September 14, 2021 - Regular Board Meeting

001time is 6 30 and i'd like to call a meeting to order um tasha white our board chair is absent this evening so i as your vice chair will be filling in for her and i'd like to welcome everyone who's attending in person and also welcome those who are attending through zoom and i'd like to begin the meeting with the moment of silence you may wish to remember the victims of 9 11 and you may also wish to think about the people who are struggling every day during this coveted pandemic now i'd like to invite all those who are able to please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty

002and justice for all so um everyone has had a chance to look at the agenda and i just want to point out there's been one recent addition to the consent items and that is to um address the system-wide kitchen equipment are there any other additions or corrections to the agenda hearing none i'd like to then discuss the minutes um has everyone had a chance to prove to review their minutes are there any additions or corrections to the minute hearing none i ask all to approve the minutes all in favor say aye aye um next i'd like to move on to my favorite part of the meeting and that is the spotlight we have christopher lofstrian from decatur high school here to present for us this evening good evening board members this is nintendo furman i

003thought about changing into more professional attire for my presentation tonight but i couldn't think of a more appropriate outfit to showcase our spotlight tonight which is on positive culture and climate it is homecoming week thank you miss powell um and today is decades day someone's showing off my school spirit if you have students coming to your students coming to school in pajamas tomorrow it is okay as tomorrow is honoring wellness wednesday so tonight i'm going to talk about how we the staff and students at decatur high school how we are supporting the district improvement area of positive culture and climate so here are the csc goals under this pillar and under that are the decatur high school school improvement bowls and i'm going to talk about a few of these tonight specifically how we're using

004advisement lessons how we're using circles during that time and how all staff are involved in things outside of the classroom so last year we began the process of rolling out our pbis branding of being the past and we wanted that to grow and become more meaningful for students and perspectives we gathered some feedback on what worked last year and what didn't when it came to our school schedule and student experiences and in the next few minutes i'm going to tell you about how we have shifted our work in order to help everyone be more connected to our school so we have a new schedule if you have a high schooler you are aware of this our new schedule for this year includes some new components including advisement twice a week in order to build community

005with our within our school and win time which is what i need we began to notice that if a student needed help or enrichment if they needed to make up work if they wanted to be in our ib diploma or our career program if they wanted to be part of a club all of these things happened before or after school in some cases we were asking our students to take our theory of knowledge class to get to school at 7 30 in the morning in order to take this mandatory class for their ib diploma by changing our schedule and shifting these things into the school day we can ensure that our students are getting what they need when they need it our advisement program has really grown into a meaningful experience for our students these

00630 minutes twice a week have helped us to build a strong to build strong relationships with students who we don't necessarily teach it allows us time to learn about school information show our school spirit build our social emotional learning skills and of course to have a little fun so one of our school improvement plan goals is that circles will be used during advisement time to help build community we have a series of professional learning scheduled during our weekly faculty meetings to teach everyone not only the importance of these circles but also give them examples of circles that they can immediately use in their advisement to help deepen their relationship with their students by learning these tools in this way they can use them as a way to restore relationships in the future if need be

007so here are two examples of opening circles used in our advisement classes the first couple weeks during a recent staff training that i did i asked the staff about something that had gone well during the first two weeks of school more than once advisement lessons and circle questions were mentioned as a way that our staff connected to students in different ways as decatur high school continues its rebranding to be in line with our pbis matrix we're creating lessons for the students that allow them to think about what it means to be purposeful accountable connected and kind we are trying everything we are tying everything we are doing back to these expectations and it really feels like our students understand our expectations because of the work we have done in advisement you guys know from pbis

008we teach students how to do math how to do english but we tell them what our expectations are for behavior and how we want them to act in the buildings but we don't take the time to teach it well advisement time has become that for us so um we had uh advisement should also be fun we have group building activities planned throughout the year as well this was an activity pack your room that our students did at the beginning of august their advisements needed to show how we are purposeful accountable connected and kind and here are some examples of the pack of the doors so you can see classroom doors um students and different advisements embrace this theme in different ways but to walk by a classroom door and see student accounts of how they

009can be positive a positive make a positive contribution to our school i have to be honest with you it has been a great way to start the school year all right so i can stand up here but now i want you to hear a little bit from our students we're all seniors and we are all part of the pack because i'm purposeful i keep my planner around in class and i make sure i write down all my upcoming assignments i'm accountable because i'm always at school on time in the morning so i can get a good start of the day from first period i'm connected by going through this i'm kind of making sure everyone feels included i feel as part of the statistic here because i'm connected to the soccer team and i'd like

010to thanks for doing it inside hi my name is paige arnold and i'm a 12th grader at degater high school and i love being a part of the pack i think that it's really important to feel connected especially after the virtual year that we've had um last year when it was really hard to you know get together and do that and i feel like definitely during um win time study hall during fourth period on friday and advisement it's like super good to be able to talk to different people and collaborate on you know projects or whatever it is that we have to do just because you get to discuss with other people the importance of you know working together and you can double check your answers or get a peer edit or something and i

011just think that's so important to know the development of how we are as students and as friends thank you so the other way that we stay connected is through our student activities and athletics in the monthly report that i've turned into dr fuhrman you will see all that is going on at decatur high schools in our clubs athletics and organizations our students and staff are super busy we have over 99 student-run run club and i approve a new one every week the national center for educational statistics published a study looking at extracurricular participation in student engagement recent research suggests that participation and extracurricular activities may increase the student's sense of engagement or attachment to their school and thereby decrease the likelihood of school failure and dropping out because of this i wanted a school improvement

012plan goal to be not just for the students to participate in extracurricular clubs and activities but a goal focused on our faculty and staff collecting data on how many of our staff are involved in our students lives outside of the classroom is important to me and to the engagement of our students in our building a member of my admin team said recently how wonderful it was to see posters around the school again advertising the student center small groups homecoming posters club posters as well as athletics so i just wanted to share those with you because it's not something we have seen for a very long time some other things that we're doing to help with culture and climate since all the 9th graders and the 10th graders are in our myt program 359 students are

013in our diploma program 93 students are in our career program 77 of our total schools is part of our ib program and 100 of our students take an ib course so that means that we want to create a whole school identity around being an iv world school this is very important because we don't want it to be if 77 of our students are involved in the ib program we feel that that should be our identity school-wide mtss multi-tiered system of support is often used to describe students needing academic or behavior intervention the tier one of mtss is actually all students so when we're talking about mtss at decatur high school we want to make sure that everybody understands that this is a whole school model and that all students are supported to increase the climate

014and culture within our whole community we ramped up dhs 101 this is done through a partnership with our ptsa thanks to what we learned last year we're recording all of our sessions and they're available on our website and that's just a little screenshot of our website coffee chats are also done at the elementary level but i know and you guys know from having elementary kids it's a great way to teach our parent community about the different programs or initiatives that we're doing at every school so we are going to have one coffee chat a month we have already had one and you can see it's down toward the bottom there it was on the ib diploma and career program overview and it was extremely successful we are now recording them and they will be posted

015on our website as well and finally we are continuing our work with nominating students and staff for how their work aligns with being purposeful accountable connected and kind today i went with our mascot spike to about 12 classrooms to give out student of the month awards i have to say that that was definitely the highlight sorry y'all but that was good so the next time you're at dhs take a look at some of our new branding there are some exciting things going on at our school we hope to see you at the parade and the football game this friday thank you all for your time thank you principal lobster and um i love your outfit i love your enthusiasm and your energy and i'm certain that it spreads to the students and then i'm sure

016that you are rubbing off on them and i think it's wonderful i appreciate your efforts to build positive climate at the school and know that that's much needed by all the students and i just also appreciate that you're being responsive to the students needs and changing the schedules and and giving them opportunities to connect and bring some of those outside experiences into the school day so thank you for all your peer work thank you do any other board members have any comments about the spotlight i was just going to say i'm really excited about the restorative circles um being used during it by assets because not only can we use those sort assorted circles to repair but to build relationships and so i'm really excited to hear that you are using that time um for

017that and how long is that bias when i'll just give you so the first two weeks of school it was long because we didn't have wind time yet so the first couple weeks it was an hour and a half but now it's 30 minutes twice a week thank you so the chunks of time are much more manageable but we really pushed hard the first few weeks on that relationship building and thank you guys thank you thank you michelle um next is public comments we have um how many signed up for this evening we have three people signed up for public comments the first is amy ratcliffe and she's there soon okay and before we begin i just would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that you'll be given three minutes please state your

018name and your affiliation with the city schools of decatur and also just a reminder that during public comment it's not a time to discuss individual grievances and if you have if you happen to have some please connect with the board outside of this meeting before and we will respond to you accordingly thank you miss radcliffe yes thank you um i'm not sure goodness i'm sorry i'm not able to turn on my i'm not sure how to turn on my video so i'm um amy ratcliffe and i'm speaking on behalf of two other parents of city school of decatur students catherine tan and julie gutmann we are epidemiologists and we submitted comments also as a letter to the board and we applaud and encourage your decision to require vaccinations for all staff and students who are

019eligible for the coven 19 vaccines as an additional requirement to indoor masks we recognize that in school participation is vital for many children to learn effectively and protecting our community with as many layers as possible with the interventions that we have as the right decision as you apply the vaccine requirements and consider how to accommodate those who are ineligible for vaccines we wanted to address eligibility and spread some information about who is medically eligible for the vaccine of course the broadest exclusion criteria is age and protecting our middle and grade school children who are not eligible for vaccination is vital as they're under 12 years of age our message for you is intended to clarify the exclusion criteria based on the medical reasons for anyone who's 12 or older the only medical reason that should

020exclude someone across all of the covet vaccines is a known and severe allergy to one of the vaccine components there are a few other health categories that may shape vaccine choice people can discuss their unresolved heart conditions a history of blood clots and people with guillain-barre syndrome should consult with their doctors but vaccination is advisable for anyone who has a pre-existing condition or is in one of the high risk categories so we hope to clear up the misperception that there's a long list of reasons that would medically prevent someone from getting vaccinated against covin in fact the only medical reason that should exclude someone across all of the vaccines as i said is a severe allergy to one of the vaccine components so thanks very much for considering these as you formulate policy and begin

021to roll out vaccine requirements incentives and encourage vaccination in our community and that's it thank you thank you next up is anna hansen in person ever to be here thank you my name is anna henson i am the mother of two decatur high school students i'm on the board of the decatur career academy and for the past couple years have conducted core values training for many of our high school students during career month in 2016 my family moved to decatur for its exceptional school system which quote works to develop curious self-directed learners who engage in a rigorous and purposeful interdisciplinary curriculum by participating in inquiries collaboration a passionate exchange of ideas and self-reflection a vaccine mandate which applies really to less than 20 percent of students and teachers within our school system would go against

022your mission of exclusive with a mandate you would be telling the tips you teach that no matter how curious self-directed self-aware and autonomous they are in their growth process there will always be an authoritative power that is ready to squash the direction of their growth and dependence if it does not perform what message would you be sending our students you would also be undermining parental rights which supersede any public school district rights over our children i understand worry i am a first generation off the boat greek on earth but perspective and facts on me tremendously i do not buy into the fear that is generated on social media i do my own research and go from there as to what works with or goes against my family's core values which are faith independence love courage

023perseverance among others for the school age covered 19 surveillance report as of september 8th in the state of georgia there have been 539 total cases in the 5 to 17 age group there are approximately 88 500 students in all of dekalb county including the city of theater about 10 percent of all students in dekalb county sets a positive proportion according to the day this daily surveillance the weekly number of reported cases has actually dropped by 22 over this past week that's fantastic but there is some sad news there have been 15 deaths total attributed to coven 19 with children 2-17 in the state of georgia as of september 8th these heart-wrenching cases were attributed to obesity asthma and you know compromised kids and other forms called imposed impulsivity i'm not opposed to code of vaccines

024i am opposed to a vaccine mandate within the school system with a greater than 80 percent vast rate it is unnecessary it is an overreach of your authority however and that is completely unacceptable thank you thank you next focus comment the next comment is from john barbie mr barbie hi can you hear me thank you my daughter's in the school system here we have given her all the required vaccines since she was a baby and we joined the vast majority in support of routine child vaccination however there are serious safety concerns with the coveted vaccines and we don't know long-term implications for our kids the cdc has confirmed and certified thousands of reports in their vares system seventeen thousand seven hundred ninety four permanently disabled thirteen thousand six hundred twenty seven deaths five thousand ninety

025three cases of heart injury as of july 419 513 adverse event reports according to the federal database no other vaccines in history have had these kinds of numbers can you imagine a trip to eggleston with your son or your daughter or reading a decatur-ish article about someone else's child i personally know of two deaths and five others who have had very serious reactions to the shots putting them in the hospital there are treatment protocols that work emory and other clinics are using monoclonal antibodies and drugs that are saving patients and avoiding hospitalization i have talked with a few physicians and nurses who are using protocols that are working we are putting all of our eggs in just one basket focusing so much on vaccines masking distancing and other mitigation measures are working in our schools

026decatur is doing an amazing job amazing vaccination does not stop transmission vaccination family members are giving it to one another if i'm sorry fully vaccinated family members are giving to one another a cdc study from august proves the vaccinated are spreading the delta variant just as much as unvaccinated also they report hospitalizations of fully vaccinated up from one percent of the total in january to over 20 percent in june nurse friends working in three different hospitals are praising natural immunity they're not seeing coveted recovered patients in their icus the research is in line with what's happening on the front lines emory's dr ahmed study and at least 14 other studies show the evidence that our immune systems protect us long after recovery even against the delta variant please do not vote for a coveted vaccine

027student mandate let's put energy into getting our doctors to treat covet early and to educate us about prevention parents along with our chosen health care team should be allowed to decide whether to vaccinate our kids please let us decide what's right for our families and thank you so much thank you that's it for the public comment for this evening now moving on to the superintendent's comment okay thank you everyone welcome good to see everyone here this evening for my presentation they get put up on the screen thank you aspen all right thank you uh mr melton i can go ahead to the next slide um so just an overview of my topics this evening i'm going to give some updates on our covid protocols i am i'm going to talk a little bit about vaccines

028for staff and students and then also i want to share some things that our community can do to help us mitigate covet not just in our schools but also in our communities i'm going to share my evaluation tool as well as to discuss briefly particularly for the board the monthly updates for the schools that were included in the board packet this week and then also our super intended student advisory team that is being formed and then i want to share some information about all the amazing parts that i got it was so great all right thank you espen you can go the next slide okay so just a reminder for everyone that all of our coded information is on our csd website and that is the place to find the most up-to-date information about mitigation

029strategies about our dashboard and information about any positive covid cases that have been identified for staff or students in our building along with the number of quarantined staff and students as well and i did just also want to update um we shared on friday that we did kind of do a variation of what was included in our manual with how we responded to a covid positive case at our fifth avenue school um because we realize that things change kind of ongoing when it comes to covid what the recommendations are coming out of the public health departments and sometimes we can't keep up with updating our manual in real time so we did share information with the public about if we do have to make a change and very vary from what's in our manual we

030will be very transparent with clarification on that why we made the change kind of what was driving that just so people can understand here's an update if we didn't get something updated in the manual in time we will share that and be up to date about that uh covet testing we are getting ready to get up and going our weekly proved testing we will continue our point of care testing which is if a student or staff comes to school starts showing symptoms we have available rapid testing in our nurses office to us and several of our other auxiliary buildings to test individuals who are showing symptoms while on campus um so we'll continue with those um weekly code testing i get parents we've gotten some communication why is this taking so long believe me dr

031huddleston is working as fast as she can when you're dealing with government agencies when you're dealing with a large system the size of ours it's a lot of pieces to get moving and organized and she has been doing a phenomenal job organizing that meeting with the schools identifying the locations seeing the in between the lab and the schools to make sure everything is organized as well as the uh the consent form there are a lot of hoops to jump through with that i'm currently have about 1500 students that have been signed up for consent for testing we really want to try to see that number get up to about 2500. we know that if you're testing about 50 or more of your students on a weekly basis that is really the most beneficial um so

032just putting another plug out there for parents please review that consent form sign your student up for weekly test screenings so that we can identify any of those asymptomatic students that may be spreading covid amongst other students within our building or staff members so we really want to see that number get a little bit higher to make that surveillance testing or that weekly covet testing as effective as possible so we are waiting on the supply chain to deliver things our plan is to start testing after fall break um and that really will just depend on when the tests get here i think we are we are ready to go we are ready to start the process but we need the test to arrive and we here keep hearing the supply chain supply chain supply chain

033issues as things go on with covid and as soon as it gets here we are ready to ready to go okay vaccines so we are moving ahead as a school district with requiring vaccines for our employees our date for staff to con fully vaccinated is october 31st um or they can complete the exemption process so if a staff member feels that a vaccine is not the right option for them they can enter the exemption process and our human resources department will handle that if a staff member successfully completes the exemption process which means they're granted an exemption and don't have to be vaccinated they will be required to take a rapid covet test daily we will offer those tests in our school building for those staff we'll have the details we'll share those with our

034staff coming up or if that staff member wants to take their take a rapid test at either a pharmacy or a health care facility they're welcome to do that but we will not be accepting home covid tests they will have to bring in a certified result from either a pharmacy or a healthcare facility if a staff member does get through the exemption process and has to take the test and they decide to take the rapid covet test daily at one of our facilities we will have a cost associated with that so that is the update for staff um so for students this is a much bigger issue than first staff staff is so it's a much different thing when you're talking about employees that work for your school system versus students that attend your public

035school system um so we um the board the superintendent we all agree that vaccines are the best way to get through this pandemic however at this point the board is not is knows that there are some other obstacles to navigate there's lots of other things to consider when requiring vaccines for our students in our school building so we are still continuing this conversation and are not ready at this time to take any official action for mandating vaccines for students in our buildings i will on friday every week i share my friday follow up i will be providing some additional information in my friday follow up with just some more information about the discussion that the board's been having and the reasonings behind what we've been talking about with vaccinations for students for povid so look

036forward to my friday follow up for some additional information on vaccines so what we are seeing is we can see some you know a little bit of downturn and positive cases in the community but i can tell you every positive case that shows up in our schools creates a lot of work for our staff the contact trace it requires students that haven't been vaccinated to be quarantined so really i'm putting out a clarion call to our community to do all that you can as a community to decrease the spread of covid and this is just some reminders of what's on the cdc website stay home when you're not feeling well keep your child home when they're not feeling well continue practicing masking physical distancing frequent hand washing please avoid crowds and any poorly ventilated areas

037make sure you're cleaning even in your home high touch surfaces cover your coughs and sneeze and then also just monitor your health and the health of your child even if your symptoms are very minor what we're seeing is people how i have a little bit of a scratchy throat oh i've got a little bit of a sniffle maybe a slight headache people are testing positive that have been vaccinated and their symptoms are lower and as we heard in some of our public comments people that have been vaccinated can test positive and can spread the virus so we definitely want to make sure that whatever you are doing if you are not feeling well if you're experiencing any of those symptoms please get a covet test make sure you get that all clear come to school

038late whatever you need to do but we want to make sure that the people coming into our buildings are not covet positive and are not continuing to spread covet amongst our staff and students i did also want to share just my evaluation tool we finalized this has been kind of a long on ongoing project and i'm happy to show that we've finalized this tool this evening with the last phase which was developing the annual gold that i will use um if you can open up that tool for me um if you want to increase it just a little bit for me estim zoom in okay so it's a pretty lengthy tool um it's ver first part of it gives the calendar gives an overview and i'll be posting a pdf of this on our website

039for people to review um just go ahead and scroll down and you'll notice that there are district priorities and my evaluation is tied to making sure that our school district achieves those priorities so priorities as related to our vision and mission um priorities related to equitable outcomes for our students um as well as building a positive culture and climate another priority area for the school system is making sure our school runs effectively and efficiently that operations run well that we are meeting our goals and objectives as it relates to human resources and management district priority five really deals with leadership accountability so what am i doing as a leader how is my executive cabinet functioning and as a board how are we functioning together as a board so that's very important we know that effective

040school governance creates effective school systems um and then priority six is communication and community engagement so that is the last priority so there's actions and activities that i will be completing to demonstrate my effectiveness or lack of effectiveness in these areas as well as some ideas of things that i will provide as evidence to the board to show that requirement that i'm meeting where i am on my on these different evaluation points so if you scroll down a little bit further so i have developed four areas for annual goals um now just so people know student outcomes and achievement that is related to priority number two equitable outcomes for students so i very much am a student achievement focused person i want to make sure that our achievement is high as a school district and

041i want to make sure that our all of our students have equitable opportunities for that high level of success but i think there are a couple core areas that we need to work on as a district and these are the goals that i've developed and they are around making sure our district communications are effective and frequent we really need to focus on a district about building the foundations for a data culture um so i've included some language there there's also a link to the kind of the protocol that we're going to use to help develop that foundation embedding and implementing our social emotional learning curriculum and then also enhancing stakeholder engagement opportunities is on my fourth goal area so those that will be my evaluation so i'll get my midterm evaluation completed um in november

042and then we'll do my final evaluation close to the end of the year and estimate if you will scroll down what i will be sharing publicly is publicly i will share the over overall summary report so with the mid-year after my is completed i will be sharing this sheet on the website so people can follow and see how we are doing as a district and how i'm performing as well and at the end of the year there's a final evaluation page and we'll also share that overall summary publicly as well so i did just want to and you can go back to the presentation austin thank you part of the survey and part of what i really value as a leader is getting input from stakeholder groups i want to know how do the parents

043how do the teachers how do the leaders how do the students and the principals that i work with perceive my leadership that's very important to me i'm very much a growth focused a growth mindset person and i want to hear where am i doing well what do i need to keep doing and what are some areas that i may need to work on for my own personal growth so that i can help support our staff and students in the district so there will be some surveys going out to gather some data on the different areas that are listed in my evaluation and as i said i will be sharing publicly the mid-year and the summary sheets when those are completed so that is my updated evaluation tool um and then for the board if you

044looked through our expensive board packet this month you saw at the end that there is a report and principal losterian mentioned this in her presentation as well i've asked each school to provide a monthly status report for the board first part of it is data so how are our students achieving i want to and i've shared before that we'll be tracking how our students are performing on reading on math for high school we'll also be looking at on track for graduation at the high school in the middle school attendance data we'll also be giving an overview of student athletics and activities events and any upcoming events that may the board may want to attend will also be listed there so just for the board some of them were a little formatted a little bit differently

045so when we get to the chair comments if the board wants to share kind of how you like the reports is the is there one that kind of stuck out as a better format than some of the other ones feel free to let me know so we can make sure that those are in a way that is most digestible for our board and for the public and then the final piece um for the monthly updates so the public can also follow along not only with the monthly updates but we have finalized our framework for equitable outcomes it is ready to publish and it will be put on our website as well so it is just our overview of our pillars and our plan um and then if you scroll down there's lots of links in

046there to take you to our ends policies to show you our coherence framework so you can see a connection not just from school improvement plans to the classroom but this coherence plan connects the board room to the classroom and that's very important that as the leaders for our school district we are modeling and showing how we connect our work directly to the students in our classrooms um in essen if you scroll all the way down there's lots of information to digest in there there are links to every single one of our school improvement plans so families are welcome and public is welcome to review those and those will be updated mid-year and again at the end of the year um so that is just some information for the board and for our public and the

047last thing i'm going to well the second last thing i'm going to share is i am forming our student advisory team for the superintendent and it's called f squared eighty and uh the applications went out um last week so if students are interested we are doing eighth grade and above i will be selecting students that i'll meet with on a monthly basis because i really believe that the students need to have a voice that is heard at the top level of our district i want to know how do our students see what's happening how do the education we're providing our students how is that received are they getting the outcomes that we hope they are getting to me that is one of the most essential voices that need to be listed in a school district

048um so i will be meeting with those students monthly and last slide eston i over the summer shared an art contest and got lots of different submissions i think these are the ones that came in so far and i said i was going to choose a couple to hang and put in the outer office in the superintendent suite i have to be honest i couldn't choose any of them so i chose all of them um so we are gonna frame all of these amazing works of art and put them in the outer office in the superintendent suite but what i would love is this i will keep reminding people to share their student artwork and hopefully some of the art teachers in our buildings also use this as a way to get our students to

049express their artistic side we will add those as we go throughout the year and just add to that collection and i'll highlight those at every board meeting once they come in because they were just so wonderful and it just would just make my whole week when a couple would come in i'd be like oh my gosh so great so loved seeing the artwork love seeing our students artistic abilities they were amazing so good job students and that concludes my comments for this evening thank you thank you dr herman now it's time to move on to the chairs report and i do have a few things i'd love to mention after i finish my comments i will allow the other board members to add anything if there's anything they would also like to mention and also

050if they have any feedback regarding the principal reports for for you dr fuhrman or also we may follow up with you after this meeting if it's sure something more um detailed but i'd like to start by saying thank you to you our our superintendent uh leader uh and also to our teachers and staff uh for your endless work um your dedication is really appreciated to keeping our kids safe and our schools open and keeping them learning in person and i appreciate that this is another job on top of your already more than full-time job and the same is true for our teachers and our staff and i realize and appreciate that it's exhausting but it's so important and i'm extremely grateful as both a parent and a school board member that we have such wonderful

051people in place doing these jobs this landscape's ever changing it takes a lot to stay on top of everything and also it takes a lot for the teachers and the staff to not only implement but enforce our mitigation strategies but i hear it that the students are doing a really good job and when i ask my own student my own children you know are the kids doing it they say yes they're they're doing it and they're seeing that kids are are being supportive and mindful of these mitigation strategies and i think that's great um we're also excited to be adding another mitigation layer including the surveillance testing which is going to be ruled out very soon and i also want to say that i appreciate the community very much for trusting us with your children

052and for all of your support and ongoing support of csd during this time it means a lot this community is amazing there are a lot of resources in this community a lot of people who give a lot of their good energy every single day to our schools and to support our teachers and to our children and so thank you very much to our community um one thing that was really fun this week um we as board members received many emails from eighth graders who had been given an assignment to advocate for something that mattered to them and to voice their concerns to people who could do something about it and so we heard from many eighth graders and i really appreciated hearing their voices and hearing about some really important topics some of them very

053serious and i just want to shout out those eighth graders and encourage them to continue to make their voices be heard something exciting has happened here on the courtyard outside of the wilson center there's a new statue entitled what sonia said by alex slovani and it was unveiled in september 12th in the courtyard here at the wilson center the art for people installation was organized by the beacon hill black alliance for human rights and it's the first public art indicator specifically commissioned and designed to actively change oppressive and racist narratives board member dana johnson davis spoke at the event thank you and um it was you know it's really beautiful and i hope everyone if you haven't seen it yet take take a look and take a moment to to see this statue and and

054learn what it represents also this past month beacon hill presented the first pan african festival it was an inspiring event with the theme of innovation culture and economic empowerment through music dance and spoken words and i hope it becomes more than just a one-time thing i would love to see that become an annual event we are also celebrating hispanic heritage month which begins september 15th and there will be a series here in decatur of many events of hispanic latinx culture food um and music dance art and education many examples of the valuable contributions hispanic americans have made to our country so that should be a lot of fun i look forward to attending that event as well september is national suicide prevention month csd is committed to the emotional well-being of our students and the

055vital mission of suicide prevention we encourage parents of students to reach out to your school counselors and just know that they are there for you your teachers as well and also to ask for the support and support if it's needed and we want to also encourage students if you have high school students mention to them that the student decatur student center is there it's there for them and not to be shy about going there make sure they know that it's okay it's an excused absence it's there for them when they just need a minute and it's a beautiful space it's a partnership with the decatur education foundation and it's more than just a space there's support there there are people to talk to and they can also get some counseling services if they need it

056there or they can just go there if they just need to breathe so encourage your students to make use of that it's wonderful and we look forward to expanding the this initiative to renfro as well in the future on a lighter note it's homecoming spirit week at csd and this is especially exciting for the students who didn't get to experience it last year so it's been a couple years since we've had the joy of doing this and so we hope that you'll participate there's going to be a parade this friday at 5 30 and then there's going to be a football game kickoff at 7 30. and we hope to see you there we hope to see you there wearing a mask and being mindful also of the cdc safety guidelines um it's exciting especially

057because our football team is 3-0 and it's ranked number 10 in class 5a in the state and this is the first time since 2004 that they've been ranked and so that's pretty cool and we're also really proud of our coach he's been coach felton he has been nominated for the atlanta falcons coach of the week so if you have an opportunity to vote for him you can vote once every hour until sometime on wednesday and that would just be really fun if you could get recognized during homecoming week um i just want to say i'm so proud of all of our student athletes for being great athletes and also for being dedicated students it's a tricky balance and i think you know i just really admire and appreciate our student athletes um and a lot

058of this couldn't be possible without our parents again i look back at our community and want to thank the dedicated parent volunteers who run the the the bulldog boosters club the ptas and ptos they put together really fun events and it just you know we were talking with hearing from principal lofstrand about building positive culture and our parents and their support for the ptas and ptos and the bulldog boosters does so much to build that positive climate and culture at the school and we are really fortunate as a community to have that because not all communities have it to the extent that we do and so that's something i want to thank the community for the dhs cross country team is hosting their 5k race on the trails at legacy park which as you probably

059know that's the 77 acre acquisition that was made by the city of decatur only a couple of years ago and so that's pretty neat that there we are able to collaboratively collaboratively use that space and this will be a fundraiser for the cross country team so hope to see you there finally i'd like to also reiterate just we're grateful for the resources and support that the decatur education foundation provides to our district and the community and that includes many things a broad range of topics they're often the first to jump in and identify a need and that includes homework help mentoring tutoring even food insecurity over the past year and what they often do is they are because they are nimble they're able to identify that need quickly react to it and then connect those

060people with other organizations that can sustain that service to them long term but they often fill the gaps they support our teachers in ways that we can't always do from the from the system budget point of view and so it's really wonderful to have them as partners so thank you um for listening but there are just so many good things to say about our district um now i'd like to give the rest of the board an opportunity if there are any other comments you would like to make i thought the school reports were great everyone basically followed the same format some just have more information to share than others and uh i really even appreciated the coming events um that um dhs and rental shares because it has the games listed right there so you

061know a nice discourse and quickly look to reference for the games of the next month and so i thought you know the reports were very informative and the information that was provided is very relevant i like the way i agree excellent great data um we'll first put uh the final number next to the percentage for a lot of their stuff which is something you and i've talked about and you see something like five percent of a school is doing something and then the data says that's two kids right so we can read that very okay differently and then it showed up the same way and the counseling numbers which stood out to me i think i appreciated that a lot of the counselors responded that part numbers they said we heard from 40 students at

062claremont who reached out to counselors for one-on-one just as as we hear that through the year prioritizing counseling and mental health and reaching out i think becomes a little it's numbers in our city um and speaks to heather i think he's pointing out the eighth graders who reached out a number of them spoke about suicide prevention and this month and dealing with mental health and so it's definitely been on my mind i only want i was glad that you mentioned the eighth graders letters and if any of the eighth graders are listening um i fully intend to respond to these many emails and i have sat down again but it takes some time as the kids will attest given the obvious amount of efforts they put into the letters which were really quite impressive and

063i advocacy for the various things that they picked um and so i was very impressed by them i'm very happy this is a great assignment it's also going to take me a little bit of time to respond so i don't want to be a bad example of unresponsive you know government by not by not answering so the answers are coming but uh i just wanted to say thank you for the emails so far i agree with all of them sometimes issues are difficult though so anyways thank you so much i just have one final comment about the principles report i enjoyed all of them i like that insight into the school i do wonder if there's any way to make them even more standardized or take certain components and build sort of a dashboard around

064it but i also don't want to put too much work on you to do that but maybe if there's a way to digest that a little more and the one thing that in this past report i think would be very helpful is to not only see the current map scores and percentages of achievement in the various levels but also compare that to two years ago so that it can be given we can be given the perspective and understand the delta is that better or worse than we've been varying in years past yeah thank you and that is going to be a big part of that delta and kind of growth over time that will be a big part of the data that we share next month when we take a deep dive into the accelerating

065student learning pillar okay i might make one additional comment but i appreciated that you shared your the evaluation tool we've of course always had an evaluation tool i don't know we've always talked about it so publicly but one of the things you put in it that i'm very excited to see is the emphasis on surveys and so that we're reaching out to the people who need to be on us gather this day to evaluate how you're doing it's something that we've been really trying to get done ever since i've been on the board and it's been a complicated issue for a lot of reasons but i appreciate that you've embraced it and i mean we've been moving in this direction for a couple of years and laying the groundwork but i appreciate that we're there

066because i think it's important and i think you know i mean students staff pets so that we can really get a good good understanding of how people are affected i take the job very seriously and need to hear from the people um that receive the work and make sure that i'm hitting the target that they need to see and want to see hit so yeah it's important to me okay okay thank you so moving on to consent items um we have a list here including personnel report school nutrition financial reports approve the purchase of equipment and service contracts for secondary one-to-one devices sample foods grocery bid contract school nutrition for fiscal year 22 u.s foods grocery bid contract school nutrition for fiscal year 22 and an rfqb of 2105 the system-wide kitchen equipment replacement item

067do i have a motion to approve the consent items in a second all in favor thank you and finally we are moving forward to the items for action information or discussion and the first item is to approve the 2022-2023 school calendar and everyone's had it attached any questions before the board may approve it did that did my one comment get incorporated okay okay good thank you thank you you're welcome i appreciate your attention all right um okay so i guess uh may i have a motion please to approve the calendar for the 2022-2023 school year i moved to approve the calendar for the 2022-2023 a oh sorry all in favor thank you thank you louis um and the next item is the monitoring reports for discussion yeah so two monitoring reports um of this month

068um so i know it's a lot this month but we have these two ready to go um first one up is our human resources monitoring report um so board members in your packet you had um el and i've kind of got a naming convention so it's an executive limitation i'm calling those el policy number and then whatever is in the policy um 2.6 this one is staff so the process to go through here is the first phase of this is to make sure that i have reasonably interpreted the board's policy um for what you what was written in our policy um so then what we'll do is once you have reasonably or once you believe i have reasonably interpreted the policy we will check off on page the first page of the report that yes

069i've reasonably interpreted it and then the second phase is that you will also check off on the second page for board action that it has been either reasonably interpreted or not reasonably interpreted and then we dig into the policy so um what i'm interested in is as the board has read through this are there any areas in the human resources or in the staff policy that i have not reasonably interpreted so that i can make those changes and bring this back to the board and then i also listed on the on the report is compliant so what will it look like if the school district or if i have insured compliance of the report or of the policy and then the evidence and the data that will be provided to ensure compliance um so that

070is kind of what page in the [Music] packet page i think it starts in the early 100s so go through that yeah that's the actual report go to the actual policy there you go yep okay so if you have any clarifications or things that you think i need to review and take back to the drawing board with interpretation of the policy so if you look at the format i've just copied and pasted the actual policy in the top and then i have my interpretation then i've got the section for compliance and then i've listed evidence and data and then once this is officially approved is interpreted reasonably i will bring back we'll set a date for when i will bring it back with the actual data linked and um my take on if it's compliant

071or not and then the board will review and determine if that complies with or not so any questions on the staff i i did have one question and it was um about the nation yeah i was curious why it says um that we let me go to that section some page board packet page 108. that's page 10 and the report yeah and it's in the table that lists evidence the data and it's actually one of the administrative regulations so i got really excited when i finished going through the policy and then realized i also had to interpret the ars as well so i was like all right here i keep going maggie um so the policy uh the report says that our staff demographic demographics will reflect um diversity and i'll be 100 percent honest

072i put not the nation in there because that's what the previous superintendent kept telling us as a cabinet so if that's something we want to look at metro area if we want to look at i can update that one okay i that caught my eye too and my thought and i'm drawing you know is the book the color of lost you know this book is interrupting the outstanding book but he makes a recommendation in it and the point is that you don't want to use local demographics as you might pick because as decatur leeches out you've warped your statistics and you've got the wrong model but what he recommends and he's really talking in that book about diversity and housing and this sort of thing did you use the metropolitan statistical area okay as the

073basis because it's broad enough it's not warped by local irregularities but it's small enough so that it's relevant to locality right so it would be that you know i don't know what the metropolitan statistical area is it's like a 16 or 22 area so it would be quite large and it would include that's what i would suggest and i've always thought that it was a very smart recommendation that might be how does the rest of the board feel about that can you just clarify what the negative to using the district specific um data is well if we've lost if we're losing our diversity in the city of decatur we don't want our goal to be to match that instead we want the goals to be a little bit more un affected by that kind of

074imbalance i'm just trying to pick my word carefully but i think i'll tell you something okay i i think it makes sense to use the um to use the demographic comparison to what our target areas are for recruiting so if we hold our career fairs in the around the metro atlanta area i think that that would be make sense to reflect the metro atlanta area okay that's a more general comment which is that the last word meaning i talked a lot about the importance and i understand from others that i might have been misunderstood i want to make clear what i was intending to say in in terms of the board what we call board work um and i think that this is board work and what i was emphasizing is the need to get

075a report exactly like you've presented which i think is really good and fulfills that need it's this report that identifies how you interpret our policies and how you're progressing to meet them how you're meeting them it has been absent for the past uh really year and a half and so this is exactly what i'm asking for i very much appreciate what i see here because this is what i think we need to be doing let's put this on a regular cycle but i think this is well done and i appreciate it okay yeah i have to give kudos to dina and her team once you once we finish the policy piece she'll answer any questions you have about the actual human resource annual report i have two other requests and one is that it's part

076of the format when we do it i would appreciate actually having because i like to read these things a hard copy because we know that i have some challenges um when there are links to things like regulations i'm not gonna go follow sure so i'd like to have this printed out that's number one number two um i appreciate is that your metric or your evaluation for whether or not there's two employee grievance and employee protection regulations kind of hit the bill is to go out and survey the teachers the employees and find out if they do because if employees are satisfied and i'm satisfied that's exactly what we need to do and that's what you committed to doing so thank you you're welcome okay any other questions from other board members about the interpretation or

077the evidence for employee 2.6 all right so miss walker also included in the packet the annual staff of value oh so here's what we need to do sorry so we have been doing the annual report and kind of monitoring of staff 2.6 policies in september um speaking with miss walker as she's been preparing the report this is a really really busy time for human resources so i was going to recommend that we move policy monitoring for 2.6 to january was that what we were talking about adina okay because that's a better time for her and her department to really do all the work it's a lot a lot of work to pull all the data and do that presentation um so if you're okay we will bring this back for actual monitoring in december i'm

078sorry january yeah i'm fine with timing these however it makes most sense for for us to function well because i also appreciate that we have been wanting to start recruiting sooner and sooner and the earlier we recruit it seems like the more competitive pool of candidates we get and so last year we actually even started recruiting didn't we in january and so i think that's fantastic and so tell us when the timing is best and then we can work together to make that calendar okay what works for us is january okay so we'll do january then okay awesome okay so the last part of this is um the annual report were there any questions for miss walker and her team as it relates to the actual annual report that was included in there as well

079and i just want to give adina a shout out first of all she revamped our entire employee handbook it was i'm not i'm just going to say it it was kind of a disaster she revamped it she reorganized it she updated it it is now an actual usable employee handbook um which i think has the valuable information our staff has been needing um so i want to give her and her team big kudos for that as well as the rest of the executive cabinet because they had lots of parts to contribute to that big document as well so thank you adina executive cabinet and your team you guys did a really excellent job with getting that employee handbook together and then adina's team worked diligently lots of long hours getting the annual report ready um

080so any questions you have for her and her team we're ready to answer those i have a question so i saw where there was a page about the job fair and there were a hundred i think um folks who were candidates who were interviewed i was wondering how many new hires came out of that um doctor and i don't know if you have that information right now at your fingertips but i was curious as to you know what we were able to get from that job fair okay thank you or just comment that i really appreciated the annual report and i don't remember seeing that kind of a report before and maybe it's been done and i don't remember it but i appreciate it it's very welcome i was also curious i think it was

081in this report uh where the affinity mentioned or is that the later um the equity pillars report maybe in both of them okay i was wondering are the affinity groups have they are they up and running now okay all right well there's no other questions we'll move on to the equity i had i have submitted to some administrators yes did those get correct yes okay yeah i think it was a very good report it was very interested and i'm really excited about a couple of things in there just i think that it's really exciting that we're doing a 30 60 90 check-in with new hires because the onboarding process is so important um i also really like that we're finding pathways for the classified staff to get their teacher certification because i love that we're

082being able to grow people from within and give people opportunities and reasons to come to our district i also really like the student teacher placement and that seems to also have helped us grow and groom people from you know kind of from within because they got their first experience teaching here um i also like that we have the new hire mentors so thank you for implementing that um and also i really like that we're doing the new hire feedback but also the departure surveys so as we see people leave i'm also very appreciative that we're figuring out why they left so that we can figure out ways to have even better staff retention so there were a lot of things that were that stood out in this report those were just a few so thank

083you for this you can see that they are very busy in human resources yes and adina has stepped up and done a really great job as the chief human resource officer for our district thank you the number of new hires it was that statistically high lows uh is that about right that's pretty cool because that includes people who left and we're replacing that's a new okay are we continuing to plan to do a job fair and start that recruiting in january again absolutely right now and i think the feedback from our principals and this community that helped you know recruit interviews that appreciated this a weekday and the weekend day so right now we do have attendance dates of february 23rd and the 26th saturday um we have our winter break right there this week

084season 4. um okay that's great and i would also just ask that you let us and the superintendent know what we need to do for you to make that happen because obviously there needs to be budget there needs to be positions identified and all of those things first and so i know we need to do our work early to allow you to do your work early so please let us know what we can do to make that happen and even if we do more uh in person i think keeping a virtual that kind of uses our religious you know abroad and that advocates from all over those [Music] thank you all right thank you so we will move on to the equity monitoring report and presentation uh mary's one well i'm gonna make sure they're

085good on the policy and then we'll have you get a rest just for pull your heels for just a second more okay so um heather had submitted a question on the equity report and it was the interpretation for the section of the policy that said opportunities that meaning students would pursue within and beyond our school system and i had interpreted that to mean as programs such as whether they're in our ibdp program career they're going to a four-year college a technical college if they're moving straight into the workforce or military and heather had submitted a question about also including extracurriculars um in that um section as well so just curious on the rest of the board's interpretation of that and if that's something we need to add i'm sorry but can you ground me yes

086paige it is page 116. and it's the last um opportunity so i definitely could see with when it says within our school system that would be extracurriculars that would be sports and clubs i kept it with more of the academic kind of instructional programs and not as much thinking the extracurricular but i did i definitely could see how that would be an addition there you can think of obvious instances when that would be inappropriate for instance participation in an affinity group units and uh i guess i'm wondering if this is right it's obvious that those things would predict participation and i just wonder if it's too broad abroad i think my intent was that i would like to have some i guess intention to see to it that all groups are invited encouraged feel welcome

087represented in extracurricular activities as a whole and we maybe don't need to drill down to each individual group for each individual club to see i mean that's up for discussion but my overall feeling was that i think it's important that all of our students are encouraged to participate and that we do see representation from all of our subgroups because it's an it is an extension of the school it's really important for socializing for social emotional outlets and support and just even for academic enrichment like a lot of our clubs like debate club or you know math bowl or whatever greek club you know they can be also an extension of of learning and the part that makes it fun and not only that but i also think it's a great opportunity for kids to kind

088of mingle in different ways than they do in their regular classes and so you know some quiz who may not have classes together will meet who wouldn't otherwise meet and so um it maybe doesn't need to be too rigid but maybe there could be some mention of just you know having a finger on the pulse of that and being mindful of it and making sure that we are doing the kind of outreach we should be doing to at least reach out to all groups and extend the invitation that was my thinking yeah i think that is something i didn't really think about but glad that you brought that up i'll add that in there okay any other questions or clarifications on the equity monitoring interpretation i don't think i look at this i think the

089tripod survey one time so i was just trying to remember what is the categories that come out of that survey um that we would be comparing the data yes um caring challenge it's all these c words that's why i saw the seven c it's like the flower report for 0.6 under compliance um you keep up with data on the post-secondary and other so like achievement of our students is that correct we do we keep um information and it comes back to us through when the state does our ccrpi report about where students end up not just where they end up but how they succeed before they end up now that we have to check on that one um i don't know about success rates uh like do they continue after their first year we do

090get data in our ccrpi report about you know do they continue to be like enrolled as a student in like a four-year college or technical college but how do they measure success that's a little more difficult for schools and school districts before how certain schools stack up for preparing people but it's one thing to get into the place where you get to it's another thing to have a success rate beyond that it may actually be the housing authority that keeps up with that level but i think i've seen it for school as well and i would love to see that i mean obviously that's a multi-year thing but i'll second that i i've always thought that would be good it seems like the kind of thing on the college and that is only one end

091but you could get lots of information just from the uga [Music] admissions count you know and you know go to the colleges around town and get a good pool and ask them how we're doing you know they do yeah and that's you know this is one of those things where when you look at overall program evaluation you know how successful are your graduates you know leadership academies at the college level try to track this and measure this and it's and once people leave your institution they're gone can you get the data back can you not if so it gets a little a little more squiggly once they leave we can try to gather much of it as we can let me look up i think that i know a few okay that'd be awesome thank

092you yeah i think that definitely would enhance that report to see how our students do after they leave us okay any other questions on this one okay so um if the board thinks that that is with those two corrections that that's a reasonable interpretation um i will we will do this report in august it's going to kind of one of those lagging ones so next august we'll have all the data and interpretations of how we did this year okay all right so dr banks we're ready for your amazing presentation good evening everyone i'm really excited to be able to share with you which is why we're talking about okay so for those of you who've seen the presentation by me before you know that i like to bring a little my culture into every presentation

093so this presentation will be a little bit interactive and i'm asking if you are willing to help me yes yes okay awesome i'll tell you all more about that in a moment michelle alexander wrote the quotes that you see here on this slide to indicate our responsibility to fight against racial injustice and her statement is also relevant to our fight against racial injustice here in city schools of decatur and that is the racial injustice that is so evident in our disproportionately negative outcome for black students as michelle alexander says something more is required this is why csb has chosen to make advancing racial equity a prominent part of who we are and what we do the equity part of the equity and student services department helps to support csv's framework through what we call the

094advancing racial equity pillar you see it over here on the left however i want to take a moment to stress that when work is done with fidelity and done by people who believe in it the word becomes practically seamless so i can't take responsibility for all of the work in our department um everything in the pillar happens because of the unwavering support of my boss doctor also the unwavering support of our school principals who have been phenomenal in supporting this equity work curriculum and instruction status support and the federal programs departments our teachers and i'll tell you more about the work that they do in a moment and members of our community who are always reaching out to support this month our ttas has even taken part by establishing dei committees and they are doing

095equity work for other parents to try to bring parents along with their students in a time when our country is so divided and experiencing so much turmoil and strife it is encouraging to see that so many of us know that something different is required of us and that we are willing to act i will share a little piece of my culture now to these videos clips it's relevant to what i will ask you to do later to move forward this is the priority statement that guides the advancing racial equity color it requires active work against racism each student getting what they need to be successful and addressing and eliminating disproportionately negative outcomes and the most pivotal point in this priority statement and all the work we are doing in this pillar is about paying our

096educational debt to black students now comes the interactive part don't forget you all agree to help [Music] whenever i raise my fist and you see these flapping hand symbols we are all going to emphasize the point by implementing the double hand clap on syllables that goes with this text so it'll look like a b because that's what we need to do so let's practice and make it go away all right so i will again raise my hand i will then show the clapping hand symbol that we all hey all right thank you very much now don't forget if you're really going to honor my culture you got to say it like me okay we're not just playing with that we're paying you may have heard of the equity action plan we talked about that several

097times here and i want to clarify that it is one in the same with the advancing racial equity pillar and the goals are the same creating an anti-racist equitable environment while paying our debts so all students can thrive to achieve these goals we are implementing three critical initiatives normalized involves everyone being on the same page developing cultural humility and developing a shared organizational understanding of key concepts related to racial equity organize involves building our capacity as an organization to learn the skills and competencies that will prepare all csd educators to engage culturally responsive educator practices and curriculum operationalize involves revising increasing and ensuring the implementation of equitable district-wide policy i'm going to present information regarding all three of these initiatives and for each one i'm going to tell you what's being done in the area

098why it's being done where we are with it right now and how it's going so we'll start with normalize since we say that this normalized initiative is about cultural humility i just want to take a moment to define that cultural humility turns our gaze inward on developing our self-humility and a genuine interest in others in order to practice cultural humility a person must also be aware of and sensitive to historic realities like legacies of violence against certain groups of people and be knowledgeable about key concepts related to racial equity like anti-racism implicit bias and systemic racism the highlighted portion of the rockstand gay quote on this slide illustrates this mindset in other words we gotta know that we ain't perfect we gotta clean up our own backyard and then maybe we can start talking about

099others but not until we take care of ourselves within the normalized initiative csv has done and is doing a lot of strong work because our time is limited i will only highlight a small portion of the work we do but if you want to know more don't hesitate to act like steve rogers says i can do this all day let's start with district professional learning in addition to the work that you all know we're already doing with courageous conversations about race a lot of our professional learning comes through our equity teams or e-teams who help us normalize by facilitating the execution of the advancing racial equity pillar in individual schools and at the wilson center each of the 10 schools in csd and the wilson center has an equity team team members are teachers and

100administrators who have volunteered to serve with and are connected to each other through their desire to eliminate systemic racism towards students of color while inspiring equitable outcomes for all students i cannot say enough about the work that the equity teams have done and the wonderful contributions that they make there's only one of me but they take that work and spread it out exponentially throughout the district and they are really committed to it often when you see a presentation to the lord the blue spotlight it is directly connected to work from the equity committee so just just wanted to take a moment to shout them out because they really are awesome we are using e-teams because research shows us that peer-to-peer instruction is one of the high leverage practices that means instruction this work also helps

101teachers to understand and combat systemic inequities such as disproportionality district-wide racial affinity groups affinity groups can take a lot of forms veterans groups faith groups lbgt plus groups disability groups to name a few but they are often the most powerful when they are focused on creating a diverse and inclusive workplace since csd has put our focus toward racial equity we offer racial affinity groups for those who wish to engage in conversation about and or explore their personal development journey toward racial justice with others who share their racial identity we have a white racial affinity group a black female racial affinity group a black male racial affinity group and administrators of color racial affinity group and i just got great news today from one of our aapi teachers that we will now have an aapi racial

102affinity group so that's really exciting we are implementing implementing racial infinity groups because the research indicates that they promote staff retention and satisfaction happy teachers make average students beyond others we also have student anti-racism groups that have developed at dhs and rms the first group to develop was soar students organized for anti-racism this was a group that was sponsored and guided by courageous conversations about race very quickly as decatur students are want to do students grew into a place where they said we want more we want to do more we want to do this differently so they themselves form the group star students talk about race also starting this semester in the middle school due to student requests we will be beginning a student organization there called slam student leaders anti-racist movement slam participants deeper

103in their personal racial understanding and ability to communicate effectively about race as they develop skills and tools to disrupt systemic racism a final student group is aapi scientists this is headed by becca lewis and her dhs asian culture club students it's also supported by ms diane andre and dr jones this group is planning to partner with elementary schools to mentor aapi students and support them through any covet 19 related harassment see athletes if csd is to be a system truly committed to equity the time for learning and change is now in c equity students are s scholars students in grades 6 through 12 e who are examining that is reflecting on their own understandings about race e and who are engaging equity learning and using skills to interrupt racism such as bystander intervention eliminating cyber

104hate and identifying microaggressions we work to support these student groups because being able to engage in cross-cultural human communication and being culturally competent prepare students to be part of the global community and to be honest because we are all aware of specific student incidents that indicate that such conversations are long overdue having said all of this however the primary reason for all of this normalizing work is to [Music] now where are we with these things and how are they going as far as courageous conversations professional development 92.5 of our certified teachers have been trained classified staff and new hires are being trained this month and again in february as far as e-teams are concerned again one of the strongest part of the work they volunteer their own time to provide and support professional development they

105review and discuss district data related to equity they educate students and they support caretakers e-team leaders have almost 24 7 access to me for support and this year e-teams will have specialized training from ccar to help them better deliver to their peers professional learning regarding rates as far as see equity is concerned covent was a factor slowing down our implementation of c equity because we expected to implement the entire thing last year as a result we split it up see equity part one included three sessions during wellness wednesdays in 2020 part two lessons four through nine would take place this year in sixth through twelfth grade advisement classes to determine the influence of the normalized initiative on teachers self-efficacy regarding equity related issues we implemented a survey which had really exciting results more about that

106in a moment as i mentioned earlier i don't have enough time to go deeply into everything we do but i want to stress just a few things in the normal life area when it comes to equity professional learning under normalized there are multiple initiatives the ones that you see on the slide that's not even all of them teachers staff principals other administrators and cabinet members all participate in developing cultural humility and this type of professional learning they all realize that developing cultural humility is a marathon and not a sprint our superintendent is even doing an independent study and posting her growth on the equity website for all to see and did i mention that we have continued to do all this equity work even in the midst of a global pandemic did i mention that

107and it's making a difference at least that's what people say and that's what our research says while admittedly progress on the ultimate goal of disproportionality has yet to manifest laying this groundwork is part of moving the needles in many ways and another analysis of our survey shows that overall teachers confidence and their ability to talk and teach about equity has grown considerably from when the district started our equity work survey participants were asked to record how frequently they a examine themselves to identify bias whiteness and or microaggressions in which they engage how frequently they challenge physics when they express the racial stereotype and how frequently they challenge peers and administrators when they express a racial stereotype overall respondents reported examining themselves as well as challenging others more frequently now than they did at the start

108of the equity work the results presented in table 10 indicate that these differences in the frequency of behavior are in fact statistically seated teachers were also asked to compare the current extent to which they decolonize content and reflects upon the role they play in disproportionate outcomes for black students as seen in figure 6 and table 11 teachers currently engage in most of these practices more frequently than they report to have done so two years ago and these results too are statistically significant we learned a lot more through this survey both positive and negative if you'd like me to i'll come back another time and tell you all about our next key initiative is organize people often say to me yeah yeah all this culture humility stuff yeah that's real good but when will teachers do

109something in the classroom to address equity a valid question this is where culturally responsive education comes in but it's not just the job of teachers culturally responsive education is called education and not teaching because it includes all of us everyone involved from the tiniest student to the head of the district even you because we are all educators in one way or another for the organized initiative we will do our deeper dive first as we look at the culturally responsive education framework that csd teachers will learn and use to address equity in the classroom as well as the suspension prevention program seminal researchers in the field of education who address issues of culture associated with several related terms perhaps you've heard of terms like multicultural education transformative education teaching for social justice afrocentric education and democratic

110education ideas from many of these constructs coalesce creating culturally responsive education or crp cre also includes aspects of definitions provided by seminal educational researchers like geneva gay gloria lads and billings bell hooks james banks leader hilliard and nieto among others their contributions to culturally responsive education involve the characteristics that you see here cre as a practice addresses the imbalance of our current school culture which caters to the needs of the dominant cultural group the goals of cre is to provide a bridge initiated by educators to students homes and lives so that students are able to thrive in the school environment and feel as if it's a place of belonging it's a big topic so to help make it digestible and more importantly actionable we created what we are calling the culturally responsive education through for

111framework let's get into the framework just a tiny bit it is in your packet the do four framework is heavily research based but don't take my word for it read the bibliography in your fact and for others who may be interested in the research supporting the do four framework it is also posted on the equity website the framework has four quadrants and each is further explained by discussing four things culturally responsive educators choose to do to be anti-racist abolitionists just great teachers as a whole quadrant one is called do herself it's about developing developing personal racial id cultural humility and eliminating deficit perspectives squad 2 is called due for students here teachers address an equitable school or classroom policy and help students by scaffolding to build their intellectual capacity section 3 curriculum and assessment here

112teachers address bias and curriculum by engaging the current events and challenges of society and they also address assessment by aligning grading practices with standards and implementing other concepts that address bias in evaluation and finally is due for instruction this addresses teacher pedagogy through encouraging warm demanding and the interruption of inequitable instructional practices it's a pretty good framework even if i do say so however let me emphasize for you now we will not see the changes in educational outcomes that we want we will not pay the debt until we are on the ground helping educators do the work if they knew better they'd already be doing better so they need some assistance they don't need to just be introduced to this framework many will need extensive professional learning and active coaching to make this work part

113of who they are and we have to do that intentional work if we wish to see substantive change so suspension is a widely used disciplinary technique in both general and special ed research has raised serious questions about its effects frequent use of suspension has many undesirable outcomes lower academic achievements higher levels of disruptive behavior and higher school dropout rates particularly troubling is the disproportionate imposition of school suspension on black students national and state data reveal that black students are three to four times more likely to be suspended for school misconduct than our white students research also shows that racial disparities in school discipline cannot be explained by higher rates of misbehavior among black students in multiple studies white students displayed a higher rate of misbehavior than black students yet black students misbehavior was more likely

114to be punished overuse of suspension is a problem individual schools and districts can address by replacing immediate suspensions with alternatives backed by research much like csd's commitment to restorative practices when implemented with fidelity the results can be dramatically positive both for the students in the school therefore this office in collaboration with others is developing a data-driven program of restorative practices in lieu of suspension in which exclusion through school is not a default response to most student behavior this program is called suspension prevention and you see here on the slide just a tale of two schools an example of a school using restorative practices versus a school that does not now having done a deep dive into the organized initiative let's just look at the overall summary of the organized initiative we are using the due

115for a framework because we believe it will improve academic outcomes for black students we are implementing suspension prevention because we believe it will improve discipline disparities for black students and of course we are doing all of this too thank you very much so where are we with these things with cultural enrollment education the framework has been created 5 out of 11 introduction trainings are complete others have been scheduled there are deep dive trainings for administrators and coaches that begin next week 10 educational scholars reviewed the cre framework and provided feedback the framework was adjusted based upon that conversation the initial training seemed very positive teachers have given good response to it and we're hoping that the same thing will happen with the administrator and coach training with suspension prevention however we are just starting the

116work it is still in planning stage we have a charter and we will have our first meeting next week within the operationalized initiative csv has done and is doing a lot of work that has resulted in several substantive policy changes that you're already familiar with like the code of conduct like the other initiatives i'm going to tell you some of what's currently being done in the area why it's being done where we are within now and how it's going csd uses a protocol in order to facilitate the implementation of equitable policy across the district through the use of a tool called the racial equity tool you have it in your packet and i challenge the board to start using the racial equity tool consistently to guide your policy decisions it's a tool with a series

117of questions that you answer as you are making policies to ensure that the policy is estimated we have also begun to use a protocol to facilitate equitable hiring practices you have a copy of that in your packet as well initial reports from the use of the equitable hiring tool from principals have the reports have been extremely positive and we have seen actually i believe that i can't quote that but i think we've seen an increase in diverse hires across our district um hiring managers say that they believe it makes a difference and they believe the questions are relevant and really help them think through what they're trying to do for the operationalize these guides i'd like to call your attention to a few areas of the equity website that's going to give you the front

118page of the website please as you see this is the front page of the equity website and on this front page you see two bright red buttons these buttons are here to support our policy of responding to equity concerns within 24 to 48 hours we have had 55 forms submitted since we opened the platform in october 2019. on the equity dashboard please equity dashboard enhances csv's policy of transparency i am really proud of this collaboration with heidi watley and her team in research and analytics who provided the data here anyone can view where city schools of decatur is regarding racial disparities in real time and help to keep us accountable the resource pages please thank you the resource pages include over 300 items that provide support for parents teachers and leaders as we all share

119this equity journey it also provides information regarding resources that address hate crimes connected to coping 19 and other concerns thank you a curriculum that misrepresents history or does not introduce opportunities for students to engage positively in their own learning is a disservice to students however unintended the consequences of such a curriculum may be disengagement lack of connection low self-esteem city schools of decatur is working to decolonize our curriculum through a number of initiatives because curriculum is what we're talking about in this area dr bean and her dream team are integral partners in this work curriculum and instruction does this with us in addition to already doing their own strong work in this area you have detailed information about all initiatives in your packet so i would just provide a brief description of each the first

120initiative is the equity and education task force this task course was created in an effort to fulfill the promises made by csd regarding equitable curriculum and it does work in multiple areas for example the social studies task force is a subcommittee of this group i just mentioned and its work was accelerated when parents teachers and students began to complain about insensitive social studies curricula being used in the district the equity and assessment task force has been formed to examine and improve and clarify csv grading and other assessment policies this summer we did direct decolonizing work with our eighth grade individuals and societies teachers who were an awesome team to work with doctors tracy blair and ray jane jackson from agnes supported this professional learning they bought books they provided stipends for teachers they also the

121georgia archives also contributed as well and our final decolonizing initiative is jade jade was a proposal originally called jedi you heard it before about a single horse on anti-racism and social justice that will be taken by every csd student prior to matriculation but it has grown a life of his own we invited students to give feedback to the course proposal and as you would expect from our excellent csb students they ran with that julian fortuna and cohen roy mehu with the support of myself and dr bean expanded my little raggedy one course proposal to an entire three-course curriculum that they would like to see take place throughout the entirety of middle school i owe dr bean big time my little department conceived it and she jumped right in to help us achieve all of this

122decolonization work in the case of the equity and assessment task force she has taken the weight fully on her department and that work is being led by christian gibbons that information is in your packet as well and of course we are doing all of this too thank you so where are we these things and how are they going the racial equity tool and the equity executable hiring tool are in use district-wide and we are doing a refresher training in october there's a collaboration with staff support for a training in january prior to making the use of the tool a mandatory process a mandatory process meaning that you will have to state that you have used this tool before you are able to even hire we are also adding new resources to the website constantly please

123be sure to look at it often because it changes often what's the decolonization work we with the equity and education task force we are recruiting members with the social studies task force which again is the subcommittee we have collected and analyzed data district-wide principles have been kind enough to support team members and we are moving forward with that work with the equity and assessment task force that task force is meeting and recruiting teacher participants who will be paid to actually look very closely at our entire program of assessment and build something better build that better as far as to work with uh agnes scott that collaboration is complete and the young men who are now alumni one at georgia tech and one at uga have asked that i emphasize that this jade proposal is in

124planning stages it is a draft and there is also a pilot being created that may take place at river this spring that's the plan so as i conclude i'd like to leave you with a few thoughts wait wait equity is everyone's worth and if everyone is pitching in to get it done which they are in this district together we will win it hasn't happened overnight but it's happening people are having conversations that they have never had before people are doing work that they've never done before people are questioning biases that they've never questioned before so the work is happening point two i know i fed you with a fire hose tonight i apologize but honestly it really is just part of the work our department is doing and again i can do this all day

125a lot of people ask why so much of our equity work focuses on black students i hear that all the time i cannot emphasize enough that csd is doing what we do regarding equity in order to handle say the debt we owe these students and it's like triage we have to pay attention to the students we have injured the most and help them to get better so we can help others to get better thank you are there any questions thank you for your report i'll just start by saying there was a lot of detail and i've had to read through it twice to really understand all the different components of where like the different groups and how you're collaborating with other groups and how these you know subcommittees are supporting one another and you know

126the work of the jade group is being kind of folded into the work of the other groups who are also looking at curriculum so thank you for that it's this is where your work is leading to which is where the you know actual impact will happen um in the classroom and to the students i was particularly excited to hear about the work that you're doing regarding um suspension prevention that's something that has been a really difficult part of being a board member when some of those disciplinary situations have come to us over the years and we have tried and have been seeking alternative ways to work with students to go through restorative practices but we haven't quite had the framework in which to do it and so i'm really excited that you are going to

127be actively creating a framework because we would like to keep our students here and we would like to work with them to help them understand you know the consequences of their actions and to be better and to allow them to continue to be a part of our community so i'm i'm really excited about that and the constructive and proactive direction that um you know the tale of two schools csd being one i think you know that is doing these restorative practices um and helping these students in a positive way so i'm really excited about that so thank you for for that and for for all of your work i did have many other thoughts and questions but we'll have to like you said take it this will be an ongoing conversation thank you hello question

128um on the this is kind of small and then i have a larger question but first i appreciate the report i think it's an outstanding report i appreciate seeing all the good work in the particular operationalized piece of this um because you know you can see the fruition of a lot of work it seems like it's beginning to land and it starts happening so i appreciate that my very small point is on the teaching uh i can't remember right now acronym that you use for the hiring matrix but when you know when i was back on an slt some time ago now and slp members were recruited to do the interviewing um at that time at least the process was somewhat haphazard to try to get slp members available because you know a lot of

129people have jobs during the day and they can't make it so the result was that you had a team that was kind of thrown together and it was going to be one team for the for the first day of interviews in a different team to the second statement another is that the team members who are doing the interviewing wouldn't necessarily understand the reason to use a matrix and i was one of those people i was like well come on we're having a conversation i want to get a sense of this individual and i understand that it's important to ask the same questions of each individual i understand that it's important to stick to the questions into the rubric but i didn't at that time and uh i'm wondering so what this is all leading up

130to is how do we make sure that when we have these good ideas and practices that they're actually implemented with fidelity when our our actual interview teams are selected as they are i assume they still are because it's in our handbook the sops are participating and i guess i'd suggest for example that they'd be at a minimum for every slt so instead of before the interviewing occurs that it's a training session for the slp members so they're going to be enlisted to do some interviews let's have a training at one time at the beginning of the slt service you know so that people get that because i didn't get it it took me a long time before i do now but my other comment and this is where i'm going to be misunderstood which always

131happened but i wonder if it would uh make sense to define some of the terms and the one that catches me is anti-racist i know what the term means and i agree that we should be anti-racist that's not my question the question is or my comment is that i know what it means because i've done a lot of reading i don't think a lot of people know what it is and i think that one of the problems that we are confronting as a society is that the discussion about race is being conducted by people who use words in different ways and the people are interested in equity of adoption of vocabulary that many of the people who are not actively anti-racist simply don't share and as a result words are used in communication between people

132but we're not communicating because we mean one thing and the recipient understands a different thing uh i think that that's what's behind this business about critical race theory and the board of education's atrocious resolution against it which uh if i think the ideas were expressed clearly and understood i don't think we have that so i think that speaking clearly about these things is important and uh i also think that some of these terms and anti-racist is one of them come with lots of baggage because you know there's the handbook how did it be an anti-racist well one of the things it says is that standardized tests are racist and to be anti-racist we have to eliminate standardized tests that's not where we are as a district and yet you know some people are going to

133look at these terms and say well it says this and then in the popular literature that's what this means that's not where the district is which is to say i think some definition would be beneficial and i would suggest that whenever we do a presentation like this if we're going to declare ourselves to be anti-racist we explain what that means that's why i landed on that but that was good wonderful presentation i'm a ramessey fan oh so i love watching that clip um i appreciate the clarification about affinity groups and you know they're not limited to racial groups but i understand that that is our focus um here in csd um i have questions about um jade because i was looking at the timeline is this this time my accurate like no okay this year

134okay young men are just really fleshing out their ideal program okay so right now do we think that they're going to be starting uh the j j curriculum will be starting doing advising in january or i do think that we will be able to start a uh pilot of it in january i do not think it will be a full rollout of this in any way shape of fashion and right now the young men are meeting with uh the person who's over our the person who's over our advisement classes as well as meeting with the person who's over our counselors to talk about kind of a fusion of it with c learning so it can all take place at the same time along the same path and we can kind of prep students for the

135conversation through cdr and then move into street equity i mean actually you're gonna move into sierra league as well but then move in okay and i'm i'm really proud of this work um as school board members and see our district um you know taking these initiatives um and i always give you credit with introducing me to the um the quote about paying the debt to black students um and so my only thing is that what's wonderful about all of these initiatives is that all students will really benefit from us right and so um which i think is important um you know to to note that because often um folks think that it's only certain subgroups or demographics that really benefit now i realized that you know by implementing restorative practices then naturally you know the

136discipline disproportionality will start to drop um and you know having culturally relevant educators and education that go to that you know our achievement gap to start to close but you know ideally we'll see that with other demographics as well students with special needs and things like that and just you know students of color in general my my only thing is um when i think of uh paying the debt that and james mentioned the word the last-minute intention though that there's something intentional as it relates to black suit and you know what are some things specifically that would not be limited to black students but i was thinking initially you know um you know black college tour open to everyone because then anyone can attend hbcu but i would think that there would be a special

137attraction for our black students to be happy you know to be taken on those tours and have access to those types of tours i know that two years ago there was a proposal for [Music] a affinity group for black students um i think it starts at six and goes through twelve and um it's based on this uh during blase um from black panther um since i was learning you know is that still in the work you know i i would also i've always given a shout out to run from the jensen while a week because those organizations have been here and them getting the support um you know that they need and so to me that you know being intentional about repaying the debt you know what what can that look like none of it

138would be exclusionary because those clubs are open to all students but we know that they typically draw black students so a couple of things the thing that i find most interesting is whenever you refer to cultural in this particular situation culturally responsive education people automatically think students of color like white students don't have culture right like everybody has a culture so when we are catering to students culture and trying to make a connection between the teacher and home and trying to build relationships that's the path that's right that's a relationship with everybody and that's doing what you need to do to know your students individually so thank you for bringing that forward because people are frequently like well you're just doing work for black and you know the work is for everyone but the word

139hopefully will benefit black students that is as far as the organization that you mentioned the aquacentric warriors endurance to be specific we had to scale back on it because of closing so we weren't able to implement it and we wanted to do and we've had a couple of different conversations about it we talked about taking the funding and dedicating it to existing programs and then spreading those existing programs to places in the district where they do not exist yes versus creating an entirely new for you so that's where we are with it we're going okay thank you yeah the the conversation jane is referencing is i also love pay the debt and the notion it comes from but when we talk about things like eliminating suspension to me that's not paying a debt that's just

140being a decent human being and figuring out what we need to do to treat people equally and so i would love for you and this leads into the conversation that i have thank you for the website thank you for the work with the what would you call the dashboard where you can submit your equity concerns um one of the things that we've talked about over the years is i hear from so many particularly young parents in this district for like but we're not doing anything or there's racial inequality in them so decatur did not invent racial equality we are in fact putting it out there in many ways you're doing the work of letting people know things that many many of us have spent our lives being blind to and so i appreciate that i

141appreciate the notion that we have something like a dashboard because as a parent and you have to deal with that and the more people in csd that know you can go in here and complain about an issue or situation it will be addressed it's beautiful the only comment that i have is i love that equity is all of our work part of that is is using your office to put some of the work only the uh groups that are popping up in dt i think decatur is hungry for a mission from you from this group to parents because the only way we're going to combat the truth that lewis shared because i spoke to a member of the georgia state board we were not having the same conversation the whole time we were talking about

142why i thought it was valuable and he thought it was valuable in his way and so that cultural humility has to be something we all get involved in um and i also want to echo what jayna said thank you for all the work that you're doing the number of times that i've told people oh you know dr banks and what she's doing it's great um don't just say we're not doing anything step one indicator should be figure out what we are doing and then how you could carry some of that weight yes when he should have reached out to me a few days ago about a k-5 uh initiative that's taking place when those ptas or company dei groups are coming together to try to collect their work so i'll be meeting with them tomorrow

143and hopefully you know trying to streamline things there and we just will move on all the work that we can do with whomever wants to do it we're trying to do it so i have just one more quick comment and it's kind of a question and it's something maybe you have an answer to or maybe it's something we could think about but it has to do with the equitable hiring tool and i reacted because in the hr report i wasn't really surprised but it was interesting to see it in numbers that we have about 78 female teachers and 22 percent male teachers and so the racial and gender equity tool specifies that we need to have at least one person of color and one woman or gender fluid individual on the interview panel and i

144thought is that really a problem and shouldn't we make sure that we also have one man because i would like to also appeal to more men because i have heard young men young boys you know who are at elementary schools going into save their more male teachers that they say like they're kind of shocked they're like oh my gosh i can have a man as a teacher and so and i think that's really valuable to have that balance in our schools so that was my only comment about that i think the tool was great but i thought that might be like we might have the opposite challenge than some other you know workplaces and industries because we have a lot of female you for bringing that employees that is an excellent point we are definitely

145wanting for men in the field of education so i think when i comprised the tool i think i was really just thinking the usual suspect yeah you're right men are important in this area so thank you for that yeah thank you i just wanted to thank you mary our vision for city schools of decatur is that we will build the foundation for children to be their best achieve their dreams and make the world a better place and this equity work has been taking a long time but it's so important that we build that strong foundation so everyone in our district in our community understands the work and lean into the work and knows what we're doing with the work and when we talk about making the world a better place that's the outcomes that we're

146seeing when we pay the debt so thank you for really being the champion for this work for us it is everyone's work but you lead it with elegance with grace with humility and just so passionate about it it's contagious so thank you so much mary really appreciate you thank you okay um my next thing on our edges what happened to my agenda is is it future dates oh no just some informational it was the um development report that was just informational for the board and there we go and then the monthly data reports those were just information as well future dates homecoming week activities are listed in there um upcoming board meetings are listed in there and um some conferences some workshops our upcoming breaks we know that this thursday and friday our first early

147release days of the district i'm really excited to have parent conferences and that dedicated time for our teachers um to really meet and lean in with their parents and share how our students are doing um any questions on upcoming dates okay that is that's the agenda for today okay all right well thank you dr fuhrman and thank you to my fellow board members it's an honor working with you uh the meeting is adjourned at 8 47.