when they know somebody cares about them we have countless data you already know that and they

021are not feeling that as much currently at the high school um see learning again they're having some questions about that doesn't give us like we're given these activities but we don't get to connect with the teachers in a way that's sort of authentic and creates those relationships um and they want things that are less transactional and more again relational um and having more um chances of seeing again and again was um having more regular visits with council school counselors so it's not just when they're in crisis and again they have a relationship that they can fall back on um the second theme that was mentioned was designated places and times to work and to not work i know you know this is an issue that has come up before our focus on academics and on

022being one of the best school systems academically means we have sacrificed and some of the ways to support kids in non-academic ways and sort of their plus but that girl says it really beautifully like academics aren't the only thing that matters um and we know that as adults and so we just have to kind of build that in small things one comment was about like normalized taking small breaks so like i'm not the weird girl touching my toes and stretching in the middle of the class to make that kind of a normal thing um and this last comment i think is really telling they know that they benefit from having extra curriculars playing sports but they feel like in order to do that they have to give up food and sleep that is disturbing on

023a lot of levels right there's not enough room and so instead of carving out time from their academics they're going to do all that and then sacrifice on their health and well-being um this i thought was you know this just shows you some of the ways you saw in the video how the youth led sessions used jamboard and all these different tools to really get kids engaged you can see a lot of comments about um study hall study i'll study hall the good news is that is being built in now at the high school but that came up like 14 times in one session and you can see how they kind of group the things together more accessible mental health resources they felt positive about the student center which was great a lot has we've

024come a long way this was in june where they a lot of kids didn't know where it was um as my teacher husband said if kids don't know where it is now i don't know what to say because it it is publicized it is everywhere so i think we've done a better job um getting the word out and making sure kids know where it is and how to go um but they also feel like there's a lot of top-down resources and they want to see more student-led initiatives and they want to again reduce stigma by having sort of regular check-ins not only when they're in crisis um this one i think for me this one spoke to me a lot and how adults not school system adults but adults in our adults in general have

025failed are failing our kids and that is sort of not believing them and not really taking them seriously when they talk about their mental health they had a lot of great ideas for educating younger students so that by the time they needed the help they would know where to go there was a lot of confusion about what's a therapist versus a counselor versus an intern and how do i access these different levels of care um and again a lot of the thought was like you only care about my mental health if it relates to not doing well on a test and you give me a lot of time management i don't need time management i need other services um and they have some great ideas like mandatory five-minute check-in meetings with counselors over times again

026to build that relationship or have a whole class go to the student center so they really understand and are educated about what's there um but the last point i think is the point to me that's the really the part we really need to focus on which is that adults aren't paying attention and don't see us they don't see our needs i'm going to actually ask each of the board members but everyone else um if you would each read one of these out loud these are words that i think are really powerful of the kids and they really reflect some of what um those themes we just went over are so um you can start and just each of you i think hearing them is really powerful i'd rather cry while taking my math test than

027miss it and go to the student center it felt like they cared about mental health only when it got in the way of getting a good grade will take care of your mental health in terms of time management so you will do well on this iv test there's an idea that mental health is only existent if it is extreme such as extreme depression or anxiety attacks in reality people with no visible symptoms need help too later teachers should work together to give tests on different days to prevent students from being overwhelmed i wish i could always rest assured that i'm really being listened to however it's belittling when adults say things like are you sure that's necessary why can't you just suck it up and we know what's best for you those are some powerful

028words from our kids right there thank you for that so i want to talk a little bit about the positive again this was several months ago it's not like our staff at the schools isn't working night and day to try to change that culture so i want to certainly acknowledge that some of the things the kids mentioned they just didn't know were already in the works that's very clear and some of them we've just made a lot of progress and that's really great the wind time in the schedule on the what i need which is i think twice a week at the high school and make the kids can really have a flex time it's what we used to call study hall but they can use it for tutoring they can use it for meeting

029with other students about projects about special interests it's a really flexible time diane andre also let me know they can use it for individual counseling sessions they can use it to go to groups sometimes there are groups offered during that so that is a big that is a great improvement i think over in over the past schedule a lot of kids now most kids know about the student center and that's great the high school has a dedicated substance misuse counselor and that's wonderful no matter how many hours santa hai is there she is filled up with a waiting list so of course more to be done there i've heard from dr fuhrman and i'm thrilled that the current budget draft has a goal to get us to the recommended counselor ratio of school counselors 100

030one to 250 instead of one to 500 that is long overdue and i applaud the efforts to put that um in this time when we don't have a lot of extra money and that is really important um and also um i've been working in we've been funding the train uh the training for assist which is suicide intervention and diane andre let me know that uh and by march um 80 adults will have been trained in this very specific um it's not prevention suicide intervention meaning when a student is in suicidal ideation how adults can move that child to safety from a place of not being safe and so those are great great things that are happening um i thought it was really interesting i'm a fundraiser of course i found this interesting that i think

031as a bunch of people you will too you saw it in the video too there a lot of talk from the kids about funding what is the barrier they know we're not putting our money where our mouth is they are not they are not fools when we talk both equity and mental health they are saying where is the money i thought i was surprised that's the sort of they really really focus a lot of energy on the barrier is there not resources being put where they need to be so that i thought was um something to note as you're thinking about the budget so i just want to leave you with a couple of thoughts um i have your attention and i have opinions and def has been working um hard on this issue for

032a long time um we already know that before the pandemic we were seeing alarming trends in all things and we know we're in a worse state now than we were then we also know just by food insecurity kids cannot take advantage of the best school system in the world is not teaching kids who are struggling with mental health if you are depressed you are not taking in information if you are having a panic attack you are not listening to whatever great lesson is being put before you and this starts with our youngest kids so all of this great education is for nothing if we don't get this epidemic under control listening to kids takes time and energy and experts and expertise we are looking at future partnerships our staff maybe we can train some csv

033staff to be that guide on the side but give the teens again the ability to set the stage for their peers and we have been talking about this for a long time i think there's some progress but csd needs a comprehensive research-based framework we're doing a lot of good work there doesn't seem to be if there is it's not being communicated to the community that there is an overall strategy from k-12 that we are being able to assess where we're knocking it out of the park and where we have gaps like any system and how do we then use resources to um to make sure that we're hitting all the things this research has shown there's 10 things that districts who are supporting their kids well have in place we have a lot of those

034there's an s3 collaborative that i know dr huddleston is managing and hopefully that is a good start and then um the funding i just can't say this part enough um i asked my accountant because i wasn't sure exactly how much def has from joe's fund and it's about a quarter of a million dollars um and just to put it into a spotlight the budget for the student center is 13 000 this year now of course that's not for the therapists and the counselors but everything that's not personnel is supposed to be funded from a budget of 13 000. the community did the madison soapbox derby and funded the student center at three times the rate that the budget from the school system did i just think that's something that has to change we want the

035community funding this but we need you all to put this into the budget it just has to be a priority and then we would love you to commit to hearing from youth continually on these topics i'll just leave you people say i'm a big aspirational thinker so um this came about from one of my board members and i just thought i'd share it um if we turned the tables and started prioritizing mental health over all other things including academic achievement i think you'd find that you'd have great gains and academic achievement because kids would be supported and would be better able to learn so i just leave you with that i know you have a hard job i know there's not endless money and we look forward to continuing to partner with you because we

036have to because this is too important for anything else so thank you i will be sending you all the report with the data and i would absolutely love the opportunity to sit down with you and go deeper into some of these topics but i really appreciate all the time you've already given me um i look forward to seeing what you'll do thank you all right our second spotlight this evening is winona park and miss ruth scott and is your counselor meg gonna come up to you support team okay um and ruth is gonna share how winona park is leveraging their counseling program to support increased social emotional health needs as their students return to face-to-face learning this year thank you sometimes the star is just alive um speaking about mental health and it's also national

037school counseling week um and so i think it's just everything is just aligned perfectly for me to um talk about our counseling program at wooden park so i am rude scott i'm the principal at winona park elementary and dr ninten is here with me um as my school counselor um all right so last summer as we began preparing to bring all of our students back to face-to-face learning there was a lot of uncertainty and fear about how the students would be returning um we didn't know what their lives had been like for the past one and a half years had they been in the school building before had they ever sat 20 minutes and listened to a mini lesson before um what kind of trauma have they experienced have they been sick have their loved

038ones been sick have they lost someone we didn't know how we would support all these needs and teach them to read write ads try and keep a mask on all day so we started exploring ideas on how to support the social emotional health of all of our students from day one we are very lucky to have a full-time school counselor dr huntington who has always supported the students through targeted whole class lessons at least once a month as well as small groups and individual check-ins we brainstormed ways we could accelerate her support for all students at winona park the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning or to sell states kindergartners who are strong in social emotional learning competence are more likely to graduate from high school complete a college degree obtained stable employment in

039young adulthood ksell also says that universal sel interventions enhance young people's social and emotional skills and reduce symptoms of depression and so we decided to explore this idea of universal and we created a schedule that included targeted lessons with dr huntington every week for every class and every student we launched his plan in august 2021 and dr honey kindness respect following directions empathy feelings conflict resolution and self-regulation in september our behavior referrals were rising and we were feeling very discouraged after many discussions analyzing student behavior and studying tier one or universal interventions we just doubled down we were determined to stay the course seeing that so many of our students still needed consistent social emotional support we continued weekly lessons for all of our students and added in small groups for those that had more

040significant social emotional needs the topics introduced began to deepen studying individual strengths and goal setting mindset and empathy problem solving and managing emotions in december we had decreased our behavior referrals by 80 classroom disruptions were minimal and office referrals were rare without even noticing the social emotional climate of the school has stabilized we're now seeing joy all around us joy as they come into the school in the morning joy in the learning joy on the playground and joy during lunch and our academic games which i don't have time to go into but the academic growth has been substantial as well at winona we value these social emotional skills just as we value academic skills and we look forward to continuing to support the social emotional health of all of our i students a video to

041share some joy [Laughter] reading among the messiah among the most accomplished and fatal tribes of america [Music] among the most accomplished and fabled tribes of africa no tribe was considered to have warriors more fearsome or more intelligent than the mighty messiah it is perhaps surprising then to learn the traditional reading that passed between messiah and warriors and how are the children it is still the traditional breeding among themselves acknowledging the high value that the messiah always plays on their children's well-being even warriors with no children of their own would always give the traditional answer all the children are well meaning of course that peace and safety prevails that the priorities of protecting the young are in place that messiah's desire has not forgotten its reason for being its proper function and responsibility all the children

042are well means that life is good it means that the daily struggles for existence do not preclude proper caring for their young [Music] i wonder how it might affect our consciousness of our own children's welfare if in our culture we took to greeting each other with this daily question and how are the children if we heard that question and passed it along to each other a dozen times a day if it would begin to make a difference in the reality of how the children are thought of or cared about in our own country a wonder in every adult among us parents and known parents alike felt an equal way for the daily care and protection of all children in our community in our towns and our states and our country and i wonder if we

043could truly say without hesitation children are well yes older children are well [Music] um me thank you i'm going to say that since the student center has opened and diane has been on staff that i've been telling her don't forget the little ones don't forget the little ones because we see these things in the little ones too and they come out in different ways and sometimes it comes out with them kicking and screaming and yelling at us and sometimes it is just hell deep inside them so i'm just i'm so grateful for all the great work that we've been able to do ncsc for our students and our wonderful counseling program um do you have any questions oh i just um i want to say thank you thank you for for sharing that and um

044thank you for shifting the focus um and and just like you stated i mean very in line with what what gayle was just talking about you know we didn't even focus on the academic here although you noted it has improved probably because the shift so i really appreciated seeing just the focus on the joy with the kids because i know that's something we were absolutely missing in this last year and a half of being able to even see faces and smiling faces and smiling faces under math so um so yeah thank you so much for for taking the time to put that together i was going to say thank you for the profound reminder and how are the children um you know i will be thinking about that for the rest of tonight um what

045would it be like if we had that constant reminder as we greeted each other how are the children the children are all right so thank you [Music] thank you at this time we will move on to public comment um dr fuhrman do we have any members of the public signed up for um to share three people signed up for public comment this evening all right the following information is included in the board policy manual and members of the public are also acknowledged 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 public during public comment must sign in before

046the public comment period begins and in doing so will be asked to state their connection to csd and or the city of decatur to allow time for the board's other business public comment will ordinarily be limited to one hour or 20 speakers at the board's discretion the comment period may be extended for a specified amount of time or a specific number of additional speakers comments i'm sorry the time limit for all speakers will be three minutes person speaking during public comment will not be permitted to yield the floor or transfer unused time to other speakers comments during public comment should be addressed to the board as a body and not to individual members at the chair's discretion persons violating this policy may be asked to step down speakers should be courteous and professional speakers are

047not 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 jeers applause or shouts from the floor disruptive persons will be asked to leave the meeting room the chair may terminate public comments that are profane vulgar defamatory or disruptive speakers may not address confidential student or personnel matters but may submit such concerns to the superintendent in writing members of the board will not address persons presenting public comment or speak to the substance of any comments made during public comment however a member of the administrative team will follow up with person speaking at the board meeting dr fuhrman will you please call our first speaker yes our first speaker is patricia robertson via zoom and next up is juanisha jackson hello

048can you guys hear me okay my name is patricia robinson i am an 11th grader at decatur high school and i am mainly speaking on the topic of mental health in the student center at the middle at the middle school so it's obvious during the pandemic the issue of mental health has gotten a lot more attention and this has mainly been because there has been no shield for the overwhelming presence of this issue and mental health has had a large impact on youth and has sadly been seen especially for the last couple of years through the passing of community members by way of suicide and problems like depression anxiety have become more well-known and supported by many schools and organizations in the community however these issues are still very prevalent in a lot of minority

049communities like the black community where health mental health and trauma continue to be very prevalent issues you know in recent times a lot of prominent black figures have taken their own lives as a result of mental health and trauma there are a lot of unresolved issues like that come from racial trauma economic hardship and stress all of this really to say that the decatur schools have done a great job at supporting the youth in their middle schools and high schools in the student center where they've done a lot to prove to support their students in healthier ways to cope with stress and anxiety and they've also offered a lot of licensed professionals and therapy sessions as well and at the high school especially the space is very well maintained efficient and productive there are two

050main common spaces office space for people to meet with professionals however the main issue i have is at the middle school there is the space isn't nearly as big or functional it's a lot harder to cater to the needs of the middle school and there's not nearly enough privacy for those who are seeking professional help and this is simply because i don't feel there isn't as much attention being given to the services and resources allocated to this center and i'm simply saying that for the middle school this issue is just as important not to say it's more but it's very very very important i feel like it's not getting as much attention as what the high school is getting and this initiative has caused me to frame a whole project over it that i'll be

051presenting on on friday for a separate occasion but i really do feel like there's more that the board could do to to allocate more resources to this service and before i graduate i would like to see more change towards this and more services that could be allocated to help the middle school students [Music] thank you okay next up is qanisha jackson she i don't see her in the audience um and after miss jackson we have maria pinkleston is miss jackson on zoom perhaps okay all right well we will move on to maria pinkleston hello can you hear me yes awesome hi my name is maria pinkleton and i am a city of decatur resident and parent of a fifth grader at talley elementary school um i would just like to thank um the presenters this

052evening um and to applaud the news that extra money is being put towards mental health resources in the system um i think on top of rigorous curriculum um the social life of our students homework extracurricular activities there is always such a big weight on their shoulders and when you add the pandemic onto that it's an even greater weight two years has only exacerbated the issues that they are facing every day i'm concerned though that the recommendation of 250 students to one counselor ratio may not be enough to face the situation we currently face um the american school counselor association actually set that ratio in 1965. we didn't have a lot of things in 1965 we didn't have the pressure of students when it comes to body image social media success all the different things that

053now in 2022 our kids have added onto their backs that i didn't have when i was in high school in the 80s and so i implore you to look under every sofa cushion you can to find even more money to move even bolder if we at all possibly can beyond the ratio of 250 students for one counselor to 100 students for one counselor flood our system with mental health supports around every corner so that children realize that it is natural to reach out to speak to people that the opportunities for them to reach out to speak are plentiful um and not that this has to be a permanent thing but i think that pandemic makes things has made everything bigger bigger than we've ever seen before and i think that the number that we should

054be looking to achieve here should be bigger um at least for a couple of years um until we really know that our kids are mentally safe and sound and will be successful as they leave our school system thank you thank you includes public comment all right at this time i'll turn over the agenda to dr fuhrman to share superintendent comments this evening thank you madam chair okay um welcome uh good evening board members good evening um members of the public thank you for being here this evening uh just some general updates for this evening um i uh mr perez and i have then started our capital outlay and facilities course offered by the georgia superintendents association and have already learned a lot at least i've learned a lot asked sergio i said are you learning

055anything and he's like well i've met some people i was like oh you're not my favorite time but he's been my translator at those sessions so thank you sergio for attending those with me um also our monthly call with metro area superintendents i had a great opportunity to meet the superintendent from clayton county dr beasley he's just inspirational and just really is all ready to help and offered all kinds of guidance and counsel for me so that was wonderful meeting there also attended a gssa superintendent training offered at their annual meeting just this a couple weeks ago also have continued to meet with stakeholder groups had our teacher advisory council meeting in january got a lot of great information from our teacher advisory council as well as our classified staff advisory council getting input from

056them on what they are looking forward to in the budget has been helpful as we start moving down the budget planning process and it was so great to hear ms rothman share about what really resonated with me as i've been meeting with the student advisory team at the middle school in the high school hearing directly from the students on what their needs are their perceptions of things has just been immensely beneficial to make sure that we're incorporating the student voice as we plan what's best for our students i also have our monthly principal check-in and that was very beneficial as we're moving towards a new staffing plan um so that they have clear understanding of what that is they've been able to ask questions and gather input as they've moved through their planning for their

057staffing upcoming this month we've been working with my staff we had a great class three for our leadership academy mr melton and mr perez presented on operations and information systems miss varum and i have been knee-deep and and planning for the budget and assessing what our needs are developing priorities and then looking at what are the changes coming from the government recommendations for our budget also working on the staffing allotments which i presented at the work session in january finishing up our mid-year evaluation has been one of our main tasks as well as reviewing our school's mid-year implementation updates and improvement plans um also wanted to share that we have two public sessions coming up for our budget um so the fave and the tally slt meetings one is february 9th at fave at 4

05845 the tally slt is february 24th at 6 pm these meetings are open to the public the links will be posted on our district website this is an opportunity for any member of the public to get more information about our budget to share information about we'll have a link available if they have questions and input that they want to process and i will be going over more in-depth information at our slt meetings about the budget what's in our budget and kind of some of the critical issues that we're facing as we move forward with budget planning for fy23 i actually did also want to address the student center we do have plans in place to improve the space for the student center um we do have some limitations of well those plans are in place

059to improve that placement of the student center for next school year there are some limitations this year on moving the student center from where it is we are trying to make some accommodations and put some supports in place to help us get through the rest of this school year with the current location of the student center but we do have plans in place to move forward with making some improvements for the location of the student center for next year for our middle school students i also wanted to share covered protocols we have no changes really to share it this evening but i did want to share that i will be meeting with our covet advisory teams over the break over the the next break to really discuss what is some criteria that we could put

060into into place indicator to help decide when it's okay to start peeling back some of our mitigation layers masking protocols any of the other mitigation strategies that we have we know we're hearing a lot more about increased immunity overall in our community and nationwide of covid what does that look like now for us as a community so i am addressing that and working on how do we create and i think carmen set an offering for some of these mitigation strategies which we definitely want to do as soon as possible but we also want to keep our staff and students safe i did want to update the board and the community the state is continuing with their state accountability measures which they call ccrpi and that is the college and career readiness performance index and they

061categorize this through several different they use several different categories to create an index score of but they're taking away most of these for the current year so we will not get a summary rating on that score from 1 to 100 for this current school year they are going to measure progress or content mastery so that looks at our students scores on the milestones assessments and other various assessments that we get throughout the school year that will be reported but as i said no summary ratings they are also not doing progress scores because they are creating a new baseline with the scores that we get this current school year also they will not report closing the gap scores again as they are setting a new baseline for this with this data from this school year and

062they also for the readiness indicator they will not be reporting on attendance so we'll have some more information to share with our principals and unpack this on how this is going to look whenever the state reports that i just want to update the board that the state is moving forward with some level of accountability measures but much still scaled back from previous years wanted to give shout outs i have lots of shout outs so sit tight first i want to give a congratulations to the renfrow and decatur high school band um the students were accepted into the georgia all-state band additionally the decatur band has the fifth highest representation of any school in the state and this speaks highly to the dedication and artistry of these young musicians congratulations to all also our orchestra students

063congratulations um for those orchestra students on their acceptance to allstate orchestra we are very proud of their hard work this has been a new program that we've been getting off the ground and they've been doing amazing work i want to give a huge shout out to a student from our high school max b lindbergh we are proud of him he was recognized as a re-generon science talent search scholar um this is the oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors max was a finalist in the competition and according to records from regeneron science talent search max is both the first semi-finalist and the first finalist from dictator high school in 82 years of this national competition so huge congratulations to max he has won 25 000 in scholarships and he'll be

064competing for additional 250 000 um of washington d.c in march so way to go max that's huge um also another celebration for our code very own coach mary father she and she was selected as the us track and field cross country boys coach of the year for the state of georgia um so this is huge if you know um coach southers she puts in endless amounts of time and energy very early in the mornings out in the cold to support our track and field program so we are honored and want to congratulate coach spelther another congratulations for our band the band was well represented at the gmea which is this conference that they do um this and several students participated and won recognitions for their original pieces we also had students performing in a trumpet

065ensemble they were accompanied by another middle school riverwatch school symphonic band we had profession instructor mark little he served on the instructional team as well at trevor middle school and he is featured in that ensemble so just a huge congratulations to uh tyler l erwich um he was elected to participate at the gmea leadership symposium for future leaders of state music educators so huge congratulations to our band they're doing amazing work we also want to give a shout out to students that were recognized on the college board national recognition awards program and we've listed those students here these student outstanding students have received one or more of the following awards the national african american recognition award the national hispanic recognition awards the national indigenous recognition award and or the national rural and small town recognition

066award our students have earned this recognition because of their academic achievement in school and outstanding performance on the s.a.t or ap exams they have accomplished these milestones at the pinnacle of their career where it's so demanding but also we know we've been going to school in the midst of a pandemic and has made that even more hard to achieve so congratulations to these students also want to give a huge congratulations to our high school computer science teacher deirdre pierce she has accomplished or she has been accepted into the amazon future engineer program in partnership with project stem they are giving her a scholarship for that and we are excited to see how she can use this to expand her computer science program i also have students that were given the governor's honors semi-finalist award and

067these students will compete in a statewide finalist selection process um this on a few saturdays at ferry college and we have been performing in dance mathematics and social studies also a big shout out to our high school swim team we had 14 athletes who competed at the ghsa state swimming and dive meet this past weekend overall our girls team plays 14th and the boys placed 12th so we had a list here of the 13 finishers that were in the top 20. and finally i want to give a shout out to our decatur debates team we had several students winning high honors at the most recent debate team um and we are proud of their work and their coaches so want to support our debate team as well that concludes my comments for this evening madam

068chair thank you thank you we will now move on to the chair comments yesterday i attended the georgia senate education and youth committee meeting with the intent to testify on senate bill 377 one of the four anti-critical race theory bills in the legislature currently these bills are troublesome for many reasons unfortunately i was not able to share our board's concerns with the committee because the meeting was limited to allowing the bill's authors to present his bill and then to take questions from the other legislatures legislators the attendees in the meeting were assured that there will be an opportunity for the legislators to hear from the public and i look forward to sharing the concerns of csc's board relating to that senate bill 377 at that time it is important for our community to know that

069these bills not only expand state control as to what is taught and said indicator schools and classrooms but these bills place a tremendous burden on our teachers and school leaders the board will be sharing a letter with our legislators regarding the harm legislation like this will have on staff and students as well and actually that letter went out today to our indicator delegation so i'm going to read just an excerpt from that letter um but that letter um will be included in the board's bulletin that will come out later this week the entire letter will be included our letter states city schools of decatur via vehemently opposes senate bill 375 senate bill 377 house bill 888 and house bill 1084 these bills threaten to harm students instruction levy unfunded mandates impede business and undermine local

070control all of this would be in response to a quote-unquote problem that doesn't exist supporters might think this legislation will splash cold water on critical race theory but instead it will drown our ability to do basic schooling furthermore we believe that georgia's deserve legislation that doesn't have its roots in disinformation and georgians deserve better than copy and paste legislation handed to them by washington dc think tanks that don't know georgians needs the bill's chilling effects would extend to addressing georgia's gregariously desperate disparate outcomes and manifest on racial lines that manifest on racial lines we must talk honestly about race itself to address racial disparities even when it is uncomfortable these bills undermine educators ability to advance educational outcomes for all students so again this is just an excerpt from the letter that went out to

071the legislators today and again the full letter will be included in the board's newsletter later this week if community members are interested in sharing their opposition to the anti-crt race theory bill i would suggest that you email your legislator directly you can also attend and hear one of the hearings or all of the hearings on on these bills as soon as we find out when the next hearing is for senate bill 377 i will be there and we will post that if community members want to come out to support the board statement or you can also sign up to make your own public comment this is national school counselors week on february 7th through the 11th and the board wishes to express our heartfelt thanks and appreciation for our counselors these individuals are extremely important

072as we've been hearing about the work that is happening around mental health here in the district and so they are extremely important to the student success and overall health and well-being of our schools thank you to our counselors for all that you do every february the u.s honors the contributions and sacrifices of african americans who helped shape the nation so we know that february 1st was the start of black history month which celebrates the rich cultural heritage triumphs and adversities that are an indelible part of our country's history carter g woodson not history founded negro history week in 1926 and then in 1976 it was like them to a month-long celebration mr woodson wrote if a race has no history it has no worthwhile tradition it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the

073world and it stands in danger of being exterminated this is why i appreciate the efforts of csc schools not to only teach the history of african americans but to also teach the truth about american history and we will continue to do that and do as much as we can as a board to ensure that csc students are never at risk of their history being exterminated this concludes my chairs comments we will now move on to consent agenda items which include personnel report school nutrition and financial reports may have a motion to approve the consent items one through three thank you all in favor please say aye aye the consent agenda items one through three are approved we will now move on to action items for the board this evening our first action item is to

074approve the 2022-2023 board meeting calendar may have a motion to approve the 2022-2023 board meeting calendar to approve the 2022-2023 board meeting calendar may i have a second okay thank you all in favor please say aye aye thank you the 2022-2023 board calendar meeting board meeting calendar is approved our second action item is to approve a one-year extension of dr fuhrman's contract the superintendent of the city schools of decatur but before we move forward to that i'm going to ask i'm going to invite our attorney bob wilson to come up to make a statement concerning the contract i'm chair member board madam superintendent a few weeks ago ford settled upon agreement with superintendent fuhrman to extend the contract for new year starting july the 1st of 2022 and going through june 30th of 2023 that

075contract was put out through the website of school system for the public to see i'm here tonight to let those in attendance be they here in person or at home know there have been two slight changes to the contract that was put out those changes will be on the website tomorrow the red line edition will be there i can't tell you when i'm not a techno guru here but the system will get it out tomorrow section 2.2 and section 4.2 has been slightly changed there is no true substantive change to the contract the pay amount occasional amount all of those things sick leaves are exactly the same as they were nothing has changed like that section 2.2 was changed slightly under the duties of the employment of the superintendent both for the protection of the

076superintendent and of the board and by agreement of both to make it perfectly clear that this is her full-time position and all of her energies will be focused on the city schools for decatur and her responsibilities that is all it does is simply strengthen that provision so there could be no question about section 4.2 is really a mechanical way of determining a value of day's work uh in dollars based on the compensation in the event there are any vacation days for which the superintendent might be paid out at the end of the year-long contract dollars the amounts have not changed one bit it just makes it clear how we calculate that that's all that it does but it was important to this board to those who are at home and those who are here that

077we make it clear to the public that those two slight changes have happened that is the contract you'll be voting on is so it's the slightly different contract you're voting on tonight versus the one that you put out those are the only changes and the redline version will be out tomorrow for anyone that wants to see it i do have to get that to a system so that they can put that out but you know what it is but that is the only difference no money change at all no vacation days change no sick days nothing else change those are simply strengthening those two provisions so that mechanics are clear on one end and the responsibilities are clear on the other any question or anything you think i've left out that we need to make

078clear to those who are listed no thank you for you thank you okay thank all you so may i have a motion to approve a one-year contract extension for dr fuhrman to continue her service as the superintendent for the city schools of decatur i moved to approve a one-year contract extension for dr furman to continue her service as the superintendent for city schools of decatur thank you may i have a second second thank you all in favor please say aye aye thank you the one-year contract extension for dr fuhrman to continue her service as the superintendent for the city schools of decatur is approved we now this evening dr fuhrman will begin this presentation okay thank you madam chair i would like to invite our chief financial officer miss juanita broome up to we should

079sign the contract yep if um dr sultan if you want to start the signature and press it down we'll go ahead and get started uh miss broome um she's going to present an update on the fy 22 budget which will give the board an overview of the proposed changes that came out of the governor's office as well as an introduction to share some additional information from proposed changes for the fy 23 budget for him good evening madam chair vice chair members of the board dr furman community and colleagues today i will present an update on the governor's proposed amendment festival year 22 and fiscal year 23 budget and how i will impact the district's general fund budget i have included definitions of financial terms for reference as needed we will look at the budget calendar

080projected tax digest updates and a detailed analysis of the governor's state budget proposal financial impact on the district's fiscal year 22 and 23 budget definitions are listed for commonly used financial terminology i have also included in the appended a budget comparison by function so i have included definitions of the different function codes we started budget discussions in november 2021 and have had several discussions on the budget timeline and budget priorities competitive compensation historical trends for expenses and revenue allotment and staffing at next month's march board meeting i will present a preliminary budget draft 2022 projected tax digest update as you are aware the board of assessors approval of the 2022 personal property digest provides us with the most accurate estimate of property tax revenue which is the district's largest source of revenue prior to receiving

081the board of assessors personal property digest the district utilizes georgia state university study to project property tax revenue the board of assessor is scheduled to approve the personal property digest in early june after the board of assessors approved approval the board of education will approve the military in mid-june state budget proposal summary the governor presented the 2022 state of the state everest on january 13th the budget proposal for education included amendments to the current fiscal year 2022 budget and update for next year's fiscal year 2023 budget the amended fiscal year 2022 proposed budget is scheduled to be approved by the end of this month or early march the fiscal year 23 proposed budget is scheduled to be approved by the end of march let's start by looking at proposed changes for the current fiscal year

0822022 it is important to understand that when the state allocates increases bonuses or any additional funds it is only for those positions earned based on the state qve form based on this formula city schools of decatur earned approximately 445 positions for fiscal year 2022. in addition to the 445 positions that the district has earned the state has also included approximately 32 school nutrition employees in their proposal which is why you will see the number 477 as the number of current positions throughout the presentation the district has approximately 959 positions and of those 959 positions only 445 are earned and we received a minimum amount of state revenues for those positions the federal year 2022 amended budget proposed for one-time supplement of 1 000 for school nutrition work the district does not earn school nutrition workers

083so to figure out how many school nutrition employees qualified i took the district fce amount for fiscal year 22 and divided it by the state of the east of massachusetts year 22. i then must apply by the full state impact of 10.1 million which gave me 32 000 which will cover 32 employees the state is proposing to pay the supplement medicare and retirement the district will be responsible for paying the 6.2 percent of fiscal to add in retirement and medicare the final amount allocated by the 32 school nutrition employees is 38 803. one-time supplements of one proposed for earned bus drivers the district earns five bus drivers per the qpe allotment sheet after adding retirement and medicare 6063 we will be allocated to the five bus drivers one-time supplements of 2000 are proposed to all

084full-time employees and 1000 for part-time employees we earn approximately 444 times part-time employees this will equate to a little over one million after adding retirement and medicare seriously reduction for fiscal year 22 is proposed to be restored which will eliminate the 1.3 million reduction in the current budget since the austerity reduction is restored that means more funds from the state which means the local five meals sharing the state uses the most recent equalized adjusted school property tax digest to determine the district's five year share an additional 371 867 is projected to increase for the local five year share it will receive but the current this year is approximately two million however of that two million a little over one million will be for one time supplement which means expenses will increase by that same amount

085dr fuhrman and i have developed three options regarding the qualification for supplemental payments from the state option one is to pass on the one-time supplement for state-earned positions only that means that only 32 school nutrition workers will receive the 1 000 only if the fiscal impact to the district would be 1984 which is a fit to 6.2 percent for cyclists only five bus drivers will receive the one thousand supplements the fiscal impact for the district would be 310 which is the six point two percent for fifa 444 time part-time employees will receive a two thousand dollar supplement the fiscal impact for the district would be fifty four thousand five hundred and sixty four that is for five additionally the point three one seven million five security reduction would be eliminated and the local five mill

086would increase by 371 867 this slide shows the impact the supplement will have on the fiscal year 22 general fund budget if we serve as a flow through and distribute the supplement only to the number of employees the fiscal year 22 budget on the left is the budget prior to any state amendment the state amendment column in the center of the two budgets is the proposed amendment from the state the budget on the right is the budget at the option one amendment did not include the revenue or expenses for the one-time supplement since they will basically be a wash and not have an impact on the budget in revenue the 371-867 is the increase in local fair share which ranks the local fair share amount to over 9 million highlighted in yellow as shown the

0871.3 million austerity reduction has been removed expenditures will increase by the total amount of cycles of the supplement which is the fifty six thousand eight hundred and fifty four highlighted in orange you see the amount needed from fund balance the balance of the budget has decreased in the fiscal year 22 amended budget by approximately highlighted in blue the projected interfund balance have increased by the same amount which increases the fund balance percentage as shown in green from 7.1 to 8.1 this is one of three options and is the option which has the minimum impact on general funds option two is the path on the supplement to all employees as specified per category the one-time supplement for school nutrition workers would include the 32 employees that the state will fund and the district would extend the

0881 000 supplement to the additional nutrition employees the district will be responsible for funding 19 000 plus taxes for the 19 employees for bus drivers the one-time supplement would be extended to cover all bus drivers the state will fund the fire bus drivers in retirement and medicare the district will fund the 1 000 per employee budget the additional 20 bus drivers in applicable cash option two impact on the general fund is that shown the budget on the left is the current fiscal year 22 budget prior to any state amendment the amended fiscal year 22 budget is on the right is the budget after the amendment additional supplements and taxes for revenue local fair share increases by 371867 which increased the local fair share to 9 million austerity reduction of 1.3 million is eliminated so revenue

089increased by 9 45 salary and benefits increased by 1.235 million from taxes and supplements outside of those that are earned by the state the district would fund those additional supplements and taxes again i did not include the state supplements in the budget because it is a watch the funds were received from the state will increase the revenue amount the same as the expenditures since we would serve as a flow-through for the supplement highlighted in orange as shown for the fiscal year 22 amended budget the amount needed from fund balance to balance the budget has increased by approximately hundred and twelve thousand highlighted in blue the projected ending fund balance has decreased by the same amount which decreases the fund balance percentage as shown in green from seven point one percent to six point seven percent

090the third and final option is to give all employees the same supplement of two thousand for school nutrition workers the district would need to fund one thousand for the 32 school nutrition employees that have been allocated 1 000 from the state in addition to 2 000 each for the 19 school nutrition employees that were not allocated supplements from the state the number 51 under the column number of employees represent the number of school nutrition employees that will be impacted by giving 2 000 supplements to all school nutrition employees the total fiscal impact to the general funds of school nutrition is 91 0206. for bus drivers the district would need to fund one thousand for the five bus drivers that have been allocated one thousand from the state in addition to two thousand but twenty additional

091bus drivers that were not allocated supplements from the state the number 25 under the column number of employees represents the number of bus drivers that will be impacted the total institutional impact to the general fund for bus drivers is 56 000 sixty which includes supplements in a possible taxes four hundred and forty three represent all of the employees that were received in 2007. employees were allocated two thousand the employee's fiscal impact for funding 2 000 per employee from general response is a little under 1.2 minutes again this amount increases that includes salary and taxes this is the amended budget after the allocation of 2 000 to every employee below highlighted in orange is the amount required from fund balance to balance the budget the amount to me the amount needed to balance the budget increases

092from 4.1 million in the fiscal year 22 budget to 4.5 million in the fiscal year 22 amended budget which is an increase of 407 thousand highlighted in blue the ending from balance decreases by the same amount sun balance percentage shown highlighted in green decreases from 7.1 to 6.5 this slide shows the original budget prior to any state amendment in the three options i want to reiterate that i did not include the state supplements in the revenue or expenditures since it is a wise however the final selected budget will be revised to include all revenues and expenses these budgets only show expenses and revenues that will have an impact on the budget note the amounts highlighted in orange represent the amount that would be required from fund balance the amounts highlighted in blue represent the projected

093end of unbalance and the percentages highlighted in green is the fund balance percentage board specifies a minimum thumb balance of between 4 and 15 percent before i go into fiscal year 23 are there any questions on the fiscal year 22 pages yes please um so just to be clear we're basically looking at uh we've already presumed we're going to spend 4.1 million in this year out of our reserve the real question before us is do we want to put a little bit of money back into that or do we want to spend even more money than that out of our reserve based on some of these scenarios so let me ask particularly on option number two uh i understand that we have to provide the benefit if we take the money from the state we

094have to provide the benefit for the mandated um uh individuals that keep whatever the tpe whatever the term is that we're using right but for everyone else i mean obviously in option one we could choose not to give them anything what would be the number that we would provide to the other employees in option number two that would have a zero dollar impact on our presumption of what we would take out of the reserve it would be very close to a thousand right would be something like 989 or something like that i have to do the math but it would be in that ball there is a almost equivalent number that we could provide all of the employees that would have a zero impact on the reserve that we have already assumed that we would

095draw from no it's definitely going to have an impact there to give any funds outside of those that are allocated from the state there's going to be impact on the public and even if you just give what is allocated to the state they're still that but the state is giving us the it's not the 1.3 actually the state is giving that's about 800 some thousand dollars with the removal of the uh with the removal of the uh uh austerity so if we look at i want to look at uh here which one we're looking at i'm correct directing an option one which is giving only what the state would under cbe given that return a whole percent basically to the fund balance there seems like there would be some gray area between that and option

096two to maybe give back without actually increasing where we are currently without the budget being fixed by the state well even if we pass on just a bonus to those that earn there's still a cost to the general fund again that there's a cost but the cost could be net neutral with what the state is getting that is right that's what the state is given it's dependent on how we allocate the in effect i'm asking what is the amount that we would be able to provide under option two for all of the rest of the employees that would still leave us with a designated fund from the fund balance of 4.1 million dollars like we're choosing now i would definitely have to sit down but it's very high it's going to be in the 900

097plus dollar range like not even over probably 950 right so we have a very similar benefit so let me ask a clarifying question time so that means those so of those state allocated people which is 477 we would have to select of our 900 and some employees 959 employees which 445 would get the state allocated bonus versus which would get the 900 some sorry and that would be how would we determine who would get that who would get the state allocation versus who would get the i do yeah i'd recognize the com but it's better than zero if we were to pick option one right i mean it is better than option one that's correct right so they get something correct well they get almost exactly the same thing well only bus drivers and school

098nutrition workers teachers would be getting two thousand dollars so you'd have to pick which teachers would get a thousand dollar like a thousand dollars a thousand verses yeah okay and a clarifying point for people listening that's not that's a state rule right that we can't like put everything in the pond and divide it moments it definitely would be challenging to do it that way [Music] any other questions on the three options so you mentioned um in the agenda change that after discussion you would want to vote tentatively um is on this portion or we've just done this first yeah you need to see how it compares yeah so then she's going to run through options how this would flow through if we look at next year's budget okay perfect the option that you choose for

099fiscal year 22 will have a direct impact on next year this slide has been presented to you before the first column on the left is the fiscal year 22 budget prior to any amendment the middle middle column is changing from the addition of the care club column on the right title fiscal year 23 basic budget is your fiscal year 23 starting budget for fiscal year 23 the governor is proposing a state adjustment of 142 million to the local fair share since the year 22 we discussed increasing the local fast share due to austerity being restored but since the year 23 increasing local fair share are due to projected tax growth the 608 prosperity being restored and growth from the current digest to this year's digest in fiscal year 22 we accounted for 371 867 of

100the 608 listed here the increase in trs is included in the district's benefit costs we anticipate a decrease in enrollment which would be approximately 777 548 decrease in qep revenue the state is increasing revenue for training and experience of current positions and the district's increase is 888 thousand fifty seven so fiscal year 23 full austerity of 1.3 million will be restored the state is also increasing the state-based salary by 2000 but earned teachers and certified employees which for the district would be 933 702 the total fiscal impact from the governor so fiscal year 23 for city schools of decatur is approximately 1.7 million next i took each of the three options and listed the fiscal impact each option would have on the fiscal year 23 budget since the year 22 option one budget which is

101for the one time supplement for state-run positions only is the first column because the year 23 state amended budget state amendment state amendments are listed in the central column the revenue revisions consist of the 18 million the 1.8 million increase in revenue which is the total of the governor's fiscal year 23 888 607 increased the training and experience and the 933 702 total increase for the 2000 increase in the state-based salary scale for teachers and certified employees the 237042 is fiscal year 23 increase in local fair share and the 1.3 million in austerity has been restored for both fiscal year 22 and 23. expenditure revisions consist of the 1.258 million in salaries and 649 000 in benefits which is the district cost for the 2000 teacher step increase and one step increase for all employees

102fiscal year 23 budget includes a step increase for all employees in addition to the 2000 staff increase for certified employees looking at the bottom of the sheet highlighted in gray is your beginning home balance well the fiscal year 22 column the 6.8 million highlighted in orange is sister year 22 projected ending fund balance which is fiscal year 23 predicted beginning for 15 years 23 of approximately 3.392 million highlighted in blue is needed from fund balance to balance the budget this leaves fiscal year 23 in this one balance at approximately three point four four seven million or three point eight eight percent of fund balance again the fund balance percentage should be between four and fifteen percent this fund balance is below four percent this is fiscal year 22 option two which is to extend the

103state supplement to all positions as specified per category the state amendments are the same for all three options with the 1.585 increase in revenue which consists of the increase in training and experience 2000 increased the salary scale and 237.042 increase in local fair share the 1.9 increase in salary and benefits and for the two thousand dollar increase to all certified employees and one step increase one step increase to all other employees the beginnings on balance for fiscal year 23 but i did 61 million which is highlighted in gray 3.392 million highlighted in blue is needed to balance the budget which leaves an ending fund balance of 2.268 million which is equivalent to 2.55 and this is below the four percent minimum fund balance per board college this is fiscally year 22 option three which is

104to give all employees a one-time two thousand dollar supplement again the state amendments are the same for all fiscal year 23 budgets the difference is the beginning fund balance by option three the beginning fund balance as highlighted in grade is 5.566 million and 3.392 million will be required from fund balance to balance the budget which leaves a projected independence of 2.173 million are 2.45 this slide is a snapshot of all three options on the fiscal year 23 budget the expenses are the same because i have removed the fiscal year 22 one-time supplements from the fiscal year 23 budget the only difference in these three budgets is the beginning for unbalanced highlighted in gray which impacts the projected in their fund balance if the board rebudges with the understanding that revisions will be required if there

105are any revisions to the governor's budget that budget will be the base budget for fiscal year 23 and will allow dr berman and i to explore different options and build on this budget to present to the board recommendations to maintain a minimum fund balance a four percent particularly year 23 and multi-year forecasting today's question i mean option one is not actually a real option upgrade option one is the state telling us that you give raises to half of your faculty and staff because this is the formula we have come up with for the way you should run your school systems in the state or you pay the rest on the list 2019 it also looks like the impact of it and fun dallas is pretty similar between the 2016 can you walk through that because

106it doesn't seem like it should be like it's like 2 000 for everybody or this what's the difference between option 2 yeah the big difference between the fy 22 budget option two and three is an additional one thousand dollars for our school nutrition and bus drivers so it makes it 20 plus another 19. so it is a minimal impact to go ahead and give everyone that that 2 000 bonus across the board this year a huge impact on them for them this just comes down so then what happens what do we do if if we selected um option three and we're so it seems like we're so far below the minimum of what we should have yeah how do we make up for that and that's where um once the decisions made uh lanita and

107i can start looking at options for what we need to make adjustments on for the 2023 uh the 23 fy 23 budget part of that is already in the works is we are looking at adjusting our allocations for staffing so the current staffing allotment formula that we're using already does take into consideration that some unfilled positions will not be refilled so that'll increase decrease our expenditures which will help this process so um my record my personal recommendation for the board is that we go ahead with option three for fy22 because the impact is not as not to be overly significant and i think it's something that we can create some additional sacrifices upcoming year to give our all of our employees that two thousand dollar bonus option three means that we end the year at

1086.5 correct and then what do we need to cut out of the 23 budget to be at four percent in terms of just like final dollar amount like that's it oh double dollar amount it'll be about like if you look at option one you're here well i guess about four million potentially defined two million i mean i i just wanna speak here really quickly four percent is the absolute minimum minimum right right and that should be aware of it that is in historic high knowledge rates for all of the citizens that are in the city uh and that is also before we've actually seen any proposal or presentation on what cuts are going to happen in central office and operations i'm uncomfortable that we're already talking about cuts on uh instructional staffing and we haven't

109had a conversation yet about cuts on central office and so i get very nervous talking about pushing this out to the max when i haven't actually seen what we're talking about pulling out of the the budget at the same time i know that in 2020 if you you have a near appendix one of the slides you could probably toss it up there our budget in 2020 was 76 million dollars as a system that was after tally opened free pandemic so that should have been and that is our peak enrollment 2020 was the year we had the maximum number of students that we had in the system and so now we have fewer students in the system and we are what what's the math seven million over seven million dollars more expensive as a system from

110our peak enrollment with struggling with having conversations about increasing expenses here when i haven't seen rock solid proposes on on cutting yet so you have to start with a base so you have to know how much you need to you know so this is actually well but i mean this is we're talking about setting a baseline of increased expense we could be talking about setting a baseline of reduced expense as well there's we're just happening to choose an increased expense based on but do we we have to make a decision about how we want to handle this money from the governor in terms of these employees i do recognize the time pressure on that so i'm not suggesting that we not make a decision on that i'm expressing frustration that we're making a decision on

111an increase of an expense when we haven't already started talking about a reduction of expenses and my question was exactly what you just asked right it was like what is the minimum floor which is honestly probably an unacceptable minimal florida even be talking about of getting us to four percent here and you are absolutely correct and one of the things that shocked me that you have not shocked me that is appropriate is that instruction has remained between 65 and 68 all the way back to 2018 which means that we do need a wholesale look all of the places we can make cuts and this goes back to something that has been going through my brain all night long that qbe formula and the dr berman's credit she's talked about it is outdated the state is

112only giving us what one counselor for only students right 4.99 499 students and we've got one for every 250 and we're paying them more and we you know etcetera so we've got to tighten our belts for sure yeah and as i've shared i'm sorry um i was going to say as i shared in previous presentations with the board i am having department conversations we have kind of set the the floor at for hiring freeze at wilson center we are completing the audit to evaluate what positions should or could be hired or should or could be eliminated we are looking very line by line item at our department budget to make decisions on what can be paused what can be eliminated um you know we are starting at central office um before we look at making

113any changes in our schools our you know making sure we have maintained excellent learning environment in our classroom and i guess i'm i'm comfortable making a decision about this type of increase for our um essential workers our nutrition staff our transportation staff and our teachers who are you know so deserving of this increase and so for this particular increase i'm i'm more comfortable and then working from there to see what we need to do um because you know they don't get paid enough you know already and then to um have to persevere through um the past two years um and particularly our transportation and nutrition workers who risk exposure exposure early on um i'm willing to do that now and then to see what suggestions that you come up with um to make to balance

114everything we're only having this conversation because of the governor right i think it's you know we all agree that it's fundamentally the right thing to do to give the staff something above what they already take i think the question the real question the real need of the matter is how do we adjust going forward so in addition to taking something reorganizing something we may have to triage what new projects we take on something we have to roll over into the next i think you know we want to put it out there that we all agree that making sure that the staff the instructional staff are rewarded for all of their hard work is morally fun we just have to figure out how to so to that end if we're looking at this here where we're

115at a 5.97 million fund balance and we're you know going to be potentially talking about the full amount for everyone which i'm comfortable because i do agree with the conversation around uh rewarding those who have stuck with us through this um i am going to want an assurance that we're not talking about paying for that in the next budget by finding cuts on the instructional side i'm going to want to see clear clear cuts on central office and operations to offset that increased expense we're also i mean just so that we're clear about it we're also talking about a pretty significant increase in um mental health resources counselors and sessions schools uh i'm not entire and i'll have some comments about this in a minute i'm not convinced that we're going far enough i tend

116to agree with maria and so that's an even additional expense that we're going to have to be able to figure out covering in this next budget and so i just want some assurance that when we go through this process and we offer this reward to teachers and for essential workers we're not setting ourselves up to then have to cut some of those individuals in the next budget in order to be able to maintain pain for the reward that we just gave them i know that you can't offer that assurance i wish we could uh yeah i think it's it's a hard look at the budget um and that's what i've been sharing in our public input sessions at sdlt what i've been sharing with the board is we do have a confluence of several factors

117that we're at a critical point with the budget we do have to look at ways to increase revenue but we also have to look at ways to decrease expenditures so that is just going to be the way that we have to move forward in discussions with the budget and our number one priority is always maintaining the absolute best environment for our students in the classroom um which is making sure we have the most highly qualified staff on hand and that's our plan to move forward with that and also just bringing your attention to prior to us receiving the information about the amended budget we were at one percent that was the projection for one so i thought we look bad but better that that is worth pointing out [Laughter] for all practical purposes we're talking

118about getting not 1.3 million really from the state right it's a little under 900 000 in that from the state right because they're they're handing it over and then taking things on uh so we're in effect taking 800 000 and then pulling a little bit more out of reserve plus that in order to cover what we're talking about today you talk about the slide that you've pulled up let me know a little bit about this video so i do anticipate on heavy savings from those positions so here you see in the past that the projection which is in purple and the actual which is the orange so the actual has been overstated but since i have been working here you see that gap is close so i'm not appreciating any information okay that was correct

119he wants you to say he was hurt i remember that there was a conversation that the actual projected was a gap and i need an email about that and then one of her for that and i really appreciate that because that is a hard thing to do but i mean you're working with like five different things so i appreciate that so it sounds like the board is in agreement with tentatively moving forward on option three for the fy 22 amended budget can i have a motion for the tentative approval of option three for the fiscal year 2022 budget i move may i have a second thank you all in approval of the tentative approval of option three for the fiscal year 2022 budget please say aye aye the tenant of approval of option three for

120the fiscal year 2022 budget is approved the board was provided monthly data reports from each school as information only um so that's the next agenda item but that's information only um we have future dates listed on the agenda for upcoming meetings trainings and retreat board members are there any questions about future dates for the work of the board okay and i want to make sure that everyone just a reminder that on february 15 next tuesday we will have two more presenters um to come to the district uh to present on how to other organizations that will present on how they conduct the superintendent search and so um that meeting will start at 5 30 next um tuesday 5 30 yeah yes all right any any questions on future dates all right well if there's no

121other questions um thank everyone yeah you have other questions okay i have a couple things that i wanted to raise if that's that's okay specifically related to some of the conversation that we had today on mental health i just wanted to ask uh for a couple clarifying points i know dr fuhrman you talked about that we are putting the plan together i just want to ask about the timing and when you would expect to see that and um if that's not something that we can answer right now it is something that i would like to have answered right now um and then since these are not items on the agenda i think perhaps the better way to handle these um would be for you to send me an email with this question and we can

122provide a response okay in the future what is the right way to ensure that these are items that i have an opportunity to discuss because we don't need to discuss this yeah so that's where um you send your agenda items to ms johnson davis for her to consider get a motion from another board member to put them on the agenda okay and and we have the calendar that gives us the dates that we should have those agenda items i don't know that we have that for the calendar but i will get it to the board that was for where was that that was for next year but it's it's the same date range for this year i just didn't have it kind of all calendared out for you guys okay i will say that it

123was on the board that uh on there that we should talk about our representatives and we're reaching out to them um and while that is a subject on one of the big issues for me is someone who has lost a family member to suicide in the past and the state's funding of one counselor for every 400 is what did you say 4.99 is offensive and um does decatur do everything we can now can we possibly do better yes but that's something that you should also reach out to your representatives about because if they would increase that number we could do even more as a school district and i pulled up a map the other day and like bullitt county won for 490 students um and something like that so just to your to your thing

124so um it is only a subject that we should reach out to our representatives and i encourage the students as decatur and maria and her very powerful voice to do that as well well i would i would like to just formally ask the board to have that as an agenda item in the next i mean we understand that we had the conversation today about mental health it felt to me like it would be the board but since we aren't apparently going to now i would like to make sure that we have the opportunity to do that at a future night um and either work session or public meeting because it feels like it would be a work session um topic that we can really go into and to depth with um if it's a work

125session topic i would like to request community representatives like for example mrs rossman to attend or to speak with us as we go through that work all right we will talk more about that offline all right thank you all for um adjoining for joining us this meeting is now adjourned at 8 28. thank you you