001okay good evening everyone welcome to our april 20th board meeting let me first apologize for our delay um we are running about 15 minutes behind and so i apologize to all of those who have been waiting um we have all board members present as well as our council mr bob wilson and dr fuhrman so we will start our meeting at 6 43 april 20th call to order and let's just take a moment of silence thank you and um for all those who are able let's stand and please please in the united states of america and to the republic for to stand one nation under god indivisible with liberty and judges for all okay and just looking at the agenda um from our last board meeting are there any revisions corrections and that would be from
002the march 9th um board meeting and we had two board work sessions all right no revisions are okay and no changes to the minute all right so we will move to our spotlight and dr fuhrman would you like to get us started yes i want to interview sanders from oakrisk elementary she is going to be our spotlight for this evening get away ms sanders hi everyone i'm really excited to share the equity work we've been doing this year at oakhurst the last couple of years we've really worked on our staff and really done a lot of reflection and book studies and things of that nature and this year we've really worked a lot with our students and so that's what you will see in the video thank you that was that was awesome thank you
003so much miss sanders i love how you put that together and that true message that they say every day um i like that that was that was very powerful and and using your voice um so thank you for sharing that did you guys have any comments for me no um [Music] here someone had dialed in or had their um you guys hear us now yes i'm here yes here we go so sorry about that technical difficulty that we are back and thank you again mr sanders and that's one word if anybody had anything to say to the standard i was just gonna say [Applause] i just wanted to tell you how excited i was by the um the uh crew message of my voice at power what an empowering message that must be for your
004students um i was really excited about your books and the topics of discussion um i'm currently taking a curriculum in social justice class and so scrutinizing the curriculums with lenses that's what i was reading about today so you guys are right on top of things so thank you for all of your hard work absolutely all right back to you dr kermit oh no i'm sorry it is time for public comment shayna how many um commenters do we have this evening tonight we have four people speaking all right great so um thank you so much for those who signed up for public comment just a reminder when you first started you could please let us know who you are in your affiliation with um city schools educator this is the indicator we'd love that also if
005there are any particular or issues that are very personal then we can definitely talk in another format um this format is not the one to use if you have an issue with a certain person or um teacher or staff member okay so we will start with the first comment go ahead trainer okay first person up will be mr coonley organized mr oganite please unmute and you can speak now calmly can you hear me yes okay uh good evening school board good evening everybody my name is julio gunnare i'm a parent of a sixth grader and a ninth grader i also represent uh close the achievement group gator i'm i'm speaking to express my frustration at how we've handled the last few months regarding the uh placing the superintendent on administrative leave i have questioned whether
006we should reconsider our attorneys wilson mark martin and uh sorry i forget the last name but if they did not advise us to take action earlier are they derelict in their duties this just seemed to drag on and on for so long um did they advise us when the first the two lawsuits were brought prior to that the the personnel leaving the district it just seems like there were so many issues that kept happening and if our crisis management was at the top of it uh if we were really active with regards to crisis management we could have handled this much sooner and been further along than just now so i'm expressing frustration on that that we need to be more decisive as a board as a community and if our attorneys are not advising
007us if they're just letting us let things drag out they are not doing us any service and we should consider getting another set of attorneys in addition i do want to raise and i have raised it via email but i think it's important that we start thinking about career and technical education we are entering a phase in the 21st century new careers new industries are emerging that do not require the typical four-year college degree path of the 20th century it is very important as a school district we also begin to explore those opportunities the film industry the aviation industries alternative energy technologies industry cyber security there's so many industries that no longer require a traditional four-year college path for entry what are we as a school district doing those are my comments thank you thank
008you mr alvin next person up will be miss susan camp this camp miss camp i'm sorry it said i was promoting a panelist that that's new for me i'm sorry my name is susan camp and i have two children enrolled at claremont elementary um i too share some of um coonley's concerns about who is representing our district i also wish to use the public comment period to share that i um commend the board for unanimously voting to play star georgini on administrative leave while the investigations of a potential fraud are carried out i i also am very frustrated and disappointed that it required us launching multiple petitions and engaging with the media in order for our board to do the job in which they were elected to do now i know that later on you
009are going to be discussing the preliminary budget for the fiscal year 22 and i have serious concerns about eliminating pay increases for teachers it's my understanding the current budget also still accounts for a 12 pay increase for dr duty as was negotiated in his contract last september i'm also concerned about some of the high salaried head counts that are being added there doesn't seem to be any meaningful effort to reduce expenditures while you are simultaneously proposing a millage rate increase i also want to state for the public record that as long as this investigation is ongoing i do not believe the board should be entering into any contract renegotiations with dr duty i believe they should allow his contract to expire and the 12 pay increase should be rolled back into the budget and reallocated
010to teacher um to the teacher pay increases um before you uh vote on the budget tonight i strongly urge you to consider what your responsibility is in safeguarding the fiscal uh future of this district i would we needed to learn that the board unanimously approved a 400 000 it expense to upgrade active boards at uh tally and i mean i'm sorry at fave and renfro when we are in a period where we need to be freezing as many expenses as possible right now and i just as a taxpayer and a parent i find active boards to be pretty low on the list especially when we are looking at a number of students remaining virtual for the next year thank you for your time thank you next up would be addie design i'm not finding adding
011um so we're going to move on to jane pv all right can you hear yes we can hear you jang um my name is shane peavy thank you board for allowing me to speak i have a child at in third grade at talley i'm also a um a teacher within the system and i live within the within the city limits um my concern is that looking at the budget that um as susan stated as well one of my concerns is that you're looking at not having the step increase for teachers which and then also increasing the millage rate um and it just disappoints me that that is the consideration of looking at how to help with the budget versus looking at other ways to reduce expenditures and my question comment concern however you'd like to
012speak about it is the step increase is given my understanding is given from the state level and so the step increase that is given at the state level how does that affect within our budget within our district thank you i've searched for miss addict to sing and i have not found her so we can move on [Music] that was the last um panel excuse me that was the last speaker great thank you so much shayna and thank you for coming and we will move to superintendent hi good evening everyone i'm excited to be here i'm humbled by the opportunities that the board has given me to serve as the interim superintendent for city schools of decatur this past year has challenged our students teachers families and community school system beyond what we ever thought we
013had the capacity to endure we navigated through a global pandemic racial and political unrest and significant cuts in state and federal funding for education in the face of significant coded related costs i am grateful to have had the chance to offer stability in this role for as long as i'm called upon to do so i'm committed to being a leader who puts the well-being of our students first we are focused on a strong finish for this school year and ensuring we are 110 ready for the upcoming year i appreciate this opportunity to introduce myself to anyone who i haven't met since i joined city school with decatur in 2018. and to do this i just want to highlight a few of um i will eventually highlight a few of our accomplishments as well as we
014get closer to it as i finish up my comments so for those of you who don't know me i grew up on a dairy farm north of pittsburgh pennsylvania my father immigrated to the united states in 1965 and met my mother at northwestern university i'm one of seven children and i'll tell you growing up on a farm and that is such a strong work ethic in me that still guides me to this day i started my career in 2001 teaching seventh grade social studies at summer hour middle school and then in 2005 still at summer hour i was promoted to the role of assistant principal in 2009 i had the opportunity to open a brand new middle school in the northern part of gwinnett county which was called north gwinnett middle school i also served
015there as an assistant principal in 2014 i had the honor to be appointed as the principal at bay creek middle school in greece in georgia before joining city schools of decatur in 2018. later this evening you're going to hear more from each division leader regarding their accomplishments this year but first i want to thank our principals teachers and staff for their endless dedication and hard work to create such high quality learning environments to foster meaningful connections with students during during this time for keeping equity in the forefront as countless decisions were being made thanks to all of our counselors for supporting our students significant social and emotional needs and we are grateful to our staff for their hard work for reinventing the role as we went along so also nutrition workers they provided meals throughout
016the pandemic our bus drivers were delivering meals and books working on modified routes operations staff implemented mitigation strategies including upgrading our hvac systems our custodians followed extensive protocols to keep our buildings safe and clean and our i.t department supported virtual learning by distributing chromebooks and supporting thousands of families we're also thankful for our financial department for achieving exemplary results on our annual independent financial audit and for demonstrating transparency and sustainable discipline while planning at a very challenging budget even as we're focused on closing out this school year successfully we are working hard to set the stage for a successful start for the 2021-22 school year including ensuring a robust summer intervention program is available for students we are committed to providing students with five full days of in-person instruction next school year also based on
017guidance from our current mitigation team we plan to implement what people are calling the 3w wearing a mask washing your hands and waiting which they call social which is their word for social distancing we will cohort as much as possible to make use and make use of rapid coded testing this week i'm meeting with our mitigation team to finalize details for next year and we'll share more details soon i want to take a few seconds or a few minutes to talk more about our rigorous and engaging some alert summer learning program and that is our first layer for addressing any learning loss from the pandemic through engaging and interactive lessons we are confident that students will make academic and emotional gains through this program key dates for our students our student roadmap to success are
018as follows phase one which is now between the end of the school year we're continuing to collect and analyze data to identify which students would benefit most from this program then may through july we will be having our summer learning opportunities and a ramp-up program our phase 2a which is going to be going on at the same time as the summer learning program is going to be professional learning opportunities for staff since starting august 3rd that is our first day of school and we will continue implementation of support for academic and social emotional learning and we're also going to layer on top of that extended day tutoring and an enhanced intensive fall and winter spring break programs to support students throughout the school year i'm excited to join hands with you and take the next
019steps of this journey together thank you so much dr farmers we appreciate you um so i just wanted to um for the chair comment to thank you all again for attending tonight apologize again that we were behind and i know that there is much uncertainty lots of questions and so i just want to acknowledge that what some of you are feeling and what you are concerned about we hear you we feel it and we share some of the same concerns i want to welcome dr farman as our interim superintendent as you know we made the decision the board made the decision at the advice of council and after deliberation to put dr duty on administrative leave and we had um we went to dr fuhrman we all agreed that she would be the right one
020to step into this role and so far we are very happy with that decision her and her team have really stepped up i have no doubt that they are on top of everything and have no intentions of letting falls drop it has been actually quite nice to see some of the morale and just the working together that we've seen in the last couple of days to just try to get through a very tough time i did want to just speak a little bit on the investigations because i believe there is somewhat of a misunderstanding so there isn't a whole lot that i can go into but i do want to give somewhat of a timeline here so that people can understand first off our district attorney is wilson morton down they have represented us for
021years and they are present at our meeting today they are not however in charge of the investigation or leading the um the two laws pending lawsuits they are not involved in those carbon hartley and hawkins are the ones that represent the two pending losses that's who represents those lawsuits we do not have an update on those pending lawsuits at this time but for those who'd like to know harvard hartley and hawkins are the ones that represent or that are handling those two losses lastly mcguire woods is who the board has hired they are third party and independent council that we did not have a prior relationship with once we all decided that we did need our own council to represent the issues that we felt were important to the board and for our community we
022hired mcguire and woods after about a month long of interviews with different attorneys the investigation started then there was spring break and after spring break at the advice of council and again before discussing we decided to put dr duty on administrative leave that is the timeline of how things have happened we cannot however answer how long it will take we cannot answer any personal questions and it's not that we do not want to be transparent it's not that we uh want to keep things from our community or lie to our community i hope that you hear that from the bottom of my heart we at all times especially when dealing with legal issues go to council for our advice that is where we go because we know that this is very complicated very convoluted and
023we want to make sure that any decision that we make we know will affect our district our children potentially for years to come and so at the advice of council is how we step into all of these legal issues to make sure that we are doing the best to look out for our students and so i hope that you understand that i hope that you hear that i wish that i could give you more i wish i could tell you everything that you want to know so please just trust that we absolutely have your kids best interest at heart and at the core of every conversation that we have as a board that that is our center focus and at this time we hope that we can continue to focus on the work of our
024students to focus on what we'll be doing this summer to focus on how we can get the students back in five days a week full time because we know those are the issues that affect each of us in our homes and that is our goal moving forward but as i've stated in my emails to many of you if you would like to discuss further please don't hesitate to reach out to any of us and i will gladly have a conversation with you all if you'd like to discuss anything further thank you so much that's our comments and now we're going to move to consent items for consent items we have personnel report school nutrition financial report and the young economic summit we need to pull any of those out for discussion okay and do we
025have a motion to approve content items i'll move to approve this item okay thank you and send items don't move now we will move to the items for action information and discussion and the first item up is an update on the school district um operations dr fuhrman yes i am really excited to share this information and i'm not going to do a lot of talking and as you mentioned tasha the we have such an amazing team of leaders around the table um so i felt it was appropriate here to give the cabinet members the opportunity to share and brag on themselves a little bit so each of them has put together a couple highlights of things they've accomplished this school year that i think are really notable just in a regular school year but getting
026all these things done in a year of a pandemic is just phenomenal so i want to give my cabinet members just a little bit of time to shout out themselves and give themselves a pat on the back which is well deserved they're an amazing team and i'll just share i've never worked with a finer group of leaders so i'm just so happy to be on a team with them so i am going to start the presentation and we are going to start with miss france this is cool okay good evening dr fuhrman and the board and the community i just want to say that my department we are so proud in the way that we have been able to adjust adapt alter modify revise conform you name it our programs which are pretty complicated as
027you know everything that is state and federal is complicated and governed by a lot of rules and regulations but we have done all of those things to stay aligned with the federal and state guidance for implementing the services for eligible students that we serve in title 1 with title programs esol and special education programs throughout this pandemic never once did stop um can you guys hear me yeah yeah okay great sorry i was getting some feedback never once did we stop providing services to students in any of these programs um and all together with all the programs represented we have held 15 parent and family engagement meetings um all virtually during this time so a little bit more into the specifics in our esol and title on our esol and title side we were able
028to start an esol and title parent advisory council and that council has met quarterly and it has five parent representatives on it we've also been been able to start an esol entitled programs community collaborative and that has representation from nine community partners and it meets monthly we've been able to start an esol and title programs after school tutorial tutoring program that will run for eight weeks and then for special education we have been able to provide services both in the virtual and in-person environment and as you guys know special education comes along with a lot of paperwork and every student in special education has to have an iep which requires an annual iep meeting so we did all of those meetings as we are required to to do and and some amendments to go along
029there but in addition each family received a virtual learning contingency plan meeting and in that meeting it was outlined how their child's iep services would be provided in the different instructional delivery models that we have we have been adjusting to and so literally that doubled the number of meetings that we had to hold which took us over 1 000 meetings with families to make sure that they were informed and included in the decision making process and 1 000 meetings includes a lot of people from from my department and from our schools meeting for many hours as you can imagine we also brought back as you know our most vulnerable students with ieps to in-person instruction in october and so therapists teachers and our support staff have been working in our buildings ever since and um
030even during a time when we were experiencing a lot of uncertainty regarding the pandemic and before vaccines were available so um that is something that you know i i will always hold our teachers in the highest regard uh for for doing the you know for doing that for our students that really really needed to be in person and then last uh but not least but back in january we received our lea determinations uh for fy21 which are based on last year's data and the results indicate that last year we did meet our state target of 100 compliance on indicators 11 and 12 which are our child fine or initial evaluations for special education numbers so we know that the school year did end a little early but even so we met at 100 and head
031to school year ended in may we would have also met the target based on our data so i am so proud of my department i'm so proud of everyone that we collaborate with across you know all departments to make this possible and thank you for the opportunity to share this with you tonight thank you francis all right next up uh sergio share with us all your operations work that you've been hard at work with thank you doctor um we uh i'm gonna give out some highlights of uh uh every one of our departments the facility department has been working on the uh their dog cleaning project this is uh it's gonna be a great in in in treating the air ducts clean system with a micro engine it's going to help with the uh indoor
032air quality we are working on a solar plant for adding solar panels over tally and run from middle school also we are exploring options so install electrical vehicle charging stations and at least a couple locations just to start with we are uh working on the outdoor lighting project with uh georgia power uh this is basically providing more more safe to our schools where some locations are kind of dark at night we are also working in uh providing additional playground equipment this is mostly for the faith academy and italia upper elementary the nutrition department during the school year 2020 2021 uh they receive a hundred percent free and reduced reimbursement this is an increase from last year from 654 to hundred and 156 seven dollars this is about an increase about eighty two percent so this
033is impressive how basically we are recovering from the pandemic in the safety and security projects we uh we are working updating the emergency response procedures menu uh this is a very important uh task and uh matthew d'amico is working on this uh this task with the principals and the cabinet members so so this is a great great improvement we also are working on installing new uh school signs inside the schools this is more directional but also for safety so this is a project we are going to take every school and they're going to have a a very new uh signs in the doors but also directional as i say we are also working in upgrading the two-way uhf radius this is for all districts we are looking into a digital radios to provide encrypted communication
034just for safety inside the same schools but also for the superintendent to communicate in case of an emergency so one communication will be will be uh immediately for everyone in the transportation department we are in personal learning is going successful we are offering transportation for high school and middle school canada express runs and we are working on implementing a new routing system it's called bus planet and a student tracking system called here comes the bus this uh program gonna be probably working together with how we're gonna uh uh serving meals and and uh technology with some other different things that we'll see uh is in important improvement on this uh this uh uh system also oh go ahead oh sorry yes so the operational division work behind the scenes during the pandemic and this stuff
035uh work every day providing healthy meals reliable transportation safety and security renovating and well-maintained buildings without skills showing commitment dedication and honor to these unsung heroes i want to thank you for your hard work i see you i hear you and i value you thank you sergio all right dr bean hi good evening everybody so teaching and learning of course is the core business of the school system and in the curriculum and instruction department i have the great honor of leading a small but brilliant team of educators who work tirelessly to support our teachers and our students by providing effective standards-based materials that reflect our commitment to diversity equity and inclusion we provide high quality teacher training and we support data-driven programs for our students so there's a few areas that um we we've been
036a little busy this year as you can imagine and there's a few areas that i wanted to highlight that i'm especially proud of that we have worked in and one of that one of those areas is collaboration and that's collaboration with our schools but also with our other departments across the wilson center of course we worked with our information services department as well as all the other departments this summer to plan for virtual learning we created the virtual learning plans the guidelines the trainings and resources for our teachers we partnered with other departments to streamline our our district resources and research and recommend a simplified assessment plan as well as a k-12 district-wide personal learn personalized learning path for all of our students throughout district through district-wide collaboration we've also facilitated the creation of common
037pacing guides that have provided coherence among our grade levels and content area teachers we have increased our collaboration with equity and student support with initiatives in culturally responsive teaching decolonizing our curriculum and vetting social studies materials we've also worked with equity and student support and state and federal programs to successfully launch participation in the georgia dyslexia pilot within our content areas a few of our accomplishments this year have been that we have completed a k-5 ela curriculum adoption for the district and that announcement will be made at the end of the week so we are super excited about that um we have been conducting bi-weekly comprehensive k2 para professional foundational reading training a foundational reading training series by our district reading coaches we've successfully launched um a reboot of a district-wide fundations program which is
038an og based phonics curriculum in grades k through three and we have a cohort of teachers um and district leaders that are participating in the letters training program it's based it's a two-year program based on the science of reading and we will have that cohort continuing next year in math we've launched launched a district math team the team is in the progress of developing program evaluation for mathematics and creating a district math action plan in the arts we began um a district-wide grades three through eight orchestra program that will be expanding into the high school next year and then in our interventions and support programs we have implemented read 180 which is a reading support program and we have seen tremendous reading growth with our students at renfrew middle school with and we have been
039honored to support dr bolton and ms crockett in their work with that we have shown growth as a district and 24 indicators for academics and 21 indicators for behavior on the georgia department of education mtss fidelity of implementation rubric all of our k5 eip teachers have received training on the georgia numeracy project and will begin implementation in fall of 2021 and we continue to close the excellence gap in gifted and talented programs and we are working to reboot the critical and creative thinking lessons for all of our students in k2 next year so in addition to all of this work that we are continuing to do on a daily basis my department is also engaged in a couple of other big lists right now which include planning all of our summer intervention programs and determining
040what the future of virtual learning will look like in city schools of decatur thank you thank you christy that was wonderful update miss walker and the fowler staff support good evening to the board and to dr fuhrman we and staff support like many other departments within the district has had to adapt and overcome many obstacles and hurdles during this pandemic and during this time we were able to support our staff throughout the district as we managed an overwhelming amount of ada and non-ada accommodation requests i'm doing the virtual and in virtual learning environments as well as during that time we created a csd leave policy that extended beyond the um the december 31 2020 expiration date of the family first corona response coronavirus response act um so that is something that we wanted to do
041to just support our staff if they were exposed to covet in any situation as well as being on top of everything and supporting the normal needs of the district we were proud to successfully host our first virtual uh teacher job fair um and substitute job fair as well um to fill the vacancies the normal uh uh uh vacancies that we do have in the district and new positions for the 2021-22 school year during that sc doing that job fair we had over 100 applicants to attend and to be interviewed by our principals school administrators and department leaders after the event we actually sent out a feedback survey to our attendees our applicants and to the interviewers just to get valuable feedback because this was our first time of any successes and opportunities for improvement and
042overall experience um during the fee for the from the feedback of the surveys from our uh applicants many of them said that their experience in the virtual outfitter was we were organized informative and positive so that is something that i just uh applaud our principals and our department leaders in helping us make that event successful and including on the staff support team of the hours of the prep hours to get us through that event um and then just ending up with our onboarding new employees and just over overcoming obstacles um as our normal way of onboarding employees um usually everything is in person so just making sure that our we are adhering to social distancing guidelines and then going forward with our virtual orientations um say fingerprinting guidelines electronic uh new higher paperwork and and
043then we use this method as well as onboarding many of our uh pot facilitators that we had to support our schools in doing so our supply teachers and prepare us um so i just applied my team and i'm just so proud of them and just being the leader of this small team but we try to get as much done as possible and support our staff and our district as well as we can thank you edina that's wonderful miss fowler are you there yes good aft good afternoon or good evening board members and dr fuhrman um i just wanted to um piggyback off of what dr beam said in terms of the key thing is collaboration and working with all our other departments within wilson and also partnering with our school leaders we started off the
044year with our very first uh virtual orientation actually and so um we tried our very best to make sure that that virtual presentation really reflected the uh the culture and climate of ours our district um we had lots of um um synchronous and asynchronous presentations from as i said all our schools as well as our district leaders in terms of just trying to give our uh new staff an idea of what we are about as a district um i work regularly with staff support and um also lots of our time with our curriculum instruction so one of the things that we did is we increased our endorsement offerings this year we normally always offer the gifted but in addition to the gifted endorsement i'm working to coordinate professional learning we also offered the online teaching
045endorsement the esau endorsement the sst endorsement and the k5 mathematics again working with curriculum instruction we took some time to review our offerings and to see what we wanted to push forward for next year we spent a lot of time working with staff support and helping to support substitute management there are a lot of substitutes that we had to retrain we retrained in google classroom over a hundred staff members including our substitute teachers we also had some student teachers in there as well that needed an orientation in google classroom and to be successful in the virtual environment um we expanded our university partnerships last year we had about five different colleges we expanded to 14 this year we also increased the number of pre-service teachers we worked with and so that number is at 35.
046we had 18 last year and i just wanted to really give a shout out to our classroom teachers who in the middle of this pandemic welcomed um pre-service teachers into their classroom and i feel um that really shows that they have a heart for mentoring and for nurturing our teacher our new teachers and last but not least we also um are in the middle of rolling out the professional learning platform it will be aligned with our other offerings from front line um so that basically when staff would go in it would be on the same sign in um right now it's as i said it's it's at the early stages we are training uh district departments but it will be a really um effective change i think to have all of our professional learning efforts
047in one platform and this allows us to not just increase the quality of professional learning but to make sure that we honor the voice and choice of our staff and to make sure that everyone has access by creating a catalog and a catalog to make sure that we are sharing all our professional learning offerings and um we also feel this will definitely support our teacher leadership efforts as well thank you thank you marcia um heidi share with us what you've been busy with for research analytics good evening dr fuhrman and board members um so as uh dr beam had mentioned closely with research uh curriculum and instruction to develop a virtual assessment plan um and really make sure that teachers have the tools to use financially we started using keenville how and which tools could
048be used online we also use this opportunity to rethink study all of our existing assessment tools that conduct a thorough assessment audit so that we are now ready to streamline our assessment plan and proceed um in the most efficient way to get the data that teachers really need to have it really helped us to be forced to put a bunch of things on hold and really think about them and realize what we were missing um also did a lot of work this year on creating tools for improved use we did an equity dashboard that we collaborated with um community relations and also um the equity team with also uh created a lot of tools for as uh dr beam's brilliant team moved forward they they needed data they needed longitudinal data so we made a
049map dashboard and created some ways for them to look at longitudinal data um also this year we conducted an annual data update and something we had been intending to do for a long time and we actually accomplished it um collaborated again with communications and information services um and now nearly everyone had a parental account and we moved all of those forms and sign offs um that were all paper to a fully electronic system i also learned a lot of new skills this year um in problem solving the student information system um we built surveys and collected data and built dashboards so that school leaders could look at their data and plan as we kept changing things and had different numbers of students coming back i've learned how to make video tutorials so that parents would
050know how to fill out all those surveys a lot of tweaking to the student information system you may not know this time you adjust the schedule the calendar has to be adjusted you have to figure out how to take attendance every time you switch things up there are a lot of new tools to try to keep track of our virtual learners and london learning groups and so there was a lot of learning around that also trying to figure out how to continue all of the other state reporting um across each transition and making sure that we were doing everything that we needed to be doing and changing as the state and the world kept offering us changes and i have so much gratitude particularly to the attendance teams at the high school and the middle
051school we have had to figure out attendance no less than six different times in six different ways um also a huge shout out to anthony gilbert who worked all weekend all night whenever we had to make a change immediately and get it really quickly um and all of that also just jumping in and helping out wherever there was help needed during the pandemic um working with the subs with sea i substituted in a few classes and i'm just really happy to be part of the team and proud of everything we've been able to accomplish keeping the boat afloat and getting a lot of new things done as well yes good evening everyone i am extremely proud to be part of the finance team we received a great audit for fiscal year 2020 without any finance
052we saved the district over 1.6 million by refinancing the 2010 series bonds the finance team also worked throughout the pandemic to make sure that all staff members received their paychecks and we created a link on the district website to allow stakeholders to have access to the latest budget presentation and allow them to provide comments and suggestions to the budget thank thank you anita um lily are you there yes i'm here um good evening everyone thank you dr fuhrman board cheer white and board members for the opportunity to showcase some of the work of the equity and student support department we've implemented and sustained a number of initiatives across all the program areas within the equity and student support department but tonight i wanted to highlight the work of the school health team our lead nurse
053school nurses and school health aide have demonstrated stellar leadership and flexibility throughout the time we've been navigating this global pandemic in a very short period of time they were trained and certified to administer covet 19 vaccines they volunteered to participate in two vaccination drives so far eston melton coordinated our first vaccination drive through a partnership with the dekalb county board of health and we also partner to support a vaccination drive sponsored by dekalb pediatrics and supported by the decatur high school pta through the combination of those efforts we vaccinated a little over 500 staff members students and csd community members tomorrow many of our staff will be receiving their second dose and they've been encouraged by dekalb pediatrics to bring an unvaccinated friend for their first dose of the vaccine i'm so grateful for the
054flexibility of our principals who've helped to facilitate our nurses participation as well as making it possible for our staff members to attend the vaccination drive during the school day this week our school health team also rolled out buy next now rapid antigen test in our clinics and there were many steps to get us to this point including obtaining a clinical lab designation and waiver developing protocols and completing training and we wouldn't be at this point without the tireless efforts of the testing committee including nurses shonda moore don durham elizabeth barrington and the wilson center team members heidi watley anthony colbert and courtney burnett i'm excited to offer this tool to assist us with mitigating the spread of the virus and we're exploring additional ways to potentially expand the use of testing going forward thank you
055thank you courtney are you there i'm here can you hear me yes we got them good evening everyone i want to highlight three things that staff and the communications and enrollment department department worked on that i'm particularly proud of i'm proud of all of our team's accomplishments this year but i picked these because of the collaboration and because it gives me an opportunity to highlight staff members that have been working extremely hard first i want to highlight the work of our new equity website we've talked for a while about having a central place to share all of our equity work i'm proud of the collaboration with dr banks and equity and student support to create the website to highlight our work and the collaboration with highly wutley in research and analytics to create the equity
056dashboard next as heidi mentioned we've had a long time goal of doing away with all the paper household data updates at the beginning of the school year i'm proud of the collaboration with sn and information services in heidi to get our annual data update through infinite campus up and running this year this data is extremely important to our communication efforts and without accurate data we can't communicate and finally i am very proud of the employees in our department that made the pivot from in-person to virtual registration like so many things during the pandemic we had to rethink how to manage all the components of registration virtually while ensuring that we were thoroughly examining residency documentation this was not an easy change but these employees made this shift with such grace and with an exceptional customer
057service mindset so far since march 15th when we opened registration for the 21-22 school year we've already registered about 115 new to district students for next year out of the approximately 300 we expect to enroll i also want to thank collee's colleagues heidi watley and anthony colbert for providing amazing support to their our staff during doing this work i'm so proud to lead this small but mighty team and i truly enjoy the collaboration with all my colleagues here tonight thank you so much courtney all right i've been melting you're up yep um you can read a list of projects that we have recently concluded or very nearly um concluding or go play a video later but what i want to spotlight tonight is um or rather my teammates my colleagues uh raymusfield the college heights
058demetrius towns at claremont and westchester stephen moore at oakhurst mike reynolds at glenwood and winona park marcus ray at fifth avenue derrick burgess natalie street chris leonard at renfrow and who win at high school along with kid lee jason wade lisa jones and harold rawl here in the wilson town they're responsible for a ton of stuff they're responsible for the incomplete list in front of you um they're responsible for us having a 97.5 5 star customer satisfaction rating from our staff over the last year which is then to say a trying year so um they're phenomenal um and i couldn't uh ask for a better staff thanks vesten um also office of superintendent uh we hopefully most people know we completed our district accreditation and had a really great review uh we are still looking
059forward to receiving our final report from kavya and hopefully that will come shortly um so that we can use that their findings and any recommendations on how we can further improve our district for continuous growth and improvement over the summer last year we updated a complete overhaul of our student code of conduct and restorative practices and specifically we added rule 13 which directly addresses hate speech and use of hate speech in our schools and when we also add included in our code of conduct clear expectations for staff and students regarding the acknowledgement of racism and having a commitment to work towards eliminating racism and then even though we started virtual and we are now bringing students back in person we did launch pbis district 5 this year our schools over the summer worked really well
060to get their pbs matrices up and ready but then when we realized we were coming back virtually they added virtual learning agreements and just had a seamless launch and we look forward to continuing with pbis next year so i just want to reiterate again this is such an amazing group of leaders that i work with and in addition to these leaders our school principals daily are in the trenches and doing the work and supporting our students and because of this amazing team at the district office level our principals are able to focus on teaching and learning in their school buildings and not being over burdened with all of these just other things to get in their way of doing their jobs at their local schools thank you and then um we are ready now for
061the financial audit doug there yes i am good evening to everyone how are you feeling uh a whole lot better now thanks for asking um let me share my screen here all right here we go right so i promise i'll be very brief um but thanks for having me here virtually to present the audit results for the district's june 30 2020 financial statements um hopefully you've had a chance to kind of look over the statements the powerpoint presentation what have you uh if you have any questions we can address them at the end of the presentation all right so just a quick update about martin jenkins we actually added our ninth office last year in sarasota florida and so now we have of course four in georgia one in alabama one in tennessee one in
062south carolina as well our governmental practice continues to be one of the largest niches in the firm representing about 28 of the firm's practice we audit over 500 total governments in the southeast and that includes about 62 school systems and about 40 charter schools as far as the engagement team again i was responsible for the overall audit engagement with 21 years of experience um this year we had meredith lipson to do the quality assurance review she has over 31 years of experience and then mallory was the engagement in charge with three years of experience and then down below just some other industries that we serve and other services that we provide we do now have a criminal advisory practice uh that's led by david roberts and uh so we're we're lucky to have him he's
063coming from kpmg with over 20 plus years of experience across the nation as far as the vendor statements the financial statements are the responsibility of the board of management our responsibility is to give an opinion on those financial statements and we've issued an unmodified opinion which is the clean opinion which is what you will hope to get from the external and independent audit the audit report date was as of february 23 2021 so we're a little late but we'll talk about that a little later in the presentation we also issued a unmodified opinion or a clean opinion on your major federal award program you're required to have a single audit on your child nutrition cluster in accordance with the uniform guidance and that audit report date was as of february february 23rd as well and
064then we also uh conducted these bloss performance audit as well and uh no issues noted with those procedures on the splost program moving right along um as far as our relationship with management we received full cooperation from the school systems management staff and others uh there were no disagreements with management on accounting issues or financial reporting matters as far as audit adjustments anything that came to our attention on those adjustments were made to your trial balance reports and ultimately in your financial statements as well as in your general ledgers um main thing here i want to point out is that we are independent of the school system and its financial reporting process in accordance with aicpa professional standards there were no fees paid to modern jenkins for any type of management advisory services that would
065have impacted our independence as your external and independent auditor all right the next few slides kind of go over some financial trends um this first one is looking at your governmental activities and again this is all of your governmental funds on a full accrual basis uh meaning that you have your capital assets and long-term debt deferred inflows and outflows pertaining to your opeb and pension plans all reflected in these governmental activities and this is looking at your net position and you're changing that position over the last several years um your net position did decrease by roughly 5.4 million dollars going from 75.8 million in 2019 down to 70.4 million in 2020 of course you see in 2018 a huge decrease in your net position again if you recall from previous presentations that i've done for
066you all that's pertaining to your implementation of gas b75 recognizing your proportionate share of the other post employment benefits plan the dch plan health insurance plan so that's that explains that large decrease in your net position in 2018 which all local government state governments federal governments had to recognize that liability in school districts uh the next slide looks at your fund balance as a percentage of total expenditures and you see how uh it has trended over the last several years um of course when you look at all of your governmental funds um in 2016 you know you had a high percentage and that's due to that splost program and then as you started spinning down your splash proceeds that percentage came down when you look at all of your governmental funds as a whole but
067looking at your general fund that percentage is pretty consistent i went from 26 percent in 2019 down to roughly 22 in 2020 and then when you look at all of your governmental funds uh combined it was pretty flat uh 27 in 2019 uh compared to 28 in 2020 uh next slide is looking at your fund balance for your general fund and then your other governmental funds which include special revenue funds your capital project funds and you can see how your general punished um trended here um pretty flat to be honest 17.5 million in small decrease uh in 2020 going down to 17.3 million dollars while your other government funds again was pretty flat as well from 8.6 million to 2019 down to 8.3 million in 2020. next slide is looking at your general fund revenues
068and expenditures and that you continue to see that upward trend uh in your revenues and expenditures this year your expenditures were slightly more than your revenues which was kind of expected with pandemic and what have you um went from 77.9 i'm sorry 68.98 in revenues last year to 76.5 million uh in revenues in 2020 why your expenditures went from 67.6 million in 2019 up to 77.9 million in 2020. um as lanita uh alluded to earlier on the district didn't have any findings and so that's that's pretty pretty uh significant uh considering you know a lot of my other clients you know they you know they struggled a little bit with the pandemic and with the year in closeout procedures and we had to kind of come in and make significant adjustments but for you all
069we didn't have any adjustments that were deemed to be significant or material enough to warrant a finding so that's all for everyone working very hard to to make sure the trial balances were provided in good shape for us to do the audit now we do have a management recommendation management point and again like most governments everyone struggled with at the start of the pandemic with everyone working remotely and then also with the turnover at the district with the finance director leaving the former fedex director leaving back in december of 2019 and so your new finance director didn't come on until several months after that and so uh with the learning curve and with the you know some things being kind of um behind uh it did take the district a little while to get ready
070for us and so we really didn't get the audit started until um november uh so they kind of put us behind a little bit now however um you know with the pandemic the state recognized that you know governments were struggling uh with uh working remotely and everything that um came with you know with the pandemic and so they did an automatic extension for um local uh government school districts so basically your june 30 2020 audit wasn't due until march 31st uh 2021 and so uh again that was an automatic extension that the department of audits done for the governments here in georgia i don't foresee any major issues in fiscal year 2021 again with your new finance director being on board at that time for a little bit over a year and so we do
071i think i think things will be much better going forward a few new standards just want to kind of point out on the ones that are that you need to be made aware of gasps statement number 84 deals with fiduciary activities and this is going to be applicable for you all for june 30 2021 and again it focuses on whether government is controlling the assets of a fiduciary activity or the beneficiaries with whom a fiduciary relationship is this and so currently you all have an agency fund that reports all of your uh school activity um and so for fiscal year 2021 you're no longer going to be able to show that as an agency fund you're going to have to kind of show it as a special revenue fund so you have to show your
072your revenues and expenditures uh along with what you're showing you know normally assets and liabilities and things of that nature with the balance sheet and so that will be a change for uh fiscal year uh 2021 and with the implementation of this standard there will be a restatement a beginning fund balance to to actually show this activity now as a special revenue fund and so we'll work with the finance department to ensure that you know the district implements that standard accordingly um the next one i want to point out is gatsby statement number 87 that deals with leases and again this is going to be applicable for you all for fiscal year 2022 and we are encouraging all of our clients to start now you know you know evaluating all of your your lease agreements
073and arrangements and to ensure that you're going to be able to implement this standard when it becomes applicable so it's going to result in a lot of your operating leases now recording a liability along with the asset when this standard is implemented and the last gatsby stand i want to mention deals with um gasps statement number 96 subscription based information technology arrangements which is applicable for june 30 2023 and uh this is kind of huge for a lot of school districts that within their their reference referendum and talks about you know using the splash proceeds for you know capital outlay projects and things of that nature that has been approved and some of your larger school districts have had um very large dollar amounts of subscription-based information technology arrangements cloud-based uh software and things of
074that nature that they could not use plus proceeds for because you know you couldn't capitalize it as an asset and so you couldn't classify it as a capital outlay but with this standard it it now allows you to capitalize on these arrangements and so with that being said you should you know be able to use boss proceeds to cover on these types of arrangements so i know with fulton county board of education this was huge for them they're one of my clients and so they're happy that this standard finally came out and so they have guidance on that along with the state um representation of allowing that to be an allowable expenditure um for splash proceeds to be used for um the last thing that i want to mention we continue to offer free continuing
075education classes for our clients uh four times a year um you know since the pandemic these classes have been offered virtually and i think it's been a huge hit uh our our clients and we've seen an increase in participation uh normally when we were face to face we you know had about 100 participants at each location um that we we held um these classes and so now since it's been virtually we've been seeing an increase in the number of participants and so we try to keep our clients abreast of the new standards that are coming out uh just and there's a refresher on internal controls uh over revenues cash disbursement things of that nature and so again if you want to interview your staff to to to receive uh cpe training on various topics just
076let us know and we'll get them added to the list um to and to invite them to future cpe classes all right so that concludes my uh presentation again it was a pleasure and honor to to be able to provide um auditing services to uh decatur city school systems and i look forward next year any questions i can address at this point that's a question hi this is dana johnson davis what is your what is your process for follow-up if you made a recommendation in the previous year what is that process the following year um so you know if it's a finding of course um it depends on what it what it what it relates to so let's say if it was a a finding on your one of your federal war programs where we
077are testing your internal controls we're testing compliance requirements and things of that nature so we're required to kind of follow up with that to see if it's been addressed um in the following year and we actually have that kind of discussed within that single audit report section um if it's a um management point it depends on the nature of the management point if it's something that we've um communicated with you all and it's something that has been kind of accepted we may not repeat that again as long as we brought that to your attention um so it just kind of depends on the nature of it and so like for instance this management point that we we uh recommended uh for uh 20 2020 going forward you know we come out to do the audit
078and so you know it kind of will fix itself in terms of i mean to become evident for instance if we come in and we're making adjustments and the audit gets delayed again then that would be either another management point that's repeated or if it's significant enough it may be elevated to be a finding so it kind of depends but we we do follow up on um those issues that we've cited in the previous year just to make sure everything has been addressed thank you any other questions you're um this is james herndon your calculation of 2020 government funds that you audited does that include all of the change i mean we were whipsawed around with like carex funding and then state austerity cuts and then state returns and you kind of ran through that
079as i was running writing that down does that include all of that changes because that was as of what so so audit the audit was as of june 30 um 2020. as far as the cares funding um i think that's not going to be reflected until um your fiscal year 2021 uh schedule of expenditures of their awards and so that that'll be picked up during that time and um and more likely that'll be your the major program that we have to audit maybe another program that we have to do as well but it just depends on the dollar amount next year's it'll be a little more inclusive then so gotcha great all right thank you for verifying a question heather all right thank you again um doug for the for that good news and i'm
080glad to see that we had an audit with no findings very happy to do that and now we are going to move with our tentative budget okay um good evening again everyone um i'm going to just do a quick introduction slide and then i'm going to tag um vanita to finish the presentation and then we'll end with four discussion of the proposed budget so um before we go through uh lanita and i took a lot of time just making sure we reviewed everything just being my first time presenting a district budget i wanted to make sure i had full understanding of all the intricacies and ins and outs and one of the things that lanita and i talked a lot about was how the district can be fiscally responsible so budgeting for the long-term benefit
081of the district maintaining a strong bond rating making sure that we are transparency to build public trust and stakeholder trust and some of the ways that juanita and i talked about making sure that that happens and making the recommendations to board that the budget would maintain a minimum fund balance between four percent um ideally we should be able to cover one month and be just um that was one of the things that we shared um and as you look at the budget options also to make sure that there is an efficient millage rate basically making sure that we are spending money effectively and efficiently to keep that millage rate as low as possible so as a district we feel like that's one of our assurances and then also to make sure that our budget is
082reflective of our priorities typically you'll see in a district that 80 percent of budget should be spent on personnel and ours is above that which is great um and then all other funds are allocated towards pub programming departments based on needs that are identified in our strategic plan and i feel like we were able to really come up with several options for the budget that lanita is going to present to you that will help you make some decisions on how we will enact those spending practices for next year all right anita you ready yes good evening madam chair madam vice chair members of the board superintendent herman freeman community and colleagues today i present to you the proposed tentative fiscal year 2022 budget today makes the seventh budget discussion on the fiscal year 2022 budget
083the board is scheduled to approve a tentative fiscal year budget this evening the final approval of the fiscal year 2022 budget and tentative approval of the property tax military is scheduled for may 11 at the regular scheduled board meeting the first and second millage hearing is scheduled for june 8th at 8 a.m and 6 p.m the third public military hearing is scheduled for july 13th at 8 a.m and the final adoption of the property tax military is scheduled for july 13 at the regular scheduled board meeting this presentation will be posted on the district's website and we continue to encourage all stakeholders to go to the website and provide us with your budget suggestions and comments so first we will look at the special revenue funds special revenue funds are grant or lottery funds received
084from the state and federal government special funds are restricted in that they can only be used for the purpose they were received for for example pre-k lottery can only be used for the pre-k program the district is required to spend the funds first and submit appropriate documentation for reimbursements special revenue funds budget is based off of the current year's budget or preliminary projections from the grantor this year's special revenue budget consists of funds received from the state for the pre-k lottery funds received from the federal government for title and special education grants and jrotc and career technical and educational programs the total special revenue budget for fiscal year 2022 is 2.7 million next we have capital funds capital funds are received from a special purpose local option sales tax referred to as splost this is
085a one penny sales tax that we receive from sales tax in dekalb county capital funds are used to build and maintain district buildings and purchase furniture buses technology and other equipments and other equipment as well as payoff debt because funds received from splost are restricted to building and maintaining capital assets salaries cannot be paid using this funding source the active panelists referenced earlier were paid for out of splash not general fund we average approximately four hundred and seventeen thousand per month in splice funds we intend to utilize splost funds to pay our debt for bond certificate and on budgeted expenditures based on approved projects specified in the referendum by the capital funds budget we anticipate receiving five million for fiscal year in splice funds for fiscal year 2022 we are anticipating an ending fund balance
086of 11.6 million which gives us a balance of 16.6 million that will be used for capital improvement purchases throughout the district next we have school nutrition funds school nutrition receives majority of the revenue from sales and reimbursement from the federal and state government as listed on the next slide next we have school nutrition expenditures the largest expenses for the school nutrition program is the purchase of food the second largest expense is personnel the total budget for school nutrition for fiscal year 22 is 2.7 million which balances out with the fiscal year 2022 anticipated revenue of 2.7 next we have general fund general fund is the largest source of revenue for the district it has very limited restrictions general fund is the district's main operating account on the next slide we have the general fund fund
087balance history this slide shows the fund balance history from 2011 to present as you can see the projected fund balance has traditionally been a lot lower than the actual fund balance this means our past projections of how much funds we anticipated to have in reserve have been extremely conservative this year 2021 projection was not as conservative and is within range of where we expect to end this fiscal year in fiscal year 2020 you see that we ended the year with a fund balance of approximately 16.6 million this was the beginning fund balance for the fiscal year 2021 budget next this slide is a summary of how the current year fund balance was projected as shown on the last slide the end of fund balance of fiscal year 20 was 16.6 million this is now our
088beginning fund balance from the current year fiscal year 2021. in addition to carryover of 16.6 million from last year as of march we have 5.4 million in our current fund balance and this is the difference between budgeted revenues and budgeted expenditures so this gives us a total bond balance of 22 million we anticipate on receiving 17 million more of revenue this fiscal year and that's majority from property tax and qbe revenue so this gives us a total of approximately 39 million in revenue we anticipate that 31 million will be spent in remaining expenditures with the largest expense being salaries and benefits which are approved in june for july and august payroll and this means for july and august payroll we booked that money to june so it will show up in this fiscal year so
089this leaves us with the end of our balance for this fiscal year of approximately 7.7 million and this year's projected ending fund balance of 7.7 is a projected beginning fund balance for next fiscal year fiscal year 22. the next slide shows fund balance as a percentage it's not the firm in reference the fund balance percentage specified in the board policy is within 4 to 15 percent we are anticipating ending the current year with the fund balance of nine percent the next slide is a visual of the fund balance history the red line represents the minimum four percent fund balance and as you can see the fund balance has drastically decreased for the current fiscal year the austerity cuts from the state and the unexpected expenses related to the pandemic have had a negative financial impact
090on the district so the fiscal year 2022 budget was developed with the following revenue assumptions austerity reductions will be partially restored property tax revenue projections are based on georgia state university forecast fiscal year 22 property tax revenue takes into consideration the impact of the homestead exemption and the millage rate may increase at a maximum from 20.25 to 21. next you have fiscal year 2022 general fund budget updates updates to the fiscal year 2022 budget includes possible step increase for all employees no cost for living increase is factored into a fiscal year 22 budget step increase is the largest increase to the fiscal year 22 budget at 1.3 million the second largest impact is to increase the trs at 348 000. other increases include the addition of a teacher accounting specialist nurses aid which will be
091split funded with cares funds upgrades and staff support and finance and increase in two district reading coaches positions from 190 to 210 days to offset some of the costs operational budgets were cut five percent the total fiscal impact of the budget updates is 1.6 million other ways the district has offset costs to the fiscal year 2022 expenses include utilizing cares funds to cover expenses that would have generally been expensed against the general fund we have been allotted approximately 4.7 and cares 4.7 million in cares funds and this slide breaks down how the funds are earmarked over 3.3 million of the cares funds will be used for salaries and benefits for eip teachers decatur virtual academy staff intervention manager and salaries related to summer school and intervention programs will be paid out of the cares budget
092the remaining cares budget has been used for covet related expenses such as personal protection equipment and repairs and maintenance to make sure our facilities were safe for staff and students additional funds are allocated to supplies for the decatur virtual academy and intervention programs like summer schools cares is not in ongoing funding sources so all positions that are paid out of cares for fiscal year 2022 will be moved back to the general fund for fiscal year 2023. okay the next slide shows the millage rate history since 2005. the military has traditionally stayed stable in intervals of three years and the last 17 years the military has been as high as 20.9 and as low as 18.66 for the next five slides we will look at five options for the board to consider for the general fund
093budget this slide represents option one in which the general fund millage rate will remain the same at 20.25 the general fund budget on the left includes a step increase for all employees the general fund budget on the right does not include a step increase again cost of living increases are not proposed for any of the budgets the only difference in these two budgets is that the budget on the left includes a step increase and the budget on the right does not the military determines at what percentage property will be taxed by the school district highlighted in green is the projected revenue if the military remains at 20.25 as you can see under major expenditure categories salaries and benefits make up over 80 percent of the budget the salaries and benefits on the left side include
094a step increase and it's approximately 1.3 million more than the salaries and benefits on the right the board policy specifies a minimum fund balance percentage of four percent if you look at the yellow highlighted line you see that with a step increase the fund balance is 1.9 percent and without a step increase the fund balance is 3.6 this slide is option one this slide represents option two in which the general fund military would increase from 20.25 to 20.40 the budget on the left includes a step increase for all employees and the budget on the right does not include a step increase as you can see highlighted in green the projected revenue from taxes has increased due to the increase in the military to 20.4 highlighted in yellow you see that the fund balance has also
095increased however the fund balance for the budget on the left which includes the step increase is only point three percent which is below the four percent minimum fund balance the budget on the right which does not include the stepping increase is now at the four percent range with the military of 20.40 but again that would mean no step increase for employees the next slide represents option three in which the general fund military would increase from 20.25 to 20.8 the green highlighted line represents the new projected tax revenue at a millage rate of 20.80 again the only difference in the two budgets is that the one on the left includes the step increase and the one on the right does not include a step increase the yellow highlighted line shows that with a step increase the
096fund balance is 3.4 percent and without a step increase the fund balance is 5.1 this slide represents option 4 in which the general fund millage rate would increase from 20.25 to 20.90 the green highlighted line represents the new projected tax revenue at a millage rate of 20.90 the yellow highlighted line shows that with the step increase the fund balance is 3.7 and without a step increase the fund balance is 5.4 so in order to give a step increase option five please the next option so in order to give a step increase and have a fund balance of four percent the military would need to increase from 20.25 to 21. the green highlighted line shows the increased revenue based on the increased military of 21. the yellow highlighted line shows that increasing the military to 21
097will result in a fund balance of 4 percent of the budget on the left which includes a step increase the fund balance for the budget on the right that does not include a step increase is 5.7 next slide we have looked at the impact five different millage rates will have on the district's fund balance this slide looks at the impact the five different military rates will have on the taxpayers so the numbers highlighted in yellow yellow are the proposed military the market value of the sample property is six hundred thousand the assessed value for school district tax purposes is three hundred thousand or fifty percent of the market value if the military remains at 20.25 the tax amount paid will be the same as highlighted in green the only increases or decreases would be due
098to higher assessment values of property or any exemptions that the property owner qualifies for if we increase the millage rate to 20.4 for a property with a market value of 600 000 the taxes will increase annually by 45 as highlighted in blue if we increase the millage rate to 20.8 the taxes will increase annually by 165 dollars if we increase the military to 20.9 the taxes will increase annually by 195. and if we increase the millage rate to 21 the taxes will increase annually by 225. this concludes the fiscal year 2022 tentative budget presentation thank you um that was great i definitely can tell all of the hard work that you all put into that i mean honestly that was that's exactly what we needed to see so we could have a discussion and a
099really robust discussion and be able to make an informed decision so um thank you again lanita and maggie and everyone thank you so much so um i guess we can kind of start with questions maybe for lanita and then we can go into you know how we're feeling about the action that sounds good for everybody all right i just wanted to clarify oh this is dana um i know teachers are included in step increases does that include nutrition um uclc transportation all of those categories yes all employees lanita i'd love to hear you define this because it's a question i get a lot define what a step increase is for people out there and that's putting you on the spot i apologize but it's it's kind of greek to a lot of people uh particularly
100taxpayers or whatever because i may go back tonight and i may get the answer like for only 165 dollars a year for your taxes your teachers go up a step level do you have a concept a quick way that you explain that or you think about that as far as look i'm sorry what's the question a step means that they go up a bracket on their salary scale correct correct so what we're talking about when we're talking about a step increase means that all of the teachers in the system would move we're talking about funding so that they move forward one level on the teacher's salary scale is that correct that's correct you explained it very well they should pay me like that and so all you got to do to really get what we're
101talking about is um it's on the website that you you were talking about that we were hyping up correct and go there and say teacher salary scale if i have this degree and i'm working year 10 am i correct that what we're talking about is funding it so that if the teacher next year is their 11th year they will in fact be paid for year 11. correct that is correct all right i'm just making sure i want i want to clarify and i know that but i just got you really simple okay i wonder if you could remind us what the assumed property tax revenue rate is right now i know is that we have that study by georgia state that we are following um but when do we get to know the final number
102for what it what if does the actual match the what we are assuming right we usually receive the tax digest in may okay do we have any feeling on whether we are going to come in at the exact georgia state estimate or if we're trending ahead or behind at this point i don't know i would think that we would come in a little higher only because as you know the real estate market is booming so the assist values will probably be higher and when this study was conducted it was you know the market was not booming as it is now right and we know it can sometimes lag until we see it like it doesn't directly translate into higher property taxes of revenue but it should trend that way so i guess the reason why
103i'm asking that is because i think you know we're gonna have this discussion tonight and adopt a tentative no rate but we're not going to approve it until may and so if there's any way we could get that number it could impact you know it you know it could impact this decision a little bit since we're really close to our you know that four percent targeted target bottom of our fund balance um i just feel like that number could be significant enough to you know impact our a little bit our decision or at least help us make some adjustment in may if we need to and that's a very good point and be mindful that the final adoption of the tentative uh of the property tax military is not until july so we have a
104little time there if we need to go back and change it okay yeah so i think you know maybe if you could check on just the status on how we're trending and if we could get some sort of an update for sure by the may meeting that would be extremely helpful yes the county goes out and assess the value and then they prepare the tax digest and submit it to us for review okay thank you i have a couple questions and i i wanted to start but thank you i i continue to just really appreciate your presentations i hope you do a great job with these budgets and you do a great job explaining what's going on here both for us and for the public at large and so i just i continue to really
105appreciate thank you and um and that goes and i guess i'd also like to just say that you know the financial management of this district is strong and it's always been strong and we just got a clean audit and i want people to recognize that that it's a clean audit and it's been a clean audit sometimes and uh you know the money that we spend in this district is going to teaching kids it's not going to central office staff we have a very lean central office staff and the people that we have in central office work hard i appreciated the presentation earlier because we can see just how much our people our team is doing to keep this district going there's a lot that needs to be done yes in fact one of the common
106complaints that we get is that you don't have enough people at central office doing the thing that i want them to do why aren't they addressing my concern today and the reason is that we have a very lean team and that's not where the money's going um you know our fund balance declined significantly in this past year and as you said why did it happen well this is no mystery we lost several million dollars from the state our increase our expenses increased by seven million dollars you do that and pretty much your fund balance is going to go down and that's what explains the drop i did want to mention that uh one of the efforts that's been ongoing ever since i've been on the board is to improve our forecasting of the budget and
107so for the longest time we've had very conservative uh budget projections that in as you can see from your chart would result in an ending fund balance substantially larger than had been anticipated this is something that the board as a whole has been working to address for some time because we didn't think that was smart budgeting we want our projections not to be well what would happen is that we get these dire projections and we would all sort of panic but then we'd get enured to it and we'd say well in the past these dire projections has never been correct the budget comes in much higher than we thought and so we sort of operated as if we had this reserved tank that we really didn't know what it was and so what we've been
108trying to do is tighten the projection so the projections are more realistic and that they're more like the actual ending your expenditure i think it's great that in this year we actually projected the ending year fund balance pretty much to a t and i think that's another a strong financial management and i appreciate that um the on the step increase the way that i've sort of thought about it james has been that it's always seemed funny to me that every year the budget comes to us and we ask ourselves if we're going to get a step increase and it has always seemed to me that this is a default this is what's going to happen we would have to take that away keeping the step increase what we're doing is saying that we're going to
109continue to pay teachers on in staff on a salary scale that they signed up for and that we committed to do when we hired now it's not a commitment right because we make these decisions each year but it's kind of a commitment right you get into this career to teach there's an understanding that your salary is going to progress with your experience and i kind of think that we have an obligation to a district you know to continue that right i mean that's that's what people sign up for and that's how you keep your staff uh happy and and pay them what their what they deserve or maybe not what they deserve but at least with their problems so in my opinion i think that we should consider the stepping creates a default in every
110budget we ever do as to the fund balance um i have a question we have a four percent our policies our board policies require the fund balance to be between four percent and fifteen percent uh the four percent is the minimum in order to change it we would need to go amend our policies which we could do but i think that the four percent minimum fund balance might actually be beyond policy i think there might be a state requirement that that requires school districts to maintain a four percent fundamentals and you're interested and so i think that we should also kind of like the step increase that we just need to assume that we're gonna we're gonna have a four percent uh increase because it's required but also because it's financially responsible um the final
111is actually a question um which is only thing that concerns me in the entire presentation we discussed this to some extent um is the cares funds allocation and the scary part and you know is when i look down at the table and i see 2.4 million dollars of a one-time fund spent on salaries and benefits now we have had during covet quite a number of temporary positions that are going to phase out i don't know what 2.4 million dollars worth and so i wanted to ask number one how much of that this cares funds is this all future looking or was any of that cares funds spent are oh it wasn't that all future well no um some of it was spent initially the first uh cares 321 000 was spent mainly on protective um
112personal equipment and getting the schools ready okay but the 2.4 million dollars in salaries and benefits that's all for next year so that's part of how we're sort of managing the you know difficulties um and that's fine as a one-time thing you pointed out vinita that it better be a one-time thing because the money's not coming back do we have a five-year budget projection and typically in these presentations we do look at that so that we can see what's going to happen not just this year but next year when we don't have cares and what you know how this if we go up to 21 in terms of knowledge what's going to happen in the following year that's my question yes i can get that information to you all in previous discussions yeah so i
113mean it just didn't make it in this presentation but we've been working on that so maybe it just needs to be updated now that we know for example you know the next two years at least we know now also the senior tax exemption what that's going to look like as long as it gets approved by our voters um so that was a big unknown that we now know the next two more years that we've gone on i guess i also appreciated you're pointing out that the active screens that were discussed in the comment period that those were paid for out of splost funds that are restricted funds that couldn't be used to offset any of these operational expenses and so you know that's that's really not an issue and i think that you did point
114out that we have a five percent reduction in operating expenses so we are trying to as hard as we can you know to to to be good to be right to the taxpayers at the same time we're right to the kids at the same time the righteous as he do the fox stress that his presentation ducks about the ability to use lost on some um about some of the technology stuff have we looked into that that is fascinating um as they expand because he said that they clarified that some of the splost money was now available for more technology stuff um as we look forward that does open up a lot and it makes sense i mean you read the news how do we define infrastructure certainly expanding i think that's what that is um
115the reason i looked over at essence because last month we did get a big presentation that we have some communication issues some and stuff so i'd be interested including that a five-year proposal as well before we get too far away from it i just want to clarify what i think lewis meant about what our teachers deserve not meaning that they don't deserve that but they actually deserve more so and we always feel that way and i also want to share for anyone who doesn't remember but last year we did approve a step and we did approve a cola and we also paid the difference between what the governor promised and what ended up happening because of the kovid's revised budget and the budget cuts and so as a district despite being handed a hefty cut
116in state funding last june it didn't happen until june because remember their session was suspended things were tentative then it got approved in june when we had already adopted pretty much our budget we hadn't had the three millage rate hearings yet but we had approved our budget and we had promised our teachers steps and we had promised our teachers cola and we had promised them that that bonus yes and we knew then that we were making a decision that in the midst of a pandemic where we were being standed as a state budget because we valued our teachers and we stuck with our promise knowing it would cost us but we knew that we had a very comfortable reserve fund at the time we were planning for it and we made that very conscious decision
117and so that happened this past year when that didn't happen at a lot of school districts they weren't able to do that or android just didn't have the money or couldn't do it um or didn't take the chance and we did and i believe it was a good investment and so our teachers did get that for this past year which i'm very proud of um and so i think as a board we have always valued and have worked very hard the past few years to try to make our salaries and such more competitive we realize um that we want to recruit and retain high quality teachers um and then we also last um june we also made major adjustments to some of our lowest paid workers pace pay scales um and that was significant for
118for allowing our employees to make what you know we want everyone to have a living wage and so we we also invested in our employees in that way so um it is it is important to us and i i do support the steps um i always wish we could do more so we we have to balance our fiscal responsibility our difficult budget situation a lot of unknowns but i do i do support that also when uh you were talking about the i forgot about that two thousand dollar bonus just to make up that gap but we also employed and paid all of our staff even if they could not report to work and we had to close the building other districts did not do that so we were committed to keeping our employees getting a
119paycheck not just their paycheck but paying their benefits i think that you know i um teachers have not just our teachers but our bus drivers our nutrition folks i mean they have held this together under some really um crazy circumstances and you know they were labeled front line workers doing this pandemic when i'm sure that was not a label or title that they ever considered in the pre-service teacher program or you're training to work in the cafeteria but they they stepped up to those roles and so i think um you know we owe them a step increase um for what they have done and continue to do for our children and the district now like little says you know we just assume that that's what we're going to do because it's the right thing to
120do agreed and i i think um i really again appreciate the hard work that um dr fuhrman and anita put in this um heather and i met with them last friday and you know they were we were looking at some of the options and um the step increase at that or the uh sorry the millage rate increase at that time was 22 something you know and that made you know that made us both gas um and because there's just there's just got to be a way that we can find this balance of being able to to give the step increase but also not you know hit um hit our millage rate for two points and so i know that they spent almost a whole weekend just combing through everything um i spoke to maggie a
121couple of times over the weekend on the budget um so and i and i share that just to say that the board has concerns and wants to make sure that our staff and teachers and children are taken care of as well as knowing how that affects our community and then when we relayed that concern to dr fuhrman and her staff they heard us and then they took out the drawing board and rolled up their sleeve to figure out how we could do it and make it happen and i love the five options because it really gives us a very clear understanding of well actually gives us a clear picture of when you were listening to what we were saying you were listening to what the community is saying and that's evident and two it just
122kind of also lays out whatever option we make whatever decision we make here are the options and this is what we need to stick to and this is what we you know what we agreed to um and louis your point was spot on i think this four percent is not just policy but also georgia and then we also look at step increases being what we do period um let me just interrupt you just for a minute to say that the 15 as far as the fund balance shouldn't go over 15 percent it's more law but as far as the minimum that's more of a district decision oh thank you so much for that thank you for giving it up um but um as i was saying um dr herman and her team took the charge
123and so from option five it looks that we can stay where we need to with the fund balance we can offer the step increase without having to go to over 22 points in the millage rate and so i applaud you for the hard work that you all did and put in this in order to get us to this place because this is what we what we wanted and hoped for um so my vote would be option five and so do we want to have any more discussion about the options or does everyone kind of want to give their feedback on what option they would like and i don't think this is like an official vote right this is just kind of a we're talking about it yeah all right before we do i just this
124is a question for lunita are there any other areas besides the tax revenue property tax revenue where we might either see someone yeah or we might see some improvement first of all like are we waiting for any um what are now tentative numbers to come in from state or other funding sources you're on mute thank you other savings to come in from like vacant positions so we'll know once we start closing the books where we will end up okay and is that something we might know by may or would we not know that till end of june we should know we should have a um idea by may okay i mean it's less of a opinion on the options but more i'm just a thought sort of like i i hear a lot like we
125paid teachers less and i do i teach mean phrases and i hear you heather's like we've tried or whatever but like raising salaries and cola stuff doesn't all have to happen in one year and it's tough to have that conversation when you're raising taxes and it is part of something that i'm very interested in is continuing to work on you know salary increases and looking at it and something dr fuhrman and i talked about when when i gave her a call you know it's a bad year to address it that doesn't mean that we all collectively assault or anyone else isn't interested in looking at it down the road is all i wanted to say you know because because i i hear people are like teachers don't make enough and they want to do cola
126adjustments or you know their neighbors and other districts make more i think there's a little bit of a pushback we come to say teachers and social security and some other things and that sort of stuff but we are looking at it you know and we will continue to look at it it's just parents and community a lot of people have buckled their chin straps this past year it's been tough and so i don't know that a tax increase makes us feel good either any of us so it's that balance it's really really tough difficult let's do it maybe i'll just add that going into the budget my actual number one priority um i mean we've got multiple priorities we've got staff we've got students and we've got taxpayers and to me the number one was
127actually that we make sure to do right by the kids and that um there is and i want to make clear that there is money in this budget for the needed remediation after a year of mostly virtual learning in which some kids survive with others and there's going to be a lot of remediation summer programs and additional staff that i needed in the next year and i just feel that no matter how painful it is that's the number one funding priority and we've covered it and once we've covered that um it's true that we're asking our staff i mean you know again the step increases at fault but we've also had a program over the past several years to try to make regular cost of living increases of i think the target's been two percent
128a year for the past several years to try to catch up to try to put ourselves a salary schedule where it needs to be and what what what you know what's giving here is that we are in fact asking the staff to give up a cost of living increase so we you know we're padding our you know we're going to give the coal the step which is the fault we're not going to give the coal and so really the trade-off as i see it is that in this case we're asking the staff to hold tight for a year because you know 21 no the millage rate is high we're increasing it and but hopefully we'll return to the regular increases next year it's a balance you know because we we are balancing what we're what
129we're paying our teachers and spending on our kids with what we're asking our community for and what's been a you know it's also a tough year for many and um i think that i i feel like we're striking a balance here um and i do hope you know as we look at that five-year plan that we will be you know we'll i hope first of all that we we get our full state funding back because it's only been restored at 60 so um hopefully that will be fully restored which will bring us first of all back to where we need to be to do the kinds of things we'd like to normally do and then hopefully also with this pandemic we hope that it is getting under control and that our costs will continue to
130go down and then that five year plan i know we have stepped back down losing costs for enrichment programs and we've allowed for normal um uh you know what do you call it matriculation of that's not what is it when teachers leave net without nutrition thank you normal attrition of the what was increased staff to reduce class sizes to help with our enrichment which is a priority of this board um to really get our students back to live we know they need to be so we do see improvements over this coming five years like i said we're also going to be uh having the revised revisions to this senior tax exemption and so it'll be i'd be very helpful to look at that five-year plan to give the community some reassurance that this is not
131a trend this has been a very um unprecedented year that word is overused but it's true so this is not this is not indicative of a trend and i also agree with lewis that we have we and you and your staff dr fuhrman have done a tremendous job of very carefully preparing this tentative budget another time he says this is not a um an official quote saying right now i would choose option five all right okay so um is there any more discussions like to have a budget before we move forward all right so next on our agenda is the district improvement plan excuse me are we going to vote on the tentative budget oh yes yes we are you have a motion to vote on the tentative budget budget second all invaders all right
132or chair vote i have been approved okay i just want to clarify that we're approving option five option five correct okay thank you with the step increase right option five with the step entry all right and now we can move on to the district improvement okay so i am going to walk us through um some of the work that we've been doing so in january i presented to the board in the community um kind of a springboard of where we're headed with our long-term five-year district improvement planning process and kind of setting the aspirational goals that we put forth in that plan and part of that plan was creating a coherent lens and that's what we've been working on over the past couple months and the coherence lens is developed designed to really help us
133create a nice through line from individual classrooms up through the district improvement plan so that it is one so that we are one entity all moving together to achieve our goals for equitable student outcomes so what i'm going to do is kind of walk you through our equity lens or our um coherence lens i'm hoping i can share this so i can also i have a script that i heard the right way okay great okay so um on your screen you should see a graphic and i am going to walk you through that graphic and just kind of there's also a recording of this that will come out to our staff and community members on friday in the district dispatch and that is part of the just making sure our stakeholders are informed of what
134drives our decision-making as a district so i'm going to go through that and if there's any questions or things you want to talk about we can do that so this presentation is a follow-up to the video that we did or the presentation that we did in january and i want to start off by saying that several years ago our district um our equity department with input from equity advisory council and other key stakeholders crafted csd's beliefs and values regarding equity and these foundational principles have guided our work since that time hence as a district that is fully dedicated to paying the educational debt to our students of color we intentionally use equity beliefs and values to guide our overall district strategic improvement plan we believe that city schools of decatur will have achieved educational equity
135when all students have the resources opportunities and rigorous and relevant learning needed to enable their educational success also we value um i'm sorry uh okay so as we make decisions csv will ensure that the following values are upheld high expectations for all students a culture that honors all students and staff regardless of cultural or racial background a culture that is reflective and inclusive of all students and staff regardless of cultural or racial backgrounds inclusive parent and family engagement systematic use of data to determine and establish an equitable allocation of resources intentional development and implementation of district policies and practices with a focus on amplifying equity also that we will work together to eliminate inequitable patterns of academic achievement and disciplinary practices based on race socioeconomic status or gender so having established all and using those
136core beliefs and values we also need to establish a theory of action and i mentioned this back in january but want to bring it back to the conversation that this keeps us focused on our results our theory of action establishes the conditions that we believe will ensure equitable outcomes in city schools of decatur we believe if we establish a balance of accountability and empowerment where highly effective leadership at the school and district level ensure that our teachers deliver highly effective instruction you will also while also being supported in their own growth and development as professionals then this will result in equitable outcomes academically and discipline-wise for all of our students so with that being said with clear articulated beliefs values a theory of action we now have the essential component to build a robust framework
137to achieve equitable outcomes for our students and we selected the outline of a schoolhouse to help us create a visual representation the schoolhouse image also serves as a reminder of our relationship and partnership with city of decatur as a city of homes schools and places of worship the csc framework for equitable outcomes starts with a foundation of stakeholder engagement and transparent communication and we believe these are essential foundational components to ensure that we build and maintain trust with all stakeholder groups on this strong foundation we have identified three pillars that connect our foundation to the vision and mission for city schools of decatur the three pillars are based on our end policies that are outlined in our board policy manual and we believe that we can accomplish our vision and mission which is in this
138framework is represented by the roof of our school house structure by using our theory of action to advance racial equity accelerate student learning build and sustain positive culture and climate so that brings us to our coherence framework or sometimes also referred to as a coherence lens so finally to ensure that we have a through line that links our beliefs values theory of action and that we bring all these components together through a coherent framework and also including our framework for equitable outcomes that apply to each of our 10 schools and includes measurable results for improvement this is accomplished by using a framework for equitable outcomes to identify our strategic priorities and initiatives with this framework built in our beliefs values and theory of action we are able to ensure that our priorities and initiatives can
139take root and flourish our overall priority is to pay the educational debt to students from historically marginalized marginalized racialized marginalized racial groups and we ensure this is a priority through consistent use of restorative practices implementing district-wide positive behavior interventions and support adopting and implementing a social emotional learning curriculum and through consistent interviews and implementation of our csd instructional framework in every classroom throughout our district the next component of our coherence framework is to ensure that we have a district and school improvement plan that opera operationalize the action steps needed to meet our goals the district plan will be used as the foundation for all local school improvement plans to ensure alignment in our work this creates a clear through line all the way from our individual classrooms to our overall district goals the district and
140local school improvement plans will all include smart goals regular collection and review of data to monitor progress and clear action steps to be completed finally underlying all of these components of our framework is an agreement from the district to be accountable for equitable outcomes through ethical governance leadership transparent communication stakeholder engagement and regular progress monitoring so you may be asking what's next to make sure we have a successful launch of this very ambitious plan and so our next step is we will be sharing through the district dispatch uh video communication that will walk our stakeholders through this our principals will be sharing the same video or they have the script so they can walk through with their school staff as well as their slts more information so people have a better understanding of these foundational
141components we're also going to hold district wide stakeholder feedback sessions to gather additional input and feedback and i'm going to be partnering with each of the department leaders in cabinet that shared all those great work the great work that they're doing to get input and gather feedback from our stakeholder group after we gather that feedback we will then implement review and revise our final district improvement plan with our and share that with our schools and our community and i hope that everyone will join us and engage in this work as we feel it is essential to hear the voices from various stakeholder groups so that we can work together to make city schools of decatur a place where children can do their best achieve their dreams and make the world a better place so that
142is the update on where we are excellent thank you so much any comments or questions that was great thank you so much maggie dr herman my apologies moving to uh our legislative update is that courtney um i thought that was something with us we don't have a legitimate about this we thought that was good [Music] oh that might be from the previous agenda potentially okay i don't think we have any updates i mean we're still one thing we are still waiting on is the governor just signed um the both bills i believe that we've been working with the cow county um 292 and 293 and i believe we will be uh i will be co-signing with the board chair for dekalb county on sb 292 so i'm still waiting to hear from brad on what
143the next steps will be with that but i think those are the only two things that i've heard have you heard anything yeah maybe we should say there's probably not enough people listening but uh just a shout out our immense gratitude to brad alexander for his pro bono assistance to the district over the past two years which has just been invaluable and you know brad has just really really been helpful in navigating some really difficult situations and he's doing it like i said because he's a parent and a resident and he wants to help and he's been terrific so thank you to brad yeah thank you brad definitely uh and so we can discuss now the board newsletter i believe we added this to the agenda just so that he could throw out any i
144mean i guess he can kind of give us the framework of what you and shayna might already have put together and then if there is anybody on the board that would like to add to what we would like the newsletter to have this time and we can kind of discuss as we get in front of getting it out on time i think uh one of the key things is a more detailed q a on the budget and creating more transparency to that and we've got a lot of questions that have come in from the website so i think taking some time to really explain that would be probably for me one of the key items to put on that in that agenda or in that newsletter i think that's a great idea and sort of
145to spellings and misconceptions it seems like it would be worth spending a little yeah relatively large portion of this one correct um i would mind seeing maybe um an update on the summer remediation just kind of continuing to tell the community what the plans are there and then also um the plan for the next school year you know five five days full days and just kind of keep bringing that back i think that that's probably something that needs to be in the next few before let's board these letters just um if you do get that question i agree and perhaps we can add the summer remediation and the plan for next school year in all of the like the school-level newsletters that are getting pushed out [Music] i don't know why um trees wasn't included
146where oh in the actual board packet in the newsletter oh in the newsletter hmm mom that's a good question i think we might not have been right to the point of decision yet um when that latches and i do remember they asked that we seemed likely that it was any flux okay so they wanted it to be a joint like a joint i'll redo this more carefully tomorrow um because just after everything we've talked about at this meeting there might be some things that jump out so could we put it in like we usually do like in a google doc and um awesome and so any more discussion on the board newsletter all right and future date what do we have [Music] um one of the things i wanted to try to do um is
147to really think about agenda setting and then doing some pre-work after the agenda set for the board meeting at a work session and then whatever discussion can have some really nice robust discussions in the work session that then we can bring those items to action for vote at the actual board meeting that's good i was wondering um because we were also planning to have the for a retreat and that's correct workshop session yes [Laughter] is it possible to fold the next four state into that we could probably do that yeah yeah i just um i wanted to make sure that we dedicated enough time to whatever topic we have for that extended work session um and i know if there's a lot of stuff coming up in a work session it might be too much
148but what i can do is work with shane and see what selection was chosen for the extended work session and then if it's something that we feel we can short up in a shorter amount of time then we can add the work session there um i coonley said in public comment earlier about this college and career program the technical career programs he's doing over at the high school putting together a presentation to give everyone a nice update on where we are with that and some of his future planning ideas so to be clear those so that i am clear is what i mean um the the extended work session is that what we're talking about on a four yeah that's may 21 for that it um we're looking at a couple fridays but this was
149a different it was going to be before so yeah yes let me look at it i'm also hoping for that [Laughter] during budget i thought we maybe were going to touch on decatur virtual academy and i think at some point you know he may not be ready to give an update this evening but i think at some point in the near future an update on that probably in in this newsletter but also after the the community or their families um as a part of what what is next year is going to look like probably good communication okay so um this concludes the public portion of our public portion of our school board meeting um i want to thank again dr fuhrman for just stepping in like she's been there all the time and we really
150appreciate you and thank you also mr wilson for being here with us and um we do have a reason to go back into exec session for personnel and i don't expect that there will be any action to be taken um do i have a motion to go into effect sessions i'll make a motion and go into a big session okay all right thanks so much guys good night and thank you so much everybody agree all right all right we're going into exact session thank you everyone that stayed with us