May 11, 2021, Board of Education Meeting

001we're starting to let people into the [Music] meeting hey shane i have to jump off this device and get on one that has a charge let me back in okay [Music] the public hearing portion of the meeting will begin soon good evening thank you for joining us today is tuesday may 11th at 6 26 and first order of business will be our budget hearing so we will be in our budget hearing portion of our meeting from 6 30 to 6 45 so if there are any questions or anything that the public would like to ask they can't but dr fuhrman will take it from here well good evening everyone um fiscal year 2021 has been challenging in a demanding year we've had to change quickly and adapt to the virtual environment and at the same

002time prepare facilities for safe opening with social distancing the district has spent over 4 million on costs associated with the pandemic the expenses range from paying salaries for revenue generating departments such as our eclc and school nutrition staff ensuring facilities and staff were safe by purchasing personal protective equipment and supplies purchasing technology for virtual learning purchasing covid tests hiring nurses aides and implementing learning pods our state budget was cut by over 1.3 million and revenue from school meals tuition facility rentals and interest on investments drastically declined through it all the district has made every attempt to be transparent in our budgetary operations we've presented budget amendments to the board and publicly discussed each one of these we have had one um we have had over eight recorded budget discussions and have made the recordings of

003these board meetings and work sessions available to all stakeholders we have developed a budget link um page to solicit um with a form to solicit feedback from our community regarding the budget we've also placed a link on the district finance page with the fy 2022 budget information and budget frequently asked questions community members about the budget and additionally we have made sure to outline the budget process in our newsletters moving forward we intend to use cares funds to enter for interventions and to temporarily pay expenses that have expenses that have been traditionally paid out of our general fund we are committed to the district and to the stakeholders we are committed to being fiscally responsible to our and um take our role as financial stewards of taxpayer dollars very seriously i can assure you that

004we make good decisions to ensure the financial stability of the district and we will continue to look for areas where we can save money money and invest in areas where we need to strengthen student achievement is our primary goal and we will continue to invest in our students and with that i'm going to pass it to ms broome good evening madam chair madam vice chair members of the board superintendent furman community and colleagues today i present to you the fiscal year 2022 tentative budget upon the completion of this presentation stakeholders will have an opportunity to voice their comments today is the eighth public budget discussion on the fiscal year 2022 budget previous budget discussions on the fiscal year 2022 budget have been held at every regular schedule board meeting since the month of january additionally

005budget discussions have been held at various board work sessions recorded videos of the budget discussions can be obtained from the district's quick quick link section of the website under fiscal year 22 budget updates the final approval you could go back to the calendar slide please the final approval of the fiscal year 2022 budget and tentative approval of the property tax military is scheduled to take place this evening at the 6 30 regular scheduled board meeting the district will hold three public militaries prior to the adopting the final property tax military rate for fiscal year 2022 and they are scheduled for june 8th at 8 am and 6 pm and june 27 at 6 15 pm the final adoption of the property tax military is scheduled for june 22nd at a special board meeting at 6

00630 pm okay next this evening the board has four different budgets that are being considered for approval the first budget under consideration for approval is suspicious revenue funds the special revenue funds represent grants received from the state and federal sources and are spent on a reimbursable basis meaning that the district will first make the purchase and submit a request to be reimbursed special revenue funds are restricted and that they can only be spent for the project the grants were awarded the budget for special funds is based on current year's allotment and information received from the grantor the next slide represents your fiscal year 2022 special revenue funds the district anticipates on receiving approximately 2.7 million from various grants including pre-k title 1 special education jrotc and career technical adult education the second budget under consideration

007is capital funds next slide please funds received for capital funds are preferred or referred to as floss and are derived from a one cent sales tax on all retail purchases in dekalb county the district receives an average of approximately 416 000 per month in splost receipts splotch funds are restricted in that they can only be used for capital purchases as specified in the referendum which require taxpayers approval the next slide represents your fiscal year 2022 capital funds budget the district anticipates on receiving approximately 5 million from sloths for the fiscal year 2022. there is also approximately 11.6 million in fund balance for capital funds which brings the available capital funds balance to approximately 16.6 million the anticipated spend for the fiscal year 2022 with capital funds is approximately 10.7 million this leaves the estimated ending

008fund balance at approximately 5.8 million the third budget under consideration is the school nutrition funds school nutrition anticipates on receiving approximately 2.7 million in revenue with the largest source of revenue being revenue from sales the second largest revenue source is revenue for federal reimbursements next school nutrition expenditures the expenditures are aligned with the revenue at an amount of approximately 2.7 million with the two largest expenses being the purchase of food and school nutrition program which consists of salary the fourth and largest budget under consideration is general fund this is the only budget that is not restricted for certain purchases and that is also the district's main operating budget revenue assumptions for fiscal year 2022 include the cutting qbe of approximately 1.3 million the current budget has also been reduced by approximately 1.3 million which brings

009the two-year total of austerity reductions to approximately 2.6 mu property tax revenue is projected based on the georgia state university study of property value in the city of decatur the study was was conducted prior to the pandemic fiscal year 22 property tax revenue projections takes into consideration the current and future homestead exemptions the millage rate may increase up to a maximum of 21 based on the georgia state university study however the actual tax digest is scheduled to be delivered to the district on or around may 20th and at that time we will be able to more accurately project property tax next is the year 22 general fund expenditures the fiscal year 2022 budget includes a staff increase for all eligible employees an increase for teachers retirement system and a minimum number of positions and upgrades

010the district has offset approximately 267 thousand by reducing operating accounts which leaves an addition of approximately 1.6 mil to the budget with with the largest cost of approximately 1.3 million for staff increases the next slide represents your fiscal year 2022 general fund budget the district anticipates approximately 81.6 million in expenses and approximately 77.2 million in revenue in order to balance the budget approximately 4.4 million as listed below under designated funds from fund balance need to be taken from the projected beginning fund balance which is anticipated to be approximately 7.7 million and it's also listed at the bottom in order to maintain a minimum fund balance of 4 it is necessary to increase the millage rate from 20.25 to 20 points again this is the maximum that we anticipate the millage rate will increase upon receiving

011the tax digest from the county there is a possibility that the military may increase at a lower rate or not increase at all next slide shows the fiscal impact that a millage rate of 21 would have on the house with a market value of 600 50 of the market value equates to the assessed value of three hundred thousand when multiplied by the tentative military of 21 the annual school tax before any exemption would be six thousand three hundred this is the annual increase of property tax of 225 again this is worst case scenario the next slide shows a visual breakdown of each of the four budgets i have presented to you as you can see the general fund is by far the largest fund and make up over 83 of all four budgets the next

012slide represents the tentative fiscal year 2022 budget for all four district zones that will conclude the public budget hearing presentation thank you so much lanita so we will stay in our budget hearing for another eight minutes and do we have any public comment shaina we do um hans mutes okay hans yep i'm here can everybody hear me great so uh thank you for your time uh lanita thank you for that presentation uh and um i just wanted to make a couple comments comparing the last few years to uh this year's budget so if we look from 2016 until now our proposed taxes based on this budget are approximately 40 percent higher than what we saw in 2016. and um when you take a look at comparable systems like marietta city schools for example um you

013see that their change is less than half that and in fact the principal driver of the increased taxes in that system is student enrollment growth our student enrollment growth over that period of time is about 15 so we're increasing taxes well more than double the rate that our student enrollment has has grown our our cost per student for instructional expense is very much in line with comparable high quality systems uh we're all within a few hundred dollars of each other uh but our operating costs are between seven hundred and a thousand dollars more per student than other comparable systems our overhead and operating costs have grown over 30 percent over that period of time including 60 percent for school administration uh about 50 percent for maintenance operations and uh a whopping 125 percent uh in

014central office i'm pleased to see in this budget that there is a small reduction being anticipated in central office but um it's still over double what it was five years ago on top of that appropriation spend has been extremely volatile we've moved from less than one percent in some years to well over 11 percent that represents a 12 million dollar shift in what we've drawn from in appropriation and i worry that spend down has been in some cases operationalized which is what would explain some of these large increases in numbers i'm a pleased to see a five-year budget plan thank you very much lunita for that uh but i would also obviously like to see the narrative that goes along with that so i have three primary questions the first is we have plenty of

015student performance metrics to interact to track our instructional quality i would ask the administration and the board what overhead budget metrics do you plan to track going forward to manage some of these operational costs what steps are you planning to take to bring some of these overhead costs into line and now that we have new leadership in place what can you tell the community regarding some of these inflationary costs and how you plan to do things perhaps differently from previous leadership regarding the budget thank you for your time next person will be susan camp susan hi um as as the board and dr fuhrman know i've been uh been calling into every single budget meeting um that there has been i was a little surprised to see how differently the discussion went last month at

016the initial adoption of the tentative budget i um well first of all we really um like to thank miss broome she's always incredibly responsive and i have learned a lot in her public presentations she's done an excellent job of explaining the process and what goes where and as someone who um self-confess not a budget finance person she has made it all very easy to um follow and understand so i appreciate that and i also appreciate the um effort that was made in the last meeting to bring the millage rate increase that was originally being proposed throughout the entire process down to something that's much more powerful palatable at you know by an increase of only 0.75 when it was looking for a while that it was going to be a 2.0 increase now my concern

017here is that there were a number of items that were being proposed as part of programming for the budget for fiscal year 22 that i was that i personally didn't think that we should be spending money on and so between the budget that was last discussed publicly in march and the one that was last discussed in april uh the team obviously went through some and made some significant cuts cutting expenses down to 2.8 million dollars and of course that's obviously what had to happen in order to reduce that millage rate increase so i want to know what was cut are we still planning to hire a director of remediation at central office are what what were the i i i my understanding this whole time is that there was already an expectation the operational budget

018was being cut by five percent so where did the other 2.8 million dollars come from i want to ensure that those are not cuts that are going to directly impact the student experience thank you miss camp we have no more public comments pertaining to budget okay thank you shayna you just have one more minute for our budget hearing i'm sorry i'm sorry um someone just raised their hand coonley would like to say mr organ now okay so shayna my question was are we in the board of education meeting or in the budget here right we're in the budget meeting oh sorry okay all right so my public comment is for board of education music okay thank you okay so we are now adjourned um for our budget hearing meeting are we logging back are we

019logging for that anymore we're just gonna okay so we've ended at 6 45 and now we are logging into our um public portion of our school board meeting for may 11 and we are starting today at 45 thank you to everyone that has joined us we have all of our board members here dr berman our superintendent superintendent assistant as well as our legal counsel so we will start with a moment of silence okay thank you and for all who are able please stand for the pledge with peace the united states of america and to the republic for its under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so we would like to start our meeting off on a very good note a very high note we are going to vote our new superintendent in for

020the next school year so do i have a motion to vote in our new server attendant for the for another year contract move to approve one-year contract for dr maggie furman for the 21-22 school year second welcome all in favor aye i chair boats i so it looks like we have a new superintendent welcome thank you [Applause] so we need to do uh your oath are you ready right hand up please i state your name i maggie furman do you solemnly swear or affirm that i will truly perform do solemnly swear that i will truly perform the duties of local superintendent of the decatur city school system the duties and responsibilities of the decatur city school system to the best of my ability the best of my ability i do further swear or affirm as

021you further swear or affirm that i am not the holder of any unaccounted for public money that i am not the holder of any unaccounted for money but do this state or any political subdivision do this state or any political subdivision or authority thereof or authority thereof that i am not the holder of any office of trust that i am not the holder of any office of trust under the government of the united states under the government of the united states any other state or any foreign state any other state or any foreign state which i am by the laws of the state of georgia prohibited from holding of the laws of georgia prohibited from holding that i am otherwise qualified to hold said office that i am otherwise qualified to hold said office according

022to the constitution according to the constitution and the laws of georgia and the laws of georgia and that i will support the constitution and that i will support the constitution of the united states and of the state of the united states and of this state welcome thank you thank you all right so let's get started with our meeting let's look um looking at the last meeting minutes um for our april 20th changes [Applause] and we didn't have a work session last month did he feel like we did all right so we can go ahead and start with our highlights go ahead take it away this is dr fuhrman all right i uh we have two highlights this month and our first highlight is claremont elementary and um i'm going to pass it over to dr

023armor the amazing principal at claremont to share a little bit of the great things that go on in the hall claremont every day good evening to our superintendent dr fuhrman members of the board my csd colleagues and community stakeholders my name is dr curtis armour jr and i am honored to serve as principal of claremont elementary school claremont elementary is an el education credential school in the el education model leadership is a collaborative dynamic effort toward a common vision for teaching and learning el education's core practice 35 outlines the steps to promoting shared leadership in addition to creating the conditions for the entire crew to learn claremont administrators create collaborative conditions for all staff to lead by creating high functioning data informed impact-oriented school teams the claremont crew builds their personal and collective capacity to

024drive improvement across the school we are proud to share with you a glimpse of the many magnificent initiatives being led by our dynamic staff it looks like we might be having some technical difficulties is there supposed to be a video playing dr curtis it should be um miss bruton was chewing up the video for us okay while shayna is working on that for the second spotlight is there a video for that one as well or is it just some a presentation um yeah let's go ahead and we'll keep figuring that out um mr sproul you want to go ahead and share your presentation about the decatur career academy we've had several community members asking for more information about the career academies i thought this would be a great opportunity for mr school to highlight the

025great things that they do in his department so all right you dr fuhrman i also have a video but i'll go ahead and do my lead in while we're queuing up the videos um so uh it's been five years since i spoke with the board i'm sorry let me start over uh good evening i'm duane sproul i'm the director of the decatur career academy and um i want to thank the board and dr fuhrman for inviting me tonight i was so excited as our principals lost tram would tell you um i even talked to miss huddleston uh in on the way to the car yesterday i believe about my excitement about presenting tonight because it's been like i said five years the kidder career academy uh was founded uh in july 2000 uh 2011. so

026it's 10 years of the career academy at this point um when i created my video um and i just kind of rolled through the whole thing as i created it it ended up being 30 minutes long so that was not going to work and so i started to trim and i continued to trim and i got it down to around 10 minutes which mr lofstrom was happy with um so the focus of my video it talks about career uh the the decatur career academy and our pathways that's offered here um in our building uh it talks about dual enrollment and in particular our early college program which is one of our equity initiatives in the career academy um we also talk about the ib career program and how that benefits students that want a rigorous

027curriculum in addition to having um at the same time that opportunity to study uh a career and then finally we talk about work based learning and how students are able to go out into the community whether it's the cafeteria for the city of decatur or at kumon or various other sites um and show what they've learned in class in the in the field of work so that's what the video focuses around um and i tried to highlight three students and and it was wonderful about the video the videos were not created for the board they were created as a recruiting tool for students transitioning from their sophomore year into their junior year or from the junior year into their senior year so that's um those that's the focus of the presentation tonight and um are

028we ready to roll or hello i'm duane sproul decatur career academy director and career and technical education director for the city schools decatur career technical and agriculture education in georgia falls under the georgia department education while the career academy in georgia fall under the technical college system of georgia although independent in many ways they serve the same roles including technical instruction pathway completion middle school transition to high school high school transition to post-secondary and other career related the decatur career academy advisory committee is comprised of educators and business and industry professionals as well as members of the department of labor these individuals meet monthly with career academy staff and provide feedback and opportunities for career academy students the cater career academy offers 11 pathways and work based learning as opportunities for students to increase their

029technical skills architecture drawing design and culinary arts are two most popular pathways students are deemed to be pathway completers once they have completed all three courses in a particular pathway these students will then sit for the end the pathway assessment given by the georgia department of education in 2018 2019 the decatur career academy can boast of a 84 pass rate on the indicator assessment each pathway has a current technical student organization associated with the curriculum students can not only compete at the regional state and national levels related to their technical skills but also employability skills and presentation skills work-based learning provides students the opportunity to to earn and learn at the same time we developed a partnership that was set to begin with emory non-clinical in which 10 students would have a rotating experience at

030emory that was put on pause due to the pandemic we hope to bring that program back in the 2022-2023 school year one work based on employers stated the candidates that i have received from you are exponentially stronger employees than those who come outside of the workplace learner program i'm megan jansen and i was in the architecture drawing and design pathway at decatur high school so my work-based learning placement really assisted me and wanting to do landscape architecture as i didn't really know what i wanted to do before this i mean i knew i wanted to do something in the design and architecture field but i hadn't narrowed it down yet and having two internships that were specialized and different um really allowed me to widen my skills but narrowed my search on what job i

031wanted to do these are a few of my workplace learning placements many of these employers bring back students year after year to work in their facilities dual enrollment provides students the opportunity to earn college credits while still in high school we have a number of schools we work with in the dual enrollment program at the technical and four-year college level some of our specialized programs include the georgia state early college program we partnered with georgia p my technical college in the computer science department this year as a bridge until we expanded our computer science program and we're bringing back the georgia piedmont technical college certified nursing assistants program for the fall of 2021. option b provides an alternate option for students to seek graduation from high school while participating in dual enrollment hi my name

032is maria miles and i'm a senior i'm a part of the early college program at georgia state in downtown atlanta which is a part of the dual enrollment program i was encouraged to apply to the early college program through an email that i received from mr school before finding out about the early college program i was already leaning toward doing dual enrollment because i wanted to earn college credits while being in high school the early college program provides benefits to make sure students stay on track with their college workload being a part of the early college program i am required to attend mandatory study sessions twice a week to work on any of my college assignments and also to receive help if needed from my study coach also i'm required to attend a one hour

033touching meeting once a week my advisor at georgia state to receive information about upcoming events within the early college program and also to touch base on how i'm doing academically to date i have received 24 college credits you are also responsible for your grades in high school most teachers are understanding and provide multiple chances to make up tests and assignments but in college you are held accountable whether you missed a test or assignment cater career academy addresses equity access in various ways through career and technical instruction special education teachers push into career and technical classrooms and provide support to students in those classrooms the georgia state early college program addresses four main categories of students to increase those students enrollment at georgia state as a part of the dual enrollment program having georgia p my

034technical college courses on our campus provides students the opportunity to to take up to 12 hours of college credits without having to leave the high school campus the ib career program provides students the opportunity to earn a certificate that focuses around career studies and rigorous academic work the ib core consists of personal professional skills course service learning of 50 hours over two years the reflective project as a replacement for the senior project and language development included in these requirements are the decatur career academy requirements which are pathway completion successfully passing the in the pathway assessment and completing a work based learning internship directly connected to your program of study hello my name is caroline putman i'm a senior at computer high school and i'm part of the ib program on a convergence pathway one of

035the things that initially compelled me to join this program is the fact that i've known from a very young age that i wanted to pursue media and communication with my future so when i got to the high school and i learned that i would have the opportunity to pursue this career interest of mine at an academic level i was instantly enthralled because i knew that otherwise i would not have the opportunity to do so until college another thing that really drew me into the program is the fact that i'm involved in a multitude of extracurriculars here at decatur i am captain of our school's debate team an editor for our magazine and website and i stage manage for all of decatur high school theater productions um another thing that's really interesting about the career program

036is our final project it is a research paper that each of us will write about our pathway about our career pathway so i'm currently writing a paper on the ethics of financing in digital media and i've learned so much writing and researching this paper and it's really opened my eyes to so many issues and so many things to be aware of when entering this and it's in industry um another thing and arguably the thing that i found most appealing about the program is the fact that every single student is required to have an internship their senior year so i'm currently interning at the educator education foundation as the communications intern it has been such a wonderful experience for me i have learned so much about running a brand social media and how to um understand

037like what goes into it and what goes into scheduling what you need to post and it has been just a really amazing opportunity for me and i have learned so much from it katie career academy has several highlights for the school year we received computer science grants totaling 39 thousand dollars i presented at the big hill black alliance student leadership series and brought a 2019 graduate that now is now in the navy and a video that she created and presented about her naval experience we have virtual field trips one to mercedes-benz stadium for architecture students and then for culinary myself along with some of our advisory members teamed up to go to scout in oakhurst and have chef crystal uh give a presentation and answer some questions from students virtually then we had career talks

038in march in april of this year and career talks consisted of over a hundred and twenty community members virtually coming in on panels and presenting the students during advising i would like to acknowledge our middle school career technical instructors our educator career academy instructors middle school and high school career academy and cj instructors many of them also serve in capacities as club sponsors and coaches of athletic teams outside of our programs i want to honor dr charlie mcadoo who is currently serving as an inclusion access equity and diversity mentor for the association of career technical education and was featured in the april techniques magazine completing our comprehensive local needs assessment last school year three areas stuck out as areas for growth increasing membership in the career technical student organizations increasing opportunities computer science and health

039care finally beginning the process of industry certification of our programs thank you dwayne thank you next up we will finally see the claremont video my apologies to claremont elementary the el education model supports shared leadership among all its teachers in order to build opportunities that inspire students to celebrate joy in learning and to build a school-wide learning community of trust and collaboration crew meetings is one example where grade level teachers collaborate with support teachers or special area teachers to plan and facilitate crew experiences for students that support building relationships through collaboration and joyful competition habits of character and social emotional learning activities that foster empathy and caring or concerns about behavior such as bullying or exclusion and also the celebration of positive behavior here is an example of crew in a virtual setting [Music] happy

040friday and welcome to community circle claremont community circles have helped our students in the virtual environment this year they were always important but in this unique school year community circle has really pulled our school and staff together as specialist teachers work together to share leadership on developing community circles with a collective knowledge of what has been happening in the classrooms in virtual and in-person settings community circle crew exchange ideas every week and we share thoughts about what should go into each weekly program students are always involved in a big part of community circle they do a welcome they lead the pledge of allegiance they do the school motto and they also include a joke of the day and habits of character claremont students always are featured in educational highlights and we also feature student artwork

041staff and students look forward to community circles every friday they're important because they impact student achievement and they also improve school morale with both teachers and students everyone looks forward to friday's community circle in claremont pbis leadership team made the decision that we wanted to collaborate with the community circle team to give more students the opportunity to receive recognition each homeroom teacher selects two students that have exemplified a habit of character or scholarship for the week and they place the information in a shared spreadsheet this information is then placed into a google slide for each grade level and it's placed in the community circle video to announce our bulldogs of the week having the opportunity to possibly be named bulldog of the week has really made our students even more intentional about displaying the habits

042of character and scholars why are small groups important the kindergarten team feels that small groups are a great way to meet all the needs of the children through differentiated instruction how do you provide support in making sure that the instruction in small groups is effective we do formal and informal assessments daily and weekly to ensure students are mastering the standards we reflect on the assessments and adjust instruction as needed what data do teams use to inform our small group instruction we use star rating map math fundations assessments informal daily assessments in small groups the writing rainbow and quick checks as a crew we analyze data from formative and summative assessments we also look at student work and discuss next steps for students some of our action plans include improving teaching strategies reteaching implementing academic interventions

043providing extensions and providing flexible grouping we regularly assess and revise action plans based on new data how are the responsibilities shared in reaching students in small groups with a large number of students in virtual classrooms this created a unique opportunity all of the specials and support teachers came together as crew to teach ela and math small groups in the virtual classrooms how do we know if the small group instruction is making a difference we know small group instruction is making a difference because the students master the assessments and meet the standards they can confidently explain how their knowledge meets the learning target eip is an important part of providing additional instructional supports to students at claremont who are not yet meeting grade level standards the eip teachers at claremont regularly lead collaborative meetings with classroom

044teachers to review benchmark formative and summative assessment data and use the data to develop action plans flexible small group and individual intervention for students in need of additional support to meet the grade level standards in the shortest time possible students enter and exit the program when data indicate that students need support or they've met grade level benchmarks this flexible process ensures students get the support that they need when they need it eip supports include hands-on arts and movement infused learning experiences that preview reteach and remediate grade level concepts in an engaging way equity versus equality you might be wondering don't these mean the same thing they look the same and sound similar however there is a distinct difference equality means each individual or group of people have the same rights opportunities and resources and are

045treated the same regardless of need whereas equity is the idea of leveling the playing field the purpose of the claremont equity committee is to promote engagement among school staff to examine and discuss potential biases and practices that disproportionately impact student learning and school climate the equity committee collaborates by establishing an atmosphere where diverse perspectives are welcome the committee encourages input and feedback from team members while empowering members to take the lead to facilitate activities related to team initiatives that complement their pedagogical interest for example there are two initiatives that we focus on this year the equity read-alouds and the staff book study the purpose of our monthly equity read-alouds is to offer a student-facing experience that highlights the beauty and diversity and give all our students a chance to see themselves at the center of

046a learning experience this year we chose these books because they helped us to take a deeper look at race and the biases that we hold based on the color of our skin it allowed us to talk about our differences and celebrate our beautiful skin tones for example we encouraged each other and felt proud when we posted our power poses when we read i am every good thing we explored concepts such as accepting diverse cultures traditions and families this month we will continue our journey and celebrate asian cultures and the myriad of beautiful people in our community we'll be leading a conversation on assimilation we hope we are planting the seeds of compassion responsibility engagement and respect as we are the crew and not passengers the purpose of the staff book study is to engage colleagues

047in meaningful dialogue and activities about race diversity equity and inclusion these discussions are facilitated by equity team members during our bi-monthly equity spotlight and staff meetings this fall the equity committee led a faculty-wide book study of the text those kids are out of control why we must reimagine classroom management for equity in the book the authors explore ways in which educate can confront and change both implicit and institutional biases embedded in traditional classroom management practices the claremont elementary instructional leadership team is a diverse group of teacher leaders who are continuous learners collaborative and have a shared understanding of effective teaching and learning approaching our instructional goals as a collective leads to effectively assessing the progress of teachers and students and making adjustments as needed the ilt identifies a narrow student learning problem and works to

048adjust teaching practices to improve student outcomes in order to be successful the school leaders support the iot's work toward a common vision and ensure that the iot speaks with one voice on the school's approach to teacher leadership and collaboration annually the instructional leadership team works with our el education school designer to review the previous year's student achievement data to construct our el work plan for the coming school year here we identify goals in the areas of mastery of skills and knowledge character development and high quality work and chart the course of action that the school will follow to show growth in each of these areas thank you so much for that video on both wayne and dr curtis thank you for sharing that with us always my favorite part of our school board meeting so

049now we'll move to our public comments shaina how many do we have okay just a reminder that you have three minutes for your public comments please state your name and your affiliation with the city of schools of decatur or city of decatur and keep your comments general if there are any specific people or personnel that you do need to speak about we do have other avenues um for that so thank you so much ahead of time and shayna we can go ahead and start with the first comment first person up will be miss lorraine here hi did you say lorraine eerie air i my phone is going in and out so i'm hoping you can hear me now yes we can hear you okay wonderful good evening mormon members i'm lorraine earlier and i have

050two kids in the city schools of decatur at christian faith and as you all know this is asian american heritage month because i'm also asian american i wanted to highlight some of the issues and then also make a couple asks of you all i know we are doing some work related to asian american heritage month but i really feel like we need to do a little more and integrate that into our curriculum in schools and also have better representation um as you know or may not know asian americans are the fastest growing minority group in the united states and georgia we are part of this community and we've been here for a very long time um you know racial issues in our community are not just black and white we want to support the work

051of the black leaders in our community for black students but we also want to highlight that asian americans are also experiencing racism and it's different and needs to be addressed differently like i said we specifically want meaningful curriculum changes to reflect our history and representation and staffing i think often there is this model minority myth um an assumption that asian americans don't face racism and are excelling in professions like math and science which is not entirely true the asian american community is not monolithic it's diverse we include chinese koreans vietnamese indians and pakistanis we have deep roots in america and we you know just looking at some of the history myself i was shocked to learn that we have asian americans and chinese americans coming to the united states in the 1800s despite you know

052a racist immigrant laws that prevented them from obtaining citizenship i can't tell you how many times even as an american who was born here how often i've been asked um where am i from or my children of mass where i've been from so we need to expand this concept of what is american for our children um there has been some you know asian american history that's been delivered to my kids uh and i'm happy to hear that like at morning meetings at curse they've done a bit of that um but i really want to see that it's more integrated into the curriculum for my students that's the only way we can confront asian racism i mean we just recently had an attack on the community here in atlanta and we've barely talked about it in

053our community so you know if we're not going to do it now when are we going to do it so again my main asks are that we consciously look to increase staffing representation of asian americans to represent our diverse community i think our population has more than doubled um in in in decatur when i was looking at the numbers so we that's the only way that we can combat stereotypes and have meaningful change so thank you thank you next up is miss susan camp miss camp hi thank you um i wanted to i saw that um i guess in conjunction with swearing and dr fuhrman as our superintendent i also saw that on the agenda you are going to be approving um her contract and i appreciate that in the spirit of transparency that was

054posted um as one of the agenda items available for public consumption i'm concerned as we know the issue around a superintendent contract has been the crux of what a lot of people in the community perceive to be problems with oversight of the superintendent and i'm concerned that this contract is not really been updated and the language hasn't been changed in a way that makes it clear what the minimum work days are required for our superintendent i'm also concerned that there seems to be um a a pay increase that is disproportionate to the situation um based on public records that are available from fiscal year 2020 and what was um stipulated in the contract we're looking at a total salary increase for promotion of like nearly 57 and that is just highly unusual even in corporate

055um jobs they are limited pay increases are limited even for promotions by 12 and anything over that um requires you know special approval um i'm just concerned that we are not really in a financial state to be offering such generous uh packages at this time um especially when it's for a new a new and positioned role and it's also not in line with state averages we're a relatively small district and the average the the average uh superintendent salary in the state of georgia was 172 000 a year the median was 159 and 225 000 dollars a year so this is significantly above what is market um for this state i don't think it's reasonable to compare us to other metro districts because we are not have the same student body size and we do not

056have the same operating budgets so i would highly encourage our board to really tighten up the language around what the expectations are offer a package that's more in line and commiserates with the actual experience and the certain circumstances and reflects the true fiscal responsibility that you guys are claiming is your priority now thank you thank you miss camp next up will be sam's kanika sims miss samjoe unmuted yes hello yes you want to speak now thank you hi i'm i'm dr kanika sims and um first i just wanted to thank the board for taking decisive action as it relates to the leadership of our school district um i'd also like to thank dr duty for stepping down and dr fuhrman for her willingness to accept this position i would like to ask the board what

057our plans are moving forward as it relates to our superintendent i do understand that dr fuhrman will be given a one-year contract what will happen at the end of that one year what will happen during this year will we have a national search for a superintendent i have not i may have missed communication around that point but i have not seen it our school district really deserves a leader who is dynamic progressive empathetic and has a proven track record of elevating school districts to new heights we have an amazing community it is made all that much more amazing by the school system and we need a leader who can restore faith in our school system and truly propel this school district into the future i have pulled all three of my children out of csd

058for the next school year because after this dismal year i do not possess faith in the leadership of this system and i'm only one of many families who've done this my children are only three of likely hundreds of children who will not be returning to csd next year our community deserves a school district that rivals that of our surrounding private schools our children deserve a school district that will meet the needs of all of our children from children with dyslexia and other learning differences to those who excel academically and everywhere in between i speak for many when i say that as a black parent it is exhausting to have to always advocate for my children to ensure that they are not being marginalized and have equal access within this district our black children deserve to

059be in a district where they are celebrated i would love to be in a district where i don't have to explain over and over again how certain policies alienate us and our families it would be amazing to have a leader who doesn't simply give lip service to equity diversity and inclusion because these are the current buzzwords it would be amazing to have a leader who simply gets it it would be amazing to have a leader that values all of our children regardless of ethnicity and values all of our families regardless of socioeconomic status a leader who has a proven track record as a superintendent someone who can make those of us leading the district excited about returning so in closing i want to reiterate my hope that the school board is planning to do a

060nationwide search to find a superintendent who can be the leader that our district deserves this is a wonderful opportunity to accomplish that goal thank you again school board and thank you dr fuhrman for your willingness to lead this year thank you [Music] april hi um i'm concerned about what's the plan for our spanish program at this point uh since 2016 our spanish has dropped from five days a week to three days and i'm concerned that spanish is going to go from three 30-minute sessions to two 30-minute sessions i want to know how our teachers are supposed to add 30 minutes of spanish to their week and if we are reducing the budget by reducing our spanish teachers currently our classroom teachers are not typically native speakers or are fluent in spanish currently our classroom teachers

061have full plates already and so i would like some clarity on what the future of our spanish curriculum is going to be thank you thank you thank you yes he's raised his hand to talk speak kunlein kunley you can speak now hi this is juan he shen um may i speak hello yes you may okay thank you hi i'm glad to hear i'm glad to speak here tonight my name is and i am speaking to you as a korean american mother of three csd students first of all i like to make it clear that this is not a comparison or competition of which racial group has it worse as done so in history we fully support black latinx and indigenous neighbors in their fight however our history is unique and invisibility perpetual foreigner and model

062minority myth among asian americans are real even in csd many believe that we do not face racism when covet related racist plaques were pieced with industrial clue around atlanta last year one oakhurst neighbor minimized the incident on social media calling it newfound racism and she's incorrect chinese exclusion act of 1882 the first federal law to for immigration based on ethnicity alone japanese american internment camp tournament 120 000 japanese americans forced to concentration camps during world war ii chinese massacre of 1871 lynching of 19 people of chinese heritage the largest documented mass lynching of u.s history atlanta spa shooting six women of asian descent were murdered a little over a month ago in our own backyard our community did not receive any timely message of solidarity from the district the most we received were typically days

063delayed messages from principal's quote tucked away in a newsletter end quote as another parent commented and the message was clear invisible here and as my son expressed in second grade about csd he said everything is black and white they don't care about people like me may is aapi heritage month and there is inconsistent recognition among all of our schools and some mean well but only highlight stereotypes and tokens education is vital we need substantial change in the curricula as our district revisits k-2 curricula and the teacher's plan for the following year remember that hate against asian americans is not new but will continue in new forms if honest history is not taught since we do not have asian american representation within our staff currently consulting with aapi history experts and involving community members and planning

064are necessary otherwise there will be far too many blind spots by well-meaning individuals thank you i'm going to try cornway again hello can you hear me yes we can okay thank you so cool i'm the parent of two children in uh ninth grade and uh sixth grade and i also did submit a public comment form my first comment is regarding the role of our district attorneys wilson martin and downs regarding the um the lawsuits and the problems we faced over the last year or so uh based on the reporting indicators the david adams and susan first expressed reservations about the superintendent's conduct to the district attorneys um maybe 2017 or 2018 it appears no action was taken i have to ask the district attorneys advise us appropriately and the district attorneys are supposed to provide

065crisis management last year the last eight months has just been a disaster and he didn't need to get to this so what how culpable are our district attorneys i would love to hear from them and i hope they don't hide behind or we can't see because there are legal matters there's got to be some sort of explanation there should be a root cause analysis for why things went so badly over the last eight months and my second comment is regarding communication and family engagement and i would like to commend one of the teachers at rent from middle school mr johnny stroy he's the math teacher for sixth grade he gives the students a workbook worksheets for each unit of work that they are doing so they have a workbook that they follow that parents can

066look at and he also issues a robo call every week letting us know what units the children are working on this is in addition to the emails that get buried but having the workbook and the robo calls is it's a game changer and it helps me as a parent stay engaged with the work that my child is doing and i would encourage city schools of indicator to expand that sort of methodology that communication mechanism to all teachers and all classes thank you very much thank you final person for public comment i'm sorry you say that again shana final person for public comment okay thanks shayna awesome so that concludes our public comment and so we will move um to our superintendent comment um shayna can you enable me to share my screen i have a

067presentation all right well i'm so excited to be sitting here as a superintendent for city schools of decatur and as i said before i'm just honored and humbled to have this opportunity to help lead our district through this um turbulent times and i wanted to take some time today to heal the several appreciation weeks to give our staff some shout outs and then i also want to celebrate our all of our students as well as some highlights of our graduating class i'm going to share information about our launch pad for learning camp which we will launch this summer um and then share more details about the final mitigation strategies for next school year and our plans for next school year as well as highlight a final opportunity for parents to sign up for a emergency

068broadband benefit so first i want to highlight our amazing staff i had the opportunity last week to visit all 10 of our schools and i can tell you we have such amazing staff from our custodial teams to our school nutrition workers to our bus drivers to our teachers it is just an amazing team our principals our assistant principals instructional coaches everyone that we employ is just amazing and most of the elementary schools that i went to i got there pretty early before this well before the start time of kids and sometimes even before the teachers reporting hours and i can tell you our teachers are in the classrooms early working with kids via zoom having independent tutoring sessions it was just amazing to see our staff hard at work our building farm meticulous i have

069not seen a speck of dust anywhere in our buildings stopped and talked to several bus drivers as well and they were in the midst of cleaning their buses in between routes and just wanted to make sure everyone i met knew how much i appreciated their hard work and dedication to our students so highlighted some pictures here of what school looked like for our staff that's a little different than what we're typically used to and some highlights here they at glenwood earlier in the year for halloween they did a virtual book parade they were thanking their students at winona park from a distance drive-through and then even the virtual learning classes we're keeping our students engaged but i also want to celebrate our students this has been a really tough year for our kids and as

070a school district we focus on the ivy learner profile as our end result for what we hope to see our students achieve and throughout the past couple weeks i've had some pictures sent to me and some opportunities to engage with our students and it's just been a lot of a lot of fun for me to be in the classroom and see our kids so our cfc students they persevere and this is a snapshot from westchester elementary on their perseverance day and even though they are math they're all wearing their perseverance shirts and we're just having a great time it was such a fun experience to tour westchester this is a picture from oakhurst the students are they're inquiring so even though we are social distancing and we are wearing math we are still engaging in

071hands-on learning and having a great time and having our students really raise to that level of critical thinking and our students are caring i went to the opening for the new student center launch and it was just amazing to see our high school students reaching out and dedicating their time to helping open this center and have it just be an amazing place for our students to be and our students are balanced they don't just focus on academics they don't just focus on sports they don't just focus on one thing our students are very well-rounded and have opportunities to engage in lots of various activities throughout the school year and i love that csd really supports a well-rounded education program where we're developing the whole child and our students at risk takers really want to highlight

072and shout out our student government association from the high school took it upon themselves to organize propose went through all the processes manage the whole day of student field day for our high school students and it was just an awesome experience to have the kids interact with each other in a fun and exciting way we know our students have had very little opportunity to engage socially with each other and this was a wonderful opportunity for our kids to get out there and just really get to know each other and have that reconnect with each other so it was a great opportunity so i want to thank our students as well for their patience their perseverance and how they have really focused on coming together as a community throughout this i do want to highlight some

073of our amazing seniors that are going to walk across the stage or i guess the field this year so here's some of our students we have alex watts this is a student that was announced as one of the 21 outstanding youth leaders um in the georgia leader youth leadership awards um i'm not going to pronounce this name right and i wish i'd practiced it a little better um yield jeronic this was our 2021 page star student for dhs and csd owen hammond lee and anna emmerglock charles wilcox the willock these are our 2021 merit finalists dax pettis he was a 2020 city of decatur hometown hero also he was featured on nationwide on good morning america for social justice advocacy malagaan she was featured on nationwide research nationwide on good morning america as well and

074then we have these amazing students who really led the effort for commemorating king in our decatur team these are decatur team members that helped get the mlk marker placed on mcdonough street and west trinity in genesis texas haley and alonzo so great accomplishments there also wanted to highlight some of our sports and athletic students we have lots of students that have signed with scholarships to attend different universities we have two of our swimmers that have been selected to good swimming scholarships annie fucher haley laney and then for baseball lots of baseball players there too marshall toole james white jack deuter cole turner and alden wright all have scholarships to attend college while playing baseball three of our track and field students um kennedy bivens is going to livingston college and then we have kennedy turner

075and kristen turner trying to decide between three amazing opportunities so really exciting for these track and field students and then also several of our football players have gotten scholarships to attend universities as well zacharowski isaac dimock kristen esnard justin weaver and christopher williams so great job to our students athletes as well as i mentioned i wanted to share a little bit about our launch cad launch pad for learning camp more information will come out about this camp on friday but this is a great opportunity for us to partner not just with the city not just with the education foundation but really a trifecta of amazing support to help our students really build a foundation for a successful start to the 21-22 school year i know we've got a learning gap that's been out there we've

076talked about missed academic time for our students but i have a strong belief in that the best way to help our students succeed is to accelerate their learning so we're going to take an opportunity in july to invite students into a camp for four days and we're going to focus on previewing the information and content and skills that they need to be successful when the first day of school starts so we're going to preview content so if we know a student in sixth grade needs these core mathematic skills we're going to preview those for the students in july so that they step in ahead of the game and can be leaders in the in the content areas for their peers we're also going to focus on previewing pbis so what are the classroom expectations we

077want the students to be very comfortable with the school they've had a really rough year even our kindergart our rising first graders may not have been in the school building this year so will be an opportunity for students to really see the school walk the school get to know the routines and procedures so they're more comfortable on that first day of school also a huge focus here on social emotional learning getting students used to being back together with other students we know some of our students have left their home very little during this pandemic but we want to help them ease back into what school is going to be like for our students i'm really excited as i mentioned a partner with decatur education foundation gail has jumped right in when i proposed this to

078her and said she is willing to do whatever they can to help out with figuring out different camp activities um to helping us provide scholarships for students that need those we want to guarantee a spot for every student that wants to participate and city of decatur claire miller who runs their camps and their educational program is also partnering with us so that we can have a really exciting experience where it's going to we're going to set the class size of 15 students for one teacher and then the decatur city education group is also going to help provide a camp counselor for each of these classrooms so it'll be two adults and 15 students so we can make sure it's a great experience for all of our students so we're really excited for this but just

079some more details we're going to run two cohorts so we can ensure good social distancing and keep the class sizes small so we're going to run one cohort in july from the july 12 through the 15th and these are going to be a half day camp and then a second cohort starts july 19th and will end on the 22nd um but we're 100 committed to k-8 instilling conversations with the high school about what a ninth grade opportunity would look like and one of the things when i talk about accelerating student learning is we know 100 that passing algebra your freshman year of high school is 100 essential to make sure you graduate high school on that four-year track and if we can give students some of those make sure they've got those concrete foundations in

080algebra so they will be successful their first year through algebra will get them through the door in four years to graduate to whatever they want to do next um the cost is going to be 115 percent student we've got sign up information coming out and as i mentioned earlier we will have full scholarships available for any students or parents that need that financial assistance and i also want to give a shout out next at the next board meeting you'll be meeting our csc leadership academy graduating class is a group of teachers that have completed a year of leadership academy and i've tapped several of well i talked to eddie johnson who's a teacher at save and he's taking up the initiative and leading it through and he's tapped several of his csd leadership academy peers

081to help him coordinate the program it was a great opportunity then to help give our aspiring leaders a leadership chance throughout our district so really excited for this launch pad for learning and as i said we'll have more information coming out in the next couple of days so let's talk about next school year um again we are we've shared this several times but cannot say it again and again even more we are committed to five full days of instruction next year so every day of the week full days of instruction that is our full commitment we are also fully committed to enhanced learning support for students throughout the school year we know that even with acceleration and have focused on looking forward we will have students that will need support to be successful in the

082academic setting and scaffolding that support for students in their classrooms is going to be essential so that they can keep up and keep pace and do the work that they need to do in the classroom and be successful and that we will definitely be using the cares fund to help us support those efforts we do want to talk about mitigation strategies we have seen in the community that our numbers have been dropping that is looking really good but the cdc still has some pretty strict recommendations on mitigation strategies so we want to talk through those now what i'll say before i go through these mitigation strategies is that these are what is current what we are trying to do is match as close to what cdc guidance is at this time but as we go

083through the summer if we see the cdc is making recommendations that mitigation strategies can be relaxed we will definitely follow suit but we had to make sure we had a plan in place so that we can start day one with a good list of mitigation strategies and prepare it's much easier to relax mitigation strategies than it is to try to put new ones in place when if things get worse so we know we've got everything ready if things get really bad we can go all the way full into full virtual if we need to but we also want to make sure that we've got plans in place to have students back in person with full classrooms and proper safety measures in place so just to review also how we came up with these mitigation strategies

084is um i spent a lot of time engaging with stakeholders so i first i asked our teachers what areas they wanted to talk about and get guidance on for mitigation strategies i asked parents to send topics that they had for what they wanted mitigation strategies on i pulled together a subgroup of our mitigation team some other parents that have been very helpful in informing our practices and what we're going to do going forward so we met and the principals joined us for that call as well we talked about the topics we said hey here's what's the masking policy what should it be and we talked through all the different scenarios and what the recommendations were we drafted suggested practices we sent it out to the community i met with our teacher advisory council they vetted

085that and then each principal and department chair took those vetted and proposed mitigation strategies met with their staff at their local school sent feedback and then department leaders also sent feedback so this has been very vetted lots of feedback the form that was sent for public feedback get over 100 responses um so there's there's and there's it's not 100 this way it's not 100 yes on one thing and no on the other is pretty 50 50 on a lot of things so that's where i really had to then go back and look at the cdc guidance and see what is the cdc recommending for what we can do and what we can make work in our schools so that's where these recommendations are coming from so maps is one of the most important mitigation strategies

086so we are will 100 unless cdc relax guidance require masks indoors for all individuals um and then we will also require when individuals are outdoor and closer than six feet so that they should be wearing masks as well now this was a bone of kind of one of the areas where people were like yep mass outside no mass outside and it was really 50 50 as i looked at the numbers it wasn't really swaying one way or the other but we will not require math for students ages three and under so if they're four and up that we'll have to wear a mask one of the other things this is definitely one of the feedback pieces that came through was making sure people understand when to stay home if you are showing signs of cova

087do not come to school do not come to the building if they are staff members talk to your immediate supervisor if you're a student or you're a parent monitor those symptoms for your child of your children and keep them home if they're shocked showing signs of coca-19 i put a picture here of our screener for people to remind them and i think we need to enhance communication as we get closer to the start of the year so these are more familiar to our families hand hygiene is another no-brainer we are going to continue with frequent hand washing and use a hand sanitizer we know 100 that hand washing is preference like that is the bes the most best way best way to want to clean your hands and keep your hands clean is to use

088good hand washing techniques um but in lieu of or if immediate hand washing is not available or is not feasible that you could do hand sanitizer but the preference is to try to wash your hands as frequently as possible social distancing this is one of those areas that as a school system i know and i'm just going to be completely transparent it's hard for us to do social distancing particularly when we increase the number of students in our classes so we do know that i just i cannot say comfortable i cannot guarantee that we're going to have a guaranteed three feet between each student particularly at our lower elementary schools where students sit at desks at tables so with the high school in the middle school you can spread those individual guests out a little

089better in the elementary schools at a table like this we might have six students now we're going to do our best to add tables and spread stuff out as much as possible but we do want to be very transparent and let people know we are going to try to do three feet but that is not a 100 guaranteed mitigation strategy going forward but we have lots of other mitigation strategies and that's why we talk about that swiss cheese model when it comes to mitigation if it's not one if you don't do this one particular strategy everything else isn't good it's all of them build on each other lunch was another big topic of discussion um and we definitely 100 percent if people can eat outdoors if the weather is good eat outside we're going to

090tell parents to send in a towel or a yoga mat so when the students go outside they have something they can sit on take it home and wash it bring something in the next day but that is our preference we know that we won't be able to eat outside every single day so every building is different every building has different class sizes different numbers of students different staff members the buildings are set up different with what the cafeterias look like so we can't stay 100 at a district level here's what indoor eating will look like so we have asked our principals to start working with their school teams their code response team to develop that plan for what indoor eating will look like we do not want to eat lunch in the classroom that is

091not the preferred place to eat lunch so it's not like hey we can't eat outside we have to eat in our classrooms that was one of the feedbacks that we got from the mitigation strategy mitigation team is that that's not the preference so really looking at what are some other options for eating lunch indoors there's this the recommendation from the team was that when people are actively eating and that is if you are picking up your sandwich and you're taking a bite that's actively eating but we know a lot of times kids will sit there and they want to have a chat with their friend in between bites they should put their mask on at that time and that's perfectly appropriate definitely we're going to adhere to six feet of distance between students during lunch

092because they will be without mask so we know at that time they won't have maps on so they will need to maintain that social distancing um and then for assistance in contact tracing we are recommending that we assign seats or tables i know at the high school in middle school it's a little difficult to assign seats so if you could say hey you know the french teacher comes in and he's got three three tables for his kids and he knows they all have to skip the seat we think that's appropriate for high school and middle school students we are we'll start the school year with pre-packaged lunches to facilitate students getting in through the cafeteria line at a faster pace visitor guidelines we will start next year with continuing with no visitors at all of

093our schools we know there's already a lot going on at a school adding visitors to the mix is just another layer of extra things to try to monitor and work out so we want to definitely start with no visitors at the schools but then as i said if things look better we can start rolling back mitigation strategies and relaxing some of those policies the exception here is that at our early learning centers we know some of the parents we are going to allow them to take their kids in and drop them off at the door of their classroom school assemblies this is a really big one particularly in our k5 schools they do their crew meetings they do the cast call it phase on the do the tally rally we want to keep those that

094build a really great sense of culture at our schools and we want to keep that going but what we've asked our principals to do is if you're going to bring together more than one regular sized class do those outside if we're math do social distancing um if you have to bring kids indoors maybe do one group indoor you can put other people online so think of alternative ways to make those pool assemblies more effective transportation we've had really great work on our transportation as i mentioned as i visited pools our bus drivers are cleaning the buses in between routes they're opening the windows they're assigning seats they're distancing the kids as much as possible on the buses so we're going to continue with that it's been working really well cohorting is another area that is

095one of those that gets a little more difficult we have students that get pulled out for eip for gifted for resource classes so it gets hard if we want to make sure that our students are set up in a nice mixture of teams or homeroom classes so we are going to cohort as much as we possibly can but we do not want to limit any in-person services for students because of the cohorting so principals are looking at this they're doing the best that they can but just know that we are going to continue with pull-out services like eip and gifted and resource classes so that those students can get the services that they need so that that is more important that they get those services addressed than not continue with those services and just we'll

096be perfectly honest cohorting at the middle and high school is pretty much impossible but we feel since those students most of them will have had the opportunity to get vaccinated it's not much of a need at that level for school meetings whether they're person in you know parent meetings or iep meetings or if they are faculty meetings we're going to allow the schools to have flexibility as they want to call in-person meetings but those we are asking that those are limited ventilation there is a lot of always discussion about ventilation but i am very happy to say that we have invested a lot of money and resources into our ventilation system and i think they're operating highly effectively we will be enhancing ventilation by placing hepa filters in every single classroom if a teacher has

097an office space that they view students if there's not a hepa filter in there let us know we will get one out to that classroom or that office area and then even the larger spaces like our cafeterias and auditoriums we have bigger hepa filters to help manage that increased air we definitely want to return to daily recess for our younger students that is essential particularly at our early learning centers and elementary schools so we will be returning to recess um there is the cdc did remove the need to clean the recessed equipment in between classes so that is not necessary anymore going forward but then we also want to make sure that our 612 students have max breaks and outdoor activity outdoor time i just think getting outside and stretching your legs and getting fresh

098air is very important for our students so we want to make sure that that's encouraged at all grade levels i will continue with our enhanced cleaning procedures as i said our tools are spotless they look beautiful we want to continue with that additional cleaning supplies will continue to provide those additional wiping down of high-touch surfaces one of the requests has come in a lot in the by the teachers and through the public um input form with the silicone protectors so that we can clean off computer surfaces if we're sharing um materials left that way so we'll be looking at those too music classes we know with k5 or if we're returning to full days we're going to have our special classes in person we're going to encourage those staff as much as they can to

099use outdoor spaces additional ppe on musical instruments so when they are playing air instruments in the band class they've got like a filter on the end of the trombone or the trumpet um to help make those safer it is okay to sing in a mask it's not sometimes very comfortable but it is okay um so we want to make sure that yes you can sing indoors you do need to keep your mask on and again additional hepa filters as needed for those classes athletics and extracurriculars i believe strongly in supporting our athletics and extracurriculars and think that's a huge area that helps our students with social emotional outlets we've got a really good strategy in place for social mitigation for those areas we're going to continue with that and really excited that we are going

100full forward with all middle school sports and extracurriculars so that those students can start climbing up and and gearing up with that and i do want to put a special shout out here the um decatur bulldog booster club they're looking for a treasure for next year so if you know anyone that would be willing to serve in the role of treasurer for the booster club have them reach out to rodney thomas for more information about that i know that's a critical role um the head for the booster club says you don't need to be an accountant you just have to be ready to learn quickbooks and you can do it it's just it's pretty easy she says so don't be afraid if you're not a full accountant that you couldn't do that job so quarantine

101and viral testing we are going to continue at this point i had put in the mitigation that was out for public review that we were starting to look at some options for what we could change we're not ready to announce any changes in that at this point but right now what we're saying is we're going to continue to follow guidance by quarantine we did receive approval to viral tests symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals so if you're sitting in a class and i think this is particularly important for the middle of the elementary schools where you may not be able to keep that three foot distancing so if i'm a i'm a student i'm in a first grade classroom one of my classmates has positive recovered i've sat at the desk with the students we can offer

102those students that are even the asymptomatic students in close contact and viral testing at this point so we're really excited to add that mitigation strategy for our for all of our students and staff and i just want to touch on vaccinations also came up a lot in the public input form at this time because we just we cannot require vaccines at this time that's just not something that i feel that we can move forward with but um it just creates a lot of issues that i don't think are appropriate to get into even though i think and i'll just say me as an individual would strongly encourage people to talk to their healthcare provider about getting the vaccine and if it's right for them encouraging them to get that that being said some of the

103feedback on the mitigation strategies was hey if you're vaccinated you don't have to do this if you're not activated do this you know you have to wear a mask i don't think we're ready to go that route yet i think we'll wait and follow the guidance from the cdc um on what that looks like going forward so that is um that is kind of the overview of our mitigation strategies i feel very confident that it's a good plan we've got good strategies in place we've seen the numbers coming down and as i've mentioned here we will be closely monitoring what the cdc tells us and following that guidance as we can to make it work for all the students that want to return to in person within those parameters so as soon as they update

104guidance on procedures we will look at what we can update and monitor as well change on our problems and then the last thing i had to share on my public comment was the fcc has an emergency broadband benefit and there are eligibility requirements and you can get up to 50 a month discount on your broadband service and there's a website here we'll also post that in my friday berman's friday follow us for additional families you can access that link there as well so that concludes my comment perfect thank you so much dr hernan um so on to share comments uh chair report um so i first wanted to congratulate the decatur high school musical theater ensemble and the advanced technical theaters class on their um oddly titled but incredibly funny musical year in town so

105if you missed that performance last week you can go on demand to decatur performs.org and you have till may 14th to watch that so i definitely encourage you to to pull that up um huge congratulations to our baseball team they did a fantastic job they captured the 2021 region 5 aaaa championship and this is uh and the decatur baseball program fourth region championship so that's awesome they will be playing again on thursday um so we'll see if they make it to the third round so good luck to our baseball team and a huge shout out and congratulations to the rest of our spring sports teams we have our baseball boys and girls lacrosse who also made it to state playoffs our boys and girls soccer finished their season by going to the second round of

106the state playoffs track finished their region meet with boys in first place and the girls in third place girls tennis went to the first round of state playoffs boys and girls golf went to the first round of state playoffs literary and esports are participating in state competitions this year and literary earned three overalls with our girls placing in four out of five of the events and there's a plethora of reasons why it's exciting to share news like this but i also recognize that it's a way of our community and our school district starting to are continuing i should say to move toward healing sometimes when we're in a space of healing it can feel very painful it can be intentional but very painful and but when we have moments like this it's in the background

107the healing is happening in the background our kids are shiny and we're able to cheer them on we're laughing together we're you know cheering together we're sitting together we're having great conversations and that has been solely missed i mean we've been in this pandemic and we've been worried about getting sick or dying or family members getting sick or dying or even lost family members to this pandemic we've been living in involuntary confinement people have had fear of job loss the news is constant and it's bad all the time um we're experiencing much more fear and loneliness probably than we ever have um and so and if you're a parent you're worried about your kids and their education their physical health their mental health and these effects could potentially last for years i mean i don't

108think we really are going to know how long and how much we've been affected by that and so when i was reading these and putting these together it was a joy to be able to talk about it you know some part of me felt like oh should we still be talking about the serious stuff and should we you know we need to talk about it we need to talk about it and there are there is a time and place for that um but there's also a time and place to celebrate and there's a time and place to be happy and to be joyful when there are things to be happy and be joyful about so congratulations to our students for allowing me to highlight them today in my board commons we've also learned that through

109dr huddleston that we just this week have been accepted to participate in the national safe supportive schools learning collaborative so we are one of 15 school districts in the united states that will help us amplify our mental health services and supports using racial equity lens and strengthen our work around the positive climate pillar of the district improvement plan so that's that's huge um as dr fuhrman said earlier it is our goal and it is our culture it is our way to capture the whole child and that's including their mental health and that's including groups that have felt disenfranchised and so this just speaks to we are moving in the right direction and we're not there yet um no one probably is but we're continuing in the right direction and that that makes me very proud

110to be on the school board and very proud to be a part of this community so i just want to give a quick shout out to some of our employees who will be retiring this year we have two dhs um employees susan boutir and bill roberts oh bill roberts yeah oh oh they will be retiring this year we have an eclc teacher ellen carpenter two fave teachers carl mclaughlin and jackie statham um she owes her sisters laura deming and kathy harbor i should say four oaker excuse me and susan suzanne hawkins and kira wilsterman so thank you so much um for your service to our district and i wish you all the best on your next venture um and lastly just wanted to encourage uh all other parents in our district to read the newsletters

111that we're sending out so we have the board newsletter that does go out once a month we've also started a monday memo and that's usually a statement or an update from the board every monday dr fuhrman has her friday follow-ups so that goes out every friday and we also have the district dispatch so i just wanted to encourage you to read those we try to keep you informed on what's going on transparent with the things that you want to know about but continue to email us again if you have any questions that are not answered in those forms of communication so that concludes my both comments and we will move on to the next section um and we will get a curriculum and instruction update okay dr beam are you ready i'm ready can i

112share my screen i think i can okay i think we're ready now so thank you dr fuhrman members of the board colleagues and community there are there have been a lot of discussions the first thing i want to update you guys on is our decatur virtual academy so there have been various discussions throughout the past year and even prior to the pandemic about a virtual academy here in decatur but on april 2nd of this year we had enough information and details to move forward so we began sharing information with the community and we opened the intent form we have currently 87 students that have expressed interest in attending virtual academy next year beginning in august the majority are due to covet and plan to return in person when they deem it safe those numbers are

113also on par with the percentages of students that other local districts are seeing for virtual learning as well so we are a small but mighty group and we've decided to move ahead with the planning we wanted input from teachers students and parents so we created an advisory team and i'm so grateful for this team's input and everything that they helped pull together for our recommendations that we presented to dr fuhrman so a huge thank you to april biagioni aaron grady jennifer hallen francis holt vanessa lane esta melton derek peavey joanne pinckney wilcox juliana suki sean tiernan our sole student who braved the group um willie washington and eliza wingo i really appreciate all the time and effort that they put into this so being a small district poses an extra challenge share my slides sorry

114about that i got all excited okay so being a small district does pose an extra challenge and how do we create a program that is so small in a cost-effective manner so that was really the charge of the team and we did work through it and i believe that we have developed a viable cost-effective solution that will allow us to stay within the typical pure per pupil allocation and create a program that will grow in the future by building the on the successes that we create now so i believe our program will allow us to not only serve and accommodate families that are not ready to return in person due to covet but also a variety of other families that this may be a perfect option such as sports and film families that frequently need

115to travel for extended periods our hospital and homebound students students seeking acceleration or credit recovery atypical students that simply were not um engaged or that did not thrive in the typical school environment we'll also be able to accommodate our students that we have a wide variety of students that take a wide variety of courses at georgia virtual academy for uh for many reasons during their school day or in the summer so we'll be able to accommodate those students within city schools of decatur i also believe this is an opportunity for us to reconnect some of our homeschool families and families that are currently attending other virtual programs in the state so in our team planning process we utilized the city schools of decatur racial equity tool for decision making we also identified wants and needs

116of the families and those included city we want csd quality education want more flexibility equitable access for all csd students and families we want students to have the opportunity to connect with peers and we have to find a way to balance the various needs of the k-12 population i do want to say that there was um we really felt like moving forward with 312 we as in myself and other district leaders felt that moving ahead with 312 was probably the best option we do have some concerns about the educational appropriateness of k2 in virtual however there were some some some strong some opinions and some debate and due to the fact that we have due to covid and the fact that we do have students that will may still need to stay virtual um until

117you know we have a vaccine or until um parents feel safe we are going to pilot that program this year so um anyway we'll see how that goes but um really we we do anticipate the 312 clip program for sure being um a permanent viable option within the district moving forward after next year so we do plan to partner with an existing k-12 virtual platform that will allow teachers to have the curriculum built for them so that they can focus on student relationships rather than having to build the modules and lessons we will utilize csd staff to facilitate the vast majority of the courses there may be some secondary specialized courses that we still need to outsource um potentially to georgia virtual but we anticipate you know utilizing our teachers for the majority we will

118utilize existing resources and support staff to lower the cost of the program we will create in-person social and learning opportunities for the students to support them as they are able our students may participate in csd activities extracurricular and sports we plan to fully continue to engage in csv equity work and create a reflective and inclusive learning environment we plan to build a robust option for students to achieve their individualized learning goals and that does align with the georgia department of education personalized learning initiative to provide students with a tailored personalized school experi a tailored school experience to match passions potential and post-secondary pursuits we also envision this to be a learning community with rich online experiences supplemented with in-person opportunities and we hope we know that this will only be successful with significant family engagement

119and support so in k5 um like i said we we know that students need more support um families will be more involved there will be more synchronous activities teachers will be more involved with the k5 students and that requires you know it's still going to require a lot of involvement from the adults at home we will have daily lessons um or meetings and or touch points with the teachers and we you know they will meet with the two students either individually or in their groups the students will also have opportunities to meet with their cohorts and build community with their peers in 612 it will be a more individualized customized curriculum that will allow the students to pursue enrichment and their post-secondary interests the students will work mostly independently throughout the modules and they can

120pace it at their own you know during their own time during the day that is what we heard from our secondary students that was the the draw of personalized learning or virtual learning that they can move at their own pace and schedule it at their own time so that is definitely a level of independence we will still have csd teachers that will facilitate that learning and be available um to assist them and certainly check in very regularly and that's nice my internet's unstable so um we do anticipate that um decatur virtual will be a way that city schools of decatur can continue to break down barriers and allow students multiple pathways to achieve their post-secondary goals so next we have an update on summer school so we are super excited about the summer programs that

121we are offering here in city schools of decatur and thank you for allowing us to expand these opportunities for our students so we do have two options for students this summer one is an in-person academic intervention program which will be june 7th through 25th decatur high school will be offering a second session in july students are have been identified as needing a little extra boost for the summer and so we will be providing that in k-8 we are focused on priority skills in english language arts and math and in high school is focused on credit recovery but we will be offering additional support to to work on reading and math gaps as well we also have open to all students a virtual learning boost and that is an online program that we will have teachers

122supporting teachers will help students set goals check in make sure students are progressing and it is a mostly independent option so for families that are traveling or you know have other plans this is a great flexible flexible option we're just asking for at least an hour a week so if you can commit to that we would love to have you join so in k-5 we have approximately 100 students that are signed up currently it will be at tally street elementary and we have created a fun kept camp-like environment we have an environmental theme so we will have a wacky water week focused on water activities up up and away focused on air and we have we'll have down to earth where we will be um looking at earth-related activities in six eight we have about

123130 students identified right now and we will be partnering um kristen caribly has partnered makers to make that a really exciting hands-on activity opportunity as well at the high school there are currently about 200 students that have been identified for credit recovery and targeted support although i know the 612 teachers are working really hard to get those students um you know passing those classes before summer so we are still hoping those numbers are going to go down my next update is something one of our parents mentioned earlier and that is a k5 spanish update there have been things flying around lately and i just wanted to give an update and some information as to what is going on which is anyway i just wanted to share uh to try to address some of the questions

124so some of the questions in the last week that have come up are about the k5 spanish program and and time and and the number of minutes and all of that so first let me assure everyone that city schools of decatur is committed to the spanish program and there is no desire to remove it from our educational programming but we also support our principals and allowing them to have the flexibility to make decisions that are best for their school within the district parameters so district guidance is currently 90 minutes of spanish instruction k5 per week however that can be divided up a variety of ways so first of all we look at what the georgia department of education provides guidance on and that's three models first is the immersion program which is 50 percent of

125daily instruction in the target language next is the flex program which simply stands for foreign language in elementary school which we definitely have and that their guidance says that the program should meet at least two to five times a week for at least 20 to 40 minutes per session so we are well over that as well um plus programs focus on the development of listening and speaking skills and on cultural awareness and then the other option is the flex program which is a foreign language exploratory program that is to introduce students to a foreign language and culture and motivate them to pursue further language study flex classes are usually conducted in english not in the target language and although there may be some basic communication in the foreign language and it may introduce students to

126multiple languages so you may have a session or a year in french you may have a year in german you may have a year in spanish so we believe also that applying the language in context will accelerate um learning and provide daily mini immersion um experiences not only do we believe that there's a lot of research that supports that also shorter more frequent exposure is best for language learning so all of those things being said we currently um offer you know there are current schools that are exploring some more efficient effective overall ways to structure their specials programs to increase instructional time and decrease transitions most recently also we have our school our local school agreements or school level agreements excuse me that state that k5 students again receive 90 minutes of instruction so to

127adhere to the sla and based on all of that information i just shared schools were provided the guidance and the spanish teachers were provided the guidance that we do have the option to restructure spanish time meaning if we want to go for example just an example to 60-minute daily um special schedules then we would find a way to incorporate the spanish teacher into the school day the spanish teachers would then have time in their school day to push into the classroom support the teacher with a spanish lesson some examples that were given go into math class and we count in english we count in spanish we provide daily brain bakes brain breaks they could be in spanish we could push in and read a story in spanish so there are lots of opportunities for embedding

128that into the day so those are just some options um there's no you know these are just the things that we provided guidance to the schools um so next is the world language um for next year we have the world language we re review coming up our k-12 world language teachers already started really diving in and aligning their curriculum this year and so next year we will do that as a k-12 it is in our our cycle of evaluation and that will be defining the vision the purpose the expected outcomes of our k-12 spanish program and defining those grade level expectations so finally i'm so excited about this so i thank you so much for letting me update you on our current and upcoming initiatives with the curriculum and instruction department and now i would

129like to take a few minutes to reflect on some of our accomplishments from this school year during a pandemic so my team is dedicated you know to researching and providing every teacher in this district with the highest quality resources and support needed for strong implementation of those resources in city schools of decatur one of our core practices for equity is effective literacy instruction for all students so we are all very fortunate to have two amazing literacy experts that i get to work with every day and they are focused they focus their passion and their enthusiasm to best serve our teachers and students throughout the district and our district literacy reading coaches sorry are gail hardwick and katrina paget smith and they are here to um they have accomplished so much this year in our schools

130and i have invited them to share a few of their accomplishments with you ladies well thank you thank you dr beam and the board and dr fuhrman um we are very excited to share this with you katrina and i csd's district literacy coaches are excited to share some highlights that have occurred with literacy during the 2020-2021 school year we found this graphic to be very fitting as it reminds us of a flower thank you gail and i am so excited to be here and we're going to be talking about each of the petals of the flower um to share just a little bit about what we've been doing this year so i'm going to start with the turquoise um petal that says curriculum um core curriculum foundations tier one kate kindergarten through third this year

131csd rebooted wilson anatomy's foundations as our tier one phonics program in grades kindergarten through third this multi-sensory structured literacy curriculum based on the orton billingham approach ensures all students are receiving instruction based on students instructional needs as a system our instructional practices are being unified to build equitable practices for every student while accelerating learning with high quality research based year one instruction yes and moving on to the green petal we are very excited about our newly adopted core curriculum for grades k-5 american reading companies high-quality comprehensive core curriculum arcore includes culturally responsive thematic inquiry-based units of study that integrate reading writing science and social studies content in a student-centered learning environment arc will become part of our culture here at csd and we are very excited because the arc literacy team will be providing job

132embedded professional development where they work side by side with homeroom teachers and leaders in each school additional professional development will be delivered by us the district reading coaches throughout the year to ensure fidelity and provide continued support we'll be moving on now to the the dyslexia pilot kindergarten through third grade in accordance with state bill 48 psd's curriculum and instruction department developed a system to support the requirements of the dyslexia pilot our goal is to identify students who may have characteristics of dyslexia and provide the support they need as early as possible to ensure they reach and on grade level the results from these assessments are not intended or designed to diagnose dyslexia their purpose is to identify children who are experiencing reading difficulties that may require extra support and ensure support is targeted to

133each student's need the dyslexia pilot is data driven and student-centered our two tier one programs that we just talked about foundations and our core both support students with characteristics of dyslexia while building all students literacy skills with research-based instructional practices thank you and next let's move to the pink petal letters language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling also known as letters is a professional development course that empowers teachers to gain deeper knowledge of the what why and how of literacy instruction based on the most current scientific research letters was developed by dr louisa moats and dr carol tolman these are two nationally renowned leaders of the science of reading here at csd we began our first cohort this school year including teacher leaders throughout the district and district leaders including dr christy beam we

134are one year into this two-year course in addition katrina and i are being trained to become district facilitators for letters as facilitators we will provide the direct connections from letters content knowledge for teachers to apply these practical classroom applications the next petal the purple petal is the paraprofessional learning series throughout the school year gail and i offered professional development opportunities to kindergarten through second grade paraprofessionals the goal of the paraprofessional learning series was to equip paraprofessionals with literacy tools to support students some of the topics in the series were highlighting key foundations practices the power of phonemic awareness learning the difference between sight words and high frequency words accelerating learning with small groups and preparing for the next school year the sessions were offered approximately two times per month and the feedback was very positive

135and it exemplified the importance of ensure of ensuring all staff members are given the opportunity opportunity to grow professionally in order to accelerate learning for all now to the gold pedal the hegerty phonemic awareness curriculum is a research-based program for foundational literacy these lessons are meant to supplement an existing core literacy curriculum and provide explicit teacher modeling and support for students we are thrilled that all pre-k through first grade classrooms will implement hegerty this will strengthen and unify our instructional practices in addition katrina and i will build teachers instructional capacity by supporting hegerty's implementation now in the midst of all the ups and downs associated with covet csd's curriculum and instruction department is happy to report that teaching and learning was still blooming in the halls and walls of our schools and home offices we

136are thankful to the board and our district leadership for empowering us to continue to build equitable practices while ins while ensuring high quality tier one instruction to accelerate learning for our csd scholars and a special thank you to the teachers and paraprofessionals that allowed us to support them through this unforgettable year we are truly looking forward to continued growth and literacy during the 21-22 school year we thank each of you for your time and attention thank you so much ladies so as you can see i get to work with these amazing superstars and just so you know who they are i believe i got nervous and i reversed um miss smith paget's name so this was gail hardwick and katrina smith paget thank you so much ladies they are um just a breath of fresh

137air every day to work with i'm i'm very fortunate thank you all for letting us speak thank you so much for those updates um on everything that was um extremely informative and um i was very glad to hear uh do we have any questions from the board member for miss beam i do have one quick question yes the launch pad program is that a summer school program was an after-school program it is a program being held during the summer it's not quote summer school okay it's an additional opportunity to accelerate student learning before the kids come into the classroom so if they're those kids could be summer school kids in june they may also attend the launch pad for learning camp in july okay they can do both thank you yep just along the line

138with the launch pad are the kids are they going to be identified like the kids were for summer for the summer school programs or is this something that any parent can any parent can sign up but we will be looking at students that we think will definitely benefit from the program and reaching out to those families to make sure they are aware of the program know that there's financial support if they want to join the program and also looking at opportunities if transportation is an issue to make sure we can get those students to the building okay so i i have a comment which is that i really appreciated that presentation i like hearing what's going on and i thought that was particularly well done i also have a question and i'm on shaky ground

139here so i'm going to ask the question which i think makes a point okay and if it doesn't i'll be a little bit embarrassed but i think it does um i think that our two reading specialists ms smith packet and this harvard are two of the new people who are assigned to central office staff you're correct and so you know when we get these comments that why do you have these people who work in central office these are the people who work in central offices these reading programs this is core construction exactly that we're providing and so this idea that we have this bloated central office is just false and and really what people are asking is that we sort of dismantle these programs that we're trying to build so we're trying to deliver excellent

140educational programming that's consistent and it's up to the csd standards instead of leaving it to each individual class and each teacher to figure it out if you want consistency and excellence we need miss miss paget and we need ms hardwick to coordinate this work for the district that's where that money's going and and that's why we have those expenses and if you look at the central office staff per and you're good enough to assume the analysis james central office staff pro 350 students is the metric that had been developed that we had been using that number is going down over the past 10 years where was it 24 less it's decreasing it's not increasing and so if you ask why are from our budget hearing earlier why are the expenses going up i think we

141heard it earlier today four million dollars in covet expenditures 1.3 million dollars in lost state funding lost revenues across the board that's why your millage rate needs to go up because we have to cover those costs it's not because the central office staff and if you ask why has the millage gone up increased student enrollment we've opened tally street every time we've ever opened the school it's been a one village hit and in this case i think that we're a little bit under that actually uh you've got uh issues from the senior exemption and you've got in this case covet and so you know i just want to put to rest this notion that there's any financial problems in this school that we we are soundly managed and always have been that hasn't changed and

142right now there's some challenges presented by coded but they're well under control and we're dealing with them and uh what we're delivering is what you saw just now so i just want to think based just on the words of ms hartwick and miss smith padgett um as a former rental uh reading a remedial reading teacher i'm so excited to see these programs because i know how impactful they will be in potentially reducing the number of students who will be in those classes and so i'm really excited about all of those programs so i know you all talked about the dyslexia pilot and i know it's not you know testing everyone but it's kind of identifying and training people in the organ gillingham background so they can do that and that that's great to hear i

143mean since i believe indicated it's been a major request an issue and so i'm glad that we're dealing with that is that the focus that seems like that's going along with the paraprofessional i'd just like to hear a little bit more about that and sort of like what the purpose of that is okay yes the dyslexia pipe is from state bill 48 and the goal is we use universal screeners um to identify students that may be having some showing some risk with reading and we give a multiple screeners and we're really trying to identify the area of weakness and make sure that they're receiving the additional support um so that and and we sometimes some of these students may already be receiving tier two or tier three services but the key is to make sure

144the intervention that they're receiving is aligned to their area of weakness but was really just identifying students as quickly as possible making sure that they're have they're getting the needed support and that support is aligning to the area of weakness that's great thank you this is a question for dr beam i wondered if you could elaborate on how students could participate in the summer program i know you said that some are being identified but others would be able to participate in the more self-self-directed program where they're checking in weekly how do those students sign up for that yeah so we have a hundred and about 150 students already signed up it has been in the district dispatch i believe it's also on the website um we can send that one more time i believe this

145week there's a dispatch going out um and the deadline is is this weekend so um yeah just sign up and like i said next week we will organize those by teachers and we will get more information out so that is open to anyone and there is no charge for that and we will you know provide about six weeks of online learning it will be self-paced we are expecting at least an hour a week and it's with one of our um personalized learning paths that we already have in place in the district okay and i have one other question i wondered if you could just clarify what what is changing with the spanish program absolutely nothing it was just no there's nothing changing there had been some requests or some exploration of the schools looking at

146some different options with their specials programs changing looking at instead of some schools do three 30-minute sessions maybe looking at going to 45-minute specials or one-hour specials or different things just because when you have a lot of transitions you lose a lot of instructional time and i know at glenwood getting the little kindergartners from pe to spanish up two flights of steps you know you lose a lot of time and so there was just been some conversation about that and like i said the guy the guidance that that we provided was you know certainly principals have the opportunity to do that but we need to look at where we're going to put those 90 minutes and there's lots of opportunities to embed that in the classroom but to my knowledge right at this moment i

147don't know of anybody that's that's necessarily doing that is just exploration we were getting questions from the community so i just wanted to be clear about that i really enjoyed the presentation and i really want to thank you all of you for all of your work regarding the literacy and we all know how important that is especially when we have heard over the years about whether a child can read fluently by third grade really determines whether they're going to be on path to graduation and so these these foundations really i think are going to put us on a solid path to helping our our students uh on their way to literacy so thank you yeah thank you i i definitely think we will see the results i had meant to comment on spanish as well

148and the i'm agnostic about the presentation today so i'm not really commenting about the change or the flexibility but i did want to emphasize at least for me and i think this is a shared it has in the past been a shared priority that we as a board put on the world languages program and you know i would put it up there as a core program i think that it's just incredibly important that we continue to offer all languages and um you know i i there are challenges there's all kinds of other things that you need to do everything needs to be balanced but if i'm designing the curriculum that's going to be right up there with math reading and you know english and when we went from five days a week spanish started cutting

149back a couple of years back was it two years ago three three years ago one of the essentially the the deals sort of that we struck and this is what this is why i'm bringing this up is that at the time we were told yes we're offering five days a week spanish but the program is not as effective as you might think it is so we've got five days a week spanish but we're not necessarily getting sort of five days a week value out of it and our our world languages program hasn't really been coordinated across the district until it's been very uneven and very spotty and not always as effective as it might be we believe that we can be more effective delivering fewer minutes and still keep the program good and the board

150discussion that we had at the time is that well that's good it's disappointing because we always thought that our five days a week you know i was very proud of it and so now i'm told it wasn't that good and that raises the problem that we need a really good objective and rigorous way to evaluate what we're doing and which we don't have right now now we've instituted the stamp program which is intended to get us that baseline data so that we can really kind of analyze what we're doing and how effective it is and the problem is it got a little bit interrupted by covet i think was this going to be the first year that we're getting the data oh we did baseline data last year and this is going to be the

151second year okay so we've got baseline data we actually have two years of data okay great because we gave it right before we closed in march 2020 and the only reason i'm mentioning that mentioning this is i want folks to know that as we tinker with the the spanish program there is an effort afoot to evaluate it really rigorously and systematically so that we can actually look and say well is it true that this is just as effective as as as the other way and and so we're working to get it on the footing where we can actually really assess that okay so going forward that's what we're going to be looking at is so is is is when the when the when the individual school principles experiment is it working well that's what we

152need to know and then if it is that's great and so i just wanted to emphasize that this is how we're sort of approaching that problem thank you yes and i will be back when uh school starts back and we will talk about the plan for evaluating that and not only evaluating but it's not just the minutes um it's you know what are the outcomes what do we expect from our spanish program and how can we like you said make it most effective and so we will talk about that and hopefully you know not hopefully we will engage the community and you know make that that process very transparent you know looking at there's a lot of research on integrating it into the content areas and various different um options for doing that and so

153anyway um yeah i i'm totally supportive of that my husband's a native spanish speaker and so i am a huge advocate of um language programs you know we just want to be sure that we are like you said doing it the most effectively for our students thank you awesome thank you and i did have um one question about the decatur um virtual academy of dr beam um and if you could stop sharing your screen just for a second thank you um so we have the 87 students that have been identified that essentially will participate in virtual majority being coveted and some being the entire will potentially be there for the entire year is that now officially closed or do we have kind of a cap is where you know how does that look how we

154oh do we still have that open for parents to to participate if they change their mind we don't what we published back in april when we sent out the information is that we took uh you know received the intent and so now what we will do is provide parents within the next upcoming weeks with a very detailed schedule of what their child's day will look like and then you know they will have the opportunity to say yep we want to move forward or no this this really isn't for us um and they're you know therefore based on that um dr fuhrman and i discussed the number of 100 so that we have an idea of how many students we can accommodate so that's kind of our cap so we do have even now a little

155bit of space but we have not reopened that yet until we have all the details out there we've also discussed you know the what if so what's going to happen if there's you know some horrible variant things go awry again in the summer and things like that which isn't going to happen but um should it then then we would have the plan b if we would have to revert back to something like we are doing now where the schools assign you know a teacher on a grade level for virtual so um we do have some options you know plan a plan b plan c we want to be sure that we're going into next year with a solid plan um on various things that could happen so we would be looking at you know early

156july um you know if there is something you know parents can say i'm not safe to go back or what have you so so we have been looking at various options awesome thank you so much um i just wanted to thank christy and her team they've done a lot of hard work and also the the advisory team that helped dr bean come up with the plan for uh virtual academy it was very much a collaborative effort between dr b and the advisory team she gave them some options they gave her something to think about so i really liked how she collaborated with that advisory team to come up with a plan that i think will really meet the needs of our students and provide this virtual learning option that i think is greatly needed in

157our in our system i also want to thank katrina and gail for their hard work on the literacy work that they've done that is one of our core practices for equity in our instructional framework it was we've been investing three years of work in our literacy project and this is the final fruition of what we have so now we're ready to start looking at what is the next topic that we can really jump into when our core practice is for equity so that we have a very strong base in our instructional framework so thank you both for all your hard work it is amazing to see what you were able to accomplish thank you dr being throughout something that i really wanted you to just speak on which is that there's like a service level

158oh yeah agreement changes to like the hours that are provided by the caterer don't just like happen no under like the you know the threat of night you wake up one morning and spanish has changed i asked you about that when i because i gave you a call and we and you had a really good answer if you don't mind talking about like how if some change like that started to happen right yeah so if so they're uh way back i'm not sure when these were created they were there when i got here three years ago and their school or service level agreement so it's some agreements that the district has set one is we have an instructional coach at every one of our schools another one is the 90 minutes of spanish other ones

159are hey students every week and k5 will have this much pe time or average of this kind of support time teacher that protects future planning time as well so those are the agreements that at the district level and then the schools have flexibility to do what works for their school so a school like oakhurst is double the size of a school like glenwood so how their schedule works and how they can manage running classes through their specials programs is going to look different so we can't say every school has to run their spanish program this way because it's just it's just not going to work logistically for how they can schedule and staffing so there's that flexible option so we we kind of give them the fence and then they say here's how we can

160make that work within our school or within the parameters that we have and they're and changes the defense we don't change defense and if defense changes that would be a board discussion awesome thank you for that detailed explanation all right so moving on to consent items we have our financial report school nutrition personnel report we need to approve the safety and security upgrade at dhs in winona park approve a bid addendum for school nutrition program vendor access panel purchasing installation and also multi-function device lease do we need to pull out any of those for discussion all right do i have a motion to approve the consent item i'll move to approve the question item okay all in favor and now we'll move on to our item for action information and discussion um and so the

161superintendent appointment is this where we go over the uh contract or where you did that i think we're gonna do this right it's been a very long day oh all right so next we'll talk about the tentative approval of millage rate uh fiscal year for 2022. so the proposed fiscal millage rate is raising the millage rate to 21.0 from 20.5 all right so do we have a motion to approve the military 21. i believe that we tentatively pending feedback from the may property saturday 21. all right all right all right all right let's move on to our wellness action plans budget for action to say again so then the actual budget so you make a question just all crammed in there all right and now we will go over the fiscal year 2022 final budget

162approval and that is the budget that was presented in the hearing right before the start of the general meeting all right so a motion to approve the um fiscal year 2022 final budget move to approve the fiscal year 21-22 final budget second okay all in favor do we should we have any discussion oh i'm sorry i need to go ahead i have one point which was only that when we approved the millage which is tied with the budget we said that it was a tentative approval of the millage and i wanted to emphasize the point that the tentativeness of it is because we don't yet know the property digest so we don't yet know what to expect in taxes so and ms broome's presentation earlier she'd indicated that the maximum based on the worst case

163projection in other words the least expected income from property taxes would we would need to raise the millage 21 in order to keep the four percent funding but the um what we've just approved by proving it tentatively is that we're going to adjust it based on the property tax returns and hope that it can come in less than 21. i just wanted to make that clarification and we already received the fund we already know how we're getting in our care funds that that's that we've already done and i had two questions uh one was the question um that we got during public comment or what would are you able to address some of the things that were cut so what we did um to be able to move the milk continuously from the higher level

164to the 21 is he took we looked at teachers that were being paid for out of the eip teachers so the care fund allows us to pay salaries for staff that provide remediation services so we have many staff already on our on our payroll that provide remedial services so what we did is we moved those salaries for one year to the cares fund so that we didn't have to pay them at a general fund so that allowed us to decrease the spending out of general funds we didn't cut any programs basically moved the staff from one bucket to another bucket so that we didn't have to raise the military as high and then there were three special ed positions in the general fund that were to provide support for the virtual program but after looking

165at our special ed allotment we didn't need three of those special ed teachers so we took those out of the budget so those were that's how we were able to keep the military down with moving payroll into care fund for a year and then as teachers matriculate out or retire next year we can scoop those teachers back into the general fund okay so the pro there weren't really programs that we're all programs okay great and my last question is about tuition i know we have discussed tuition um for students who didn't live in the district but we're not going to do that no yeah and this decision was made before i took the interim position is that we wouldn't do um tuition based payments for students to come to city schools of digital systems that's

166good and why was that do you know my first decision yeah we were just we because we've been recently having conversations about specific grade levels right and it was deciding on what grade levels and i think we narrowed it down to potentially middle school and high school and i think the last question was you know do we give them a timed frame or do we agree that once they're in the system they're in the system unanimously in favor of exploring and subject to what y'all found about about those two different okay so that then is where i didn't pick but pick that back up and keep moving forward but if that's something you guys want to continue looking at i'm happy to be able to do together and it came down to whether we thought

167we needed to do that to balance any sort of class sizes it's sort of counter-intuitive because we're actually trying to reduce class sizes in some ways but if there were places where it did make sense since at our elementary schools it's not always evenly distributed we were we were considering that but where we were going to school in high school again where did we where did that land yes that was really we were pretty open to that and it looked like there was um space enough to do that and i think it just came down to um should we offer it for a limited time or should it be for life and i think that's where we left it off just trying to figure out what what the pros and cons of those options would

168be but it was also presented to us in a way to add more to um our budget right now okay so we're bringing in the source of income so we've got a june work session coming up so we'll put together a presentation and have more numbers and they can present that for your review at the work session okay i think i think it was we were open to it and it was going to take some analysis to ensure that it wasn't going to cost us more and we would earn from them like we wouldn't we would only want it to like incrementally fill out classes but then we have to also plan for housing but not make it so that we would need to hire another teacher or install another learning cottage you know because

169those yeah was way offset for the benefit of taking on that student so i think we've basically left it open to needing more analysis but it wasn't to the idea definitely still open to the idea all right yep we'll pull some scenarios together and share those that the word june work session yeah all right that's perfect thank you um well one comment on our budgeting process this was the first year that we had a variable millage rate in our conversation as opposed to a variable fund balance in our conversation and i think we all agreed on principle that that's what we felt was important to say this is what we need to keep our school strong um and co and then see where that landed on the military which uh i think was not well

170understood by the community i think we had a lot of confusion or backlash and perhaps because it was a new approach and also because we maybe needed to do more emphasis around what that meant and that it was draft and worst case and it was with you know in january a long list of attempts we didn't know yet what the state funding was going to be we didn't know what cares you know there were many unknowns not just now the last unknown which is the property tax daca but i'm thinking that at a future work session we probably need to discuss our approach to budget and just see if how we all feel about how this went this year and what we may do again or what we might want to change because i do

171feel like there was a disconnect with the community in how we approached our budget we would have landed in the same place i believe but the conversation would have been different because we would have seen instead of a higher millage rate as a draft we would have seen an extremely low fundraiser neither are acceptable but i think that the it did awaken different kinds of uh feelings in the community and it was a new approach and i think we just need to talk through that yeah i think um what one of the things i've been reflecting on going through as a new superintendent through the budgeting process is um more like looking at the budget long term instead of hey we're in the budget season let's start putting the budget together but just because we've

172voted on the budget we're going to go through the next steps and approve the budget whatever the june and july meetings are show us with the tax digest and the millage rate is putting together a budget committee um that is maybe one or two board members uh lanita and any community members i'm thinking like a member from each of our local school slps to help look at it long term look at all the ins and outs of it and make sure that there is that parent connection through the slts being able to provide input and being that conduit between the local school communities and the board through a committee so i think that might be a way for us to look at it in a wider perspective and get more input and information ask the

173community about it just one well this is a discussion maybe for a retreat or something yeah but our sort of working philosophy has been to avoid committees oh okay the board pretty pretty very much intentionally okay um we had one committee and i think that might be a good reason not to have another one i just think it creates some some some dif some difficult dynamics yeah yeah and um but there's some philosophy behind it okay that's good but that doesn't mean i'd have a committee it means not to have a board committee understood so you get to get your input and whatnot okay you can discuss that as the day-long work session not the retreat all right a further discussion on the final budget all right so do i now have a motion to

174approve the 2022 final budget approval uh well the tentative is the military it's a definite motion to approve a tentative million we already did that one because this is just for the final budget approval it's the final thing yeah okay so i moved to approve the fiscal year 2022 final budget second all in favor all right all right all right so let's move on now to the wellness action plan change are you presenting that dr sherman i am and it's it's just a minor correct um changes to the wellness action plan um normally name was still in there so there's there was a wellness action plan there's really not much of a change um it's just bringing some stuff up that needed corrected there um and then the meal time period if you as i

175shared about in the mitigation strategies there is a there's um the government sets some timelines for students to eat lunch um 10 minutes i think for breakfast 20 minutes for lunch um and what we're proposing is a one-year waiver so that we can decrease eating time to match the um it goes quarantine time so it would be active eating without a mask 15 minutes because that's the if you're exposed to someone 160 minutes then you're close contact um so this we're just trying to follow the guidelines of the cdc with our meal time so um just proposing that we do a waiver next year because of covid to decrease lunch by active eating time now they'll still be in the cafeteria longer than 15 minutes but just saying the guidelines say hey by the time

176the kid sits down to the time the kids dismiss it should be 20 minutes we just want to make sure we're following everyone's aware that this is a deviation from standard policy i appreciate that you brought it as a change to the plan i think it makes total sense i like to see it reflected in the fact that we're changing plans to do thank you for your information and then we have the go ahead lewis i realized that and when we did the agenda there's no future business on there and there's one item i wanted to bring up future date no it's not a future date it's a future business it's a it's an island that i'm like that proposed to be taken up by the board and i realized we did i thought maybe

177under wellness action plan i apologize but um the student center that we got to visit that opened up at the high school i was hoping that would draw a little attention i know not everyone is open but it was a collaboration between the cst but there's a student center now that if you are listening you're going to have a student high school i encourage them to go by it is absolutely beautiful so it looks like a coffee shop that actually literally is some old furniture from a coffee shop and it's a really lovely place i thought maybe it might be under the wellness action plan but that's why i didn't bring it up early there you go yes it is great thank you for all the hard work that went into that that was uh

178that was that team yeah that's incredibly go over the important newsletter real quick and then we can do future business um so we have a draft in here is there anything in particular that um would like to share with shana on what we would like [Music] [Applause] um can we just send it out to everyone because i don't have a pressure yeah absolutely all right so we'll work on that i don't does that go out last week yeah so we can start with that and then i guess add to it but i think i just need some time to look at it yeah and i'll be um i'm setting up a joint press conference with the um chair of the cad county school board probably this week um to talk about the the bill that

179we passed so that will probably be sometime this week that'll be something we could potentially add to the to the newsletter as well because i know there was a point where we weren't really talking much about it so we can do that now um that was a long time coming so we need to celebrate it yeah the language the newsletter suggested on the desk he signed yeah all right and then um okay so and then any other comments about the board newsletter so we'll just have shayna send that out and just make sure we all look at it i think she wants to get it out by friday okay and future business so i wanted to bring up an issue that we have discussed off and on for years but it's one that we've never

180closed the loop on and this has to do with people in the community who are in our school system who want to renovate their homes but while the home is being renovated they need to move out so you know to live somewhere else while the construction is going on and i had a personal connection with somebody in this position a number of years ago and they worked very hard to try to figure out how they could stay in the school system even if they're you know the rule technically is that you know schools are for the residents of the city of decatur and the residents are people who put their head on a pillow inside the decatur city limits you know most nights and so if there's a year when you're not doing that living

181outside the city limits technically you're not a resident and that has never seemed really to make sense to me but i know in this one case that family wound up leaving the school system you know because where they had to go live while they're doing their renovations with somewhere else and um and we had some issues with the students at the care housing authority at one point and went through quite a regular role to make sure that they could stay in the system while displaced as a result of the renovations but in order to make that happen um again it was it was kind of a one-off special circumstance where we had everyone signed out to david saying that they're displaced and intended to return which was the right result it's just that it would

182be nice to have what i'm proposing is that we actually address this in our policies to the extent that we can but i believe it makes complete sense that if you are a decatur homeowner and you are paying taxes on a decade or home while renovating it so long as you're not accepting rent right it's one thing if someone's renting out their home but if they're not paying rent and they're continuing to pay their taxes while they live somewhere else and if this does not continue for more than some period of time and i don't know what the rate yeah i would assume that 12 months would do maybe 18 months i don't know what the right period of time is but we should consider those people to be still to cater residents if they're

183just displaced from during the renovation uh and i would propose that we look to addressing that in an explicit change to our policy so there's people confronting these questions can actually have the assurance that they need to to do it on the up or not and maybe there's a requirement to come in and there would be a requirement that you come in and say this is what i'm doing so that when people ask questions it's only so i'm this is future business i'm proposing that we take this up and proposing maybe we come forward with the draft put it out for comment see what feedback we get make sure it's on the up and up legally but i just wanted to raise it and kind of put it on the agenda okay that's a good

184idea you can dig into that anybody else want to talk about future business or future dates there's one thing i thought you were going to say that you didn't say but there's been a discussion about class rank off and on oh and that came up you know years ago it's kind of resurfaced this year because of her crazy year and i wonder if it's landed somewhere or if it's still a discussion it is going to be also on the june work session agenda so um michelle and kim jones will be leading a presentation on that and we have a couple suggestions um to present to the board at the work session and if it's something you're amenable to um it'll move to the june board meeting for an action item do we have a date

185for that session concerned about how many items have been mentioned for the gym well i'm in all seriousness three days long okay they're just beginning to sort of metastasize first 5 30. it's just not i mean it's not a full-time job yeah i didn't know that since june first i was like i'm gonna be traveling first i'm gonna have it on my calendar are you gonna be actively paying traveling during that time okay good for you [Laughter] i forgot [Laughter] but i mean you know i mean we will be traveling okay yeah janet if the only way that i keep any of this straight is because shayna puts this on the board workout if you figure out how to okay subscribe to that i have not have a cool night when i get the emails

186i'll i'll go ahead and add some money on my account okay we'll work with you we'll help you with that esteem's waving at you as we speak you got to that's nice and usually when i say yes is when it comes onto my calendar but i don't remember seeing it in there for me to say yes to so all right um is it possible to have a pick a different date um and your your hope is that because we typically have done um work sessions for tuesday not always so kind of the you know we'd have our board meeting second tuesday work session fourth tuesday i don't know if it got bumped or something um the 25th has the wilson center uh retiree celebration from 4 30 to 5 30 and then from 6 to

1876 15 is the military hearing so we we could like maybe we could do it that night like right after the military yeah i said on what there was 25 [Music] so there's nothing on the board's calendar there should be anything on there it's either it's either the tuesday before the board meeting or it's the tuesday after you know the other work session we've got something every week could we do it on the fourth tuesday the 26th the 22nd if we if we kind of got back into that rhythm of doing them on the fourth grade rhythm is kind of important okay yeah but i don't know what we're talking about now you're talking about june 22nd right so just i mean tentatively keeping there's the fourth tuesday civil rights meeting that do you want

188to know after that 15 we're supposed to adopt the military okay that works for everybody's work session june 22nd so we'll do the millage rate the last knowledge right hearing on the 26th and then just have a board session right after that because it will work nothing on the first nothing ever and we can just i i would think keep that tentatively open that pattern if we feel like we need to have it and then we all already know that to keep that date open each month right now all right perfect any other business before we adjourn all right thank you all who have stayed with us through the entire night it's 9 15 we are joining our board session good night everyone