March 9, 2021 Board of Education Meeting

001all right it looks like it's fairly stable if you want to whenever you're ready to start talking i think all right good evening this evening is march 9th and we are starting our school board meeting at 6 43. apologize for our delay to everyone who's been waiting uh all board members are present four of us in person and one by zoo and the superintendent and president is present as well call to order and um let's all please take a moment of silence thank you very much and all who are able to please stand so we can do the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the support of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay and then

002for the agenda for um last month's meeting um the minutes and also the minutes for the january 27th board work session can you go back one item real quick um i wondered if we want to add an agenda item on um maybe to discuss legislation yes are you guys interested in doing that under discussion items yeah why don't we put it on at just at the end of the item for action information discussion okay legislation and then for the minutes for the board session the regular board session january 12th and the minute for january 27 board work session are there any changes oh step say i i i saw your lips jana awesome so let's start with um my favorite part of the board meeting we're going to spotlight you know the park take it

003away david all right i think we have a video today are you launching that aston martin who is oh shannon is oh shane is online hey shayna okay we're ready for the video yes okay you need to have it on some full screen or something it'll pop up yep it'll pop up good evening i'm ruth scott principal of winona park elementary tonight i will provide an overview of how we at winona park are on a journey learning how to be anti-racist with our staff students and when families park's vision statement highlights empathy compassion collaboration and diversity all traits that are essential to our learning to be anti-racist over the past three years winana park staff has been participating in professional learning communities where we meet complete and have in-depth conversations about race and equity this

004year we began a book study using ibram kendy's book how to be an anti-racist our work in the past has prepared us for challenging conversations such as what it truly means to be anti-racist as well as engaging in discussions about highly controversial subjects such as the work of dr seuss and how to look critically at our social studies resources the winona park pbis team collaborated on crew lessons this year leveraging our equity work with the staff to empower them to engage in conversations about race with students we've used books such as these to spark conversations about what inclusive and empathy really mean finally the winona park pta is also fully committed to the work of anti-racism in our school we have a subcommittee dedicated to diversity equity and inclusion who haven't wavered this year in

005their commitment to provide resources and events for our families and community the pta diversity equity and inclusion committee has sponsored a year-long project called our celebrations where families were able to share their values and traditions with the whole school community they have also hosted a virtual peace and pie where students and parents were able to learn about the diverse fruits and history of southern cuisine through a cooking experience and last but not least our black history month events have elevated black artists through art displays a virtual gallery walk a guest artist for students art classes and our traditional living museum in a non-traditional way i am grateful to be a part of a community that is committed to providing an inclusive anti-racist environment for all of our students now i will stop talking and let

006you see some of our extraordinary work [Music] so [Music] the artist i chose is donna's flatworth jr also known as the cradle i chose the creative one because he is creative he is very good at painting and he paints beautiful pictures of people who look like me he only uses six colors when he is painting not including black and white an interesting fact about him is that has alice in wonderland syndrome it's a normal psychological condition that causes a distortion of perception how he sees things but he is still an awesome artist my name is normanier and my chosen artist is augusta savage i like augusta savage's artwork because she made sculptures and i really like the faces she carved into some of them she was born again christine fells in green cove springs florida

007on february 1892 she passed away on march 27 1962. she modeled clay when she was young and in 1919 at the palm beach county fair she was awarded a 25 prize and ribbon for most of the original exhibit she spent most of her time working for equal rights for african americans in the arts thank you you made hello my name is lisa and i am going to tell you about misty copeland this is a book about all amazing women and this is where i found it here she is in the book um i like her i like her because you're gonna hear the story and then you're gonna find out why i like her she [Music] was the only dancer that was black on the stage and she was a premium ballerina and the thing

008that the dance that she danced was called firebird [Music] she danced so gracefully but when it was oh the dance was over she hulk her leg and it was i think broken and she had to go through therapy and something else and and i really like her because she was a ballerina but also some people told her that she could never dance again but that was impossible to point and she also helps kids follow their dreams um and that's all about her and this is this is what she looks like this is like what her costume looked like and i'm going to do something right there i'm going to do a dance so thank you that looks super cute that was fun and uh ruth is online root but do you have anything more to

009add or are you just available if we have questions yeah i am i'm available if you have questions i i will say we um i had just a few i had to choose just a few excerpts from our living museum um but they really um showed out this year even though we were doing it some virtual and some in class and some were sharing it through a padlet for us and it was just really awesome to be able to share all that work throughout the school that was really fun thank you that was great thank you okay so next on the agenda we are going to discuss the in-person versus uh or the in-person and virtual instructional plan yeah so we've got some good updates so um i'm going to start with a quick announcement

010to share and then um we're going to hear from uh greg wiseman about how the first few days have gone at rent row we're going to hear from michelle lostrand about how the first few days have gone up to high school we're going to hear from maybe furman on where we are with planning for bringing back some additional students for k-5 following our survey and then i'll wrap things up with talking a little bit about fall next year so what i get to share is really exciting and a huge part of the kudos goes to the man behind me esther melton as well as some others um uh lily huddleston and shonda moore and a bunch of others i'm sure that i don't even know have been involved but we have successfully through their great

011efforts scheduled a vaccine clinic for csb staff and we are super excited and it is this saturday [Music] one shot vaccine um we anticipate um being able to serve four or five hundred somewhere around there somewhere in the middle yeah somewhere around there um staff quite a few of our staff have already gotten vaccinated as i go around those buildings i hear from a lot of teachers who have found appointments but for those who haven't and want an opportunity we will be working with the dekalb county board of health to pull that off they're providing a lot of the clerical type staff for the event and then our nurses who have all been credentialed to give vaccines will be the ones giving the actual vaccine so kudos to our nurses for going through all that

012extra effort is really awesome um really paid off to have our ends in all of our buildings um and so they are highly qualified to do this so we've got that coming up and then tomorrow night we scheduled a vaccine information session because we know there are a lot of questions about vaccines some folks have concerns about vaccines and so lily has pulled together some experts in our community with medical expertise and vaccination expertise to kind of share what they know about vaccines and answer any questions and so that was scheduled actually before we found out we can do the clinic so the timing couldn't have been any better that it worked out so very exciting there's been so much work that has gone in behind the scenes to make this happen um and so

013if we have more demand um if we have more demand than we're able to accommodate on saturday we will get a second site schedule um to figure that out but very exciting the details went out to staff this afternoon and i think we also have updated our um faq page with some details for staff and we'll be getting some of them more information about how to sign up and things like that um it is in doralville because they needed to use a large site we tried to figure out a site here and they were just worried that with that volume of people that none of the sites we had available here would be a work but it is right next to a marta station so if anybody has trouble getting out there at least they

014can jump on marta and get out there so um we you know you take what you get and so we're excited to be able to get it scheduled and and get people vaccinated and amazing that it's the one shot back then so they'll be done and they have that one shot so that's the exciting news and again just so many kudos to all the staff that may have happened there's been a ton of work going on so very pleased with that it's an info session for teachers and staff only or the public or i think it's for staff right yeah we framed it for staff um my guess would be we'll probably record it like we have other ones so i was just thinking of families just you know if it's helpful if we if

015and if it hasn't already done we'll check with the experts and see if they're okay with us recording it and posting it um so very exciting all right so now we're going to turn over to um rochelle and greg so we can hear about how their first two days have gone i don't know who wants to start there but whoever jumps in first or we can call on somebody age before beauty right rochelle that's right greg okay so here i go um so we've had a great first uh two days of our hybrid in-person and virtual uh learning um we had group a come in yesterday and today and the arrival um protocols that we used worked really well the the transition from one class to the other worked really really well and were very

016orchestrated and then our dismissal uh you know leaving the building was very staggered and quiet and calm i mean like we like the the silver lining for uh kovid is that like it has completely changed the way i'm thinking about arrival and dismissal even when we're back normally so um so lots of really really good things happening you know teachers are getting used to the concurrent part of it um the kids seem to be really excited to be back in school i went into every classroom i know the aps went into all their classrooms and um it's just been amazing to you know i've been working in that big old dark building with a skeleton crew for a number of months and just to have teachers and kids back in that building just just to

017spread life into into that place so it's been um really really great we've had uh i think we did a really good job of yeah we've had to rewrite 13 over 1 300 new schedules for every you know schedule for every new kid and i think we did a really good job of communicating that and and working with the kids to figure it out we had a couple kids that didn't quite know what to do but we worked that out really quickly um you know kids that came in without a chromebook we had you know chromebooks in every hallway and you know within 10 minutes you know if a kid came in without a chromebook we had a chromebook for them some kids that came in um with their own personal devices you know we

018had the code and everything ready to go for them to log on but there is a hiccup there but i think we've worked that out so overall um i'm ecstatic with how things um things went these last these first two days awesome thanks greg rochelle and same here um i have come home the past two nights absolutely exhausted because i've just been walking around the building smiling um again the admin team and the teachers and the support staff and the custodians everyone working together made this possible um it's been it's been a great two days so on thursday we'll welcome cohort b we know that it's going to be hard to get used to cohort a and b but um so far the kids have done great we had one person show up on the

019wrong day and that's it so we think that's a huge win um and thank you to all of the parents who have reached out with kind words to teachers and staff um it actually means quite a lot and we appreciate the fact that you see all the hard work that everyone put into this i just want to say just you know teachers are are having to do something totally different yet again this year when it comes to teaching and learning so thank you for your patience um as we continue to work out the kinks of the technology but it is it is happening and um we are we are excited about that awesome thanks rochelle i was able i visited renpro on monday um the you know first day back and then dhs today and

020i was able to talk to almost all the teachers and it is amazing of course you have nervousness right it's first day there's all these mitigations there's there's all of that normal things that are better going on but also just a lot of excitement um and it wasn't quite as beauty as when january 19th when the k5 kids came back you know that really felt like a first day you had the parents out front taking pictures of the kids in front of the sign and all that kind of stuff but it was still really great and just so many teachers especially at dhs that i could talk to today who they've now had a day under their belt by the time i talked to them just saying they forgot how awesome it was to see

021those kids in person in front of them so that was great so um i'm sure there are challenges we'll work through but overall it's off to a great start so and dr dude it's my understanding that they went ahead and cr corrected the way you were going down the hallway um as well with some of the arrows i ended up getting caught in these infinite loops where i couldn't get where i was going because i i was adam and i was going to follow those arrows and i kept going by the same rooms over and over again i'm sure the kids will deal with that too but it's it's good yeah and i just want to echo what rochelle said about the you know the custodians that have done a really good job in the

022cafeteria staff getting the lunches out and getting them ready and and again like the teachers um you know getting you know just being so so flexible like you know we would have it's like you know early last week it's like oh that's right we have to do attendance a whole new way and so i asked one teacher to say hey can you come up with a google form in a way and somebody did it and it's like and you know pretty much that first day it's like okay guys this is how we're doing attendance today you know um and so they they they understand that you know how things move so fast and they've been so flexible and they're teaching a new way and um yeah i i'm very humbled by the staff at renfrow

023that's awesome and we appreciate all the community members um i think one of them mentioned just how much we like we appreciate when people recognize what the teachers are taking on and the staff are taking on and i do think the vast majority of the community appreciates how hard all the staff are working on the virtual land on the in person and everything in between and trying to figure these things out and people are very flexible as we kind of go through and reinvent school yet again so very good any questions for greg and rochelle before we move on i was just going to say congratulations on the great first two days we were copied on a couple of those emails um parents really you know please and and you know um sharing with their

024children came home and shared with them about the first two days so congratulations thank you dana awesome thank you for all your hard work to you and your teachers and your staff please pass that on and like david said reinventing school for this third time it's really amazing what's going into that all right and on the subject of reinventing school i'm going to pass it over to maggie to talk about where we are with some additional planning for k5 so maggie take it away all right good evening everyone good to see you um if it's okay i was going to share my screen and pull up that uh document that okay i think make you a co-host or something yeah i can't share it but i'm um dana can you uh be able to share

025it now your co-host okay gotcha thank you okay all right here we go um so as we get ready to look at how we can add students in our k5 classrooms we wanted to make sure that we were taking some time to hear from particularly our teachers and school-based staff as well as parents so we had been brainstorming some possibilities and then decided to hold two stakeholder input meetings we did our one with the staff last week and we hold our parent meeting next week um and then we'll look through what the um with the feedback and questions and any things that are brought up during these feedback sessions so that we can take those into considerations before we make any final announcements or decisions um and as we know with covid we've got to

026learn how to pivot on a dime because it is changing daily and as we just saw with you know words of vaccines coming out that can play an important part in our timeline um so we just definitely want to make sure that we're taking all of the things that are in within the context into consideration so what we did is we we ran through with our staff and i'll do the same protocol with our parents a protocol called world cafe but we kind of changed it a little bit to fit the needs that we had and we really like a world the world cafe protocol because it really allows people to as the stakeholders to bring up their ideas their questions a lot of good things come to surface when you just allow that open

027feedback and input so when we started the cafe we outlined what we were doing and then we gave them kind of the problem that we have which is we've got about 1200 students in our k5 classes right now but we have somewhere 500 plus that do want to return so wanting to hear from our teachers and finally our parents about how to bring those students back um into our classrooms um and we had two options that kind of rose to the top with principles and admin and the first one which i'm going to share here in a little bit is adding students to the current in-person classes the second option that came to the top is we were just as a district leadership team talking was to create a pm cohort um so we wanted

028to talk with staff and parents about those two options and then also i always would tell my teachers the answers in the room to the problem and many times my parents and teachers would solve problems without any direction they would have the ideas and the expertise and know what solutions were out there we also wanted to make sure that we established some pretty clear parameters um and some agreements so our first parameter was that we wanted to make sure that we're actively engaging with our uh most vulnerable stakeholders and at-risk students make sure that we are lifting their voices recognizing and honoring um where they are and and what they are challenged with we also had to recognize that at this time we can't add any additional staffing or increased teacher hours we're kind of

029have what we have we did not want to decrease the amount of in-person instruction that we're already providing for students that are in the in in person right now we did want to make sure that we continue to commit to wellness wednesday for all of our students we do also want to make sure that we maintain staff and student safety through our multiple mitigation layers we also wanted to let the stakeholders know that when they go through this protocol the decision is not going to be made in that meeting that the meeting really is to get input and to hear their concerns and thoughts and that it's not going to be hey we're going to vote on an option we just are gathering input at this stage and then we also welcomed other parameters or

030agreements that people in the group wanted to bring forward so as i mentioned we talked about two options and we've divided everyone into three groups and they rotated through talking through option one which is adding students to in-person they talked through option two adding a pm cohort and then i hosted the third group which was what are some other ideas that are out there that we could possibly see would be tenable to make to add additional students to our classrooms um so we shared here we collected a lot of information and we summarized it here just in opportunities and some challenges so opportunities for option one is definitely i think for all of these options opportunities are we're allowing additional students to come back to get that in-person instruction um also for option one it's

031really minimal changes for scheduling and logistics are a lot easier and also could balance those virtual classes that we know are a little bit larger than we like them to be some challenges that came up for option one is that one of the key mitigation strategies has been that social distancing of six feet um and that would definitely have to decrease if we're going to add students to our classrooms um so altering that key mitigation strategy that we've originally outlined also may limit our ability to provide some small group interventions may require require some additional equipment or supplies and furniture also one of the big concerns and this is really where we want to hear from our parents is if those students have to change teachers for a third time so what is this what

032is the input from our parents on kids changing again if they had teacher a for when they started then they switched and had to go to a teacher b well can we get them back with future a is that the preference or do parents have a preference on that so that's one thing we definitely want to talk through with our families um and then is there a difference um could it make the difference in selecting um on racial groups so we don't we definitely want to make sure that we're engaging with our students and families of color to make sure that they understand what's um what the opportunities are and how we're helping and supporting all of our families like i said with agreement one is how are we engaging with those families cohort two

033or option two was adding students in a pm cohort again opportunities for this one is we can serve more students but maintain that social distancing a lot of several challenges came up with logistics for this one how do we bus students to and from when we're going back and forth between two eight two cohorts um the flexibility might be a little difficult it could possibly shorten the instructional day which was a violation of one of our agreements um that was that one and then some creative thinking came up in our third group and a lot of the similar opportunities and challenges came up with these as well um an option three um that came up with our staff group was to say trying to maintain the the number of hours that students were getting in

034person instruction but expanding it to a full day so students would come and this is much like what we're doing at the high school in the middle school so students would come on an a day for two days a week another group would come on a b day two days a week and they'd stay the full day instead of just a half a day with what we're doing right now hopefully that would keep the current number of instructional hours that our students are getting we could maintain smaller cohorts with that model also um could possibly increase some opportunities for our specialist teachers um to interact with their students and definitely with all of these it's decreasing that virtual learning um class size so a challenge is here the eating at school that's one of our

035mitigation um strong mitigation strategies is not having any time where students are not wearing masks definitely some challenges with child care and then really a concern about adding screen time when those students are not in the building and then what happens do we switch to a concurrent model or do we provide asynchronous learning on those off days when kids aren't in the building and then another challenge was that possibly could add some increased planning time for our teachers um the three option 3b was to create a hybrid schedule in a little bit of a different way but kids would come let's say seven days in a row and then stay home for seven days come in for seven days come out of seven days so lots of the similar opportunities and challenges came up with

036that um solution and then 3c was more of a needs-based solution so we know we have about 500 plus students but really taking time to look at what are who are the students that really have that high level of need to come back to an in-person setting so that we could get those students in our classrooms so maintaining a smaller cohorts um getting our in-person students in seats that have the most need um or one of the opportunities there it would we were thinking could keep our current mitigation levels and it also seemed to be one of the least disruptive options um for staff and students um challenges for this one is determining that need how do we determine what the need is then another challenge is we would not meet our agreement of trying

037to get as many kids back into our buildings as possible um and that virtual learning classes would remain a little bit higher for the time being if we did 3b so those are the options that we looked at tomorrow evening we'll meet with our parent slt group and run them through the same protocol i will also share some of the similar you know so we'll share with them what our teachers came up with so they're aware of that as well but also getting that other perspective before we make any final decisions on next phases and what to do so that's the that's where we are so um when we initially were looking at all of this we anticipated far fewer students wanting to come back in person so just to reiterate it was about 500

038responses saying they wanted to come back in person so that's why we had to kind of revisit what the options were that were available to us so we hope to announce very soon what that next phase can look like um any questions from maggie on that information you i have a question you might have said this and i might have missed it um but what sort of a timeline not just for the world cafes but do we have a target timeline for the decision is when the kids might actually get back we do not yet and so part of it will depend on which solution looks most viable um we're looking at things like the availability of vaccines and when people um our staff will have had the opportunity to be vaccinated we're looking at

039kind of how much time will it take to ramp up depending on how complex the solution is do you have to redo schedules what kind of communications need to happen what kind of planning needs to happen so we don't have a timeline quite yet but we hope to by the end of the week well that's good and my for my two cents i i continue to feel the sense of urgency that we can't but we can't just plan it and we i mean i appreciate all the planning and training is wonderful and it's been very successful but we also need to plan with urgency so we can totally agree and we were really hoping to be able to share a plan tonight until we saw that 500 number and we realized we needed to do

040a little more in depth but we will get a plan out there as soon as that leave possible um so that would be a total of because right now we've got about 17 you know probably about 1500 students so we'd be about 2 000 and we've got about uh what would that be 500 kids a grade maybe so um about 3 000 total um ka5 kids roughly okay so about so about 2 000 of the 3 000 would be in person at that point that's really awesome and it really particularly it makes the vaccinating the teachers this saturday even more important and exciting stuff that's happening um and i i appreciate the way you laid that out every option has challenges and it's complicated um so just a good job on thinking through all those

041things and i'm glad you're getting input from business one other thing i'll share just in terms of some of the data we're monitoring people frequently ask what are we looking at and i hope people are looking at the dashboard that we have of cases in the school and i just want to share that over the last two weeks we have only had we we haven't had more than one person isolated at any given time out of about 1700 in person and we've only we've had about one person quarantined one day we had two in the last several weeks so things are going very well um now we just jumped to about a thousand more people present as of monday when we started with the renfrow in high school and so we will continue to monitor

042and see how that goes but um so far the mitigation efforts appear to be working pretty well okay all right so i want to talk a little bit about uh next steps just real quick parents will get we were asked for data i provided data myself the first line of it was and then you'll get a chance to kind of re-put back in once we outline the plan that's still in the timeline is that right yes so the survey was just an expression of interest so we had an idea of what magnitude are we looking at yep and so part of what we will share is how do you make a decision then like how do you record your decision because we also anticipate depending on what that model looks like there may be some

043people who are currently in person who aren't comfortable with that plan and want to move virtual yeah right and so that will be communicated the timeline for that but yes people will have the opportunity to make a change one way or the other yeah and i just want to agree with louis i mean yeah agreed i mean given that fact let's go thank you doctor we feel the urgency as well okay other questions or comments about that piece everybody asked my question so good um my song is picking up so the um i get a lot of questions about next fall so i'll reiterate a little bit about what i shared in the in the last meeting and that is that um at this point based on the conversations i've had with the various experts

044and just looking at what what others are planning for the fall we are anticipating that we will have a mostly regular fall right for the most part it will probably look like what school looked like pre-pandemic with some very few exceptions it is quite possible we will still have a mass mandate it is quite possible we'll still have some various lunchroom procedures and things of how we handle lunch in an environment where we're requiring mass and how all that works and maybe some other things but for the most part it looks like if things continue the way that they're going we will probably be able to have whoever wants to be in person in person for full days in the fall so i will get into some more details about the decatur virtual academy because

045we will be offering a virtual option hopefully depending on how our budget conversation goes so if folks are listening and they're interested in the decatur virtual academy options like what virtual options will be in the fall stick around for the budget discussions because we will get into some details about that when we get to that point so clarification yes you said most likely as it continues and you we get in trouble here because in august you said we're going to open up and then in november you said we're going to go open up yeah so i just wanted to say for the record obviously if there's another major outbreak and this brazilian version and turns out or there's a johnson johnson vaccine doesn't work that changes that exactly but the exact opposite is true as

046well um so if the coveted numbers continue to go down if vaccinations continue to go up the current plan is school as normal with major mitigations continuing to be in place to increase the comfort level of the people indicator yeah to a certain level of mitigation i don't want to give a false impression that we can still have classes of five right right like we will have to have full size classes at that point depending on how many people choose to stay virtual okay and then um i think the confusion came up and i know we were going to get to the decatur virtual academy or whatever like i guess there will be a level where we would offer a virtual academy or virtual option for all of decatur and then there will be a

047level where no you know like we we think we're safe choose the in-person option so let me so i'll share i'll share one piece of it because it may be very relevant to what you're saying right now the um the virtual academy the way we have it designed right now that we'll get into in the budget will allow more flexibility than what we were originally picturing we were picturing the virtual academy having to be its own standalone school and that's why we said when you enroll you enroll right that's your school for the year we don't think we will have to be that stringent with it now that we see have that expression of interest see how many people are interested and how we're able to structure it we will probably be able to be

048more flexible so that if people want to start the year virtually and then transition to being in person that will most likely be an option and it's part of it depends on what we decide in the budget discussion because just to forecast the budget discussion seems like we were two we were two minds we were talking we're talking one there's some people who have thrived in the virtual world and just kind of like it as an academic solution moving forward and there attempted to be a survey to gauge how many people fouled into that and then through part our fault part the flaw of communication these days um it got it gets wrapped up so there will be people who would like a virtual option right for various reasons right and so the idea of

049what we're picturing now with the virtual academy is we would serve both those populations in the same way okay and so if you're wanting to be virtual because you have pandemic related concerns you have that option you want to be virtual just because it works better for your child you'll have that same option you'll be in the same classrooms as the same program and we should be able to be more flexible than we're originally picturing so that you won't have to make that year-long commitment some people will right if you're choosing it because that's what's best for your kid and they work really well in that virtual environment then you may choose it and stick with it for the whole year if you're choosing it because you're waiting for your kid to be fully vaccinated

050and come you know october or november your kids now fully vaccinated and you want to go back in person we should be able to accommodate that at that time yes any other questions about that stuff all right i do have a question did you did we already touched on this but what is is there what are the initiatives so right now we're focused on k5 and so part of what we see happen in k5 we're kind of staggering right so we started k5 january 19th what we learned from there we incorporated into how we did the 6 through 12 plan now we're planning for the next phase of k5 and we hope to follow very quickly to see what can we figure out from that to apply to 612 because we know there are desires

051to go longer days there's desires to have more days um and so i think what we learn in this k5 section this week and the plans we make there will directly tie into what we start doing to talk about for 612. what we hear from the teachers over and over again is try not to completely upset the apple card again right like we don't want to reinvent school for a fourth time so if we come up with a solution is it a solution that's just a natural like next step and it's not reinventing everything and so that's what we'll be looking at for middle school and high school but we are not locked into this exact mode for middle high school through the end of the year just to be clear anything else all right

052so we are now moving to public comments and i believe shayna you said you have nine signed up for a public comment yes nine i think and first stop will be april biagioni april hi good evening um april b is joni 315 mimosa drive i'm going to be quick um last october the board chair said in a public meeting that it was not the job of the board to provide oversight for the superintendent could someone please speak to this statement and in light of revelations of the lawsuits does he still stand by it and does the rest of the board agree with that if yes then can they please clarify who if anyone the superintendent is accountable to currently and do they plan to change that moving forward especially with the new contract my other

053question is how many days is our superintendent expected to work in conjunction with that if a teacher or administrative staff didn't report their vacation what would be the repercussions of that also is the board concerned about the large number of missing documents from the decatur-ish open records request can anyone publicly comment on the process by which these requests are processed and how do they plan to address the holes that might be in the current system regardless of the veracity of these accusations is the board not concerned that having more federal lawsuits against the district in the last 20 years prior and how these new revelations create an environment where the superintendent has lost the trust of the community that he can no longer effectively do his job also is the board concerned that there appears

054to be a pattern of the superintendent deflating blame to black women there have been several instances when i've listened on these board members where that seems to be the case um i also have some concerns about what most likely a regular fall looks like and if these lower mitigations are going to follow cdc guidelines thank you very much thank you april next up is dr jean o'connor okay i'm not finding dr o'connor so we'll move on to the next person kanika sims miss sims hello hi we can hear you good evening my name is i'm a csd parent of three and a physician i'm concerned about whether we have assault we have solid plans for return to school in the fall i'm very concerned with the narrative that school will look like normal in the

055fall with sun mitigation strategies that is a dangerous assumption and i believe indicates that we will once again be unprepared for the reality that we may find ourselves in as i'm sure you all are aware it is very unlikely that children under the age of 12 will be vaccinated by august of 2021 so although parents and teachers will be vaccinated the children will not currently the vaccine is only authorized for children 16 and older trials for vaccines and children 12 to 15 with pfizer are currently underway and will then be followed by trials for children 9-12 and then six to nine so as we consider this reality that the pandemic is not yet over and will not be over by fall of 2021 and that our k-5 and many middle school children will not be

056vaccinated by the start of school it is important that the school district is actively working on plans for return to school in the fall now our children in our community deserve return to school plans in the fall that take into consideration the fact that mitigation strategies are going to remain very important for our children since the vast majority of them will not be vaccinated many former csd families have left the district and put their kids in private school many more csv families who stuck it out with csd throughout the year have applied to private schools for next year because they don't have confidence in csu's ability to provide a safe in-person learning environment and those families will receive their acceptance notifications and need to commit in april so unless csd wants to continue to lose

057students which is not good for our school system from a budgetary perspective then the district needs to provide parents with a comprehensive plan by the beginning of next month i sincerely hope that csd is currently creating this comprehensive plan with the appropriate mitigation factors in place that is predicated on the knowledge that our children under the age of 12 will need these same mitigation strategies in place in the fall to remain safe as they do now and as you know one of the rate limited considerations for all of our children returning to school safely is space the current cdc recommendation is six foot of spacing between the students and csd can achieve this and accommodate all of our children with outdoor classrooms another consideration is to delay the start of school to september so that

058more children can be vaccinated i ask that parents who also share these concerns will email the board thank you for your time thank you dr sims next up is organic mr organa yes good evening to the school board thank you for this opportunity and speaking on the need for effective family management i'm glad to see that it's on the agenda today and will be addressed but i also want to stress that our equity work and not be successful without effective family engagement part of the challenge i've stated this numerous times and i am reiterating is that our school system is built for sophisticated high resource households without effective family engagement we are implicitly i think implicitly is the right word leaving a whole segment of the population out low resource households that is not as

059highly sophisticated as the affluent households and we need to address that the only way to address that is through effective family engagement how do we support households to help their children greed at an early level we should not assume that everyone knows how to get to the library and how to check out book from the library there may be resources where they can acquire books um at a at a discounted rate family engagements can help with that there are scholarship programs in the metro atlanta area that we are not tapping into our school district does not tap into because everybody assumes that city schools are dedicated as an affluent everybody is affluent if we have effective family engagement we're able to tap into those scholarship programs on behalf of our low resource households we also

060need to address the fact that um what where what happens to our children during summers typical summers summer camps there are school districts that offer free summer camps to their students is there ways that we can take advantage of those uh free summer camps so that our children can also get those enrichment opportunities again in my mind that's effective family engagement if coordinating the needs of low resource households and finding solutions broad-based solutions rather than one-off solutions or expecting that parents will be able to do this on their own there's big opportunities there thank you thank you next up is mr robert jeffrey mr jeffrey good evening can you hear me we can hear you now hi my name is robert jeffrey and i serve on the education committee of beacon hill black alliance for

061human rights we appreciate the effort and thought you have invested in creating the district improvement plan and we would like to identify some components that should be considered in order for this design to meet the needs of all students the district's improvement plan sets forth to graduate students that are empowered to make a better world according to the u.s census data for the city of decatur adults in 84.51 of white households have at least a bachelor's degree only 33.76 percent of black households have an adult with a bachelor's degree the improvement plan may improve this statistic by providing students with the support and guidance they need to pursue a four-year college option that is affordable and ensure that such guidance is provided to all students regardless of their socioeconomic status beginning in ninth grade this

062effort would also help to address the district's plan to eliminate disproportionate academic outcomes based on rates the district's improvement plan expects all students to exemplify the graduate profile currently the graduation depiction it lends heavily to the ib profile by upholding the ib student profile as an ideal for all students our learning system assumes that children have support structures such as tutoring electronic learning aids and parents who can support student learning motivation is a key component of learning and in order to motivate students we must meet them where they are the improvement plan must expand the definition of success for families to include those who have resources and those who may not have resources or the knowledge thereof students who do not aspire to attend a four-year college or university cannot be left behind or forgotten

063for our district improvement plan to be truly successful we must increase the delivery of transitional counseling to include a full array of the ways in which the school is committed to the success of all students while our district improvement plan focuses on student success for pre-k through 12th grade it needs to carry our students into successful post-secondary options whether it be college technical school or career if students choose a college route they must be adequately counseled on college costs and how they are financed ensuring all students have access to a guaranteed and viable curriculum through our instructional framework should also include expanding knowledge of career and technical education utilizing the expertise of the director of the ctae as a member of the district improvement committee will ensure that the district remains at the forefront of

064booming industries we must remember that we are educating the next generation of innovative citizens we are happy to see equity at the forefront of the district improvement plan and we believe including these considerations will advance our shared goal of eliminating academic and disciplinary outcomes based on race thank you for your time thank you mr jeffrey next up is marnie rodson okay i'm not finding miss gratson so we're gonna move on to mary drury my apologies it's marie drury thank you hi okay thank you um my name is marie drury i'm a mom of two boys one is at fave and one is homeschooled um i wanted to talk about the virtual academy and voice my support for different reasons um i um i come at this as i i was an in school teacher i

065now homeschool um a child who has selective mutism which is an anxiety disorder um i also had the same anxiety disorder as as a child um and um i uh a couple of reasons why i think we need a very robust virtual academy one um the traditional thought with um selective mutism kids or kids with anxiety is to keep them in the class and work through their anxiety which i agree with however it hasn't worked well in public schools for a variety of reasons when i was a child uh the expectation to speak in class was not as great as it is now it was a much more workbook environment so i i did not speak in school until college but i got straight a's because i just stuck my head in the books and

066and did fine um but now the the expectation is to speak more and the pressure on these kids to do that with their anxiety it just shuts the child down um so the virtual academy especially i'm envisioning even if these kids could possibly be in in pods of a few kids just for the social i think would meet the needs of these kids much better but also them being allowed to partake in activities in sports outside of um the classroom but still be part of the school environment is huge that's where a lot of these kids thrive i was really loud on the swim team from five years old on uh just would not speak in class so that is that's that end um but the other side uh the things that virtual could um

067allow any child to partake in especially middle and high school the thought of traveling being able to study virtually from anywhere i'm thinking of my kids godparents in munich germany being able to go there for a few weeks and do virtual and experience germany the internships that kids could do while doing virtual the flexibility is needed um so i'm short on time here but uh i as a parent and i know many other parents are willing to help put something together that's really robust and great for all the students and i just hope we move forward with that kind of thinking and allowing the parents to help create something that could be really great for our community that's it thank you thank you mr erin next up is susan camp miss cam hi my name

068is susan camp i live at 11 rockland i have two elementary age children i no matter how much i prepare for comment at the public comment section and board meetings i always learn something new that just flips my script and i have to say to hear you guys citing people interested in returning face-to-face for k-5 learning options as i emailed to your leaders to district leadership before the way you conduct your parent surveys is unethical they are poorly designed i think that you will have now that we know that teachers will be vaccinated i think that you might find um that number is going to be significantly different i pro offered you an ethically designed survey that you can use and it's my understanding that some of the slts are sending that some version of

069that out to their parents but that's not how claremont's doing it they i guess they're using this open protocol method where they're just relying on social media and email to just get parent feedback so this idea that you guys are truly engaging stakeholders and that you're doing it in an ethical way is not true did you guys mail surveys to our lower resource households to ensure that they got the information um because it's my understanding i don't think that you did and i know that some sms messages went out but i didn't receive any um and i'm the one who created the parent portal account um i'm getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of transparency and honesty and with regards to open communications and to that end we have a huge ethics problem in our

070district and it all rolls downhill and i share similar concerns from other parents around these lawsuits so i want to know is the board willing to release information about the amount they are paying lawyers for these lawsuits including board attorneys or and outside attorneys do the board attorneys or outside attorneys represent our superintendent personally who is responsible for for providing documents on open records requests directed to the district um really getting tired of not getting a lot of answers for trying to partner with the district and not seeing the needle move in any direction you continue to communicate and collect parent feedback in a way that is inequitable and unethical and i will be here at every board meeting every month um calling you out on it until you make the changes that you need

071to make so that when you say parents are stakeholders and you engage them then it won't be a lie thank you thank you miss cam next up is ha news who will be our last um speaker there we go can you hear me yes great so as i'm sure all of you are aware a number of serious allegations uh regarding dr dude's use of vacation time and availability during working periods have been made recently uh based on their reporting there it looks to it to be some substantive and sustained evidence behind the claims and i understand that items in executive session cannot and should not be discussed publicly i also understand that due to the fact that there are lawsuits about the matter the board is highly constrained about what can and cannot be said

072in public i further understand that the board is likely acting on direction from legal counsel and that council is focused on limiting liability to the system as a whole all of that said there is no scenario where not speaking publicly at all serves the best interests of either the board or the community the lawyers are there to advise about legal liability which ultimately in this case is a form of fiscal liability their advice to you is meant to limit the expense of potential findings or unleveraged settlements i am telling you that by not discussing this the board faces a crisis of credibility ultimately that is far more damaging than a potential settlement you as the board need to assure us that you take these allegations seriously and that you are investigating them appropriately anything short

073of that is a dodge to your obligations to us the voters i reject the premise that you cannot publicly admit that these are serious allegations they are serious allegations it hardly affects liability to recognize a basic fact i reject that you cannot acknowledge you intend to investigate you must investigate and we all know it a competent communicator would be able to craft a legally passable statement that gives us the confidence that you are taking the appropriate investigatory steps and let's be clear that confidence is currently shaken please for the sake of the community for the sake of your credibility please investigate all of this appropriately thank you mr use that concludes our board public comment section um i don't think i have any comments that aren't going to be addressed in later presentations so i

074will just hold those for them thank you um i will keep my uh board comments short today um i would first like to just again give scooters and thanks to dr beating his staff for working on getting those vaccines for the teachers it's very exciting i would like to thank the principals that have worked so diligently to get our students back into the building we've heard a lot of good communication from families and parents and so i hope that we can continue down that same path but thank you and i thank the staff and teachers you are all doing an amazing job and i just want to say that the board is very much aware of the issues that have been raised in the media and in the community and we are actively consulting with

075appropriate counsel and advisors actively and multiply so several lawsuits are pending so of course you know that it would be inappropriate for us to comment on any of those we will allow that to play out in court but we are taking the allegations serious we are speaking with council on several several items and what we will be doing shortly probably in a couple of days in the near future we will have a much more robust and detailed statements that will come out and address some of the questions or concerns that you as a community have so we do not want to ignore how you are feeling we feel uh we have our kind of finger on the pulse of how you are feeling and um we are being responsible we are working together and we

076are taking everything into consideration and taking everything seriously and we will have further and more detailed um statements in the near future so moving on to sunset items we have the personnel report nutrition financial reports and the active panel purchase and installation vendor and the landscape maintenance oh yeah sorry the landscape maintenance services is there anything that needs to be pulled out for discussion on that all right everybody agree to those items yes you're good all right a second thank you all right so now we'll move to uh items for action information and discussion yeah so our first one we are going to delay because our auditor came down ill and so he is not able to present tonight so we will get that on a future meeting um but we left it on there

077so if anyone was interested in reviewing the document they're all there and we will get that rescheduled as soon as he's feeling better again and able to present okay great so will that just be more than likely just the next coordination well we could do the work session if you're feeling better by then if you guys were interested um but for sure i would think he'd be better by the next um regular board meeting as well okay and then the next item is the fy22 budget and so we're going to do this in two phases lanita and i have spent a lot of time on the budget i think we we estimated somewhere around 100 hours between the two of us trying to get all these things figured out so we're really pleased to present

078with you um what we have figured out so lanita is going to walk through a presentation with you on the budget just a note we did leave some slides in there that we're not going to talk about just so that if somebody pulls up the document they'll still be there because they are informative but you guys have heard a lot of that before so we won't be talking about every single slide and then we have created you may recall at the end of the last board meeting budget discussion we talked about i got a concept of an interactive spreadsheet so we could answer some of the questions that were coming up a little more live and so we um after lunita does her presentation i will pull off the interactive spreadsheet um where we will

079walk through some details i'll share with you some of the conclusions we've come to uh dictator virtual academy on the remediation program and get into some fairly detailed information on those things in terms of the budget and then we also if we have questions that come up and kind of those what-if questions um a lot of those will be able to be live uh in the moment so lanita's gonna kick us off and then i'll take over and then we'll be ready for whatever questions so anita thank you doody good evening madam chair madam vice chair members of the board dr duty community and colleagues this evening we will continue our detailed analysis and discussion on the fiscal year 22 budget we will start as usual with a budget calendar next slide please this evening's

080budget discussion is the sixth public budget discussion on the fiscal year 2022 budget the next budget hearing will be the tentative adoption of the fiscal year 2022 budget which is scheduled for the april 13th board meeting the tentative budget will be posted on the district's website on april 14 to the 2021. the final fiscal year 2022 budget and the tentative property tax military is scheduled to be adopted at the may 12 board meeting three public militaries will be scheduled at the receipt of the preliminary tax digest followed by the final adoption of the property tax military in july to ensure transparency and that we receive input from the community we have placed a link on the district's website to allow our stakeholders to provide budget suggestions and comments the link is located under the city

081schools of decatur news section of the website and is titled provide your feedback on the 2021 2022 csv draft budget once you click on the link you will see a link to the latest draft of the 21 21-22 budget in a link for submitting your feedback the next slide contains definitions next slide please the next slide contains definitions for some of the commonly used financial terms this presentation is posted on the district's website and while reviewing the content of the presentation it may be helpful to refer back to these definitions next we have the fiscal year 22 preliminary draft budget narrative this presentation is a review of the preliminary fiscal year 22 budget and fiscal year 23 to 25 budget projections please be mindful that this presentation is a draft and is considered preliminary at

082this phase next year's fiscal year 2022 revenue budget assumptions the fiscal year 22 budget assumptions ce okay here we are the fiscal year 22 revenue budget assumptions have been modified to include the following updates it is assumed that 60 of austerity will be restored for fiscal year 21 and fiscal year 22. 80 of austerity will be restored for fiscal year 23. and that 100 of austerity will be restored in fiscal year 24 and 25. initially property tax for fiscal year year 22 was based off of the current homestead exception expired in december in the proposed homestead exemption taking effect in january after further conversation with the city we were advised that we are not likely to see the impact of the proposed homestead exemption until may 2021 collection which will impact june's revenue with this

083new information we project that 99 of homestead exemption for fiscal year will be based on the current exemption and one percent will be based on the proposed senior homestead exemption projected revenue numbers have been revised based on the acceptance of 39 resident tuition pan students next you have your major revenue sources this slide contains a list with brief definitions of the major revenue sources for the general fund some notable definitions that you will hear throughout this presentation is senior homestead exemption the next fiscal year 22 we are anticipating having two sets of senior exemptions the current exemption which expires in december 2021 is for full exemption for 65 and older and the proposed senior homestead exemption which if passed will start in january 2022 and is full of two-tier exemptions for seniors based on income

084and property value next we have our property tax on the previous slide i referenced two homestead exemptions the current exemption and the proposed exemption if you will recall i specified that the current homestead exemption will expire at the end of the year and if the proposed exemption passes will begin in january so after speaking with the city and learning that the proposed exemption if passed would not impact tax revenue until may's collection i conducted an analysis to determine the trend for the percent of revenue that comes from may collection period the first column identifies the month that the city collects the taxes the second column indicates the date that we receive the revenue and the third column represents the amount of revenue we receive for the specified month i have highlighted in green the two

085largest collection periods for the district which is received in july and january july revenue represents tax revenue collected in june and january revenue represents tax revenue collected in december this means for fiscal year 22 the current homestead exemption will be in place for the largest collection period of july through may highlighted in yellow represent funds that are received from june to july which is a time frame that the proposed senior homestead exemption will have on revenue for fiscal year 22. i took the average of the collection period from june to july and as you can see by the amount and percentage on the side of each fist of the year based on the trend an average of one percent revenue comes in from june or july so with this information for fiscal year 2022 99

086of the senior home instead exemption will fall under the current senior homestead exemption and one percent will fall under the proposal your homestead is interested so now we will look at the projected cost of the senior homestead exemption for the current fiscal year 2021 the current homestead exemption was in place which cost the district approximately 4.3 million for fiscal year 2022 as discussed both the current and proposed exemptions will be in place so if you will look at the second table the calculation for the fiscal year 22 projections as shown take 99 of the current exemption and one percent of the proposed exemption to project the district cost of 4.4 million in exemptions for the senior homestead exemptions for fiscal year 2022. the projections for fiscal year 2023 through 2025 are based exclusively on the

087proposed senior homestead exemption the next slide we discussed in detail at the february work session this slide represents how the local five meal share is calculated every district that participates in the qbe program is mandated to contribute a local share based on the revenue which will be generated by five meals of property tax or five dollars for every one thousand when levied on the most recent equalized tax digest for the district the equalized tax digest is calculated by the department of audits and sent to school districts involved in the fall next we have our fiscal year 22 budgeted expenditure assumptions next slide please the fiscal year 22 budgeted expenditure assumptions have been modified to include the following updates cost of living adjustments have been modified and are not included in every budget personnel benefits and

088resources for costs associated with decatur virtual academy are included in the fiscal year 22-25 budget operational budgets have been reduced because the year 22-25 next you have the more expenditure the major expenditure categories next slide please this slide contains the definition for the major expenditure categories next you have your full fiscal year 22 through 25 preliminary draft budget which includes both revenues and expenditures so what has changed since this budget was last presented to you let's start with the first column of numbers label amendment three that's the year 2021 budget every source and amount for fiscal year under the major revenue source is the same as last presented with the exception of the from fund balance line which is highlighted in pink the 9.1 million needed from fund balance has increased by approximately 182 000

089from the last presentation this increase is due to the summer school intervention programs that will take place this summer for example summer school this increase is in the areas of salaries benefits and supplies budget amendment number four requesting the board approval for these increases will be submitted at april's board meeting your new projected ended fund balance percentage for fiscal year 21 is now 8.9 percent which is listed below the yellow highlighted line but the second column of numbers preliminary fiscal year 22 budget the following changes have been made the amount of taxes have decreased to 55 50 399 453 this decrease is due to a lower military of 22.25 which is highlighted in yellow at the bottom of the preliminary fiscal year 22 budget column if you will recall last month the proposed millage rate

090was 23.10 today we have reduced the millage rate to 22.25 however if we reduce the amount of projected revenue be mindful that we must also reduce the amount of expenses so also change shifts the year major revenue sources are the financial impact of the two homestead exemptions as discussed in previous slide the current senior homestead exemption represents the 99 and the proposed homestead exemption represents the 1 which is the 36 000. tuition has increased based on the district accepting tuition from 30 kids for fiscal year 22. qbe has also increased based on the acceptance of additional students the amount needed from fund balance highlighted in pink has increased by approximately 2.2 million due to the lower military rate which reduced the amount of taxes collected so as i stated earlier when we reduce the military

091the amount of taxes collected also reduces so it is necessary to cut expenses for the preliminary fiscal year 22 budget second column of numbers under the expenditure categories the following changes have been implemented a review of all positions and position control showed a surplus of positions that equate it to one million dollars so that amount will help to offset some of the expenses salaries and benefits increase as a result of salaries for 19 teachers for the intervention programs additionally an intervention program manager and extended day tutoring also increase salaries and benefits and those are your intervention programs house of summer school listed in fiscal year 21 was removed from the fiscal year 22 budget salary and benefits for decatur virtual academy is included in the fiscal year 22 budget salary for a half pe teacher

092at the decatur high school and salaries for hr training specialist and an instructional coach are also included in the fiscal year 22 salaries and benefits unfortunately we will not be able to offer a cost of living adjustments to employees for fiscal year however we have included a step increase in the budget for expenditure categories outside of salary and benefits we have reduced operational budgets by five percent and fees and payment by two percent dr duty and i spent numerous hours contemplating on different options and scenarios and this was the best that we could come with that had minimum impact to the taxpayers and the employees of the district but fiscal year 23 through 25 we have decreased the military below as highlighted in yellow we anticipate that the military will remain the same but this

093is the year 2022 through 2024 and decreased back to 20.25 but just a year 25. with the decreased millage rate the revenue proceeds also decreases from taxes so we have had to look at our practices to determine areas that can be strengthened you will see the tuition amount increases as we put into place a process to analyze tuition for eclc programs and increase tuition as expenses increase although salaries and benefits and the cost to operate the ecsc program has increased the budget has remained the same for the last three years and the tuition amount has remained the same additionally we anticipate on retaining the 30 tuition pan students the salaries and benefits for the intervention positions gradually phase out throughout the fiscal years and dr judy will go into more details on the phaseout approach

094for fiscal year 22 in fiscal year 22 employees did not receive a cost of living adjustment however for fiscal year 23 we have included a 0.5 cost of living increase for fiscal year 1 percent increase and for fiscal year a two percent increase step increases are included in all fiscal years there is also some savings in future years from the decatur virtual academy for the salaries and benefits as the number of teachers in the k2 program decreased from five and fiscal year 22 to three and this year 23 through 25. we anticipate on gradually increasing the operational budgets in fiscal year 23 through fiscal year 25 by 2 each year i know this is a lot of information and at the end of this presentation if you want to see all the changes from what

095this year to the next since the year or explore different options dr duty has created a spreadsheet that will allow you to see the details next we have the sample tax appraisal values so with the new military we included a sample tax appraisal to calculate the financial impact on taxpayers if the military is increased from 20.25 to 22.25 for property with the market value of six hundred thousand the assessed value which is fifty percent of the market value would be three hundred thousand when the assessed value is multiplied by the proposed military of 22.25 you will see that the increase in fiscal year 22 for property tax would be 600 annually before any tax exemption for property with a market value of six hundred thousand in this year 2025 we anticipate reducing the millage rate

096back to the 20.25 which will reduce the 600 amount next we have staffing consideration for fiscal year 21 as you are aware school site personnel and pre-k workers qualify for a 1 000 bonus that will be funded by the governor's office and department of early care and learning employees that work at locations outside outside of school facilities do not qualify for the bonus offered by the governor's office our department of early care and learning we realized that the diligent work of central office staff such as payroll staff development technology operations student support and the academic team behind virtual learning were primary factors in the effective and efficient transition to virtual learning therefore superintendent duty and his cabinet are proposing to reallocate funds within our current fiscal year 20 budget to ensure all district level employees

097in positions of coordinators and below are awarded one thousand dollar bonuses and we will follow the same guidelines as those offered by the school site personnel the superintendent in his cabinet and all positions at a director level or higher will not receive the one thousand dollar bonus for the fiscal year 22 staffing requests in consideration for central office positions and reviewing the vacancies there are several key vacancies that have contributed to savings in personnel a few cabinet positions have been vacant for several months in fiscal year 21. which have resulted in savings from those positions we are proposing that the savings from the vacancies be reallocated to cover the 106 798 and staffing requests for central office positions for fiscal year 22. the savings from fiscal year 21 will contribute to increasing the end of

098fund balance for just the year 21 which will be the beginning fund balance because the year 22. the next slide is the list of positions assigned to locations other than school sites that superintendent duty and cabinet are proposing to fund bonuses from their existing fiscal year 21 budget positions in red that have been striked through are positions that will not receive the bonus okay this slide represents your fiscal year preliminary special revenue funds budget in addition to general fund the board also reviews and approved special revenue funds budget school nutrition budget and the capital funds budget which we will discuss in upcoming slides this special revenue funds budget represent grant funding received from the state and federal source special special revenue funds budget is spent on a reimbursable basis and the budget is determined based

099on current year allotment and our preliminary estimates from the grantor the grants for this budget includes the pre-k grant which is a state lottery funded educational program for all age eligible four-year-old children the purpose of georgia's pre-k program is to prepare children for success in kindergarten in later school years although the pre-k program is primarily funded through the lottery financial support from general fund is required under the transfer in row there is an amount of three hundred ninety four thousand four hundred and thirty three dollars that is subsidized from the general fund we will talk more about programs that we subsidize in an upcoming slide the projected preliminary budget for the pre-k program is 1.2 million the remaining grants are grants issued through federal government and includes title 1 grant which is awarded to provide

100supplemental resources for improving the academic achievement of students the projected preliminary budget for the title 1 grant is 428 500. the ess flow through grant is an additional resource for students with disabilities under the individuals with disabilities education act this grant allows us to serve students with ieps the projected preliminary budget for the ess flow through grant is nine hundred sixteen thousand seven hundred and sixty four the special ed preschool grant is an additional resource for serving students aged three to five with disabilities under under the individuals with disabilities education act the projected preliminary budget for the special education preschool grant is 26 560. the junior reserve officers training courts grant referred to as a jrotc grant is sponsored by the united states army and awarded to high schools to enforce the value of citizenship

101service to the united states and personal responsibility in a sense of accomplishment the projected preliminary budget for the jrotc is 119 720. the perkins grant is a grant for improving the secondary and post-secondary career in technical education programs the purpose of the grant is to develop more fully the academic knowledge and technical and employability skills of students who elect to enroll in career and technical education programs and programs of study the projected preliminary budget for perkins is 17 350. the total preliminary fiscal year 2022 budget for special revenue funds is 2.7 million the next slide represents your fiscal year 22 preliminary school nutrition budget school nutrition program has five sources of revenue on this slide four is shown and the fifth source is the general fund which we will be discussing further on the next

102slide the largest source of revenue for the school nutrition program is revenues from sales it is anticipated anticipated that for this year 2022 school campuses will be open and operational and revenue from sales will be back to normal levels of operations federal and state sources are grants received for operations and other local revenue consists of miscellaneous revenue anticipated expenses for the school nutrition program reflects that the highest expenses of those for purchasing food 1.2 million and salary and benefits which are under school nutrition program at a cost of 1.1 million the anticipated revenues are aligned with anticipated expenses and allows for a balanced budget of 2.7 million next we have the history of subsidized programs so in the last few slides we we're discussing the budget for the pre-k lottery and the school nutrition program

103you have heard me refer to subsidizing those budgets with general fund this slide shows the history of programs the district is currently subsidized the slide regarding the school nutrition program i indicated that there was a fifth source of revenue funded for school nutrition the fifth source is the general fund in the first table titled snp you will see the past four years in the current year school nutrition budget and actual expenditures and this is again a general fund budget the average subsidized expenditures cost for the last four years for the school nutrition program has been 903 000 annually the majority of this budget is for personnel at the central office however there are small operational accounts in this budget for the ec lc program which is a tuition plan program you see the budget expenditures

104and the revenue collected for tuition and then you see the column label general fund the general fund column represents the difference between ecst expenditures and the revenue received the difference is paid by the general fund the general fund subsidizes the ecsfc program at an annual average amount of eight hundred twenty six thousand seven hundred and eighty for the pre-k lottery you have the budget and the actual expenses and then the amount of revenue received from the lottery the column general fund represents the difference between the actual expenditures and the amount of revenue received from the lottery the difference is paid by the general fund the general fund subsidizes the pre-k lottery program an annual average amount of 186 and 401. if you will recall the board approved amendment 1 to allocate an additional five hundred

105and seventy thousand two hundred and ninety three dollars to the school nutrition program and two hundred and ninety thousand three hundred and forty eight dollars to the ec eclc program for fiscal year 2021 due to facility closure from covet when i combine those amount with what has currently been spent are allocated for the degree subsidized program the total anticipated fiscal impact to general fund but the current fiscal year 2021 to subsidize this program is approximately 3.2 million okay next is capital funds overview the capital funds budget consists primarily of revenue proceeds received from special purpose local option sales tax referred to as floss the splash proceeds are generated from sales tax from anyone that spends money in the city shopping eating purchasing gas etc and the funds are allocated for capital outlay projects so fiscal

106year 2021 an average of approximately 498 000 monthly in splash proceeds for fiscal year 22 the estimated splost revenue budget is 5 million additionally the capital fund's restricted fund balance is estimated at 11.6 million and this amount is calculated as noted below under the section titled capital funds restricted fund balance calculations the restricted fund balance for capital funds is calculated by adding the ending fund balance as of february to the anticipated revenue through june and subtracting out the anticipated expenditures through june 30th and all of that is listed there this brings the total capital revenue available to 16.6 million the estimated expenditures which are based on projected completion of referendum approved projects debt service payment on certificate of participation in general obligation bonds approved projects totals 10.7 million the estimated indian fund balance for capital

107funds for fiscal year 22 is right under 6 million finally we have our budget challenges this budget season has presented numerous challenges starting with the projected ending fund balance because the year 2021 which was negatively impacted by over 3.2 million in cuts from the state and increased expenditures of over 33 million over 3 million due to covet 19. the impact of the pandemic and fiscal year 2021 has resulted in challenges to maintain the current military of 20.25 additionally no final decisions have been made from the state on school funding for fiscal year 2022. i will pass it over to dr judy now all right thank you lanita a couple of two things i just want to make sure to remind people of one the squash revenues which you saw at the capital fund sheet that

108actually comes from sales anywhere in the county not just within the city and that money is split proportionately based on enrollment with the county schools and it is very restricted and so when she talked about completing the project based on the um oh what's the word i'm looking for with the referendum there are certain requirements of what you're allowed to use that money for and so that's what that reflects so i just wanted to reiterate that as a reminder um so i'm going to jump into a spreadsheet i'm going to share my screen here and board members i also sent you a link in case you want to pull it up separately and look somewhere other than where i'm sharing you can that way you can scroll around if you want to i'll walk through

109it fairly quickly i am going to expand a little bit on a couple things that lanita um touched on and get into a little bit more detail and then we can go through whatever questions comments and and whatnot you have so let me get my screen set up to share here real quick and take just a second to get it sized correctly all right so you should see a spreadsheet on your screen these numbers the overall numbers will match the earlier slide that lumita presented but we get into a little bit more in detail so a little bit of an overview as we went through this process and as you've seen in previous budget iterations it was very difficult to fit in what we wanted to fit in and so in order to do it

110we were having absurdly high millage rates which none of us want um and so what we did is we approached this as how can we try to meet the needs especially as they relate to things like remediation and virtual offerings things like that how can we meet those needs are what we're trying to do with salaries for our staff but also keep a reasonable millage rate one that is reflective of the tough financial times but also stays reasonable and so we set a goal for ourselves to not go up more than two on the millage rate and to see what we could do can we make it fit within that and so the other thing i really wanted to do was not have a millage rate that is going back and forth and so you'll

111see in this proposal the millage rate remains stable for three years and then goes back to where we are now because we really wanted to try to see a light at the end of the tunnel that this is temporary it's recovering from the pandemic get us back into a position and then hopefully we would be able to go back to where we are now with the military if everything worked out the way we wanted so there's that piece um as when you shared unfortunately we won't really see benefits of changes to senior exemption until fy 23 so you'll see that change here as well um the um in terms of tuition students we did put in 30 students here anywhere you see this yellow that's something that we can easily change and the spreadsheet will

112recalculate so if we wanted to explore the one thing i'll share with the tuition students is we can definitely go for a smaller number if we go for a bigger number it will most likely require additional staff and therefore there would be expenses involved so 30 is about the limit i'm comfortable with feeling we could do it with existing staff okay so we could go lower without changing others but with higher we'd have to incorporate associated expenditures the um uh austerity cuts um just to reiterate what lanita shared we are projecting 60 restoration this year and next year and then ramping up to 80 and then 100 this really is a guess right and so at this point that's our best estimate of what could happen based on what we're seeing in terms of the

113financial environment of the state of georgia we do feel like there isn't going to be a need to maintain that austerity cut and that's why we ranked it back up to the 100 restoration meaning the cut would go away in the yellow you'll see the unspent balances um and so just a reminder the positive numbers mean you're taking money from the unspent balance and the negative numbers mean you're replenishing the unspent balance and you're building it back up again and when we get to the bottom you'll see the percentages associated so you can see the revenue projections actually go down um from one fiscal year to the next from last this fiscal year the next fiscal year and that's largely due to how many coveted expenses we're not anticipating having the expenditures i just want

114to give kudos to anita and her team for really looking carefully at position control and found significant savings um of things we were budgeting for that we probably didn't need the budget for and so it's over a million dollars that they found in the savings which is fantastic the flip side of that is every time we find something like that we have to be more careful with our budget because there's now not a place to rescue us if something goes wrong that makes sense so every time we cut things a little closer closer we have to be more accurate in what it is we're actually going to be doing in the expenditure sheet i want to um explain one thing because it can be a little confusing when you first look at it a positive

115number means that an expense is being introduced in that fiscal year if it if nothing else happens in that line it means it stays if that expense goes away you'll see a negative number taking it away so what you see in those in the expenditure part of the is slightly different than what you see in the revenue part so in the expenditure part of this sheet so when i'm looking at snp salaries we budgeted this year 570 thousand 293 dollars because we had to supplement um which she was talking about a little bit earlier and then next year we take that away because we won't need it next year that's why you see a negative number the following year i'll give you a couple more examples of these two and hopefully it'll start making sense

116the next section is salaries for intervention positions and so um originally we were hoping to do 21 positions and that just was not feasible there was no way we could make that work so we won't talk through what are our actual core needs what could it look like so we reduced it down to 15 teachers instead of 21 and then we also designated three of those as special education teachers you may recall me saying in a previous meeting how we have to remember there are always last-minute special education needs that come up we anticipate that happening just as much of this year and so we took those 15 teachers and designated three of them as special ed teachers so of the 12 intervention positions for other teachers beyond the special ed we added those 12

117in to the next year's budget for 715 000 and then we reduced by four teachers each year to get back to not having those extra positions so this goes with what we were talking about before of we anticipate the greatest need for responding to the pandemic next year and then ease it off a little bit in the following years so that's what that represents so we add them in and then we take four away we do not intend to do that through um terminations or anything like that well we're really hoping with so few numbers there we can do it through natural attrition of people moving in and out of the district the intervention program manager we see as a long-term need that could eventually help us with our overall mcss program multi-tier system of

118supports and so you'll see that 89 000 goes in next fiscal year and it stays there there's no negative to pull it back out because that is an additional resource we can use um into the future and then you'll see the next items are a lot of the remediation plan either for things we currently do or for some extra things that we're planning to do so for instance the standard innervation pro or intervention program doing some supplemental things with that you'll see all of these numbers are slightly smaller than what we did in the last budget i think they're about 75 of what they were before we looked very carefully at what we were trying to achieve and we felt like we didn't have to use that full amount of money for each of those

119what you see with the standard intervention program is um half of those expenses we anticipate that yet this year and then the other half next year and then we take it away in the future so the way that's in there that first time you see 28 125 that's an additional expense this year and by the way the numbers in blue are what we need was talking about bringing a future amendment to you for okay so that has not yet been approved by you all that would be that amendment for the 28125 is still in the budget for the next fiscal year because there's no negative number there to take it away and then it goes away the following year the summer school for dhs we realized that we were kind of double counting some funding

120because we already have summer school in dhs and so what we did is we took out what we've already budgeted for because we budget for it every year and then we um also like the others decrease that a little bit so that 27 000 that would be for summer school this summer after after the school ends and then similarly for 6 8 and k5 that would be for summer school this summer and those are a little higher if we don't have summer school for the site so that would be only the extended day tutoring and the intensive break program we anticipate putting in place next school year so you'll see that in the fy 22 budget and then we don't anticipate having that additional piece we'd still have the normal extended day trade tutoring just

121not the additional and so that subtracts out in the following fiscal year for the decatur virtual academy we looked at the results of the survey and based on the survey results we had i think it was about somewhere between 350 and 500 people i can't remember what the final update was it did look a lot like i was worried about it looking like which is the k2 kids are spread throughout all five k2 schools and so at any given school you would not be able to repurpose a teacher it would just reduce class sizes a little at the 3-5 level however the numbers were big enough if it showed up if it turned out to be that way you could take an existing say third grade teacher and make them virtual because there's enough students

122to cover an entire class and then as we thought through grades 6 through 12 we think it really needs to be something that the the support is provided on a more of an ad hoc basis because the kids get much more specialized as they go up in grades and so it's much harder to say we have a virtual you know math teacher who can teach every possible math course what is more likely to happen is we will assign a teacher let's let's say we have enough kids to offer in a virtual pre-calculus course we could assign one period of an existing math teacher to teach virtual pre-calculus and that way we can be much more specialized so this has actually a couple benefits to it so one of the things we're picturing doing is taking

123out all of those extra costs when we pictured it being its own school and not having a separate sensible and separate clerical support separate counselors whatever what we're picturing now with this slightly smaller version is have it be a part of a school and so for instance for the k2 teachers we would assign the k2 grades to one of the existing elementary schools for the virtual program so for instance i think um glenwood is our smallest school right now i think so we may assign the k2 virtual schools to glenwood the principal at glenwood would be in charge of that k2 virtual school the council would provide support in the kdu virtual school the front office people which provide support to the k2 virtual school and the benefit of that would be that we can

124be much more flexible then so let's say that we have two first grade teachers that each have classes of 15 and then as soon as all the kids get vaccinated we have 15 students who no longer want to be virtual we can now have that teacher transition to being an in-person teacher so that's what the vision is for that we also may be able to have those kids potentially go back to whatever school they would have been otherwise so let's say you're a winona park kid you want to be virtual in second grade you're now a glenwood student while you're virtual and there may be room in your second grade class to go back to winona park when you want to go in person so we need to work through the details of what exactly

125that looks like but it will it will allow them to be a part of a school community and get all those benefits that come from being a part of the school community grades 3-5 we would either assign them to one of the schools or depending on numbers we might have one at each school some representation so we need to see how people sign up for that but because we're looking at at each grade level over 30 kids we anticipate that we could pull from the existing teachers um and find a third grade teacher who can be the third grade virtual school teacher etc so um and then at high school we put in some spikens because it is possible that while working through the schedule we may not be able to have free periods and

126we may have to ask somebody to teach an extra period and so in that case we put in some money for stipends so we could pay them for that extra period if that comes down to that so that's the virtual academy picture and one of the questions that came up in the comments was about like the athletics and stuff like that i know that had been a concern previously this also addresses that because you would still be a retro student you wouldn't be a decatur virtual academy student think of it more as a program than as a school just like you may be in dictator career academy at the high school but you're still a dhs student right and so it would be similar with this it would be a program not a school okay

127and then we would still through our curriculum and instruction department offer that continuity vertically across grades but it would not be a film separate school okay um uh as lanida spoke to um obviously our salaries are by far the biggest part of our expenses and so any changes in the cost of living or step changes have drastic impact on the budget and so as we were looking at it it was very difficult to accomplish what we were trying to accomplish in some of these other areas while still having a cost of living right off the bat and so what we tried to do we wanted to continue with an increase of some sort and so we kept the step increases in across the board which on average is a one and a half percent increase

128there are exceptions and i want to make sure you know that that there are people who who are at the bottom of the salary schedule for instance and there's nowhere else to go and so you would not see an increase if you're that person and there are some weird steps in the state salary schedule where the salary is the same two years in a row so there are some instances where it would not be a one and a half percent increase there are others where someone might see a three percent increase right so it depends on where they are in the salary schedule um so we left the step increases in there and then we put the cost of living adjustments and tried to ramp it up to two percent which is our goal usually

129as quickly as we could and still make it viable the benefits section is very similar to the salary section it's just the benefit side of it of things so what does it cost for their health insurance just a reminder that for every employee that we offer health insurance to we are investing 12 279 dollars of funds that we are covering for that and so there are people whose salary is almost doubled just because we offer health insurance so it is a tremendous benefit and then we also took into account things like fica and trs and so you'll see that in this chart as well and then finally one of the ways um we were able to fund this is um that we did uh are recommending it across the board five percent cut in all

130of our other budget areas as you see listed right here and so the five percent cut we feel like we can still operate um it is a little it makes me a little bit nervous because we already have very lean operations budgets we put the vast majority of our money into people but we feel like as long as we can try to start restoring it which you'll see later it goes five percent cut but then we start bringing it back with two percent increases into the future but that way we are trying to put our money where we really feel is the most important which is in the people um and then pulling it from some other places so you'll see five percent cuts everywhere except the fees and payments because most of those lines

131we don't really have much say in and they're probably going to go up whether we want them to or not and then the other thing i'll note is you will see some items in here like um under the supplies and equipment fifteen thousand dollars that then we take out two 000 of it then we take out 13 000 of it those are most likely those are related to the remediation programs where we had some supply lines and things like that and these other pieces so you'll see some of those as well so the overall impact of this we are projecting an ending fund balance of 8.9 we would use four million of our uh unspent balance next year in order to balance the budget and that would allow us to meet our board policy of

132at least four percent just barely 4.1 um we would then of that 3.5 million fund balance we would be able to increase another 1.1 million the following year so we're actually starting to rebuild the unspent house at that point it goes up to 5.5 and then we hit that milestone the following year and then the following year the last year of this projection we're projecting at 12 percent even when we bring the millage rate back to 20.25 so i hope it's obvious that there was a lot of thought put into this we tried to bring you a budget that we would feel comfortable with um moving forward with if you said even if you say look good let's do it we feel comfortable with this budget we're of course happy to make whatever changes you

133guys would like to look at and explore but we wanted to make sure it was something that we could live with and feel like we're still accomplishing the goals of what we're trying to accomplish as we start recovering from the pandemic so that's a quick overview of what is there i know it's a lot to to digest are there any questions i can answer either about my part or that lanita or i could answer about her part um how many tuition students um no no no that wasn't the grades are the tuition students so the way we left it right now was either 6 12 or 9 12 and i think that's part of what we would want to talk about because we've had some conversation about it but we haven't really decided so it

134could be it could be flexible okay and then how many students does the budget accommodate for the virtual school so the virtual school um what we have tried to accommodate is basically what was in the demand um based on the survey so the of the k2 teachers these five teachers it's looking like we would need one kindergarten teacher two first grade two second grade and that is in order to try to have the similar class sizes to what we have in our in-person classes okay and then at the 3-5 it looks like we would need about two teachers per grade maybe three depending on how many actually sign up and so we'd need about three teachers but those would not be additional expense those would be reallocated from classrooms we wouldn't need because those kids

135had moved virtually and then the middle school and high school we would try to do with existing staff we haven't figured out the details because it'll depend on which kids sign up and which courses they need um but we budgeted a little bit extra there in case we had to ask people to teach an extra period here and there in order to cover what the need was okay so i was just wondering i know we don't know exactly how many students would um sign up but i was just wondering if you had a rough number of how many students we are able to accommodate about 350 or so if i remember correctly 350 from calgary across law grade the interesting thing about that number is i don't think we're able to dissect what percentage of

136those were covered related wanting virtual versus what percentage we're just wanting a virtual school has a more permanent solution well and part of the idea of this structure is it can be more flexible like i think we have to be prepared for either having a lot more kids in the fall than we anticipate and or um having to fluctuate through the school year and i feel like this solution is a lot more flexible than what we were originally picturing and so if we had a lot more say third through fifth grade um students want virtual at the start of the fall we could accommodate that much more easily by assigning a teacher to be virtual find another teacher or two or three or however many we need and if that demand changes through the year

137as kids get vaccinated as people feel more comfortable sending kids we can then transition some of those folks back to in person we do need to figure out some of those logistics right and so i don't want you to think that's all figured out because it's not um you would need to figure out like could we keep kids with their same teacher for instance and transition the whole class back what does that look like would they have to change we'd have to think through all those kind of things but i do feel like this solution is a lot more flexible than what we were picturing originally i think it's important i think that's helpful and i think it addresses some of the concerns that i'm hearing from the community which are are we prepared for

138the fall whatever may come right and i think this answers that question that yes we are preparing for being able to be flexible because we hope and we think we know you know a scenario that that may happen but we also have learned that we have to be nimble and i think this is giving us the opportunity to do that exactly what we're trying to do i have some top dollar questions and you can answer them i know linda can um i know that it's sixty dollars or six hundred dollars a year for the proposed millage increase for six hundred thousand dollar home so fifty dollars a month um what's the total revenue that that generates for this for the school system by increasing the millage yes um well here let's do this we can

139just change this number so right now we're anticipating stop property tax real of 45.938 and we just put this right here so we have it to refer to what might make it actually legible okay so if we change this so it's about 4.5 million dollars so 4.5 million okay and that's what that's what we need to replace to both build up the fund balance and to offer the virtual programming and the um okay and then like over mediation and to continue with cost of living and other salary adjustments okay second part of my question related is how much did we get from the two sort of federal things for covid so far in funding lunita do you know that off the top of your head how much we got from the care back if you're

140talking you're muted i'm sorry that was mute yes it's about a one million three hundred and forty one thousand okay from both of them combined correct okay because i i know the the senate just passed one that is about twice the size of the summer one and so the the higher ed stuff we were getting was suggesting that 126 million for k-12 versus the 46 million and so i'm just well let's talk through that so let's say that happens so yeah we adopt the budget and then all of a sudden there's this additional revenue that comes in right um that does not mean we would have to change next year's budget what it would more likely mean is we could bring the military down in the future faster yeah and not have to keep it

141where it is the second thing and this is this is kind of related is before we vote i guess i should drop the pretense because i know not everyone follows along but raising taxes in the middle of a pandemic always makes me a little nervous i know that many of us are comfortable many of us are not the unemployment rate dekalb county has gone up quite a bit um i'd love to be better than we hope on these austerity cuts before we were like we're increasing taxes both ways um does that mean we can do that um unless the unless decisions are made that we don't have control of i don't know how how we'll know because that i mean that's where the the what we're missing is the austerity cut it's not um plus

142the increased covet expenditures right those are the two two things because we didn't shut down we continued to pay um staff that would not have been funded otherwise and then the state which thank you lanita i love that's my favorite two pages by the way for anyone listening who wants to kind of break it down but it doesn't have percentages on it but the major revenue sources and the major expenditures is really good um but like property you know right down there qbe and the money we get from the state like they just took it away before confidently going forward with like 50 more dollars a month to live in decatur on your 600 000 house um and 25 on your 300 000 it'd be nice to have better answers on something totally agree and

143so part of the reason you're you wouldn't actually be for instance tonight you're not approving the money i know i know we do have sometimes marching order yeah we do have sometimes still we may get to the point that we're gonna just have to make a decision in order to get it set we can always amend the budget later um but yeah we may we may get to the point we just have to make a decision but we do have some time still but we we we know pretty well that it's going to be a i guess a 40 austerity cut this year yeah and we're not going to know anything about what we're going to do next year until next year so there's no right there's no way to get um i think we

144will i think we'll notice i'm anticipating will know at the end of this legislative season i was thinking what it's going to look like my point was that the future years and then beyond that it really is a gun right okay but the big unknown could be if something comes from the federal government which you know in that case i i think looking at the um millage obviously but also perhaps right and if we can do something maybe between the two maybe we sort of put it in each of those buckets somehow but i know it's been a priority of the board for a long time that we do what we can to keep our teacher's house competitive so that would be um at the top of my list um those two things if you

145get that money otherwise i really appreciate how you have been able to cover really some of our highest priorities including remediation for our students there's a lot in there and that's something i think is worth expanding on and sharing with the community in more detail putting the word out there what we're planning to do i know we're going to talk about it later but also including that in our communications who are legislators i know you're interested in hearing what we're doing for our students i think that's extraordinary to be able to offer the extent of remediation efforts that we're doing and it does cost a lot of money and we're asking our you know our taxpayers to pay for it but i think you know it's really the most important place we can be putting

146those dollars right now and i'm thrilled that you've been able to recognize yourself um and i'm also very glad to see that you've been able to make this virtual academy flexible to be able to accommodate what's going to be another start of the year so that we can react if we need to thank you both thank you anita thank you dr duty for your work fantastic details for the um tuition students um have we just flushed out yet or thought about how yeah not totally i have looked um marietta city has a tuition on program so i looked at some of their materials of kind of how they advertise it what rules they have in place do they just accept everybody or do they have standards of who they accept things like that so there

147are examples out there that we can pull from but we've not put a whole lot of thought into it yet so we know whether it's going to be viable or not i think my only question about this is the um one of the commenters mentioned the the issue that we've got i mean we all hope that we're basically back to normal in the fall we also all know as she said that kids aren't all going to be vaccinated and so you uh i think we don't have um we haven't budgeted for that type of whatever mitigations might be needed going into the fall but it seems possible that something's going to be needed and so i mean i don't think most of the mitigations that we would probably need aren't going to be additional costs

148i mean we've done we've done the hba sierra that did the venting and stuff we're talking about masks but until you get to scheduling if we um if there needed to be okay so i hear the the virtual academy is flexible so it can expand um i guess the big question is space in classrooms yeah correct so in fall i am not anticipating that being able to have the our social distancing spacing right because we're going to have to go back to a regular class size in order to accommodate the number of students that we would have in person most likely now obviously all of this is hypothetical right but most likely we would have to go to more of a normal class size and so that's a big unknown in our budget that if

149if that proved to be unwise we've just blown a hole in the budget um possibly yeah possibly or it may mean that we don't have an option to stay in person that we have to go virtual for more kids right because we can keep class sizes the same if everybody's going virtual where you get the problem is when you have some people in person and some people virtual to a great number right beyond what we're talking about with the virtual academy if you have huge numbers of kids doing these things we may have to reconsider how we did that if we felt that we had to have social distancing to the extent we're doing now that would have a very big impact and that's part of what i was getting out of how tight this

150budget is right that's part of what i want to make sure you understand is like yes it's 4.1 unspent balance right which is great because remember at one point we thought it was gonna be zero right so that's great but we've also seen how quickly that money can go when you have a crisis and so we are you know we're not building up to a normal fund balance right away we're building up over time and so that is a risk that we're taking in doing that other thoughts or questions don't forget to change yourselves back what the things you changed oh yeah yeah this is this isn't our official version i i was afraid i'd change something if not remember this is but i mean it's somewhat budget related as we deal with that i

151i would love to see a similar timeline for that's added to the website so that people can go and are beginning to make decisions a timeline about um you know when this is well known this is when you would know about a virtual decision yeah this is when we plan to have more details to you about x y and z um because people are filling in a lot of gaps right um and we've talked about that and tash and i've talked about it just something that says we've gotten a lot of emails it is impossible to respond to any of them but it has been like what are you doing for 2122 i know we're working on it so we are working on this when you can expect details um dr sims con continues to

152volunteer his time she's talking to the vaccine stuff tomorrow sorry name on the list right like what are the mitigation efforts you said that we are planning to keep in place when can we that would help with us from a budgetary perspective yep it would help with um parents as well i know that they would appreciate and fill in some communication guides i think it's a great idea i did just check if the the data virtual academy is closer to 500 not 350 closer to 500 but again that was based on what people knew about it at the time and we do anticipate that can change for a number of reasons okay okay so moving on from the budget operations and information service right so the next two reports just a reminder these are just

153here so that you and others can look at them and um this is part of our regular policy monitoring schedule um the parent family engagement one is an addition um because we wanted to pull some stuff together to share what we are doing um but those um we're not going to discuss tonight that's just so you have time to look them over and community members can look them over and those will be on the work session our next word session so that's when we will discuss those and then the board newsletter you may recall we're trying a little different approach so we have attached to the draft of a board newsletter and then if you want to share with us any additional things you want to add in there we talked about a few like

154for some of the budget highlights i think we can update that a little bit given some of the conversation tonight are there any other like actual items you want in there that you don't see yes i'd like to add a section on our proposed remediation effort good okay we will get that added in there any other things look like they're missing can we add in there about are teachers getting the vaccine oh yeah absolutely that's a great idea oh and also nice to have a just update the section about the kids going back to school and how many of our middle school and high school kids went back to school and when and how many of our k-5 are back okay there's an update on that yep no problem and we have a section for

155that yeah [Applause] because people ask like are they standing in the same place that close to each other that's right free copy we try to put a little note on things that say pandemic yeah okay we'll work on that um be watching for um a note to review because we we i would really like to try to have a getting these out like the same week as our meeting um and so we'll send out a note for you if you could look at that um to review that that would be great and then just a reminder we amended our agenda at the start of the meeting to talk about legislation so that's what would be next if you're ready to move on to that so i think we need to talk through kind of where

156we are in the legislative season um obviously crossover day was um yesterday i think and so i don't know if there's any either updates we want to provide or discussions we want to have because there is a lot of different legislation out there especially part in particular for decatur not mainly senior homestead exemption right is one of our big ones so any updates we want to give on that or any discussion we want to have in order to get back to i can talk about the senior homestead exemption at least a little bit and i'm not the expert on it but we can fill it in i know we've we've spoken with senator parent and she um well supportive of it and and talk about it and we're hoping to find someone in the house

157that's also willing to do it i had a number of seniors including several that worked on the homestead committee reached out to me this week or like where is it why wasn't it on the crossover date and then i was told that local bills don't have to be on the crossover day which i think i knew but i did have a moment of panic um we're like oh no we missed it and that sort of stuff so i guess i would encourage if you're interested in the bill or whatever or if you know a senior that is to reach out to your your representative they have this bill they've seen it i've personally emailed it to a number of them lanita kind of broke down what it covers and just kind of express to them

158why you support it and why it's a good bill for sustaining you know people being able to age in place in decatur in a financially solid way which was also broken down thank you any other legislative things i think so all right very good yeah all right and then future dates we've put some of the upcoming dates don't forget board members we have some of that cognia stuff coming up for the accreditation um so april 1st um so still about a month off i believe we have those under charges we do have one where um there is a board of work session which is the one we really would like everybody at um there is another one where we can um often times it's just like the chair and vice chair or two other representatives

159go to of course everybody's welcome but if we have more than the two then we have to post it as a meeting so we can talk more about it i have conflicts for both that were scheduled on the first okay i might be able to make one but yeah no that's fine not a problem all right so that is that and then uh just a reminder we've recessed the exec session so at the end of the meeting if we want to reconvene we could do that yes so we will be ending our regular board meeting for march 9th at 9 07 p.m and we will go back into exact session no further um action will be taken after exact session um um all right thank you so much guys have a good evening thanks everybody

160jaina we'll go back to that link from before okay all right thanks everybody