February 9, 2021 Board of Education Meeting

001it looks like it's slowed down a little bit so i think whenever you're ready to start we can go ahead awesome okay um good evening everybody we're calling to order our school board meeting for february 9th starting at 6 36 welcome everybody thank you for joining us um as usual we will start with a moment of silence and if we could please take a moment in that moment of silence to lift up and think about the pritchard family who has recently lost their daughter nicole to the decatur community who has lost a community member and a student from renfrow the level of pain that our community and that family is feeling is insurmountable so if we could all just have some positive vibes and take a moment of silence for that family that would be

002greatly appreciated thanks so much guys all right and for uh the board members and all who can if you'd like to stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance pledge allegiance to the faith of the united states and to the republic for which it stands indivisible with liberty and justice okay so um let's take a look at the agenda um there any revisions um for the agenda hearing none um for the minutes from the last meeting as well as our work session um our last board work meeting was on january 27th and our work session was january excuse me opposite board work session was january 27th and our regular monthly board meeting was january 12th do we have any revisions um to the minutes for those two meetings okay so the agenda is accepted

003and approved as presented unanimous awesome all righty all right our next item is the eclc spotlight yes all right so i cannot remember who we have presenting that if it's sir or somebody else but we can let them uh pull up their presentation while we're finding that her or whoever's presenting just a quick shout out to shaina for finding that moving flag i really like that it was a motion graphic good job shayna thank you thank you shayna if they're supposed to be audio we can't hear it shane i just say no i just sent a nudge sarah garland wasn't added as a panelist i just entered the invite to come on up she should hopefully rejoin in a moment okay thank you do we have elevator music while we wait or i was gonna

004say normally we could move on to the next agenda item but that's the big one so right i don't think we want to get stuck in there there yeah they're from here hey hi sarah hi i was talking about that no problem you know we're still figuring out this zoom thing so we actually recorded um a video to essen there should be sound to this presentation shannon's got it just remember shane when when sharing you also need to click the share audio button good evening dr duty and school board thank you so much for allowing us an opportunity to talk a little bit about what we're doing at college heights with regards to equity um dr carla zuzuk our instructional coach and i will be walking you through our presentation this evening and we'll be

005sharing a little bit about all of our hard work i want to start off by sharing with you what our equity vision is so at college heights our equity vision is to align evaluate and update integrated systems of professional growth assessment inclusive practices and accountability that build confidence and confidence for every student while eliminating achievement gaps so we really are keeping this equity vision at the forefront of all of our work and initiatives that we're doing at the school and making sure that we really are working and striving to look at how we can be eliminating achievement gaps for students at this young age so at the end of last year we had an opportunity to apply for a grant we sat as our school equity team saying how can we really support our equity

006vision and we took advantage of this grant cycle that was provided to us through the early learning property management company also known as elpm and they are the company that actually built college heights and every year they have a grant cycle and they award fifteen thousand dollars to high performing programs that have initiatives that really think outside the box and so we were so pleased and excited that we were awarded this grant last year to support the equity work that we're doing here we really were focusing and targeting early literacy and how we can do that through the lens of equity um we're looking to build early literacy for young children and we've taken a holistic approach by using the lens of equity to thoughtfully implement new practices and initiatives we decided to focus on

007early literacy and equity based on what our data was telling us and so the school equity team i'm in the administration really use the data to determine what our needs were when it comes to equity with the students and the family and the staff so first we looked at our qualitative data to determine what the staff needs were and we really determined that our needs are looking at the culturally relevant practices of our staff and included in that are our texts culturally relevant text in the classrooms and we're looking at all classrooms birth through pre-k and so we're looking at how can we use an equity lens to really determine what culturally relevant texts look like and what we do with those texts and looking at culturally relevant teaching practices the second data point we

008looked at was really all about esol support so as you know the city schools decatur esol services start when the student is in kindergarten but clearly we have students younger than that that have those same needs and so we are looking at how we can support our twos and threes and four-year-olds that have eosl needs and how we can look at supporting the families and students before they get to kindergarten so this grant is going to help us do that the third data point we looked at the past four years consistently our data is telling us that students in our early head start programs are students who are two years of age have consistently scored below their peers in the areas of expressive language as measured by our preschool evaluation skill which is the assessment

009we use in the fall and spring and consistently over the four years we're seeing that these students are starting college heights at a lower foundation of expressive language we really wanted to see how we can support those students and those families with creating a stronger foundation before they even start school and then lastly we looked at our mtss data and currently 45 of our students in mtss are needing interventions around expressive language and that will also include those students um that are needing esl support and areas of expressive language our long-term goal so what we really want to get out of this grant with regards to equity is we want to look at building connections with families increasing teacher capacity and culturally relevant literacy practices and implementing evidence-based interventions for students seeing support and expressive

010language how are we going to achieve our long-term goal we're going to approach it in three different ways first by providing professional learning to our staff as a whole second by working with students and teachers in the classroom modeling interventions and providing support directly and third partnering with our community and offering support to parents and families on family literacy practices our school support has two different approaches right now first our school-based equity team has been participating in monthly round tables using the book don't look away it's about racial justice in early childhood and from these roundtable conversations offered by high scope our curriculum we are going to make make a team of train the trainers who are going to redeliver the content to the larger staff and also provide professional learning to each other around

011culturally relevant pedagogy secondly we have three staff members who have been accepted into zoretta hammond's culturally relevant teaching by design and the professional learning experience that they're participating in is centered around building capacity and developing a strong instructional practice and culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy we're very excited about both of these two opportunities for our staff members and feel like it will really move the needle on staff capacity for doing culturally relevant work and using the lens of equity to support students second in classrooms and with children directly we're going to be using some of our grant funds to contract a literacy consultant who'll be providing early intervention classroom support to children who aren't meeting benchmarks in expressive language as measured by our preschool evaluation scale and in particular focusing on our english language learners

012using an equity lens our school-based equity team has also assessed and curated a collection of books and resources both professional texts and props that go along with those books for all of our classrooms birth through pre-k so that their materials are updated culturally relevant and reflective of the diversity of our student body with our parents and community we are working to sustain our partnership with the decatur housing authority in the past we offered a series of family literacy workshops in person but however we've now pivoted and those literacy workshops will be virtual in format they will introduce developmentally appropriate home literacy practices will be modeled and presented by our own staff these workshops help families focus and develop literacy strategies for infants toddlers and preschool-aged children that they can put into action at home in

013addition our advisory council has created an equity diversity and inclusion parent group our most recent event talking to young children about racism focused on how parents can help children value diversity and challenge unfairness and how to use children's literature to facilitate conversations on race and racism so how will we know if we're successful in our efforts to meet our goals first we're going to be looking again at expressive language scores on the pes hoping and measuring the kinds of improvements that we see second we'll increase the culturally relevant materials and resources within each classroom third students who are involved in the rti and mtss process due to expressive language concerns will continue to be monitored for progress and improvement with the hope that they'll exit the process fourth parent attendance and engagement in the parent

014literacy workshop series we're hoping will be consistent and or increasing and we're also providing a qualitative survey to measure any increased knowledge of literacy practices for families who've attended the parent workshop series so as we go over all of this different data we'll see if we're successful in our use of these precious grant funds and continue to tweak and change our approach as needed we would be remiss if we did not mention our head start program update as you know the head start grant unfortunately with city schools of decatur ended this year however we really want to express our gratitude and appreciation to the board and to dr duty who have offered those families who were part of our head start program tuition-free spots and our 0-3 program families have taken advantage of this wonderful

015offer and we are so appreciative of their continued participation in the program at college heights thank you so much for your support of early childhood learning and of all of our school family here at college heights and we appreciate your time thank you so much sir and uh carla that was a great presentation really appreciate it and uh i think they at least sarah is online if you guys have any questions we can uh we can do that i will also clarify um in addition to that last slide about those early head start students there is one student who will still need a scholarship next year because they'll be in a tuition paying field so i reached out to def to see if they would be able to support that at all and they're going

016to explore that possibility as well so um and the others are moving into pre-k where they don't have to pay tuition so um do you have any questions or thought to share after the presentation i think that was very well done thanks um thank you sarah and team that was that was very good thank you we have an awesome facility there at college heights absolutely all right so um no comments from the board we are moving on to the in-person and virtual planning um for our renfro and high school taking away david all right so in just a moment i'm going to turn it over to greg wiseman principal at renfrown middle school um i just want to do a quick introduction to let you know we are going to focus on grades 6 through

01712 in our presentation tonight we still are looking at options for pre-k five we know there are some folks who wish the kids went more hours each day we know that there are some folks who wish more students could come back and those are things we're exploring but we're going to focus on 6 12 tonight and next week we're gonna dig a little more into pre-k five and and hopefully soon after we can share some um updates on those plans so just wanted to make sure to set the stage for anyone who was hoping to hear things about other grades we really are only going to be talking about 6-12 tonight so without further ado i'm going to turn it over to greg to do a presentation about renfrow if you guys could hold questions

018where possible um till the end that may be most efficient greg's going to present and then um rochelle principal of dhs is going to present um and if it's possible to hold your questions to the end you may get them answered as the presentation goes um and we may be most efficient that way um if you need to jump in feel free but if you can hold the question that would be great too so without further ado greg you want to take it away okay thank you dr duty good evening everyone and thanks for this opportunity to present renfro's plan to offer a face-to-face option for students i'm going to go ahead and share my screen now okay so we began this process late october of developing what seems like hundreds of versions of plans

019as with covid there always seems to be a moving target and it's like a whack-a-mole game where we fix one issue with the um with the schedule and then it creates another one that needs to be addressed so we've been at this for a while before i begin i have to recognize the renfro admin team of summer clayton sarah taulton buck alexis glenn and kristen carribly that are responsible for most of the creativity and vision behind the schedules i'm presenting they are remarkable you can think of me as just the pretty face presenting these plans to you so let's get started we developed two schedules for two different scenarios schedule a will be used if 52 or more students choose to return to in-person learning schedule b will be used if fewer than 52 of

020students choose to return to in-person learning those numbers are based on 15 students per room of all ela math science and ins classes so schedule a again is used if 52 or more students choose in-person learning so in-person students are divided into two groups each group has in-person learning two mornings for core classes and virtual learning two mornings for the same core classes all morning classes are taught concurrently in-person students then take world language and connections connection classes virtually at the home in the afternoon not concurrently virtual students take world language and connections in the morning then core classes in the afternoon all virtually and no classes taught concurrently for schedule a and actually for schedule b as well wednesday mornings renfro offers advisement and two help sessions all to students virtually i'll walk you

021through a graphic of this schedule in a minute then schedule b again this is the one for for um if fewer than 52 of students choose in person learning in-person students would take ela math science and ins classes four days in the morning go home take world language and connections classes in the virtually in the afternoon then virtual students take world language connections in the morning then ela math science and ins in the afternoon all virtually okay and go i'll show you a graphic of that as well all right then um so basically uh for both of these schedules students remain on current teams with current core teachers okay could there be an exception yes if there is an out of the box team on a certain grade level that 85 or 90 of those

022students choose in person and then another team on that grade level only chooses 20 percent then yeah maybe we'll have to do some hard decisions there okay um students will be also for either one of these schedules they'll be cohorted with the same 15 students or fewer depending on the learning choice people make for each in-person core class okay so for those in-person core classes they'll be cohorts of 15 students okay an exception well at this point we can count on all students that receive special education services will be on more than one cohort who choose import in-person learning okay so schedule a schedule b the learning choice link and other important plans can all be found on the rent for a website so for the board members tonight and for the benefit of the

023parents tuned in tonight i'm going to navigate through this information via this page so then the parents will know where to go after this meeting does that make sense okay so here we go so let me go to the website so this is the main page of the rent for a website and all you have to do is go to reopening plans and this is the one stop shop for everything that you need to make your choice okay so before i get into the specifics of schedule and schedule b let me just share a bird's-eye view of this page all right so at the very top this is where parents can go for their link to the parent portal to make their learning choice okay so they would click there they would log in and

024this uh possibly will be open tomorrow morning to go ahead and make their choices once you log in you're going to click on the word more and then click on the words learning choice portal and then you can make your choice okay so the schedule a overview that i just shared with you is all right there and then i have some links here where if you want to see it from the teacher's perspective you can click there if you want to see it from the student's perspective you can click there okay the i'll click on the overview to check it here and then when we go into uh schedule b same thing there's all the information there in a glance and then the different perspectives there then at the end here i will have updated

025a video that describes the arrival process and the dismissal process in a video that will be there tomorrow and we already have a um the the procedures of um of the different pro processes and procedures of the school here so i've already finished the recordings of a video description of schedule a here and schedule b here i've just finished recording those they'll be linked there so if you want to have me describe those schedules in detail as you're looking at them as i'll be doing with you guys they will be available for you guys all right so um [Music] let me go ahead and start with schedule a okay where am i all right so again this is if there is more than this should be 52 not 53. schedule a is used if 52

026or more students choose to return to in-person learning all right so this is the in this is the in person schedule i'll show you in a second and then this is the the kids who would choose virtual schedule here all right so there's two there's a couple things i need to point out to you so again we have three distinct groups of kids here okay we have group one of in-person learners we have group two of in-person learners and then we have the virtual kids that are at home all right so basically what happens here is this we've split these group these in-person learners in two groups group one will take their four core classes in person in the school on mondays and tuesdays so this might be ela and then math on monday then

027it might be science and in individuals and societies on tuesday this group one group will take those classes in class while the group two folks are taking those same classes concurrently while that group two for those group two folks are home okay then conversely on thursday and friday the group two in-person group kids are taking those core core one two three four ela science math ins they're taking those in person while the group one kids now beam into those concurrently and take those concurrent so this these these core classes are taught concurrently for the two in-person groups then after dismissal and lunch those in-person students will then take their connections and world language classes in the afternoon as you can see there are these four 45-minute blocks okay and they will take their connections a

028world language class into one of those blocks on mondays if they're if their connections and world language classes are odd periods they'll take them mondays and thursdays if they fall on even periods they'll take them tuesdays and fridays okay so they'll have these 45-minute classes maybe they'll have a a connection and a world language class here in in this block somewhere and the other times will be used for asynchronous learning all right so that is the in person for schedule one and if you go down to the virtual kids for for sk for schedule a um spoiler alert this is going to be the exact same schedule for virtual kids on schedule b okay so the connection or the the virtual kids are now at flip-flop they're taking the connections and world language classes in

029the morning while then they take the core classes in the afternoon so very similar to the um they have the four 45-minute blocks where they could have their odd period world language and connection classes monday thursday even ones tuesday friday they have lunch and then they have these 90 minute blocks for core classes okay and they mirror each other monday and tuesday near thursday and friday so they might have ela and science on monday and then um math and individuals and societies on tuesday so what this is is a 45-minute live lesson followed by a 45 minute asynchronous 45 minute live 45 minute asynchronous for monday tuesday and then there's it followed then it goes again thursday and friday we had to spell this out because we had to really spell out these asynchronous times

030because this block of time and that block of time is when those core teachers will use that for some for planning time okay they have precious little planning time in this so that is the schedule a again if we have more than 52 percent of our students choose this option all right so now let me go to schedule b all right again this is if 52 or less choose to go in person all right and you'll see right now that like the guts of this schedule is pretty much the same okay this is the in-person schedule here and the virtual schedule here all right so let's go back to in-person so since we have 52 percent or less or fewer students coming in person in this scenario all of those students can come in monday

031tuesday thursday and friday for their core subjects and these course subjects are our 75-minute classes by the way same with the other schedule okay so all in-person kids come in for their two core subjects each day transition in the middle okay then in thursday and friday their other two their their core subjects in the morning as well okay so all kids these are not concurrent no hybrid situation but they're still on their teams and they still and they're going to be cohorted okay um and then it's the same for the connections the same 45 minute um sec blocks there connections world language classes if they're odd they have them on mondays thursdays even uh tuesdays and fridays before i and actually let me just jump down to virtual real quick here this virtual schedule is

032exactly the same in schedule b as it is in schedule a okay they have those connections blocks in the morning and then they have those core subject blocks same timing and everything in the afternoon but let me jump up here real quick and i want to talk a little bit i've i've glossed over a few things that i want to just make clear so first of all wednesdays okay wednesdays this is the same for schedule a or schedule b or if your core excuse me or if you're in person or if you are virtual okay we're gonna have help sessions 45-minute help sessions just like we started a couple weeks ago for students for enrichment or um or remediation and we will also have our advisement on wednesdays okay we have to have advisement virtual

033because those kids are all mixed up on different teams and different grade levels so wednesday mornings there's help sessions and advisement and then wednesday afternoon break for kids okay then lastly what i wanted to show you is talk a little bit a very little bit about coming to school transitions and dismissal okay so i know um you know a lot of the school board members i know a lot of you well and you've had students at renfrow and the folks out there lots of you have been to the school and you may have seen in the past and pre-covered what it looks like when kids come to school at renfrow what transition breaks look like at renfrow and what dismissal looks like at renfrow well that was pre-coveted okay during covet enduring this plan like

034those days are gone all right these the the the the the block for kids coming into school is going to be very deliberate it's going to be staggered and it's going to be very well orchestrated i'm going to have a video on the website where i describe it in great detail okay same with transitions you know the transitions pre-covered are four minutes you've got kids getting out of a class and running down the hallway going to the other class they've got four minutes okay for this we have 15 minutes all right we are going to orchestrate this and make it very deliberate and take our time and do it safely okay between one class and the other class and then dismissal again pre-covered that bell rings and it's mayhem okay now it's again it's going

035to be very deliberate staggered you know it's going to be walkers and bike riders go and then car riders will go and then you'll be lined up in certain areas students are going to enter the building by a specific doors based on the team where they are the closeness of that door and kids are going to be leaving through those same doors so just know that these dismissal arrival and transitions are going to be very deliberate and i'm going to have videos coming up later um probably posted tomorrow that describe both of those in a lot of detail um i think that's all i have at this point um dr duty all right thanks craig that was very thorough we may have questions after rochelle so stick around but thank you that was a very

036good presentation i'm going to turn it over to richelle now to present the plan for decatur high school and you are muted rochelle yes i am thank you very much i was making a comment about how um age goes before beauty greg so um all right so thank you everyone again um like greg there's um many people behind this this plan um not only the aps but also my covid readiness committee was instrumental in helping us make some of the decisions when it came to how we were doing instruction how we were going to be in the hallways etc all right so just like greg i have a schedule and a schedule b my parameters are 45 this is based on the number of students that we can fit into our classrooms so if we

037have more than 45 percent of our student body returning to in-person learning we're going to use schedule a if we have less then we are going to use schedule b all right so here is schedule a so um like all of our schools right now we are going to be releasing for lunch at home and so for schedule a we will have group a come in person on mondays and tuesdays and then group b will be at home with also the virtual students the students who choose virtual and everyone will be logging in to the computer at 8 35 to their classroom with their teacher in their classroom and they will be participating in the instruction and learning while the students in the classroom are as well then they go home at 12 30 for

038lunch and then at 2 o'clock everybody logs in again for asynchronous live support wednesdays we as you all know you heard we heard comments at our last board meeting the dhs slt heard a lot of comments and our wellness wednesday plan right now is working very well so we would like to continue that on wednesdays and then on thursdays and fridays the other half of the students who choose in-person learning will come into the building while group a and our virtual students will be at home logging in the only difference between schedule a and schedule b is that for schedule b if we have less than 45 percent of students choose in-person learning we will be able to have those students come all four days with concurrent learning for the students who choose virtual um

039so our goals when we were creating these schedules is that we wanted a consistent weekly schedule that students and families and teachers could plan on we wanted the ability to remain socially distant in our classrooms and that is the 45 percent that's based on the numbers that we saw parents and students choose back in the fall we've done a lot of work on wellness wednesday and we really like the plan that we have right now and so we would like to continue that our goal is to for students to eat breakfast and lunch at home both the covid readiness team that i have and teachers and students showed concerns about eating in the building eating in a large cafeteria and so our goal for this schedule was to allow for them to eat breakfast and

040lunch at home we wanted to have an easy transition to virtual learning in case a class or a teacher had to quarantine and we wanted to continue to provide high caliber learning experience for those virtually in pers and in person um like greg i am going to share my website um so everything that i have presented is here on our website if you go to reopening plans i have links here to all parts of our coved manual for returning in person at the bottom we have returning to in-person um videos we have a video on what concurrent learning will look like a video on operations and safety and a video of me narrating what this school schedule will look like for students some of the big feedback we heard from families and students in the

041fall was that they didn't feel like they could make an informed decision about how their students were coming back to school we heard that loud and clear both renfro and the high school and so we're making sure that we're letting you all know what school will look like both in person um and virtually so please check out all of our videos and just like renfro um we have here how to make your learning choice selection this will also go out in a district email to families tomorrow so before the board asks any questions i would like to say that greg and i both have spent a lot of time with our teams talking about how to come back and when to come back and it is our recommendation that the middle school and the high

042school students come back at the earliest march 8th this is in line with the time that we gave our elementary schools to prepare to come back which is two and a half weeks and so um we really feel like for families and teachers to plan um our recommendation would be no sooner than march 8th all right thank you rachelle great presentation and i want to thank you both a couple things one [Music] i know you guys can tell this by looking but sometimes because they've done such a good job it's filling a lot of this down i cannot tell you the number of hours that have gone into this planning and all the things behind the scene to figure these things out as you know we often talk about how kids don't come in nice

043neat little packages right and that you really have to as soon as you start talking about doing things different with scheduling it gets very complex very fast and so kudos to them and their teams for all the work they've done has really been absolutely amazing a couple things i want to share just to make sure they don't get lost in the shuffle one for these two plans we are not recommending any specific metric to determine when these go back we think we're being very careful with these plans um if you've looked at the data recently you'll see that it's dropping very our cases are dropping very quickly and things are looking good if we expanded beyond these plans that's when we might want to consider implementing some metrics associated with such expansion much like we've

044been talking about at the pre-k5 level i also want to clarify that we got a lot of feedback after the last learning choice survey and so we are removing the um flex options um and that way people are making a choice one way or the other and there's none of this flex in between and that's why we created two plans that is the plan that will flex not the people that will flex and so depending on the percentage of people who respond a certain way you'll see which one of those plans gets implemented and then finally we didn't mention but i want to make sure to mention we are going to continue to encourage people to avoid using our bus transportation if at all possible there may be some very specific circumstances of course with

045like special education students for instance who needs specialized transportation that's that's not an issue there may be some safety considerations for kids of certain ages at renfor the high school and so we'll address those as we need but we really want to limit our buses as much as possible to the elementary students so that we can keep them as spread out as possible and the vast majority of middle school and high school kids do have alternate ways to get to school in many in many situations and so we're going to continue encouraging families to explore other options for getting their kids to school i just wanted to talk on those things and we will open it up for any questions or comments you might have as the board um the that present those presentations were

046awesome thank you guys i could definitely um tell all of the hard work that you've put into it so i will hold my comments till the end and um heather did you want to start with some comments or questions there we go just had to meet myself um i i also think that those plans sound extremely thorough conservative and well thought through and i like that we're able to accommodate basically all students who want to come back so my first question is for how long is this decision valid that the families are being asked to make and will there be another opportunity given just how fluid our situation is with you know cases coming down and hopefully continuing to do so and potentially more distribution of vaccines etc just um i'm wondering how long this

047choice will hold and if there'll be another option that's a great question heather and i'll i'll jump in and answer one part and then rachelle and greg may have more to add but um basically what i picture happening here is that we hope that your choice will stand until we make whatever the next phase of our plan is and so if we're able to welcome back more students or for more days or for more time that we would like this the decision you make to stand until that point we also recognize that there are very special circumstances for families sometimes and so we would ask them to reach out to their principal if they you know two weeks after they make it selection something significant changes in their life and it really changes what their

048option would be they should reach out to the schools and we'll do our best to accommodate them but um in general that's what i would say and it's the same way we handled it with the elementary as well but um rochelle and greg feel free to jump in if you have anything to add there yeah and and greg excuse me if i speak for you but i think we both planned our schedules um so that we they're easy to manipulate if things are changing and if we decide to change things in different ways so um yeah we're we're prepared for that when whenever we have to yeah and just to add to that you know depending on the numbers depending on those percentages of learning choice um i would imagine would be you know will

049be flexible would be a lot more flexible if steve folks need to move from in-person to virtual maybe a little less flexible but we'll work with folks to go virtual to in person okay we should share also i just realized we should mention one of the reasons schedule a is the hybrid option is just based on the results we've gotten in previous learning choice surveys um this appears to us that they they most likely will be on that hybrid option if people um present their choices the same way that they have been presenting them previously so i just want to make that clear as well so that everybody knows we are anticipating probably being over those percentages and implementing schedule a in both instances is what we would expect to happen okay um i also

050one wondered if you could just talk for a minute about the teacher support for these plans michelle and greg you want to jump in there so i had a group of teachers who helped me they made comments they threw things out they added things i think the teachers the number one concern is how many students that they come in contact with during a period of time um and i think this definitely this schedule is really it hits the mark as best we can and for me the number one thing was about the food and the hallways and by limiting the number of students in the building at one time i definitely think that we're we're trying our very best to um to mitigate those concerns from the staff um i'll just i echo everything that

051rochelle said just to add to that you know we presented the the plan to the staff um in in paper uh you know earl um i guess it was over the weekend and then we had a staff meeting yesterday afternoon um and one of the things that made me realize yes i want until march 8th to to to finalize everything is that the staff has given us so much input and so much so many questions about a and b and just face to face in general so as we're presenting we had a google doc there where folks were just you know putting in like questions suggestions questions suggestions so um you know i think the admin team and i you know we're looking at some you know we're getting into the weeds a little bit

052where we're really looking into some of the big picture things and the teachers now with their input are really getting into the to the weeds of of taking it from a you know a piece of paper into like real life so so they're going to be extremely helpful for that jaina did you have some comments or questions yes um so and i guess greg and rochelle i don't know that you necessarily had the decision that you all were able to make the decision of whether rms and dhs returned or did you just you know probably carried out the charges that you all were given and so um and i think that you all probably did the best that you could given the situation um i still think i wish that we could um wait until

053teachers were vaccinated at the very least you know numbers are dropping but dr fauci has predicted by march that the more contagious variant virus will be the more dominant virus come march um you know the communication went out said that we have a few cases we've had a few cases since january on 19th but in reality we've had 24 confirmed cases um or 25 confirmed cases and we currently have 104 individuals in quarantine and 9 in isolation and so those are significant numbers for me and we don't know how sick they are um or what the long lasting complications there will be for those um folks and who just those are just the cases since january 19th um and so i just i wish that um i wish that we could wait and we all

054recognize the concurrent teaching is not ideal and how challenging that's going to be for teachers to supervise students in person and virtually and uh but again i know that you all i think you know carried out your charge um and so my other concern is about subs when we bring back um rmh rms and dhs will we have enough subs to handle you know the increased number of absences that will happen because of um cases and quarantines and things like that and what the plan is for that so um rochelle do you want to jump in i saw you wanted to respond i'd be interested in both your thoughts of whether you feel like you were told you had to come up with a plan to open at all cost or if this is something

055that you uh were interested in doing as well as your thoughts on the the other things that were mentioned there um and and thank you janna for those kind words and for recognizing how much work the teachers have been doing both and and what they're doing now and what they will do um we have been creating plans probably every two weeks like just anticipating when we're coming back because i think just like parents and students um you know want to come back teachers got into this work because we love being with kids so um you know as far as creating these plans we've been working on this since september and so um i think these plans show the parameters that we feel the most comfortable with and that honor the work of our coveted readiness

056teams so um those are the parameters that we worked around my only recommendation is as we're looking at dates to come back um you know greg and i can't say for sure like when we should but we are saying we don't think we should before march 8th so that is that is what we're saying if another decision is made we of course will honor that but um we just we know our staff we know our school and our families and so we're trying to be thoughtful about the time that we have to prepare and can you address rochelle were you told that you had to open on march 8th or did you guys choose that date no no no i mean we just chose like we knew we couldn't open sooner than that so that

057was why we chose that date clarify i i'm not saying that they were told to open by march 8th i'm just saying that um i know that since we have been trying to get back there has been planning i mean we want to do school right i i understand that i know that you have been working on this since the summer but we have been trying to figure out the the best time and all i'm saying is that i'm not trying to uh pass judgment on rochelle and greg for these plans i think that they have done a great job given the circumstances um and i appreciate that you know them saying not before march 8th i wish it could at least wait until um the teachers were vaccinated and i'm saying is that that

058decision i don't know if that was under their um power and control to make that decision to wait i i think that we all would really love to be vaccinated and so i think that is something that universally we are all in agreement with and um i'm really excited by our nurses getting trained on how to give vaccines and all of the things that are coming um so that as soon as we get the green light um our teachers and staff were all ready um but i i will say that um you know we are learning where greg and i talk to our counterparts at the k5 level daily and we are supporting each other as we're working through the process as we're communicating positive cases to families in the community and i really feel

059like we are able to learn from the successes at the k5 level and that's just because we have a very collaborative leadership environment team um so they've been doing really good things and we want to build on that for our older students right and and and janet thank you so much for your kind words and and just i echo everything that rochelle said the only thing you know i'll add is like i want nothing more than to get shots in the arms of my teachers i'm i mean i'm dying for that to happen so um so i'm with you there 100 and i do want to clarify jaina i'm not sure what communication said we've had a few cases i think i i hope we've been pretty transparent on how many cases we've had and

060i don't know of any communication that said a few um what we did do is put on a communication that shared that as we analyzed the cases there were two cases that we could not rule out in school transmission so i don't know if that's maybe what you were speaking about but the we have had um hopefully been fairly transparent as a transparent probably as any school district i think on what cases we have had i was referring to the staff scoop but i know that the dashboard has all of the cases listed but um that that verb which came from the staff scope okay thank you and louis do you have any questions or comments i i think it's uh i appreciate these plans i think they're very well thought out you know thank

061you for for coming up with something that can get us back to school um i think it's very important i think everybody recognizes that and i think it's time i just want to thank you and your teachers and your staff for for putting this together um to be frank i mean i'm disappointed at march 8th um and i understand and will defer to your recommendations on that i mean it's i'm not directing you one way or the other but i understand the recommendation i wish that we could do it sooner um and i you know i feel like we're almost a full year we've gone virtual and given how protective and well thought out these plans are and given the success we've had in k-5 um you know i i i just wish and i'll

062just leave it at that i wish that we could get in you know march 1 every week counts um but one way or another i appreciate the effort and the spirit the good thought that went into this and and i'm excited that we're going to get back i'll leave you with that thank you lois james any comments or questions yeah um all right i guess lewis is often the one to express his disappointment that we're not in the classroom but i think that is universally shared amongst a bunch of people who ran for office um thank you for your time the can either of you talk a little bit of just about the concurrent model i mean if i were going back in the classroom with two and a half weeks and had to start

063doing the concurrent model sort of the support that's in place and as a parent who's signing up for it um steps we're going to do for that yeah so james i'll talk a little bit about that um we do have a video on our website that mr hatfield did that outlines that shows what it will look like inside the classroom and the experience of students who are at home so i would encourage any decatur high school parents to take a look at that video before making their decision and the reason we chose a concurrent model and we've been doing professional learning on this since the fall we knew that just because of the nature of our courses we it was going to be hard to have a virtual school and then an in-person school and

064so we've been working on ways to do it effectively and so we've been working with teachers on what this would look like on the technology um so that we feel like our students are getting the best possible education in the classroom and at home um so i would just say look at that um video teachers will be talking they'll have um you know students in the class they'll be doing work on their computers but the teacher will be interacting with them and then they will be able to answer questions from the students that are at home virtually as well um you know i think we as as a staff and as an admin team we're doing our our planning based on trying to avoid the concurrent situation as much as possible and you know the

065the the middle school is structured differently than the high school where we do have teams and and things like that so almost all of our plans from again october on were um did not involve any kind of concurrent learning i think like in the high school situation the way the high school is they kind of knew there's like no way we're going to do this without concurrent learning so i'll be you know perfectly honest with you in our planning you know the the in order to have the two options um we didn't really come to the light bulb didn't come off in my mind that okay concurrent's going to have to be an option here one of our options until kind of late in the game so that kind of goes to the march 1st

066and march 8th thing for me like star if we do schedule a with the concurrent learning having that started march 1st is way too soon for me i'm even kind of nervous about march 8th to be honest with you because i think me and my admin team and my staff are maybe not as up to speed and prepared for that as as the high school is at this point and i don't know if you remember james but we um shared a lot of the research we're doing about concurrently and learning previously which we'll be able to roll out for the middle school and high school as well to help get to get them up to speed on what was learned when we looked at that before for those who who need the extra support right

067um i'm going to ask this here dr duty maybe you can talk about it and you've given a few updates about the vaccine and some conversations you've had um it seems to fit in well here um yeah yeah absolutely so um as you know we are really pushing hard to try to get vaccines for teachers i think everyone in the district is on the same page that we would love to get anyone vaccinated who wants to be vaccinated as quickly as possible we are working with the cab county board of health i was just in communication with them again today and aston is actually leading up our efforts to make sure that we um are ready to go so on any given day if they tell us all right we've got vaccines we're going to

068have a plan ready to go and so he is leading that effort for us that is not in sight yet just to be clear they are still working on that phase 1a and teachers are not in phase 1a and i think it's been made pretty clear that there are not going to be any changes to that um i don't think that that there's any equivocation there that um there's going to be that change despite a lot of hope that there could be so um we are just going to be prepared our nurses are getting credentialed with dekalb county board of health um as soon as we could get in for those meetings is in i think two weeks if i remember correctly um and so they've already gone through the training they'll get credentialed and

069at that point they are allowed to give vaccines once they're available so we will be ready to go um but it just unfortunately we gotta wait for the doses to come that's it for now since it's on a similar topic i'll i'm sorry tasha i'll just share real quick um because it has come up about the rapid tests that we're working to procure and that's on the agenda for later today but it's related to to the whole the whole piece um we are planning to purchase the bin axe now rapid covid tests um they are just another layer of the mitigations that we're looking at we found that at the elementary level we've noticed some instances where it may have been possible to avoid a quarantine if we had had a test like that available

070because every once in a while someone will come to school you know they think they have allergies or something like that they don't really meet all the criteria for who should be sent home but there's just this inkling like maybe we should go one step further and this will give the nurses that option to have that one step further so if a teacher comes to him in the morning or calls them and says hey i'm just not quite sure the nurse can give them that press before they're in contact with anybody else and we can tell kind of a high level right away if they're positive or not it is not the same as a pcr test and so often times you would then follow up with a pcr test depending on the results but

071it'll be another tool in the toolbox of the nurses just to kind of monitor what's happening in the schools and another layer of a swiss cheese model um thanks um i i hadn't finished answering all my asking all my questions earlier but i i thought you did a great job just now of segwaying into one of my questions was and it was just wanting you to expand a little bit to share our approach about quarantining because it's in our plan but if someone hasn't read all the maybe all the fine print on the in the plan and then you know some of our dashboard um just they may wonder why our numbers are so high or why we're quarantining entire classrooms when that doesn't technically meet you know the great question less than six feet

072for more than 15 minutes criteria yeah great question so as part of our cautious approach to rolling this out um we are quarantining people that may not meet the definition of close contact to the letter and so i'll give you an example say we have a student um that is attending a class at an elementary school and they're also attending a pod in the afternoon and so they're with um their classmates in the morning for several hours in in the classroom and then they're in the pod with another group of kids for several hours in the afternoon um and that that child ends up testing positive we quarantine the entire class and the entire pod um for anyone who was present on those days when that child may have been infectious and that is way

073beyond what close contact is actually actually defined as so one of the reasons you see numbers as high as they are is because we're being very cautious with our quarantine as we see the results of what's happening in terms of whether or not people who are quarantined end up coming down with virus or not as we see changes within the environment around us in terms of case counts and present positives we may start becoming a little bit more strict to that definition of close contact but we're monitoring first exactly what's happening in the schools in actuality before we make a change like that but that's why you sometimes see a very large number of people's quarantining because of a single case that's why and i'll also share while i'm on the topic because it comes

074up often people ask the question well why then are you doing you know why do you have pods that aren't the same cohort as the kid in the morning um and so the couple answers one we just don't have the ability to keep kids in that small of a group for a pod and two we are feel very strongly that we would much rather have kids in a controlled environment that we know what mitigations are in place because we are going to such an extreme level with our mitigations than having them out in the community in some other child care arrangement in the afternoon and so um that question comes up every once in a while i think it's actually answered in our faq if i remember but if it's not we should answer it

075there but just to clarify that's one of the reasons that um we have the pods and we're doing them the way we are because we do feel like we can control that environment a lot better and and know where those students are so it's all those things combined hopefully that answers your question heather yeah thank you and i just want to thank uh principals lobster and wiseman again for your really good work on putting together these plans that are um very well thought through um just i want to just emphasize that the impact on the mental health of our students cannot be underestimated and i really appreciate that all the students who do choose to come back will have the opportunity to come back whether or not we go above or below the percentages for

076the hybrid models so i really appreciate that and just for the academic reasons i know that there has been a tremendous amount of improvement between the 12 and the 18 week grade comparison data in the high school has done a great job trying to reach out to those students who are at risk but even so there's still a lot more students who are failing classes this year than last year and so it's obvious that some students really will benefit from being in person and so i just really appreciate both of your hard work on identifying those students and i'm i'm hopeful that bringing them into the buildings will make that an even easier job for teachers to connect and and really bring hope and and inspiration back to those students and i just share real

077quickly too just because you brought it up um one thing i i agree 100 that data on how how hard the schools have worked to get kids to passing and and catching catching up i just want it's very anecdotally related to that one of my children has struggled a lot um and the teachers at renfrow have been so unbelievable um with just their compassion you know the whole compassion over compliance idea they have gone above and beyond for the kids and making sure that they're getting the supports they need in the virtual environment as well so i just want to share that as um you know there's a lot of different ways to approach these things but i just want to make sure to give a shout out that because i know that's happening throughout

078the district for lots of different kids and if i could just add to that like you know when we have like academic recovery when we have kids that are missing assessments missing assignments you know that kind of dodging dodging the work in in in person pre-covered i mean we literally have folks who like go into classrooms grab kids by the scruff of the neck get him down you know get the assessment out and talk them through and get him to do the work um obviously in this situation it is just so much harder to do that right it's just so much harder so we still have yeah we have kids that are you know that are that are struggling that aren't getting the work done that aren't doing the assessments and then just to try

079to get them to do that that work is is is to even reach out and to set up that the google meets is is very very difficult and then you know we also um you know we did a proposal to have kids come in on wednesdays when we had wellness wednesday to just targeted kids that were just you know not showing up and not doing things to get them in and had teachers volunteer those wednesdays to come in and spend a couple hours with them to get them caught up and to get them to have a plan for the next couple days um but just like yeah the the virtualness of this just makes that that you know that there's there's the ability for us to do those things so much harder i had just

080one other quick question about students with ieps and uh because greg briefly mentioned that um those students uh may will not be cohorted and so i just want to ask about mitigation and those students in terms of moving in between cohorts and engaging with those students and and you know especially teachers and things like that sure so first of all we gotta wait for the learning choice um you know to come out and and to see who these kids are right so you know my plug to all the parents watching as soon as that learning choice um option is open for you to take it take it and and do that survey asap so getting back to that when um when we and this is another reason march 1st to march 8th you know we've

081got to see who all these kids are all right and then we'll work really hard with okay here are the sixth graders here are the sixth graders that are in special education here are the teams that they're on what little moves can we make to possibly get them in a cohort or to reduce the number of cohorts they in we're going to go to that minute level to do as much as we can to mitigate that but you know a lot of these kids that are in special education are cross teams they're not just on the blue team right you know and i know i'm preaching to the choir [Laughter] so so we we you know so you know we have to really identify a who are there special ed students that are coming in

082person and then what are the little moves that we can make to to get them in as few cohorts as possible fashion yes i um most of you guys already asked my question so um thanks um but i do have one um so for you know we hear a lot from the community about uh making sure that kids that need to be in school um or need to be in person whether that is for you know academically or for mentally or maybe a combination of both um making sure that those students have the opportunity to be in school so is there any way that you um you all are kind of documenting and keeping track of those who you might feel from your level of being a principal or maybe even um guidance counselors or

083teachers where you you're reaching out saying i really feel like you're your student should be in school or would would benefit from being in school maybe if it's a parent that didn't necessarily choose that or didn't choose one when way or the other do you have a way of identifying some of those kids natasha we did that for our wednesday in person proposal um we reached out and it's a moving target so we keep asking and bringing kids in um if anyone who we don't get a choice from we will be reaching out um so that we make sure they know all of the information and that they record a choice even if it's just with us and we can go into the system and put it in for them so just like the k5s

084did um anyone who did not make a choice we will be reaching out to i'll add to what our goal is to meet their needs wherever they are so if it's in person or virtual our goal is to meet their needs in that environment and so there are kids that we would like to see in person but for various reasons it's just not feasible for that family or something right and so we'll still do our best to meet their needs virtually as well so i do want to clarify that as well that we we may feel it would be great to have them in person we could reach them a little easier things like that but there are other pieces to the calculus that families go through in making their decisions so we also don't

085want to pressure them into feeling like the only way we can serve their child is if they come in person we'll serve them virtually as well in this case like that greg were you going to say something no um you guys covered it yeah good question and i and i think like like what came up earlier about some of the work that's being done on these with these the wednesday work that they're doing at both schools and just that analysis of kids who are struggling and getting extra supports in place um that will continue as we phase into this plan as well i also want to share one more thing because i don't want to leave here and and not have said it because we we have done our best throughout this process to be

086very transparent and that is um for instance with the let's take the schedule that greg presented um so while doctor duties frozen i will currently have kids that are moving in the cohort but they've got four in my back okay now you're back can you guys hear me yeah okay sorry about that i just want to say um real quickly that one one of the situations we could run into is if a teacher um tests positive that they um as the classes rotate through and we go back and do the two-day look back it's possible we could have to quarantine four classes because that teacher had contact with four classes the day before they tested positive so i just want to be clear that while we're doing our definition of quarantine the way we're doing

087it we could continue to see large numbers of quarantining amongst amongst the schools and we want to make sure that people who are choosing in person are aware of that because it is quite possible that there could be a situation where your kid has to stay home my kid was in one of those situations i had to keep her home um for what was it 10 days or whatever so that will happen if you choose in person there is a very good chance you could end up having to quarantine because we are being so careful with the the numbers that we're warning and rachelle i think you were you were going to share something too while i was frozen do you want to go there i was just going to say i said um the

088in-person proposals for wednesdays it's actually tuesday and thursday um so that was all awesome can i follow up with one question um and this is actually more or less what you were just addressing david um which is that when we went back at the k through five i think that there is some sense that because of all the cases because of all the quarantine you know that was a problem for the plan i kind of looked at it the other way other way which was that we were being so protective the plan was working and we were quarantining and keeping people safe to me that would change if you looked at it and said we're spending so much time in quarantining we're not actually being able to function in school but i think the statistic

089uh right now is that even with all the uh quarantining we're still getting 90 of those who've opted for in school at any one time have been able to stay in school so even with this broad quarantine rule we are actually delivering in-person instruction to 90 of those and we've done it so far successfully without in-school transmission is that yeah and i i wouldn't say without in school's transmission because we do have two cases we can't rule it out but um with very limited possibility at this point and just to be clear we are monitoring this to the student level right so we are looking with every single situation so if we quarantine 35 kids we are watching those 35 kids to see if anybody ends up coming down with the virus so we are

090looking at this very carefully because we do want to know if any of our mitigations are not working um or if we're seeing patterns and things that are happening so just to clarify yes the high the high numbers are a result of us being cautious not a result of us being uncautious one other thing i wanted to add is that i appreciate your explanations for march 8th and i you make a convincing case that that's the earliest but i can still be disappointed but i i appreciate the reasoning behind it and i do encourage people to um affect the dashboard frequently the cases are dropping very quickly um they're still high right and there's they're higher than we had seen for a while but i do encourage you to check that we update it on

091a regular basis i'm talking about the data dashboard with the coveted cases and things as well as the reporting dashboard anything else we can cover for you i just want to say that mr weissman and i will be sending out an email communication tomorrow with links and reminders to go to our websites to use all that information that we've put up there so that you everyone can make a good decision and i just want to say that was the first time rochelle ever called me mr wiseman [Music] thank you guys for getting your great presentation so um i guess we can move on to public comment you said we have how many do we have david um i see four signed up and i think shane is going to take that over and run that

092for us and just so what um while she's pulling that up just a reminder for your public comment you have three minutes if you could let us know give us your full name and let us know how you're associated with the school district and if you could keep your comments more broad and not specifically pointing out any issues that you may have with a a person and specifically that can be done offline don't want to silence your voice it just needs to be done in a different format so we look forward to hearing what you would like to share with us okay first up today is miss susan camp susan hi can you hear me yes thank you my name is susan camp and um i am a parent to two children at claremont elementary

093school um i'm writing with concerns about the budget i saw that the original budget proposal um put our reserves at a at 1.8 which is very troubling as far as the financial security of this district goes and i spent a couple of weeks analyzing that budget and um questioning like line items and wondering you know what this meant for the future of our district and i understand that um not adequately funding our reserves means that um our bond rating is at risk of being lowered that would cost taxpayers a lot more money in the long run but what i find most troubling right now is that um in preparing an op-ed for decatur-ish with regards to what i see um as troublesome with regards to our financial security i see that um the agenda for

094the board of education meeting wasn't posted yesterday in fact it wasn't posted until i raised it with uh central office and then even then it didn't include the financial documents you guys are set to discuss and now while i'm frantically looking through this uh massive information overload that was not there 24 hours ago um i find it miraculous that our fund balance went from 1.8 percent to 10 and i um will definitely be diving more into that i don't expect the board of education to comment on the five federal impending lawsuits i've sent you all my email you know where i stand on that but i speak just to raise this to public awareness that we need to be looking closely at our budgets and we need to be considering how these lawsuits are going

095to impact that and taxpayers down the line thank you very much thank you shayna who's our next commenter next commenter is kunlei oganai hey good evening everybody thank you thank you very much and uh thank you to uh miss rochelle and mr wiseman for your plans reopening plans very excited about that and hopeful that we will be able to go back to school tonight rather than later i am a parent of two children in the city schools of the case the one that ran for one at general high school but i'm speaking in regards to equity and uh the i am asking that the districts establish an office of an office of family support or family engagement to support the work of equity we have a scenario where there are two dictators there's a very

096sophisticated indicator and there's indicator that is maybe not as sophisticated as uh very well educated families and we need to find a way as a school district to connect with families that maybe don't have the levels of sophistication that we think are standard not everybody works in front of a laptop all day a lot of households where that is not happening and when our communication is only via email and electronic we are losing a lot of uh parents we have to take into account the language we use in communicating a lot of families that are intimidated by the school system now i'll just give a couple of examples today in this presentation i heard the use of the word synchronous and asynchronous connections these words are very bold very audacious words that a lot of

097people may not understand um if you're trying to stay in touch with your child's learning and everything is um is on excuse me it doesn't go yes worry about that folks so anyway we need to establish an office of family support and we need to find we need to find a way to to fund that and i'm recommending we don't break the bank we know budget is a concern even if we start with a part-time position it will help uh something i heard today that was really nice the eclc family electricity that's the sort of program that can be expanded it shouldn't even be left to just the preschoolers or the early childhood learners a lot of parents that it could it could support along the way thank you very much thank you coonley our

098next speaker shayna the next speaker is april biagioni april hi there my name is april biagioni i have three uh sons and city schools of decatur and i would just like to start off by um just stating the obvious um the obvious note that all of you are virtual right now and it's my understanding that this is because the wilson center is closed until next week due to the number of positive cases and exposures um and that's a relatively small building yet four people have tested positive there alone since it opened and i've had 17 in quarantine and so i heard something mentioned earlier and i just want to say we are in quarantine because of exposure not because we're being careful um and i don't think it's accurate for that narrative to continue um

099because i've heard it several times in meetings that um people have said administration have said that the number is low or the numbers are going down compared to how many students are in the building well if we don't know how many are asymptomatic because we're not testing so i mean i just think that we need to be careful with the language that we're using surrounding this because um you know if we're not testing we don't know what the actual true numbers are so in just three days ago georgia had the deadliest day so far with 178 confirmed deaths and if georgia were its own country it would have the eighth highest death rate in the world so i don't want us to placate this virus and the severity of it right now in georgia i

100think it's also important to note that the city schools of decatur's reopening plan wasn't designed for conditions where one in 20 people have had a cove infection and it certainly wasn't designed to deal with b117 which is the new variant i think given the high rate of covet in this community we're putting all of our faith in our mitigation strategies being effective and if we just don't know how much prior data primarily from daniel benjamin's data set from duke and the abc science collaborative we can't accurately predict what will happen under our current much deteriorated conditions and this is particularly distressing when we're on the brink of having a very highly effective vaccine deployed and teachers and school staff should have vaccinations before we pursue reopening more schools and having more kids exposed in our

101buildings thank you april our next speaker shannon next up is meredith yancey miss yancy hi my name is meredith yancy i have a daughter at fave and i have a son at westchester and i want to thank you for safely allowing the elementary school kids to go back to school it has made a huge difference for my children but their education and their mental health they aren't doing great but they are doing okay which is so much better than they were doing before i look forward to the opportunity for the middle school and high school children to go back as well i know what it difference it makes not just for education but for mental health as well thank you thank you so much meredith all right who's next shayna okay next up is courtney

102solay okay courtney hi am i unmuted yes you are hi um i'm courtney soli i'm a parent of four children in four different csd schools and we have one at renboro tally winona and college heights i signed on tonight as i've listened all year long to learn more about the reopening plans and what the school board is doing and the differences between the in person and the virtual options for my family my lower elementary school students have remained virtual and have changed teachers and are now in class sizes of nearly 30 students they have larger quote unquote small groups and then have less access to um to their teacher because of their class sizes and their teachers are wonderful we've been happy with the changes that you know teachers are doing the best that they

103can but the class sizes are um you know are very large and i've just listened to the middle school plan and although i really appreciate the thoroughness and the thoughtfulness and i'm happy to see that wellness wednesdays or some version of that is going to remain i am concerned that once again it seems like virtual kids are getting less time with their teachers maybe this is a simple answer that could be given after a public comment but it seems that in-person students have live instruction with their core teachers for 75 minutes while virtual students will have 45 minutes of live instruction and 45 minutes of asynchronous so even though virtual students are getting 90 minutes 45 minutes of that time is not with their teacher research does show that it takes less time for students

104to master a skill when they don't have the social distractions but that being said it does matter that they have access to their teachers i know teachers need planning time however i hope that some of those planning sessions would be used to help kids who are struggling in their core subjects thank you courtney and this is our last caller um yes next but no we have one more manual morris okay i'm not finding manuel are you looking at it it says call morris under the name a-h-a-l i'm not finding a morris no so we can move on all right thank you shane um is it possible and i don't want to put anybody on the spot so we may have to to come back to it but is it possible that i believe you and

105i david have spoken about um some of the virtual classes that have a bigger size and so can you kind of talk about the how that's being handled every day yeah absolutely and so if you want to just jump into superintendent's comment that's part of what i was going to address so is that okay with you absolutely um so i'll start with that one since uh since it came up um the i guess i'll just go in reverse order the the last um concern i heard about the rms plan was that the students who are virtual i'm getting less access to their teacher i know greg had to jump off so i'll go ahead and answer that one and that is um the time the access to the teacher is fairly similar in both plans

106the difference is that when you're in person your access to the teacher is it's varying as you go right like a teacher may give you something to work on and you're doing that independently whereas on the virtual they tried to group that together so that that independent work is done separately the teacher's still available to communicate with the kids as needed um so i know on the schedule it may look different but it's just how things are structured differently in an in-person classroom versus a virtual classroom and i do encourage them to reach out to greg if they want more details on that but that's kind of what's going on there for the class sizes which you just brought up pasha if anybody wants to look at class sizes we do have it on our

107covid faq so if you go to our home page under the covet 19 menu covet faq right now it's the final question and there's a document there available that shows how we've broken down so while the classes themselves are a little larger in the virtual setting and they do meet as a larger class periodically depending on the structure of the school but for the most part they do meet as a larger group like to build community amongst the class but then they also have a lot of support from other certified teachers where they can break out into groups smaller groups for the more individualized instruction so if anybody wants to see what those ratios are as of let's see we updated it today so if they want to check those ratios i think you'll see

108that they're actually very similar in person and virtual like i said earlier tonight kids don't come in nice neat little packages so you will see variation from school to school the smaller the school the more likely you're going to have variation from grade to grade and the more likely it's going to be different from other schools because when you have fewer students if you have more variability in what the groupings look like so i hope people will look at that data and if they have concerns about that to reach out to the principal our principals have a lot of uh information on what they can explain for um what's happening in any specific classroom so i encourage them to do that as well and a lot of the schools have shared that information as well

109um i'm glad one of the speakers brought up wilson center because i meant to bring that up earlier so i did close wilson center through the end of the week and the reason is not because of the number of cases it's because we need time to determine if two cases were related and if they were um what happened right was there a problem with our mitigations and so they are correct that we have um shut down wilson center and move things virtual for the time being um i'd like to find out more about the concern with the board meeting not published so we'll reach out to that person because the board meeting was published it was published um i think sunday and so i'm not sure what the concern was there i do want to

110address um it is really hard to keep track of our budgets and i understand i really encourage people to listen to the recordings of our board meetings and not just look at the documents um because we do go into a lot more detail in the recordings of what exactly we're looking at so for instance the 1.9 unspent balance um was the worst case scenario first budget and it has has changed considerably since then um so and i think this would probably be a good topic for one of our many videos that we're starting to do so i'll put together a mini video about budget um so we can try to explain that a little better but it is a lot to keep track of and i totally agree with that um one of my from

111one of my comments tonight i want to quickly share some exciting news because it's been a while in the making let me pull this up real quick just a second and that is our equity website um can you guys see that am i sharing it correctly um and so this is um i'll point out most of it's done some of it is still a work in progress but as you guys know we have been working a long time to try to do a better job of communicating our equity work and so um mary banks and sarah jones and some other folks have been working together i think coonley gave some input on the equity website if i'm not mistaken um there there have been a lot of folks working to put together what is the

112equity story in city school the decatur so i'm just going to give you a high level overview there's a lot of content here and i encourage you to go take a look at it david do you need to on my screen it's not showing us like do you need to hit the maximize the window button um i can try would that be better now the the photos at the bottom are on my screen are cut in half i just thought i'd ask not sure what's going on i apologize forget about it sorry for that option no it's okay um the um so let me go through a quick high-level overview you can get to this from our webpage if you want to go through in in more detail um so um one thing that i

113hear a lot about is that we need ways for people to share their equity concerns and things like that and we've actually had these for quite a while um so i just want to point out um this is there's a nice quick link there of how you can share ideas and concerns and dr banks is really good about getting back to people on those things we also have an anonymous page where you can submit things anonymously that you want us to look into but you don't feel comfortable on sharing your identity and those have been around for for a while and we encourage people to use those um how did csd get here so this is the story of right from the start when we first back in 2015 2016 started talking about equity data

114and it kind of walks you through the story of our equity plan again i'm going to go through this pretty quickly what is the equity plan one of the things we hear is it's really difficult to digest the equity plan so we have a couple different layers of understanding of the equity plan here so we have this high level view of normalizing organizing and operationalizing and what those things look like they have put together a user-friendly equity action plan that just kind of simplifies things down a little bit more so you can see um where we are with different things and what kind of strategies we're taking on and then of course you have the full equity action plan which you guys have seen before this is for people who just really want detail right

115they want to know every single thing when it's happening where it's happening etc so that's still available as well i don't can you see those when i pull those up okay good so it's sharing the whole window that's good um and again it goes into some more information about each of those things um equity resources are very helpful so if a teacher is looking for equity resources there's a whole list of information here that they may find helpful if a parent is looking for equity resources oh that goes to teachers we'll have to fix that one um and then oh here we go equity resources for home so if a parent is interested in more information that they can use with their own family and then we also have equity resources by topic and so

116all of these things are still getting built out but there's a lot of it that's already there the equity dashboard is not actually live yet this is a mock-up we're working with a company called monogram to get this in place but this is just to give you a feel for the kind of things that um we're going to try to be presenting so these are not our data yet these are mock data and so we have a big draft stamp over there but if you want to take a look at that you can see the direction we're going and hopefully we'll have that up pretty soon the um go here okay we also have faqs about equity and so you can go through as we hear questions that tend to come up more often we

117put them there you can also see we have our responses to questions that where we've received from stakeholder groups what did they ask us to do and what's our progress on it what did we say we're doing and what are we doing i think if i remember right there's one more oh yeah the equity in action is on the far right there sorry i can't get it and this is where they periodically post news stories about things that are happening in our school district um where you can actually see equity in action so i'm really excited for this i just really appreciate all the work that went into it it'll be a living document as you look at it if you have feedback please let me or dr banks or uh sarah jones know what

118your feedback is we're happy to keep um expanding it and making it better but i'm really excited that we've made this this leap so any questions or comments before i leave that all right so um do take a look at it when you get a chance and i'll i'll send you the direct link as well so you can go visit that as well i think i think those are all my notes of things that i wanted to make sure to cover thank you so much david that um website is great um i'm looking forward to kind of digging digging in there and also i like that we now have a place to to send people when they do ask us questions um we have a one targeted place they can go and i especially love

119the um option to anonymously um present um an issue so um those are all um really great so thank you for putting into that so now it's time for board chair comments my very first ones i'm a little nervous but um so uh for my first official board comments um what i wanted to do something a little different that's to address the comments to the community and to acknowledge first of all um what a very unique place that we're in um and how we are we are struggling as parents we're struggling as educators as board members our children we are all in this place of struggling and so many of us are also seeing divisions um not just the divisions that we see between um between politics politicians and politics but also between your friends

120and between your neighbors i mean this is just such a widespread um issue and i want to try and see how we can bring it back locally there's only so much we can do right but as a community what can we do together to try to get back to that place um so over the next year i was kind of hoping that i would focus um ideally on healing that just seems to be the word that keeps coming back and if we are truly here to do what's best for our kids the only way we're going to be able to do that is if we heal first we we won't be able to show up for our kids if we're broken and so we have to heal um and then what does that look like

121and so for this first month i wanted to just kind of talk about communication and how do we heal through our communication um if you haven't seen the video yet um dr duty sent out a short video yesterday a little informational video talking about kova testing and rapid testing and the goal will be that those will be pretty frequent and they they may come from him they may come from one of our board members maybe one of his cabinet team members but um just another way to connect with each other is sometimes a newsletter just doesn't do it um and so being able to hear from your leaders in the in in in your community and in the school system hear our voice hear our heart there's a lot of times you can't hear our

122heart in text and so i think these videos will be very helpful um for you to just know what's going on kind of a quick check-in while you're sitting in line somewhere and hopefully they'll be on subjects that are important to you because that's the goal um and the newsletters of course will continue to go out as well and i encourage you to also you know email us csd decatur.net to if you have other ideas ideas and solutions on best ways that we can communicate to you how would you receive the way that we communicate to you best the other part of it is that i encourage the community to also start leaning in instead of calling out i think we've been in such a space where we are gotcha and i'm gonna get them

123and um calling each other out and it has been so divisive and unhealthy and so i encourage the community to start leaning in i also would love for us to start explaining our frustrations and explaining our anger versus expressing it because when we express it it almost feels like we just want to be in an argument we just want to keep it up here at 100. and i think the the biggest thing i've learned since we've been in covit is that everything is at 100 and we cannot sustain mentally and physically at 100 we're just not made that way and so if you take a moment to breathe and explain your frustrations then it comes from a place of solutions and that's what we need is solutions so i think that together i mean that's

124the only way this is going to happen but it starts with us and so i encourage you again to email if you have any other um ways that you feel like we can connect on on a more transparent basis we have our book you know all of the dashboards up the equity website was just a perfect lead into what i was thinking as far as sharing with our um with our community what's going on as well as the videos um and let's just do this do this for our kids um because they are watching us they're watching how we handle conflict and how we handle stress and they aren't able to do some of the outlets that we are doing and we all know what some of those outlets probably have increased since coven and

125they are unable to do some of those outlets and so their outlets are going to be different and so they're watching how we handle things or they're watching how we approach things they're watching how we we we come to something that we may not agree with how do we approach that they're watching how we do it so let's show them that even though we're in a pandemic and even though this really all of this sucks but how do we show up for each other let's go back to assuming the best intentions we've got to get there guys it really does hurt my heart when i see comments that say the board just doesn't care that's why they're doing this they just don't care and i wish you could hear me when i say that just

126absolutely the farthest from the truth i'm not always going to make a decision and my board is not always going to make a decision that you're going to like but it's always going to come from a place of all angles a lot of conversation and sometimes sleepless nights trying to figure out the best um course of action for all our kids so i um i know it's a little cheesy but remember when we used to all have community circle before covid and it was that we used to say at college heights it's love that builds community and it's us that builds community okay it's cheesy i know but that is really at the core of who we are and when we used to have our kids at college heights you cannot tell me you didn't

127look forward to singing that song i know i did or my my daughter would make me sing it with her and so unfortunately we're not all together we can all sing that song right now but we can remember we can remember what you used to love about the city of decatur what you used to love about the school system what were the things that brought you here and kept you here and there is a way that we can get back to that i know that there is um we just all have to do it together um and especially during this time that we're hurting um over the loss of nicole pritchett it's insurmountable um this again is not a time for us to fight over that this is a time for us to come together

128over that i know that she would want that her family doesn't want to see us all fighting over her death but figuring out how her death can bring us back together so i will end at that because i can talk a really long time if you let me so um but i appreciate your time i appreciate um my board giving me um giving me the opportunity to sit in this space it is truly an opportunity and so i thank you for that i thank you for trusting me and um i look forward to to helping us get to this place as best as i can thank you guys okay oh yeah i'm supposed to go next wait what's next alrighty so now does anyone else have the it's love that builds community song stuck in

129their head now because i know i do exactly that was the point right yes exactly i love it all right um so let's moving on to consent items um we have the personnel report school nutrition financial report and the budget all right and we need to clarify it's the budget amendment oh the budget okay all right and is any of do we need to pull any of that out for discussion anyone okay so um all right help me out david what do i say next right so we can just say for consent we can say all in favor say aye also for consent all in favor say aye thumbs up hi all right perfect thanks guys all right so the next items for uh action and information um will be the fy 2022 uh budget

130that we're going to talk about now go ahead david all right thank you very much so um i'm going to turn it over to lanita broome our cfo and she's going to walk us through the 2022 budget you may see lots of things that look similar and then you'll also see things that have been improved since our last discussion so she'll walk you through that again if you're if it's possible for you to hold your questions until she's finished that may be most efficient um but feel free if you need to jump in on something of course do that otherwise we'll be happy to answer questions at the end good evening board members dr duty community colleagues this evening we are going to review various factors to consider as we continue our development of the

131fiscal year 22 budget starting with the budget calendar next slide this evening is the fourth public budget discussion the board has had regarding the fiscal year 22 budget the budget was discussed previously at the january 7th work session the january 12 board meeting and the january 27th work session we are still in the preliminary stages of developing the budget and we will continue budget discussions including setting and adopting a tentative property tax military in june okay to fund balance okay this slide lists the actual fund balance percentage of annual budgeted expenditures from to 2019. 2020 fund balance percentage represents the unaudited fund balance and fiscal year 2021 which is the current fiscal year represents the projected fund balance from 2009 to 2019 the fund balance projected percentage has been significantly lower than the final fund

132balance this is mainly due to savings from vacant positions and operational budgeted funds that were unspent next is the military this slide shows the military history from 2010 to present the military fluctuates based on the economy and the needs of the district the board of education sets the military annually in the last 10 years the highest millage rate was 20.90 from 2012 through 2014. next slide is legislative priorities we have legislative priorities for the current fiscal year 21 budget and for next year's fiscal year 22 budget for the current budget the georgia house approved house bill 80 which is an amended budget that restores 60 of austerity cuts to the current fiscal year 21 budget this means that of the 3.3 million that was initially cut from the 10 austerity reduction the house has approved

133for 1.9 million to be restored in the current budget the next step for house bill 60 is for the senate to approve the senate is scheduled to begin considering the budget this friday also for the current budget the governor is recommending a one-time 1000 bonus payment to all school teachers and school level staff members including bus drivers clerical staff principals counselors and school nutrition workers the 1000 can only be used to fund the bonus payment and the funds will come from the governor's office and the georgia department of education in preparation for next year's fiscal year 22 budget the house is proposing proposing that the 60 or 1.9 million in austerity cuts be restored to this budget also additionally for fiscal year 22 the house is proposing to hold district harmless but decrease enrollment by

134not reducing the qbe funding the third addition to fiscal year 22 legislative priorities is senate bill 59 this is a new bill that was just introduced this month and is proposed to reduce charter system supplements by reducing for each four-time equivalent student from 3.8 percent to 3 this will reduce our state funding by approximately 127 000 the senate's logic for this bill is to reallocate funds from charter systems to charter schools and this is in the early stage so it's the beginning of the proposal the next slide represents your amended current budget in your preliminary fiscal year 22 budget with projected preliminary budgets through 2025. in the first column you have your current cares amended 3 for fiscal year 21 budget this is your current budget which has been amended to include the 60 restoration

135of austerity this is shown under austerity reductions previously the amount listed for austerity reduction was 3.3 million however since approximately 60 percent or 1.9 million is likely to be restored as discussed on the last slide the budget shows the 40 or 1.3 million of austerity cuts that will remain notable expenditure changes in your current fiscal year 21 budget includes increases in the salary and benefits lines as a result of learning pods and school health aids as listed in amendment 3. there is a decrease in supplies and equipment a billion dollars as a result of reallocating covet-related expenditures from the general fund budget to the federal grant the cost for the district to provide covet testing to staff and students is also included in the supplies and equipment line the current budget military is 20.25 and

136the projected ending fund balance for the current budget is 9.6 which is within the four to fifteen percent district targeted millage rate now for each of the years we have targeted the minimum fund balance goal of ten percent to cover the district for one month of operation plus this allows an additional two plus million for emergency purchases if needed and blue at the bottom i have highlighted the projected possible loss of revenue as a result of the current senior homestead exemption be mindful that the numbers highlighted in blue are preliminary only and projected based on the current senior homestead exemptions average increase from 2007 to present the modified senior homestead exemption that the board of education approved in december must be passed by the georgia legislature and approved by voters in november 2021 and if

137approved will go into effect for next year's 2022 budget so the numbers that you see for the preliminary budget for fiscal year 22 are based on the current senior exemption your second column is your preliminary fiscal year 22 budget projected property taxes are based on a military of 24.50 which is an increase of 4.25 of the current military as shown below highlighted in yellow a military of 24.50 will allow the district to maintain the 10 fund balance percentage projected property tax for fiscal year 22 are based on again the current senior home state exemption and not the proposed modified senior homestead exemption next you see tuition revenue up under major revenue source this is based off of current enrollment of all tuition paying programs and does not take into account potential revenue if the board

138decides to accept tuition from non-resident students other local revenue consists of miscellaneous revenue obtained from various sources such as surplus seller property earning on investment and facility rentals your enrollment numbers are your enrollment projections are listed up top in gala enrollment numbers for fiscal year 22 are anticipated to increase back to the original fiscal year 221 enrollment numbers which will not decrease or increase qbe funding it will remain pretty much the same your local fair share is the amount of funds that are deducted from the qbe due to the state mandate for school districts to use a minimum of five meals of their local funds the five meal calculation is a percentage of property tax which explains why the local fair share amount increases the fiscal year 22. the austerity reduction reflects the 40 or

1391.3 million cut in qbe left after restoring 60 or 1.9 million of the austerity cuts the state line under major revenue sources represents funds received from state grants such as ctae and jtroc program you will notice that the from fund balance line indicates what amount of funds need to be used from the fund balance to balance the budget for fiscal year 22 there's a negative 506 thousand six hundred and six dollars negative in this line means this is the amount of surplus funds that will go back to the fund balance if you look at the bottom of the fiscal year 22 column you will see that the beginning fund balance is projected to be 8.1 and the ending fund balance is projected to be 8.6 the ending fund balance is higher than the beginning fund

140balance due to the 506 thousand six hundred and six dollars in surplus funds the 8.6 million is the amount required in fund balance to maintain a 10 fund balance for fiscal year 22 major expenditure categories there are increases in salaries and supplies that include remediation programs that were discussed in the previous budget meetings the remediation programs include intervention summer school for all grade levels extended day tutoring intensive break program hiring a remedial program manager and the biggest expense is related to reducing class size by adding 21 teachers additional increases in salary and benefits expenditures include staff increases two percent cost of living increases benefits increases include the 6.75 increase in trs a two percent increase from all other expenditures lines from the current fiscal year to fiscal year 22 is also included in each of

141the major expenditure categories to account for inflation in order to maintain a fund balance around 10 the millage rate would need to be increased to 24.50 with the current senior homestead exemption revenue loss from the current homestead exemption is projected to be approximately 6.5 million future years the future years budget throughout 2025 followed the same format of the fiscal year 22 budget and that property tax projections are based on maintaining a 10 percent fund balance you will see that the military down at the bottom highlighted in yellow it decreases each year then you have your tuition which again is based on current enrollment or current students paying tuition the forty percent austerity cuts are included qbe funds increase as student enrollment increases local fair share which is a percentage of property tax increases as revenue

142received from property taxes increase the amount from fund balance continues to be a surplus which is added to your ending fund balance for the future years budget through fiscal year 25 major expenditure categories expenditures increase in salary and benefits include step increases benefit increases and cost of living adjustments expenses continue to take inflation into consideration and increases by two percent each year remediation programs are included in a phase out or modified approach throughout the future budgets okay next we'll go to your fiscal year 22 budget assumptions many other assumptions were discussed in the previous slide in the amendment of the current budget and development of the fiscal year 22 through fiscal year 25 budget austerity costs were partially restored at 60 percent property tax projections were based on georgia state university forecast each of the

143fiscal years utilize the current senior exemption and not the proposed modified senior exemption all one-time amendments related to covet have been removed from fiscal year 22 preliminary budget 0.75 increase to trs is included in fiscal year 22 in all future budgets enrollment projections are based on enrollment projections report by cooperative strategies remediation programs have been included in the fiscal year 22 budget and all future budgets step increases and two percent cost of living adjustments are included in all budgets the proposed military changes to maintain a fund balance of 10 next we have staffing considerations these positions are not included in the budget that we just went over in order to operate more effectively and efficiently the following staff and needs are being requested health pe teacher at decatur high school upgrade of senior accounting specialist

144to coordinator to match the job level of responsibility upgrade accounting specialists to accounts pail specialists accounts payable specialist to handle the prop payment of all district invoices accounting specialist which will be a new position to manage and monitor position control and various accounting responsibilities upgrade admin administrative assistants to hr specialists one to match the current job responsibility the total fiscal impact is approximately 172 000 annually and this cost is again not included in the fiscal year 22 preliminary budget um budget consideration for decreasing expenditures you all have seen this before includes reducing operational budgets which could result in savings up to 1.4 million implementing a tier approach for families to pay for ap and ip exams could reduce expenses by approximately 125 budget consideration for increasing revenue increasing military rates as described in the summary

145of your preliminary budget accepting tuition for non-resident students and um dr duty do you want to go into any details on the decatur virtual academy i i'm making some notes i'll go into when you're done okay so next slide board budget updates to the current budget in the legislative update summary we discussed the 1 000 bonus that the state board of education was scheduled to vote on the school site personnel and last month's budget presentation 143 000 was listed as the amount that would be needed from general fund for those employees not assigned to a school site we have recently received communication from the department of early care and learning that they will fund one thousand bonuses one thousand dollar bonuses for pre-k teachers and workers as a result the amount that will be needed

146from general fund to provide one thousand dollar bonuses to all of the employees not assigned to school site has decreased to 81 000 and this is not included in your fiscal year 22 preliminary budget budget challenges are the same as reference last month although the 60 restoration of austerity cuts is proposed it has not been approved by the senate yet budget amendments are still being requested for covet related expenses which have had a direct impact on the district's fund balance although there is discussions on high public schools although there have been discussions on how public schools will be funded for fiscal year 22 there have been no decisions and of course the biggest challenge is operating in a pandemic and not being able to project what future expenses may be necessary to protect the well-being

147of staff and students thank you all right thanks anita i've got a couple things i want to share um real quickly um one just a reminder that um with the fund balance graph you saw early on about how it was in the 20 percents and then we're going to 10 just a reminder that is a reflection of that change um that we implemented over the last couple years to aim for 10 um of an unplanned balance um i i just want to make a comment about the thousand dollar for all thing it's great that they included pre-k by the way um which uh thank you for capturing that in the presentation linita the um uh i just saw and i think it was maybe wsb news or something marietta have there was a whole story

148about them also trying to pass on the thousand dollars to the staff who wouldn't otherwise get it so i wasn't surprised that we're and we're having the same conversation here um and i'm glad that they're doing that as well um on the multi-year projection i just want to emphasize again um a couple things one we're not recommending those millage rates that's another example of the change of how we're approaching budgeting and so remember what we used to do is keep the millage rate constant and and make the unspent balance be the piece that fluctuates for whatever the needs are and what we've been trying to do lately is keep the unspent balance constant and fluctuate the millage rate if you need to and so that's that was projections they're really a worst-case scenario um what

149we still need to do we need more time to reflect the accurate impact of the changes to the senior homestead exemption and so in our next version we will try to have that better implemented there um and so i just want to make sure you understand that's kind of a that's kind of a worst case and we are not recommending those millage rates i want to make sure that that's clear this is just part of the planning process um to trying to figure out where the fences are between which we're going to try to operate and stay a couple other things i want to mention just a reminder special ed staffing is one of those things that can really fluctuate because it's very much determined by every single child's iep and so um there may

150be even as we go through this process we may get an approved budget and then have to come back to you um as we learn of change of the students ieps or new students who move in with ieps that's just a reminder that's one of those things that fluctuates and sometimes it can be difficult to predict because you don't necessarily know what student you're going to have or what their iep teams are going to decide so just a reminder in case we do get to the point we have an approved budget and we have to come back to you to make some accommodations for the special ed staffing the finance and hr staffing requests you may recall we've been working on making those departments more efficient and effective and those are reflective of some of

151those changes that we're trying to do in those departments to make sure that we're serving our stakeholders and especially our employees as well as we can so that's what those are reflective of we still need to get to you more detailed plan on the ap and ib testing and so we shared that we would look in that a little further following your last comments and we did not have a chance to get that completed yet so i want to make sure you know that will still be coming we are also waiting to hear back from the georgia virtual school about the potential of maybe partnering with them for um a virtual academy indicator and what that might look like so we just want to know what our options are and obviously depending on what that

152model looks like not knowing how many people would want that option really can make that cost fluctuate considerably so hopefully by the next time we come back we'll have some more details that we'll be able to present to you there um once we've heard back from them um yeah those are the big things that i want to make sure we we touched on we are we also have a presentation to talk through some more details on remediation um ideas and costs and plans and things um but i thought maybe we could cover questions from this part first um and then uh quickly being gonna jump on and walk through some of that remediation stuff with us so any questions or comments with the um presentation linida just gave hey tasha so first i want to

153thank uh lanita for another excellent presentation i find your reports and your explanation um just be very very clear and so this is a very helpful budget and i really appreciate that i also appreciate the way that y'all have presented the preliminary budgets going forward and fluctuating the millage rate just to show that if you're going to keep your 10 percent fund balance this is what it's going to take and i think that's the right way to look at it um i don't like the the 24.5 millage yeah but but that's not what's going to happen um i wanted to make better but i like i think this is the right way for us to look at the budget so i like what you all are doing um i did want to make a comment

154on the homestead exemption that when you're forecasting forward there's really no scenario in which the current exemption continues into fiscal year 22. and so really what we have is a choice between zero exemption whatsoever which means that we get all of that money back minus what you lose from a pre-existing exemptions versus uh in the other scenario the um presumably the exemption that we've uh requested and hoped to get passed through first the general assembly amendment referendum but these scenarios where we lose six and a half seven point three eight that's actually can't happen because of the sunset and so that's exactly right that's exactly future versions we might show a less scary version by having those other two alternatives instead of this one and and just to clarify if it in part of what

155we are hoping to do with the next version is right underneath that taxes line you would have the senior exemption impact line so you can see exactly what it is we're projecting and we are this is what we're planning unless you'd like us to do it differently we are um planning to to do the projections assuming that the legislation passes with the new exemption because i think that's the most likely scenario and so that way we will be able to see it there um in the lines so also that's what we plan to bring back next time it's the most conservative because if it doesn't financially get more money and so i think that's right the only other comment i wanted to make uh was about the well maybe i had two comments but one

156i i still am just i i don't know where i what i feel about the thousand dollar um bonuses you know as we've discussed as a rule that's the wrong way to compensate people you either adjust their salaries appropriately or not but you don't get one-time bonuses very little bang for the buck in that way and in this case you have a bonus plan that was set up by the state and the state made this choice to leave some people out whatever the logic of that i don't know but it becomes an unfunded mandate if we're just going to cover everybody and so i'm really conflicted about it and it kind of depends on who's left out so that my question at this point is who's left out are we just covering some central office

157staff because i just be frank i'd be cool to the idea of the bonus just for central office staff i think for the reasons that the state you know arranged it the way it did we should just take take it up with the state um early understand we'll get we'll get a list for the next presentation we'll make sure to have a list that describes much better who it must be 81 people who those 81 people are okay and my final comment is that in terms i'm glad that the remediations have been included in the budget um i think we should pursue all of the decreasing expenses options although we can talk about the um i wondered if you know mr garnier's comment for the past two um public comment periods about a director of

158pub family engagement to me seems like a very good idea i just wanted to sort of suggest that we give that real serious consideration i don't know what the budget impact would be um but i thought so what i what i prefer to do is come back at our next meeting and share with you what we do for family engagement because the we do have folks who this is what they do um and so let me plan to do that i do appreciate his ideas he shared several of those um recently and some of them before um and so let me put together some information for you all um so you can make sure you understand what we do for family engagement currently and then let's have the discussion if we want to do more

159than what that is that's perfect i understand anyway i just wanted to say that i like the idea yeah i agree that's all i've got i i i wanted to say an ad that the school budgets are you need a degree to finally like get into them and fully understand it's it's no mistake that like when they do school board training it's one day for everything else and one day for the budget right and i'm starting to hear a little bit of what tasha identified as um just people expressing expressing their anger not the reason why they're angry or whatever here around budget stuff and it's just sort of like the narrative that the state took 3.3 million dollars of budget um in the middle of a global pandemic and we decided we're going to

160be we're going to be okay with the fund balance continuing to fund teachers to move forward with this covet mitigation efforts to continue to to fund the two thousand dollar stance we're not gonna furlough anybody like like all of those meetings and that stuff was very important but it does look scary when you do that and then the way you've presented board we present budget where lanita comes up was like this is the scary budget this is the one you know and someone commented and said that like if you just found that one you would be like holy crap decatur is about to have to bankrupt um and so that narrative i think is is important to include in what we're doing that is oh man um it's it's pretty pretty crazy um out there

161for school budgets all across the state which we've heard reports on so um and i'm glad i guess the biggest update and correct me if i'm wrong between the first one the last one was that 60 put back of the austerity that they took away is that is that for sure um i don't think it's for sure yet it looks more certain every day so i don't think it has actually been decided upon but it is not to my knowledge i have not seen any updates today so if anything happened today i wouldn't know it but um i do not think it has actually been written in stone or changed to something different at this point okay the next step would be for the senate to approve it okay thanks but thank you lanita um

162because that's the biggest change i mean the state just took 3.3 and 1.9 it's hard to it's hard to plan when people aren't paying their bills yeah that's it um i have a question to clarify and i appreciate uh the comments around the senior tax exemption and just trying to get a more accurate picture about what that's going to look like but the current one let's i just want to talk through the timeline to understand um the current senior exemption will expire at the end of fiscal 20 to 22's budget is that right it'll expire in the middle of the middle because it'll expire december 31st of 21. okay that'll be the middle of the fy 22 budget now it gets further complicated because of when we book our revenues so i don't know lanita

163do you want to speak to that of what impact that will have for fiscal year 22 it will have a minor impact because our largest amount of tax revenue is collected in the month of january so there will be an increase from those that pay in installments does that make sense so when you look at the financial report that's provided when you look at next month's financial report you will see a large sum collected for property tax and that's the payment that was due in december so because when we i'm sorry linda go ahead no i was just gonna say because the exemption expires at the end of december it will miss the big collection but you will still have those that pay in installments and so we will get the revenue from those individuals

164so the the revenue that we book in january of 22 will reflect the second installment that still included the full senior homestead exemption is that right so it does get complicated heather and we'll try to explain that better in the next um presentation um because it does get complicated as to when you'll actually see the impact yeah because it's not a month-to-month thing yeah my so that that is helpful and where i'm going with that is i'm just trying to understand if there will be and to what extent there will be an impact to the fiscal year 22. so i think what we will see let's and correct me if i'm wrong lanita but the first payment in um 2022 will be booked in the fy 22 budget is that correct anita that's correct we'll

165see the biggest really the big the largest amount we'll see in 23 in january 23. and is that lanita because most people if they if they don't pay in installments they typically only pay in december is that right right well they pay the biggest amount in december yep because people want to hold on to their money as long as possible and so we get more revenue with the december payment than we do in the the one earlier in the year right that's usually from escrow those that have their property taxes in escrow that's when it'll pay out so we'll try to lay that out we'll we probably should devote a whole slide to it because it is very complicated and we'll do our best to try to lay that out so it can be clear

166um but i think i think we'll see kind of a an in-between state and fy22 right and then we'll see the full impact of the change to the exemption in fy23 but we will we'll try to lay that out so it's much more clear okay that's helpful because fy 22 was the year with the scary-looking millage rate yes and so i'm trying to understand if there's like what does that kind of gap year look like before we transition to the new adjust adjusted hopefully approved tax exemption and are we going to that year have to maybe um make some interesting decisions there on fund balance versus military knowing that we will be easing into a uh you know a state where that exemption will cost less going no you hit the nail on the head

167that's exactly what i would anticipate like we don't want the millage rate to fluctuate wildlife right and so it's quite possible that we will have that exact decision that we'll say all right let's let the fund balance go a little bit lower in 22 because we know what's happening with the exemption so that we can keep the miller grade more stable that's exactly the conversation we'll need to have and the only other comment i will say is when we make a slide like that i think it's worth writing on the slide just preliminary preliminary so that it doesn't for when people do just go flip through the agenda that they don't kind of misinterpret what we're trying to do with that or trying to say by that so yeah i i agree but lanita thank

168you i think your explanations are great and i appreciate you answering all of my tedious questions and it was very well spelled out um the two things i just want to say i appreciate very much that you've included are the step and cola increases each year and particularly the remediation being included and showing how that you know will be phased out so thank you i'm glad you mentioned the step in cola because i do want to make sure you all saw that because we do want to get into that habit of doing the step in cola and so for the projections we did just automatically include what we have typically done which is a step in about a few percent cola so i'm glad you pointed that out heather because that is important to notice

169thank you i didn't have any questions about lanita's explanation was really helpful for me um i'm just interested in hearing more david you said you were going to share more about the ap and ib uh fees lately well so yeah and so that will come at the next meeting because we did not have time to get into detail yeah at the last meeting we shared that we wanted to look more at like a sliding scale kind of idea and we just didn't have time to get to that so we'll bring that at the next meeting okay thank you and all my questions were answered in the presentation and some that um other board members asked i was going to mention the pl preliminary or draft or yeah this isn't real there's something on there so

170we'll get better at that i appreciate that feedback i i do think we need to remember that not everybody gets to see all of these throughout the process and all the discussions so right and i mean our numbers have gone down i can see who's attended from earlier to just now so they probably missed all of of that and then are going to look and see those numbers and wonder are we really going to 24 uh military so well and i've been jotting down notes here i think i'll do a whole series of budget videos right like here here's this little topic here this little topic here with little topic i think that will be helpful so um all right good so um if it's okay with you i'm gonna invite christy to talk us

171through the remediation pieces um so you can see where we are with the flat work christy if you want to jump in there oh there she is are you able to share share your screen christy or do you need me to find it or i think so both perfect you guys see that yep okay um so we've we talked about this at the work session and we've worked through a few more details and um you know these ideas came out of um ideas that were shared with the principals and what we thought would um you know looking at where we are with our students what we could do to get students back on track the rationale is that we do anticipate an increase in numbers of students that require remediation and we anticipate that some

172students will have larger gaps in learning and need more intensive remediation so in looking how we can plan ahead for that and um you know provide the most intensive uh remediation as soon as possible to bring students back up to um you know grade level or benchmark wherever the help is needed so some of the goals include one that we think is incredibly important is just enhancing our standard intervention program during the day so what we plan to do for that is just to increase um the very strategic so i'm going to move you guys because as everybody can see the very strategic intentional data-driven district-wide interventions that we provide but do even more targeted um have the formalized pacing guides that we started this year um and have common assessments every six weeks so

173that we're ensuring that students are meeting the benchmarks early we can remediate right away be sure those assessment results are tracked and analyzed at the school level and district level on the student level so that um you know the online so that we're able to drill down and again make sure right away that students that aren't meeting the benchmark are getting the help that they need so this is although this is happening now to enhance this we would um be looking at a cost of about 75 000 and that would primarily be staffing for the summer work to finalize the pacing guides to create the common assessments um also any additional subscriptions to online programs that would help us um that students would have access to at school and at home so that we can

174track students and provide those remedial services um right away in that environment and then next is summer school which we do already have at decatur high school the current practice is that students that need credit recovery that have failed of course they complete an online course at the school through april well at the school and home in combination but they do have support at school teachers are available they attend three hours a day five days a week for three weeks and the school typically serves approximately 100 students per summer at a cost of 25 thousand dollars what we are recommending is that um in order to provide smaller groups for students so that they can get more intensive support we are anticipating an increase in the number of students so we are planning for 200

175students so doubling that number for four days a week the purpose is not only for credit recovery so that we're ensuring that the students pass the course but if the students have any gaps and skills and need any remediation and reading and math that we would provide that um in a small group setting for these students so the cost of the additional staffing and the course fees would be an additional fifty thousand dollars we're estimating currently there is not summer school um at room for a middle school so we are recommending that we provide that support for students that are not demonstrating mastery of standards for their grade level we are proposing that we provide targeted instruction three hours a day four days a week to provide space for up to 20 percent of our

176students that may need remediation that cost would be an additional 75 000. we also at this point do not have any summer program um for general education for our elementary schools so we are recommending that we do provide that the again the support would be that for students that are not mastering standards on grade level we would provide three hours a day three days a week for up to 20 percent of our students that may need remediation services and that cost would be a hundred thousand dollars uh because of um you know there are more more students in k-5 than at the middle school or the high school and then also to provide smaller groups for more intensive services for the little ones and we would need probably at least two locations we're thinking and

177then saturday school saturday school was a practice um at decatur high school previously um up until march 2020 we want to expand the program to include k-12 and we would offer saturday remediation two which would be a type of a tutoring program three hours a day on a saturday offered every other saturday for approximately 20 saturdays throughout the year the cost per 100 students for 20 saturdays um primary costs are staffing and that would be 75 000 to create small groups for the students and then um excuse me we currently have oh my goodness i'm so sorry we currently have an extended day tutoring service um in our elementary schools in city schools of decatur this program is offered it was expanded minimally to 612 this year um this is generally for students that are

178just need a little extra help they don't usually qualify for um additional services in the school day so that's that's the population that's generally been targeted and um the previous budget for this program has been 75 000 a year we are suggesting that we double the capacity of the program for an additional expense of 75 000 and then um an intensive program for the breaks so we have fall winter and spring break currently there are no remedial services during that time we are suggesting that for students that demonstrate need we provide targeted instruction four hours a day four days a week working on reading and math foundational skills we had what we had in mind was like a mini expedition or a mini unit of inquiry so it would be problem based it would be

179very engaging and students would come um and and get remediation in that kind of critical thinking environment so to serve 100 students in that setting the cost would be approximately fifteen thousand dollars per week or forty five thousand dollars annually we do have a little bit of a con not a concern but one of the challenges of this is that if we were to have to go outside of decatur for staffing other school systems are having school at this time so um you know depending on the number of students staffing may may be a concern for this one um and then we are suggesting so we had previously talked about reducing class size and and the deeper we dug into that we thought that potentially the more bang for our buck would be to get

180um to level out the ratio of student teacher support in all the schools throughout the district so currently all schools do employ intervention teachers either eip teachers or rep teachers as early intervention teachers to support students at tier two and tier three are students that need tier two and tier three support for language arts math or and or behavior support and so if we were to hire an additional 21 teachers in that capacity we could echo equitably and effectively distribute those teachers across the school so that we would be providing a student-teacher ratio of about ten to one in pre-k through five and about fifteen to one in grade six through twelve and that's the cost that lanita mentioned um that would be about 1.9 million dollars um and so you know this would be

181a very strategic hiring at each school what exactly they need to create that small group so that every student is getting that intensive support to see quick growth and get on track so here's a summary of that and then um one final piece that is mentioned as you can imagine if we have saturday programs going and we have evening programs going and we have all summer programs going and all these programs going we need um someone to manage all those programs so in addition to that we would be looking at a position to have someone manage all of these positions they would really monitor closely student data they would report out to myself and you and the principals and you know help the teachers identify trends and needs and they would help hire staff supervise

182and coordinate all of these programs so and um kunlei act as apparent liaison as well yeah awesome thank you christy that's super helpful i also want to point out depending on the timing of some of these things they may actually for some of those things that are summer could potentially impact the fy 21 budget and so we will clarify some of those if you guys are in support of us continuing down this path we'll get some more details in each of those um which part of the expenses do you anticipate in the current year budget fy 21 because they'll happen before june 30th and which would we anticipate in the fy 22 budget so i'd be interested if there's anything you see here that you you don't you don't support we'd like to hear that

183we're excited about all of these different avenues of trying to try multiple different ways to reach students um and there may be many students that are served in multiple of these programs right it's not just you pick one or you get asked to be in one and the other one doesn't apply you may be asked to be in many of them depending on the needs and what it's serving so if there are thoughts about or concerns about the direction we're going with this please let us know um so we can adjust accordingly but when we come back next time we can share um for those that are still in the hopper um which exactly which amount from which budget were pictured i love all of those ideas i'm sorry lewis i love all of those

184ideas and um i think they'll be needed you know and i'm glad that it looks like we'll be in a position to be able to offer those services to our students after everything that's gone on i don't know if christy you had a chance to think this far ahead but i just want to know that the dhs um summer school has been typically for credit recovery the rms summer school with that is that optional is that for students who i know in the past if you didn't score at a certain level and like crct back in the day or g mass now then you'd have to go to summer school um would it be based you know would they have to go if they didn't meet certain criteria in terms of gmass or is it

185open to everybody um yeah so i i think it you know we definitely need to um offer it to our students in need first you know depending on you know we would identify and that's what the schools have been doing right now based on um you know course participation and and course you know how the students are performing in the courses so they've been identifying these students that really need to come in and that's the students that are being invited in um on you know wednesdays at the high school and um so at the moment we are going to be looking at our promotion and retention criteria here in decatur right now it's you know based on sst and yes um there does need to be remediation if a student doesn't pass gmass for sure

186so yes we would prioritize students in need but it's not we do not have a policy right now where if you don't attend summer school you don't go on to the next grade so we work through with the students and support them in the next grade level to be successful as you as you know thank you i just wanted to clarify are all of these items so i think all these are great and and you know it's um i'm happy that it looks like y'all put together a really robust you know program um and it's all budgeted so the big big numbers that we just looked at for the fiscal year 22 included these including like the intervention the big ticket items were all included in that is that correct i think they were but

187lanita can you jump in i don't want to speak since i didn't actually put those numbers together i think i heard you say they're included i think she said that remediation is included so as long as we'll double check what might change is which fiscal year they're included in uh based on what i was just sharing a minute ago but i do think they're included but we will double check well i think it's terrific i think it's good and just to be clear we we do hope to implement all of these there are challenges differently with some of them and christie touched on the one and i just want to touch on it again that the intercession pieces oh lanita just sent me a message they are included the inner intercession pieces for like fall

188break for instance and um winter break um they are very dependent on our staff being willing to be hired during those breaks because the chances of those breaks lining up with people from outside the district are not very good so i just want to emphasize what christie said there because we will need staff who will be willing to say yes i'm gonna you know give up three days they'll get paid but they will be giving up three days of a week that they would have had off um so just want to emphasize that that we will there are there's some may be a little easier to to pull off than others yeah and i can also say um i knew lanita helped with numbers i didn't know if they were in a hypothetical column or

189in the actual budget but um also the um well i forgot what i was gonna say i'm so sorry um these number oh i know what it was the estimates are high i mean because we don't have a a ton of data right now but we do want to be prepared for you know a significant number of students that may see need support even though we don't have the data to say that it would be that that many so we did go a little bit high that is true but um we want to be sure we're well prepared to support all of our students when they return i'm glad you mentioned that christie because we don't want to come back to you and say oh no wait now we need more money and then we

190need more money we we really wanted to try to estimate high and if anything we may not need quite as much to meet the need but we do definitely want it to be need-based correct i want to thank you for putting this plan together i think it's wonderful that we're going to be able to help our students in this way i really just wish that every school system would have the funding to be able to do this because every child in public school across this country is going to need this kind of remediation so i'm grateful that we as a district are looking at doing this and and have a way to pay for it um i'm interested in the position of the person who is going to be monitoring all of this because it

191sounds like there's going to be a lot to do and a lot of these remediation programs seems to me right now we're focused on the the lowest level of um achievement and where the maybe the bigger gaps are with the students who are like i guess achieving at the lowest levels but i'm also concerned about the students in the middle who have gaps and maybe missed important concepts that they'll need to build upon and just i know this is maybe i'm stating the obvious but i don't want to overlook the needs of those students as well as the high achieving students who maybe didn't grasp fully what they needed to grasp in algebra in order to build on that with algebra 2 or whatever that is and so i think you know this position it

192you know kind of expands and will be an umbrella for monitoring you know all the students and and and at the various levels to make sure that we're identifying gaps and helping to remediate those gaps and then you know i'd like to just see a little bit more discussion about that and how we how we will plan to address that for the students maybe that aren't in the those but that have still gaps and challenges from this year thank you for bringing that up heather we we forgot to address that is you brought that up before and we should have addressed that and i apologize that we didn't but um christie did you want to say something oh i was just going to say i i feel like that's um well some of what you

193spoke to i think is going to be and i mentioned this to dr duty i think that this this is going to be something that impacts education for the rest of my career at least and through the education of these you know the students that are experiencing this right now and i think there's going to be adjustments in general in um the expectations and the norms and and everything going forward because you know all students are experiencing this worldwide so we will have to adjust as educators to fill those gaps um for the students that typically had not been struggling in the past i also think in my department and through the multi-tiered system of support we do monitor that data but that's that's where we were talking about in that first slide really enhancing

194that so we are targeting in and we are making sure we are monitoring all students so if we do see those gaps even if it's not a typically low performing student but we see that on this benchmark there's there's something going on we can go back to the school so we need um you know the the resources in place the assessments in place that we can really closely monitor that and then the staffing in place that we can do that um closely so well and to hit on the point of that program manager piece was is also we need somebody who is willing to have an abnormal schedule right because a lot of these things are happening either after school or they're happening on saturdays or they're happening in summer or whatever and so um

195it would be helpful for us to have in addition to all the things they're doing there's also the logistics of when they're doing them that it's important to have somebody who can be flexible and so if we can advertise a position that way and make sure it's clear like the this is if if you're looking for the standard nine to five monday to friday this isn't the role for you um but if you're the kind of person who needs this different thing you that may fit exactly what you need so that's another one of the variables there of why it's important to get somebody in who can really serve the program to when they're happening so any other questions on uh either uh lanita's presentation or christie's presentation all right well big thanks to lunita

196and christy um that was very helpful so thank you and absolutely thank you for all the good questions we'll make sure to pull that stuff together all right now moving on to district improvement plan yeah so this is part of our policy monitoring calendar so you may remember we have scheduled things for certain months and february is district improvement plan month and so i'm really excited to have uh turn it over to maggie fuhrman to give you an update on where we are with our district improvement plan so maggie you want to take it away i do all right i'm going to share my screen okay all right good evening and greetings chairman white board members and superintendent dr duty i'm joining you this evening to share an update on where we are in regards

197to our district improvement plan and where we're headed for the next five years joining me tonight i have three amazing leaders going to help me with this presentation i've got dr lilly huddleston our executive director of equity and student support dr christy beam our executive director of curriculum and instruction and dr mary banks our equity coordinator first i want to provide you with some context for where we are currently with our district improvement plan so as you know our equity work back began really in earnest well we know it began with dr duty setting his vision for it but then when dr huddleston was hired back in 2017 and launched our district equity plan and that was kind of pillar one for our district of prison plan pillar 2 came on board in 2018 when

198we launched our csd instructional framework as our academic pillar and then last year we added our third pillar which is building and sustaining positive culture and climate and that included launching pbis across the district as well as using restorative practices enhancing that practice across our district as well and if you'll remember we rewrote our code of conduct to make sure that we were keeping restorative practices as an essential focus um as we deal with our students so we were well into implementation many key initiatives last year prior to the covet shutdown one of these big pieces that we started back in january of 2020 our district leadership team shared with our school leaders several foundational components for what we want to use to drive our work going forward and as i mentioned unfortunately before we

199could really gather much traction on that work covet brought all of this to a halt because we had to redirect many of our resources and time to focus on how to operate schools safely and effectively in the pandemic so the presentation we're sharing with you is actually what we would have shared with you last april but after the pandemic and getting things up and going we're really moving this forward again so as we all know in city schools of decatur our vision is to build the foundation for all students to be their best achieve their dreams and to make the world a better place so what drives us we believe in city schools of decatur that our beliefs drive our actions that which then drive our results but we also believe that the converse is

200converse conversely we believe that that is the reverse is true as well that our results are generated by our actions and that our actions are products of our beliefs ah i knew it was going to do this to me this prezi [Laughter] i haven't done one of these in forever on okay here we go sorry about that okay so we use that cyclical process to develop a theory of action and that is our guide that we are using across the district to help us keep a focus on what our results should be and also to help us identify specific actions that will lead to fulfillment of our vision and mission so the key elements of our of our theory of action are that as csb establishes a balance between accountability and empowerment with highly effective

201leaders at the district and school level that we can ensure our teachers are highly effective and supported in their growth and development as professionals and finally that the impact of these elements will result in a district where students can be their best achieve their dreams and make the world a better place so we wanted to think big so we were reviewing our district where we were at the district what our ends policies were where we wanted to go and we wanted to think big and when i say big we wanted to think really big so we drafted very big aspirational goals that will help keep us motivated over time we also wanted to ensure that our equity work is the lens through which we use to plan all of our action steps dr banks is

202going to share with you an overview of our equity work now there's a lot of a lot of stuff going on with equity that has been done and that is in the hopper for action steps coming up she's just going to give you a very high level of that what that looks like tonight dr beam is then going to share with you how she's framing the work in our curriculum and instruction department through our equity lens and then i'll finish up talking about positive culture and climate and what we're doing with that so with that i'm going to pass it over to dr banks thank you so much maggie csd's equity action plan has been in place and guiding our work since 2017 as maggie mentioned earlier teachers staff administrators and school equity teams in

203particular have been working extremely hard to support the plan even in the face of a pandemic as evidenced by the eclc presentation today it's our plan is undergirded by the southern education foundation's highly regarded district levers for advancing racial equity these levers assert that districts must implement research-based high-leverage policies and procedures that have demonstrated effectiveness and will increase equitable outcomes for all students this plan's central purpose is to eliminate predictable patterns of academic achievement based on subgroup membership in other words to pay csd's debt to black students who have been historically and systemically disenfranchised by focusing on three primary areas of improvement that together include all of the aforementioned levers i'll describe each area and share brief example of ongoing work as well as an example of upcoming work in the area area one is

204normalized the equity action plan attempts to normalize racial equity in csd by establishing it as a key value while developing cultural humility and a shared organizational understanding of key concepts related to racial equity for individuals across the district this shared understanding is built through structured professional learning opportunities regarding topics such as implicit bias structural and systemic racism and many others in this area we have continued to engage in initiatives such as racial affinity groups some of which are being held now beyond diversity we've held seven so far we're about to hold another one at the end of this semester and other courageous conversations workshops and for our students programs like sea equity and soar which is students organized for anti-racism upcoming initiatives in this area will be among others initiating summer workshops such as exploring

205whiteness and complicating blackness to engage staff in racial identity development and developing and instituting across district justice equity diversity and inclusion course for grades 6 through 12 as well as a similar k through 5 exploration we believe that normalizing for equity will result in increased cross-cultural knowledge engagement improve culture for students and staff and most importantly equitable academic and discipline outcomes by 2026 area 2 is organized to organize for racial equity we have to acknowledge that many aspects of curriculum and instruction slash pedagogy are historically based in overwhelmingly eurocentric principles and content once we acknowledge that then we need to build the organizational capacity skills and competencies to decolonize the curriculum and decolonize educator practices through professional development in this area we continue to engage in initiatives such as district and school equity teams that

206are providing professional development for staff and faculty and in many case parents culturally responsive teaching in the brain related professional development which just kicked off recently and we hope will s only escalate in the months to come an example of an upcoming initiative in this area will be um integrating the evaluation of culturally responsive anti-racist praxis in teacher and administrator evaluations really bringing up that accountability piece and providing support for teachers who need assistance in these areas and administrators who need assistance in these areas we believe that organizing for equity will result in increased use of culturally responsive instruction increased self-efficacy regarding racially and culturally different interactions and equitable academic and discipline outcomes by 2026. area 3 is operationalized we will operationalize racial equity by revising increasing evaluating and ensuring the implementation of district policy

207based in equity anti-racism cultural humility and culturally responsive curriculum and instruction for example in this area we are in the midst of partnering with christie and the cni team as we evaluate csd language arts and social studies materials for justice equity diversity and inclusion examples of upcoming initiatives in these in this area are training all hiring managers this spring to use our equitable hiring tool to increase justice equity diversity and inclusion in hiring and our collaboration which dr duty was so kind to point out earlier with communications and public relations and launching the new equity website sarah jones really worked hard on this and we had a lot of people in the community who weighed in on this and gave us feedback as well bpa def cooley and just a number of people and we

208really appreciate that support we believe operationalizing for equity will result in increased recruitment and retention of teachers and administrators of color the inclusion of equity as an evident and pervasive aspect of teacher and administrator evaluation consistent review and revision of district policies and practices regarding equity and equitable academic and discipline outcomes by 2026 and this is just a snapshot of the many things that we have in this plan as maggie mentioned we're really trying to go big so now turn it over to christy thank you so to disrupt the predictable patterns of academic achievement based on the sub group membership that we know exists currently in csd to ensure the success of all of our students and increase the joy of teaching and learning we have the four components of the csd instructional framework that

209guide our work to accelerate student learning at the instructional core of this relay is at the instructional core is the relationship between teachers students and our instructional standards next are core practices for equity that include formative assessment and feedback student goal setting culturally responsive teaching and literacy which includes speaking listening reading and writing and we these are practices that we believe should be clearly evident on a continuous basis in every classroom next we have our high leverage instructional practices which are 12 teaching strategies that yield high level high levels of student learning and teachers should be proficient in selecting and utilizing the appropriate strategies for each lesson and finally to tie it all together we have our ib and el instructional programs these programs frame our approach to teaching and learning with an emphasis on

210graduating students that are empowered to create a better world so through our intentional strategic instruction we also have some big goals to achieve in the next five years i think it's important that these goals are clear they're easy to understand and our whole community can work towards them so by 2026 we will ensure that all csd students will meet or exceed their growth their expected growth targets race will not be a predictor of student achievement and all students will exemplify our graduate profile these are lofty goals they're aspirational goals but we can achieve them by working together as a community and ensuring that all students in csd have access to a guaranteed and viable curriculum through our instructional framework our third pillar is positive culture and climate and our mantra with positive culture and climate

211is that we will ensure students and staff feel safe seen and successful our big goals in this area by 2016 we um what we our goals are though 2012 yes yeah i'm not going back 10 years uh the 2026 race will not be a predictor of student discipline outcomes that all students will have a positive and trusting relationship with at least one adult in their school and that by 2026 staff students and parents climate surveys results will show an overall positive experience in city schools of decatur this final goal is a little bit general but see we have a this year is a baseline year to collect data so we're hoping that we can fine-tune this goal as we move forward so these are really big goals so how do we start digging in and

212making sure that we're making progress towards these and what we do that is first by setting priorities with such big goals we know that it's important to set priorities to make sure our work is focused and what you can see here is a timeline for how we have started this work since 2017 and how we're going to continue to build upon our successes and you'll see the equity work is on the top of this timeline because we believe that is the lens that we should look through everything um as we create our action steps so as mary shared previously our equity action plan has been in place and guiding our work since 2017. we started with just a few staff participating in beyond diversity to nearly all of our instructional staff have been completed the

213course and we've extended to additional training for our district and school leadership teams as they've participated in dealt and leads we've also expanded this work to our schools with their district equity team and we are going to continue with all of these established activities as well as all the additional things that mary shared coming up on the docket and then also rolling out culturally responsive teaching training and support for our staff so that we make sure that we have an anti-racist classroom every day in every classroom in city schools of decatur as christie shared earlier our instructional framework was developed to ensure that there was a clear standard for what daily instruction should look like in all our classrooms regardless of the grade or subject area we know that at the core that begins with

214our teachers students and the content last year we started to engage our staff in unpacking and supporting our teachers to ensure that all teachers were effectively using our core practices for equity this work began with a focus on formative assessment and feedback and in the years to come we are also going to roll out expectations and training in literacy student goal setting and as mary mentioned culturally relevant teaching practices and last year we launched our pdis district-wide and i think we had a really great start to that implementation but again thanks to kovid we had to pause our work in this area however we haven't forgotten where we left off and we are ready to gear back up to ensure that we are ready to launch right back into pbis when we welcome all of

215our students back into our building not just this year but as we continue in the years ahead we also also are going to help continue to train additional staff every year on using restorative practices and embedding those practices for our primary response and how we address student behavior so along with those priorities we've identified some core initiatives to help us make sure that we have a laser focus on our work going forward and first as always we're going to start with equity and we have all obviously lots of additional activities with our district equity plan that we're going to continue over the next five years as our core focus and district to make sure we are focused on district policy culturally responsive anti-racist instruction we want to also ensure that we've embedded equity in all

216of our work and use our equity lens to guide all district policies and practices i think christie were you gonna share about the accelerating student learning so accelerating student learning to achieve our goals is tightly intertwined with the other two pillars students need a safe positive environment to be able to unleash their full potential specifically we will continue to provide high quality resources and training in our core practices for equity and high leverage practices in the next five years our areas of focus will include resource equity the allocation and effective use of resources to create student experiences that enable all students to reach empowering rigorous learning outcomes no matter their race or income curriculum mapping to identify and address academic gaps redundancies and misalignments to improve our overall coherence of our preschool through 12 instructional

217program as as we mentioned several times through highly effective formative assessment and feedback and student goal setting we will help our students to identify moves to achieve higher levels and gradually transfer responsibility in the learning process so that our students become leaders of their own learning another important area of focus is ensuring that all of our instructional decisions are data driven that we are consistently evaluating effectiveness of practice and making adjustments at the student classroom school and district level um in regards to positive culture and climate our key priorities here are going to be continuing to implement and deepen our implementation of pgis over the next five years also working to enhance our use of restorative practices we're also going to be expanding our use of the social emotional learning curriculum that we started this

218year in our elementary schools to expand up through 12th grade we're also going to invest some resources in reviewing our multi-tiered system of support for behavior interventions and then finally we don't want to leave our staff out we definitely want to make sure that we are taking time to recognize and appreciate the staff for all the hard work that they do each and every day so what are our next steps we do have a lot of work to do but over the next few months we're going to going to be engaging with several stakeholder groups to provide input on our direction and our goals once we've reviewed this feedback we're also going to take into consideration the final report from our accreditation review to make sure that we've incorporated any of the areas to be

219addressed from cognia and then finally we will wrap all that up together in a nice package so that by june 1st 2021 we have a very solid district improvement plan to launch and make sure we are ready to get all the gears moving over the summer so any questions i just want to jump in real quick and first of all thank you all for the awesome presentation i love that you use prezi i haven't seen a prezi for a long time um i hope you all are excited as i am like the way they pulled all of this together i just think is the a new standard for how we're trying to move forward with how we present information and how we kind of market it right and the other thing i want to point

220out is i'm sure it was obvious but they're the reason we labeled those big goals um because we have decided that um we want to push ourselves as hard as we possibly can and so um we had a lot of conversations about do you set realistic goals that you're pretty sure you can achieve or do you set goals that will just push you unbelievably and you might not quite reach and we decided we really would rather push ourselves to maybe unattainable heights and get much further than if we were safe and and set things reasonably so i hope you're excited as i am to see those goals on written down to say by 2026 that is right around the corner um and we are just super excited to take that on and um just see

221if we really can do it right and just push ourselves to let's just assume we can do it and do everything we can to get to that point and if we fall a little short we'll be much further ahead than it would have been otherwise so i'm just really excited to see that see that and thank all four of you for the presentation that was very informative and helpful so any questions or comments from the board i was gonna say i i mean i'm so excited and inspired as a former referral equity team member and beacon hill member it's really exciting to see um how you know this issue of equity is is growing into in the city of decatur and um as um dr banks always always reminds us of you know repaying this

222debt um i was really excited to hear about decolonizing the curriculum and i don't know it's probably not going to be possible on the school board but i was just i'm interested in that and learning more about that because i know that um our state standards and curriculum and common core can make that challenging and so um some i'm just interested in learning more about that um and then the one thing i just had me thinking about a lot when we first received the information from dr duty was race is not a predictor of student achievement and i was just kind of i struggled with that just a little bit in terms of you know i understand race is not a predictive student discipline outcomes because there's somebody else that's um responsible for those student

223outcomes in terms of what the outcomes are right that's outside of this the child's um typically the outcomes outside of the the students well now that we're doing restorative practices you know hopefully not so much but anyway so i'm just saying that i just feel like somehow expectations are what influence the student achievement as it relates to race and not necessarily because it almost gives me the impression that if you're a certain race you might be starting off as a deficit but just because you're this race we're gonna we're gonna make sure that you're that you still excel and so that's just how i just thought about that as a as i was reading this initially and then again now is that i just kind of like maybe you might consider rewording that just a

224little bit because i feel like it's more of the expectations of others that will often determine student achievement be based on race yeah i appreciate you sharing that jaina that's a good perspective and and we'll definitely talk more about that um the way we think of it um and i i totally understand and i appreciate you clarifying there's different ways to look at it the way we think of it when we say it is we're not it's not like we're using it to blame a child for their situation right for us it is what do we have to do to make sure we have paid that education debt right what do we have to do to make sure that that child has all of the support that they need in order to be successful and

225that it's our responsibility to make sure that they're successful it's not the child's responsibility to make sure they're successful now obviously part of that is building in them the fortitude to do those things right so think about our end policies and like the um uh characteristics we want to build in our students part of it is them taking on to be leaders of their own learning right and things like that and making sure that we have um we've built the skills within the kids themselves and so of course those expectations change a little bit as kids get older and things like that um but i think we're on the same page but i appreciate the feedback because we definitely don't want people to interpret it differently than what we're impending so thank you for that

226we'll we'll take a look and see if there's maybe a better way to say that and jane r um the the intent of that is that when we look at for example our ccrpi subgroup data there is no distinction there is not that gap in percentage of students that are distinguished and proficient that currently exists between black and white students so if you have suggestions on the wording of that i would love you know that would be great if you could share that but that is the we want no um difference and we do not want that to be a predictor though so now i understand the intent behind it thank you i've read it as just aim towards the absence of racial bias in academic achievement data you know and so it's on us

227as we're cultivating the data not the students and um i've shared that when someone says that like high achievement is a white thing or academic success is is a white thing that oh my god you know that's that's horrendous and so uh jaina thank you for sharing that i agree with you that we can put the more we can put it on us on us as educators um the better than we can always be um jaina if you didn't have anything else to share just the combination of this this website that we got earlier and this i want to thank you for all the effort that's gotten into it we've talked about it that um so often indicate we talk about um showing our warts or being proud of the of identifying it and dr

228banks you've motivated me when when we met and you talked about the slt and stuff and just being able to point towards stuff for people in this community that we are doing stuff is so powerful um because even if it natasha spoke about it a little bit i thought in her state of the you know the state of the schools it's like we're making a little progress and it's okay to be proud of a little bit and and scared that it's not enough and it's and and it needs to be more and so i thank you all for fighting the fight every day for our kids and our community and and this website's a great start and this presentation is great um so um lewis says it confuses him it confuses me when we go

229through that second chart so i really like the apples dr ellison i think you got credit for that on the chart i know that looked really simple but ooh i liked it so good right thank you all thanks springs any other thoughts or questions just really really great work um i think it's so easy when we have our heads down and we're doing the work to forget that we need to communicate it and i thought that was very well communicated um i think we will you know we we know that progress is slow in the beginning and i i think now that we're years into it i'm hopeful that we will now also be able to show progress and i appreciate the lofty goals i know that's a recurring conversation that we've had and even

230when we rewrote our policy manual a couple years ago we had a very similar conversation like do we do we put in lofty goals that may we may not immediately achieve and i think we're on the same page there that i think we need to put where we would like to be and then figure out how we're going to get there so i appreciate that and all your hard work really great work i'm excited to dig into the website as well thank you thanks evan i'll just sort of repeat everything everybody said i'm i'm it's just terrific and i've you know starting with the equity action plan and website and then this we've talked a lot over the years about how to present these improvement plans and action plans generally so that we can understand

231them and the people generally can understand them but i don't think it's only about communicating and sort of taking credit for what we're doing i think if you like i got excited as y'all delivered that plan just now and it shows me that we all sort of are have the same goals and the same priorities and we're all pushing in the same direction and by pat packaging it so nicely you've done the work to say and here are the three pillars of of our program and here is our focus and here are our core initiatives so if we're all going to be working together we all actually know what we're working you know we we know how to how to chip in and how to be part of the team and where we're all headed

232so i think it's terrific and i think it's um on both accounts the equity action plan and this they both i think illustrate the value of of having it packaged and put together and communicated in that way just thank you for it it's wonderful so thanks yes i echo all of that i thank the four doctors who was thinking the same thing yeah i was like okay okay oh women okay okay right um so i just wanted to thank you you all for a wonderful presentation i think that um it's been really hard to find the the light and the inspiration these last year um from our school board meetings have been very heavy and necessary but heavy so that just kind of brought in i think the light that we needed and i remember

233taking some of the um courageous conversation classes we would talk about how you have to meet people where they are you meet the community where you where they are so there was all of these baby steps that we needed to take you know in my head i was thinking you know we should be here five years ago and we couldn't be and so just even as jano mentioned the decolonizing curriculum i mean that is that is the type of language and verbiage and um you know acknowledgement that i think is like so necessary and so important and we're finally there and ready to to say that we couldn't have said that five years ago um and so um that just shows that we we are moving in the right direction even if it doesn't feel

234like it's moving fast enough we are certainly moving in the right direction so i too like louis i'm excited about um you know the plan and the the website um and just the cohesiveness that it looks like you all doctors have achieved um so yeah proud very proud moment thank you very much thank you very much awesome thank you all that was fantastic let's figure it out makes me want to talk about board newsletters is that what we're talking about next board newsletter i think it is [Laughter] so final topic board newsletter we tried a little different approach and i'd like to get your feedback on it but um you know i really i would like us to get to the point that we get the board newsletter out the same week as the board

235meeting and so um we're trying a new approach where we're bringing you the draft with a lot of things written um so then you can give us feedback on did we get it did we hit the right topics are there more topics you want and we're hoping that this may streamline things a little bit so that maybe like by friday after each board meeting we can get that newsletter out so um there's a draft link there that you can pull up and of course the link to the old newsletters and so i just wanted to touch on real quickly sorry let me pull it up here we've got the um a little quick thing to make sure that the people recipients of this newsletter know we have new board officers um and about our second

236semester plans we'll have a little thing there some of the budget highlights um the homestead exemption um and the annexation things that we're working on with the dekalb board are there any other things that you think we should include there or any other thoughts on what i just shared um i think it's important that it's succinct and short because our target audience has a short very uh you know attention span um i didn't hear you mention equity but it might be worth the blurb about what we just talked about some links to our new site and to our presentation that was really the only thing i think i would add i would love to highlight the the website and the district improvement plan and just so you know we were communicating offline here and decided

237we're going to clip out that presentation that you just saw and share that more broadly because i just think they really nailed it with that um going through that improvement plan and so we could even like put a link to it right in this newsletter and some other venues so absolutely all right well we will plan on doing that then and you've got the future dates that are listed there and i just want to remind you i think we want to um rejoin um exec session to finish up our topics from earlier so we don't need to actually adjourn this meeting but we can end this link and you can actually um join back in using the link that we used before um maybe after a quick little break okay well this adjourned i think

238we have to don't we have to make a motion to go back to the other executive session yes okay exactly so this ends our public portion of our um board meeting for february 9th and we will need a motion to break off into exact session for personnel yep we're good we got a motion in a second anyone opposed all right so we'll go ahead and end this link just because of the logistics of zoom and so if you guys can connect to the one from earlier we'll uh convene that what do you think tasha in like five five or ten minutes maybe yeah let's join back in five minutes at 10 10 and just be real quick okay all right thank you everybody bye thank you