March 12, 2019, Board of Education Meeting

001mounted a problem while the elephant could get his head in the door he could go no further it's a good thing we made this door expandable to accommodate my woodshop equipment the giraffe said give me a minute while I take care of our problem he removed some bolts and panels to allow the elephant in the elephant and giraffe were happily sharing woodworking stories when a call came in for the giraffe from his boss esta giraffe went upstairs to answer the call the elephant spotted a project in the far corner he tried to go through another doorway to look at it but he got stuck and broke the frame of the doorway he then decided to go upstairs to let giraffe know but as he stepped on the stairs he heard them crack at this point

002giraffe made his way back downstairs and asked on earth happened here I was trying to make myself at home the elephant said the giraffe looked around okay I see the problem the doorway it's too narrow we have to make you smaller there's an aerobic studio near here if you take some classes there we could get you down to size and the stairs are too weak to carry your weight the giraffe continued if you go to ballet classes at night I'm sure we can get you light on your feet I really hope you'll do it I like having you here perhaps the elephant said but to tell you the truth I'm not sure that a house designed for giraffe will ever really work for an elephant not unless there are some major changes in our story

003that giraffe represents how we sometimes want to address inequities and/or differences the elephant is warmly invited and generally welcomed but is expected to miraculously change to accommodate a situation that was not built for his unique characteristics as a faith community we chose to examine our house to determine what structures we have in place that limit the movement of student achievement and growth we want to know in what ways we have made the people the problem and altering the structures we wanted to uncover the ways in which the giraffe and elephant scenario may be present in our school community therefore we are engaging three groups in dialogue one for our staff one for our parents and one in development for our students joining me tonight our faith teachers and parents to share a few words about

004our work good evening okay save my message here tonight so I'm going to talk to you about the book courageous conversations so these dice they represent the staff members prior to being introduced to this wonderful work here so now this as we are now we move around Marbletown and so those represent what this uh this great book has done for our staff so for one that it helped us to look at difficult conversations about race about inequity about the achievement gap and this is some of the things we've been looking at for years and years and it's all continued to be a problem in our district but what this book has been able to glean out is looking at what are we doing you know as teachers as educators how we interacting with students students

005so it presents like different scenarios for us to think about how we are going about in our day to day activities you know did I say something they may have a ratio ramifications or how is the distribution of calling on students you know just being able to think about that in a more conscious way and I think the best thing that came out of this was something for my leader of new was being able to say it's okay if it's non closure you know not teachers we're so often feel like we need to have an answer to everything every problem that comes up but all problems may not be able to be solved immediately or with some kind of panacea so I think that uh that's what its open our eyes up to and so

006I'm grateful to that and I think we still have a lot of work ahead of us I teach fourth grade over at faith and I think honestly what a book like courageous conversation does is it gives us a platform and kind of a framework in which to work I think it gave people an opportunity to feel like they had a space to speak in and what it did was it actually kind of gave us parameters like it's okay to be uncomfortable as Russell said and you it said that you know we're necessarily not going to solve any problems here and to speak your truth so I think those really helped you feel like they could speak they're from their experiences teachers are people too we come with our own set of preconceived notions we come

007with our own perspectives we come with our own ideas and a lot of times maybe teachers aren't allowed to feel like they should think that way but I think what a book like this does it allows us to have those kind of tough conversations and realize that everyone has their own perceptions about race and it's always good to have those conversations it's good to talk about them and to feel comfortable that you're being heard necessarily that you're changing anyone's mind but you're giving someone a different perspective and that's what we need some time to think not necessarily I can't put myself in your shoes but I can hear your experiences and I can accept them and respect them more than anything else even if I don't agree with them I can't accept and respect them

008so I think that's what the book did it gave us that type of platform to use as a parameter to have those conversations and feel comfortable with each other and having them thank you hi good evening I believe I have the pleasure of knowing most of you but I'm Krista Sylvan I'm a double fav parent with fourth grade and fifth grade daughters that save so we've also had the opportunity this semester to participate in facilitated conversations about the book the hate you give dr. Sean Warner it has been our facilitator sponsored by the PTO I have to say that but it's been there was the school did an excellent job of soliciting parent involvement made it very clear that the expectation was five two-hour sessions and that we would have to put ourselves in a

009place where we were not always going to be very comfortable and we were going to discuss some really sensitive topics and so a group of moms and dads and guardians have shown up and we've had some conversations the first meeting of course there's a little bit of timidity we've learned a little bit of that district statistics about some of the achievement gap but since then we're now we've had three sessions and we've really gotten into some very meaty topics we've discussed the history of blackface we've discussed code-switching that sometimes our black students have to do between maybe their home life and their school life we've discussed even something as seemingly innocuous as the young lady that was cast in the movie versus how the characters portrayed on the book and the young lady in the

010movie is actually a little bit lighter skinned than the character is this is the goal of our justice board as part of the Justice Board the students will be trained to help others verbalize their concerns that they see an experienced will be working to teach kids how to communicate what they need and also to advocate for themselves effectively the work has started with a small group of students its fifth and sixth graders who are working on a podcast to tell their story our title is voice and while we have several students who are telling stories about race there are others working on issues of gender and disability because kids some of the others some of the stories our children are telling or about being black gifted student who is always in trouble because he challenges

011Authority being an Asian student who is automatically assumed to be smart and expected to perform a certain way being a student with ADHD and anxiety who struggles with deadlines and organization but is overly worried about what other people think and is often paralyzed with fear the goal of this work is to help the teachers and other adults start to understand what our kids are seeing and feeling one of my kids said we may all have the same skin colour or disability but that doesn't mean we're all the same and I thought that was very powerful um one of my students has volunteered to share her story this is Sydney and she's gonna come up and share what she's ready so my name is IRA member when I was in preschool people in our class would

012ask me which one of your parents is white because they thought I was mixed honestly I thought this was a joke when I was young when I thought this was a joke when I was young so I would laugh it off but now that I think about it it's very offensive because just because I look a certain way doesn't mean I am a certain way when people told me well when I told people none of my parents were white they would get so shocked I can see what they were confused I felt like I felt like I was supposed to be something I'm not as I got older and more mature I realized that just people just because people think I'm one thing does mean I should be that and so to wrap it up

013our anticipated our anticipated outcomes are to raise teacher parent/guardian awareness of the inequities at faith and in our school district thank you to reflect on self perceptions of how racially culturally and linguistically motivated oppressive practices policies challenge equity in our schools and to begin a framework in shared language to discuss issues of race power and privilege with faith school personnel students and families thank you so much that was awesome I had a quick question well first I will say thank you for a great presentation and I will say that I believe a student can have kind of this perfect world when he's got the support of family and the support of his school district as well as his actual school and I know growing up in school and talking about race issues that might at

014the dinner table with my family but it was never discussed at school it was never discussed on this level and so I am proud to see that the discussions are continuing to happen in all three realms so that our particular students will know that they are supported and thought of this question is for anybody but I'm just curious as to maybe what some of your biggest takeaways or aha moments are something you just absolutely didn't know that you learned from attending some of these classes or whatever I'm sorry would it be called and what the person who doesn't like being in front of the mic I think for me it just affirmed what I already want to do with students and with parents and with my coworkers it gave us a framework to work from

015to have conversations I think often with these conversations people get uncomfortable and then they shut the conversations down and so I feel like being that it's out there and that we are all engaged in it gives everybody kind of that push to the people that are really strong and wanting to do it lets us do it and then have the other people kind of understanding where we're coming from I think for me it was really a lot of introspection on the code-switching discussion that we had I don't think that I had an appreciation well I think it was aware that code-switching happened I don't think I had an appreciation until our discussion of the the stress and the and the heaviness that that must feel like for an 11 year old or nine year old

016or 10 year old yeah or more mature so I think that that's probably just all of the extra that they come to school with every day that has nothing to do with anything and then the other challenges that might be faced I think for me that's probably the biggest takeaway I've had I think for me it's been really good to have conversations about race and issues that the equity with people outside of my own circle that I wouldn't necessarily converse with other parents you know naturally when I'm with my friends of color we talk about race it just comes up because of who we are and we confront these issues every day but I don't do that in my own community where I live and so I think it's been really good for me to

017have a space to be able to do that and it's been uncomfortable but it's been really good I say for me it was uh just those moments of what I call when people realize they're using what I call recreational bigotry that's the term I use which maybe just not you it's uh exchange you name it I realize okay I didn't realize that uh you know saying X Y Z could be perceived that way sometimes people may not know you know but yeah I mean it's not everyone I'm not gonna give everyone a pass on there are some that maybe genuinely uh just naive so uh just being aware of that knowing your colleague may not always know because that did come up in commerce or I didn't know that saying this can be perceived or

018taking the net in that matter no cuz you know you may not necessarily you're not walking in that person's shoes even though you may see documentaries or watch whatever it's still different I was we see different so differently yeah I should say okay did you guys do the beyond diversity training it was that part of some of the work that you've done just you are doing it okay alright well I wanted to thank mrs. Newton because I know your work started two and three years ago when I was serving with you and the SLT then I consider you an early adopter of this book and sharing it with your staff and being a strong leader and making it a priority so thank you for doing that and thank you both to mr. Stewart and mrs.

019prophet for also being leaders and this is William sorry for also being leaders in your school and my question is for mrs. prophet I'm very interested in how you're capturing the voices of the students and how we're going to be able to share that with teachers and can you just expand on that a little bit how teachers maybe up fav and maybe other schools within our school system will be able to benefit from that so the thinking is that we're going to get it into a podcast form so that we can continue to have this happening um and be able to share it digitally with people that's not my expertise on the tech side so we would have to work that out but one of the reasons that I wanted to include some of the

020sixth graders is because a lot of the work I did last year with the fifth graders that are now sixth graders related to race I wanted them to be able to kind of start to tell their stories as well so that's my goal is to have it in podcast form so that people can listen and kids can continue to share their stories as they learn what their story might be because sometimes they don't know they don't recognize that hey this might be part of my story so I think that answers your question first of all it sounds like you guys have really gone deep and not just kind of scratched the surface in areas that are hard to converse about but it's so productive and helpful and I love that you're engaging the students in

021this too because they also think it can help parents and their children have productive conversations and I just wanted to tell soot well tell Sydney in Sydney that what city that she did a great job and Sydney's mom - she should be very proud it was that's very brave and courageous thinking of courageous conversations for a fifth grader to come and speak to a board on such a sensitive and challenging topic so thank you it isn't lost on me that the giraffe and the elephant the elephant is the elephant in the room and one of the things that the beyond diversity training allows us to do is talk about the elephant in the room but talking about the elephant in the room doesn't solve the problems it allows the problems to begin to be solved

022so as you said there's still a lot of work to do I'm amazed that you got people to sign on for ten hours of you know their lives to a deep dive on this and I think that we should challenge ourselves to do at least as much it's really easy to put the beyond diversity training on the shelf as opposed to make sure that it's right in front of us and we're using it so I really appreciate you and you're already doing this so don't really appreciate it thank you I'll just echo everything that's been said I thought this was a great it's very encouraging to see all this happening and is this the first are you all the only ones who are doing this sort of facilitated discussion involving parents and and staff to

023really dive into these issues they're not the only ones but they're the early adopters fave has been doing this work before I think pretty much any other school in the district like Heather was saying and so they're much further along in the process than a lot of other schools are it's just I mean this is what we need to be doing community-wide we need to you know really scale this up I've been participating in a similar group in my neighborhood that was and I can just attest how difficult it is to it's very valuable but it's really hard to make it work and so I'm glad that you're finding away and one question I had was how these are facilitated the parent group who's providing the facilitation as Christa said we are fortunate that our

024PTA paid for an expert facilitator his name is dr. Sean Warner he is a professor at Clark Atlanta University but he actually lives in DC so he is he comes down at the beginning of the semester to set up his classes and then he conducts them remotely and so when he is in town maybe not anyway he works it out and he facilitates our parent discussion for us because we felt like we needed someone with expertise in order to really do how many how many parents are participating in these I'm about 25 that signed up consistently probably be 15 yeah and so I think that's just really wonderful so thank you all for what you're doing I really love that story I'll send you the full story because that was the the condensed version I

025have one other question for the justice board which i think is funny because I I can imagine like a panel of superheroes so it's a little bit of right now it's like teaching kids how to speak and share what they are personally experiencing because I've had several students come to me like my student last year who said that nobody will listen to me and giving them kind of training them in tools that will get them heard because a lot of times our students have a lot of trouble being heard because of the way that they address adults so that's the first task and then ultimately our goal is to be able to have a place where students when they see something or they feel something in class that they could bring it to us as

026a group and we can help them talk through it so that they could eventually handle it on their own it's kind of learning how to advocate for yourself you know when we get to the point where we're working on the social-emotional learning I think it'd be really important for us to find a way to make sure that we meet the intersection of that and cultural humility and the equity work what you were saying about being able to advocate for yourself and teaching the skills to do that yeah you know for me one of the things you said about you know partially code-switching but the idea that that students aren't accepted for who they are just walking in the door that they have to fit into the system we need I really appreciate the work you're

027doing on that as well and challenge you to challenge us on ways that we can change the system because it doesn't fit everybody thank you all right thank you all okay the next on our agenda is the public comment I think right so we have to Fanta Cowan's and my Olli Davis with Fanta first please and the we have a it's the three minute time period for the comments I'm fond to Cowens first grader at Winona Park so let me just start by saying that I read mr. Daley dr. danee I write yours your post a couple weeks back regarding this you stated at your white privilege and I can appreciate your attempt to sell free flat however after reading the post it was clear me that you still don't get where this all began

028to go wrong and frankly it's made me question the progress of all of the training that you all have talked so much about to all of the black parents and all the other parents that have come during these meetings and the last meeting you've stated that when you read the email chain it happened exactly the way it should have happened you said that the teachers are very well-meaning trying to teach our kids how to be responsible by having them return I believe what you call it notification forms even though they had to be signed to the teachers and this was regarding a activity that was held on school campus I believe in the cafeteria for Black History Month when I heard you say that everything happened the way it was supposed to and these teachers

029wall mean my first thought was are you kidding me this is well-meaning that that the teachers required a permission slip or a notification form whatever you even call it that that's required to teach students black history month black history culture black history excuse me black history and culture during of all times February as far as I know our children are not required or even asked to provide the scientific ation form to learn white history or white culture these teachers are they not concerned about teaching responsibility when the lesson plan covers right hit white history or white culture it was only when the creek covered black history that all of a sudden the forum was needed so when you say that to a groom a concerned parent in your district that everything happened the way it

030was supposed to have happened we have a problem with that because you're supposed to be leading the ship and it doesn't even seem like you know the issue last meeting you said we hope we can do better we we can keep hoping and we can keep training our staff and parents and faculty members but at some point and I believe that playing is now I believe that point is today I believe that point was yesterday we need to see you guys actually doing better thank you Oh I just wanted to come back in as one of the co-chairs and Ingram IRA the other co-chair of Beacon Hill and just again reiterate our commitment we're here I know that at times it's a been a defensive kind of posture that some board members have taken even

031doctor duty in some of our communications we're here we have to be here this has to be addressed we're committed we're gonna keep coming we're going to keep addressing it when we see it we're gonna call it and just you know we're not doing it I mean we're doing it for the children right I mean you all everybody here is engaged for the children that's the only reason we're here is not me have a ton of other kind of commitments that we could be engaged in but we're here for the children and so like we really need everybody to kind of process that and embrace that and and just stop being defensive about our presence in our advocacy no one would be upset if something were happening to white children and folks stepped up and

032advocated no everyone would just say yeah that makes perfectly sense but when we do it it just feels like there's this pushback and it doesn't need to be right because the evidence is there we all agree so you know we're can't we can't go sit in the corner and just wait we're gonna have to stay engaged that's that's everyone has a role in this process that's our role you know a hope is that it can continue to move in a productive way you know we haven't come in and try to take over the induce sittings I've done all that stuff I mean that is within what we can do but we have done that right and so when we come and talk don't flip out on us talking right I mean because we can all

033escalate and and create of real much more uncomfortable situation than it is and we haven't done that because we've tried to move in community and so we would like for you all to respect that we're trying to move in community but at some point young people are still being impacted on a daily basis and while I think we're trying to work at the top level every one of those schools there are teachers there are administrators who are not champions of a change of culture they are not so we really need whoever at the school level are not champions that should be our measuring stick we can get people to teach we can get people to administrate but we have to find champions of justice in the schools that they just look like they are engaged

034with all of the children and they make it make us all comfortable we don't have that right now in every school and it's not you you and I know I'm out of time but it's important that you get we can find a teacher that can teach all of the white kids that's easy it happens every day in America we have to find a teacher and administrators who willing to teach all of the children and make it a priority thank you thank you all right I have a couple of things I wanted to give an update on the investigation that we did into the the concerns that were raised by Beacon Hill and so we did dr. Huddleston and I conducted an investigation of that and found out that there were definitely some missteps as were

035shared in that letter of we understand why the prevented the form went home as a permission form it was an error that should have been caught and wasn't and of course the we would not require permission for an activity like that so we followed up with the school on how that error happened and how to stop that from happening again we had some conflicting value systems in terms of teaching kids responsibility and accountability and so when it looked like a permission slip there were teachers who felt like we've been working hard to make sure kids are accountable and you need a slip you need a slip and we're trying to hold them accountable for that and they also failed to recognize the impact on that so and then with culture of caring we had several

036issues where some events they tend to get cancelled at the last second because it's difficult for groups to handle groups the size of ours and also some students we're told very soon before the event that they weren't able to go because of behavior issues and those expectations had not been communicated well in advance of if you that these criteria you might not be able to go based on your behavior so that's a quick summary of the investigation and just wanted you all to know that that has been followed up on and we'll continue to work with the school to try to avoid problems like that in the future so the we are in the midst of the staffing season and so if you're watching our website at all you'll see there's lots of positions going

037up things are moving along really well we're far ahead of where we've ever been at this point in the past we have really tried hard to to push the process back so we're the first choice for teachers and other staff before other school districts scoop them up we had a very successful career fair thanks to David Adams and his staff and all the principals who showed up and we had Excel team members show up and we had over a hundred people I think show up to the career fair which is fantastic it was a really good turnout got some really good contacts through that so staffing is is going really it's going well but it is an ongoing process and will continue throughout the entire spring so just if you know people who are looking

038for positions or who may be interested in moving make sure you're mentioning that there are lots of openings that they may be able to move into the budget prep is going really well I meant to look at the exact meeting I think it may be the next meeting is Susan here the next meeting right when we will be bringing a first draft of the budget so we've had schools are working hard on their requests and and we're pulling it all together and so I'm looking forward to bringing that to you all as well and then finally I just wanted to read you quickly a blog post rather than try to summarize I'm just going to read the to you just so you you know where we are in terms of some of the work we've

039been doing regarding school start and end times so this is just a post that is going up on my blog so opening a new building and rezoning the district provided me an opportunity to take a closer look at several issues across the district including start and end times for each school level work hours for staff and the difference in the amount of time individual teachers spend providing instruction versus time allocated to planning each school level has different state requirements for the length of the school day and I believe that CSD can create fair expectations for students in regards to instructional time and for staff in regards to planning time and I share a chart of our start and end times and employee hours one reason to reduce our noon times was due to their impact

040on bussing after reviewing three different bus routing options and corresponding changes to start and end times I decided that our current start and end times will remain in effect for the upcoming 2019 2020 school year all of the scenarios we examined required extra buses and bus drivers so there was not a need to change start and end times in relation to transportation efficiency with start and end times remaining the same the issue of inequity across the district for teachers regarding work hours and instructional versus planning time remains so between now and December we will review start and end times from instructional and employment perspectives to see if there are any changes we would like to implement for the 2020 2021 school year in the meantime for next year we'll reiterate some expectations to bring as

041much consistency as we can for our employees including ensuring that our supervisors honor the expectation of a 40-hour workweek for our staff for example for schools that have a weekly staff meeting requiring staff to stay a given time past the time the workday would typically end they will need to find an equal amount of time elsewhere in the week to allow those staff to come in late or leave early such changes will need to be communicated with impacted staff long before they are implemented in order to allow sufficient time for planning finally as I've shared previously if we want our teachers and students to continue to improve we need to provide our staff with more protected time for professional learning and for parent-teacher conferences there are several options that I've been considering for the upcoming

042school year and beyond and we will soon be sending out a survey to our stakeholders to gather input on these options so just wanted some of that you've heard some of that you haven't but just want to make sure everyone one is aware of where we're going there that'll go up on my blog and I'll also send that around to staff so they all get the same update so that's all from my update for today quick follow-up gonna you mentioned the budget are we doing a budget day in April I can't remember Susan are we doing a budget day in April I can't remember the calendar do we have that calendar I think it's an it's not we're not doing the during the day thing like we used to do okay it's a work session

043okay got it okay thank you all right next is the chairs report bear with me I have a few things this week first I'd just say to miss Collins and mr. Davis did you know thank you for being here we do appreciate that you come and we understand and want you to keep coming and keep holding us accountable I think to a person the board appreciates the spirit that you all bring to this appreciate the way that you're engaging with us and just wanted to continue I mean we're not perfect you're not perfect it's a partnership we need to work together we need to keep working at it and if it seems that we're defensive sometimes I mean sometimes the fact is that people of goodwill can fail and sometimes that's because people of goodwill

044it's hard to change an organization it takes time if it were easy we would have done it decades ago but we are to a person have embraced this need we understand the need of we and we are doing our level best to address it and we're going to keep trying and we're gonna keep failing but you just need to keep coming we just need to keep working together so I will also say that regarding the investigation that was done I think that you guys would be very very pleased to see how those allegations were investigated this was a model thorough investigation that took the concerns to heart and took a deep dive to say what went wrong it was very critical and and in reflective and honest and I appreciate the spirit with which that

045was moving to other topics first on the list is the DHS the Decatur high school production of a little mermaid I encourage all of you to go show the show starts on March 14th and it runs through the 24th you can go to Decatur performs.org to purchase tickets these shows almost always sell out because they're good they're really really good this is great entertainment and and you should go because it's you're gonna enjoy it you should also go to support the kids and support the staff there's a lot of effort into the production unrelated note I happen to attend a luncheon yesterday at the Woodruff Arts Center that was focused on the educational outreach programs and in particular they have a close partnership with the city of Atlanta with a lot of sort of end

046school opportunities where the theater people come and work with the kids in the schools same with the symphony and there's also visual arts programs and it was really great one of the things they rolled out at the luncheon was the results of the study that they had commissioned to the University of Arkansas and partnership with Woodruff and the Atlanta public school system finding that this engagement the opportunity to experience the exposure to the arts and the access to the arts through these programs turned out to have a very significant impact on standardized test scores in subjects that would seem to be unrelated like you know math and reading and I guess you know I don't I need to read the study to understand more about it but it's in teaching empathy and other thing things

047that bring these kids a different approach to their other schoolwork anyway I just think it's one reason that we should continue to emphasize the arts and not consider it just an afterthought but a really essential part of the whole child education that we're trying to provide related note I hope that we will explore these programs at Woodruff Arts Center's offering and make sure that we're you know if any right for us that we're taking full advantage over next the fifth grade had a night of expressions at at faith there was a fifth grade night of expressions at fave this was a culturally significant and I am told a very well done event the highlight of the evening was a black history performance called through the African Diaspora it was written and directed by fifth grade

048teacher nyla cardi and it was performed by many dozens of students included shorts skits depicting significant events in African American history including music and culture with live drumming singing and dancing again I'm told that this was just fantastic so congratulations there's also a family engagement and learning at Oakhurst Oakhurst Elementary has held its first family's teen night recently with over 150 participants rotating through a variety of stations which promoted scientific thinking and problem-solving the activities included boat building marble run squishy circuits coding little boats and more steam night also included an introduction to the Oakhurst inclusion project so family steam night and the Oakhurst inclusion project are two of our equity initiatives for this year the Decatur high school congratulations to DHS for being named an AP honor school superintendent woods and the Georgia Department

049of Education announced that our recently and DHS was recognized in the following categories we're an AP merit school means that we have at least 20% of our total student population taking AP exams and at least 50% of all AP exams earning scores of three or higher we're also an eighty stem school which means that we have students testing in at least two AP math courses in at least two AP science courses and we don't just send them to the tests they do very well and that's why we're also recognized as an AP stem achievement school and stem achievement schools our stem schools that have at least 40% of AP math and AP science exams earning scores of three or higher so congratulations to the staff and students at DHS I love this one Glenwood elementary

050was recently named a kindness certified school earned this credential the students had one week to try to do as many kind acts as possible the school counselor said in terms of being a kindness certified school this just puts to the forefront what's important to us and that we're choosing kindness every day in what we do I think for the students it's important because it's easy to focus on what's going wrong or negative thoughts and we focus on concrete specific kind acts we are empowered to make positive choices in our lives I think that's wonderful the next recognition is to Decatur robotics so this is not actually a DHS team from what I understand but it is a city team on which a number of DHS high school students are participating along with one of our

051board members but our team the Decatur robotics team 4:26 global dynamics competed in the FRC regional qualifier in Dalton Georgia what is FRC first robotic challenge I believe thank you hopefully I got the hacker tomorrow it's basically varsity robotics varsity robot they came in first to the 38 teams competing so they'll move on to compete in the state championship and Emerson Georgia the first week in April I wish them continued success and hope to see them compete at the World Championship in Houston that's terrific one other something that Kim Jones at DHS counsel at DHS has shared with us she said I am so proud of DHS class class of 2019 s very own Breanna Hunter did I pronounce that correctly she is now officially a published author her book seconds in eternity has been

052published she's in the top Breanna is in the top 10% of her class there's been a full-time dual enrollment student for two years and she walked into my office as a 9th grader and stated that she was writing a book and had a goal of being published before she graduated and she did it so our kids are doing amazing things the last thing I wanted to comment on is a political thing which is Senate bill 53 which is a bill that has already passed the Senate and House in the session of the General Assembly and I just want us all to be aware it's a very bad bill which will essentially limit the City of Decatur and its ability ever to annex additional land what the bill does is say that if there is any

053annexation the boundaries of the school system will not grow with the city in order to grow the school system boundaries there would need to be a separate vote of all the voters in DeKalb County who would then need to approve the annexation for the for the city schools of Decatur at the same time there's a provision of the bill that says even that's not an option unless the City of Decatur were to propose taking two percent of the total enrollment of the DeKalb County school system of a hundred thousand students so what this does in practice is mean that unless this bill has changed this our boundaries will now be fixed by law and that that you know in terms of the you know whether the City of Decatur needs to annex additional property to

054balance its tax digest and what those boundaries should be that's one question that we need to have but the idea that it just is arbitrarily fixed today and no matter what comes in terms of siddha fication and municipal ization of the county that we have no opportunity to expand our boundaries I think it's just wrong this bill is now a reality like I said it hasn't been signed by the governor but it has passed both the House and the Senate this is a response to the dispute between DeKalb County and the city of Atlanta it really has nothing to do with the City of Decatur we got caught in the middle of this but we got forgotten and and we came out of this really bad and so what we're gonna need to do going

055forward is work with our senators and our representatives to fix it because it's it's just it shouldn't happen and it needs to be changed and we're gonna we're gonna need their help and so this is something that I think we're going to be hearing about more coming up I just wanted to bring it to everyone's attention and that's all I have from my comments what others like to add two quick things one on piggybacking on that note I just noticed that we don't have a legislative update on the agenda tonight just notice that as well and I don't want to put Kourtney on the spot but maybe during our I don't know future just I don't know I I don't want to put you on the spot right now but it would be I would

056be and if you want to do it over email later or something like that I'd be interested in getting a little plan on doing it that way I apologize I don't know how that happened we we will get a memo out to the board would okay and then second just because we're that this was like a great list of shoutouts and spotlights to lots of folks that thanks for putting that together Louis and since we're spotlighting fav tonight and they've gotten a number of shoutouts I just wanted to mention that I was fortunate enough to get to chaperone the trip to Tybee Island a couple of weeks ago and that is just such a phenomenal trip and since we have a couple of fav folks here I just wanted to take a moment to express

057my gratitude for all of the hard work that you guys do and executing that phenomenal trip for kids I got to just see and experience all the great things that happen on that trip but as someone who was a daughter to an eighth grade teacher who had to go to Washington DC every year growing up I also fully appreciate the sacrifice that teachers and their families make when they have to go when they have to leave their families and go on a trip for a few days and I know that's asking a lot and so I just wanted to express my gratitude because it really is a phenomenal trip that takes a lot of work and sacrifices from the staff so thank you Thank You Louis for all the updates those those were really good

058I just wanted to address kind of what mr. Davis and Miss Brooks and then what you said Louis and I think the working together and focusing on that is is definitely where we need to come from and I think sometimes it's forgotten that the issues that we're bringing to the table aren't new and they've been happening in our life and our grandparents lives and our parents lives for a really long time and so although we are in the right space and getting on to the right path and we're addressing it and we're talking about it we're doing what we're supposed to be doing it gets very frustrating and it gets frustrating for everybody involved I know that there are times that if I'm speaking to somebody and they say something that seems totally ludicrous to

059me that I have to take a second and breathe and speak from maybe educating them and showing them a different perspective versus just doing what I really might want to do or what I really want to say and that's not always easy to do and so sometimes if we're having these conversations and it seems that somebody is a little too hot or too defensive or too upset we all just have to like take that minute to breathe and try to try to understand how or get from the perspective how would you be if this was something that you had to talk about for the last 40 years and nothing has ever happened so I think that at the heart of it for everybody involved we all want the same thing and it's not always going

060to feel easy and it's we're not always going to agree on the way to do it but I think defensive nough scums from being feeling like you're being attacked and that's not what's happening it's the system it's it's it's and that's what needs to be broken down and so because we sit up here representing the system it feels personal but it's not so we have to kind of breathe and understand where it's coming from and that's the only way we're gonna be able to keep working with each other and it's again like it's a dance sometimes - we're gonna make some steps forward and then we're gonna take some steps back and like you said if it was easy and we could just do this in one year it would have been done 4050 years

061ago so I don't want us to be discouraged or take things personal when we're feeling like the heat is on us because I think it should be it should continue to be on us and not us Tasha white for Lewis but us this collective the heat is supposed to be on us right and so sometimes when we're alone with our families we can talk about the frustrations that we have and and then about how you know something made us feel but this collective has not has not represented black children well I know that and it still isn't so if we feel the anger if we feel the frustration if we feel like we're being disrespected maybe we are but that's okay that's okay we will get to a point where these meetings will people would

062be coming and they will be bringing great reports we're gonna get to that point I believe that that we're gonna start seeing hearing good stories about teachers and administrators and our black kids are gonna speak about great experiences that's where I think all of our goal is it's just really painful right now because it's not happening it's not happening as fast as we want it to I know it's definitely not happening fast enough for our black parents so we just kind of have to that's where the work is and it's gonna be constant and again that's why I appreciate it what you're doing over at that Renfro because my conversations with my children at the table when I ran fro four or five sorry my conversations at the table with my kids are now being

063are now being validated by conversations that you're having because before it wasn't Jordan didn't get this at Decatur high she had to hear just from me and then I had to keep supporting her every time she came in and she was getting the opposite and so now and my youngest goes to your school she will be validated by the things that she's hearing at my table as well and it's gonna be an ongoing conversation and anybody that rolls their eyes and thinks we don't need to talk about it anymore probably doesn't need to be part of this system anymore it's not going anywhere we're gonna keep talking about it we're gonna keep working on it and we're gonna keep tweaking it until again we have those great stories coming to us and I do believe

064we are the right district to be able to do that I do believe that so I want to apologize for myself if I've ever come off as being defensive because that is not my intention or my goal I think sometimes I feel like I'm here and you're there and I don't want to feel like that I always felt like you all are my community and I'm your community and it doesn't always feel like that sitting up here and so if you've ever felt like I wasn't listening or I was being defensive or I'm not taking what you say to heart then I do apologize for that stance because that is not my intention and we will continue to work together and however we feel like that looks and however that needs to be tweaked I'm

065available to talk about that I appreciate that and I want to say that when you say maybe it's okay it's not okay that you know we need to make sure that we have a sense of urgency and we all know that we're acting at a board level or a governance level a superintendent a CEO level a sense of urgency means something different here and how fast we can affect change what you may expect what we can't lose the sense of urgency and when Lewis says we're going to continue to fail I want to make sure we're qualifying that that we're gonna fail in the same way that a toddler becomes a toddler where they're falling and they continue to fall forward until the Tata line becomes walking and until walking becomes running I want to

066say I hope that Black History Month will become a thing of the past because black history will be every month in history and not have to be qualified with a special month put aside for black history as if black history isn't part of all history and I'll apologize that as a 40-something white male I wear a set of blinders that I can never quite take off and I will always be an imperfect ally most likely but I always try to be a good Ally and so help me become a better Ally as well so thank you thank you to everyone for your words and as well I'm all-in and I wanted to bring something full circle just with what Lewis started talking about what I saw what I see at fav what I see it

067run through what I've seen at our other schools and and how the extra activities that we do now with the groups that we're starting to have a dialogue with in our school but also including the sports that our kids get to do together the musical groups that they get to be in with chorus and orchestra and band and the clubs and the robotics and the things like that I feel like they are so important and that as part of our equity work we are looking at how we can make accessibility to all of these groups for all of our students because I feel like that's where our children will build their lasting relationships more so than just in the in the classroom while that's a priority of ours obviously academics if we want to work

068on building our culture and develop these relationships between our students we can continue to focus on having balanced participation and all of these wonderful activities that we have available to our to our students I hope it's clear that when I said we'd continue to fail I just wanted to make sure it was clear to everybody I know what you mean if you are not going to succeed unless you are willing to fail right and if you are not willing to make a mistake you're not going to have the conversation and we're not going to make any progress that's all I think Ron do I consent items yes so do we have a motion to approve Ronit I the personnel report was it romanette to the school nutrition report 3 the financial reports and for the

069fiscal year 2020 tuition rate I have a question about the tuition rate we'll need to pull it then to talk about can I just ask a question before we like make a motion if there's no we could dispense with the normal order the the the tuition includes tuition for non-resident people at for the pre-k and at first I thought well why are non-residents using the pre-k and then I thought well maybe the answer is that if you're a an employee with the benefit so that you get tuition for K through 12 you're also allowed to use pre-k but just like everybody else you have to pay tuition to it is that what's happening I don't know the answer to that do you guys know what non-residents would be paying pre-k tuition I didn't think any

070non-residents qualified for the lottery other than courtesy tuition right well there wouldn't be courtesy would be courtesy there wouldn't be no tuition charge no but courtesy tuition meaning we allow the teachers children to come to our schools that they don't live in Decatur but and that extends to pre-k without having they don't pay they don't get to go to pre-k if they can access pre-k - they didn't have to pay tuition they don't okay so why don't we have it on the form I just pose that as a question we can approve all of this but the form includes reference to pre-k I don't you'll have to tell me where you're talking about because I don't see it here there's a 2019 2020 non-resident student tuition contract okay we'll check that I just poses the

071question if y'all would check it yes we'll check that I don't think that changes what we need to pass in terms of that correct what you're actually and actually the recommendation is approval to set the k-12 tuition rate to 45 90 okay do we have the motion to approve the consent items second all in favor high chair both I so the motion carries okay next on the agenda is the discussion item no it's the information report for the challenge Street upper elementary school all right Billy good evening I'm Billy heme principal of tally Street upper elementary school first I want to acknowledge all the amazing work going on at saves made me feel a little bit pressure but I look forward working with principal Newton to make sure that this great work continues over at

072Talley Street so I have a brief update for you guys tonight switch on the side okay okay there we go first slide is actually dealing with a topic that dr. duty brought up a little bit earlier and I want to acknowledge the superintendent and our HR department for moving up our job fair or hiring season it really has allowed us to get some top-notch candidates so I'm really excited about the teachers that will be coming over from Talley you can see the breakout Tally's faculty is almost complete we still have a Spanish nurse a a Tata one parent liaison position to fill but other than that we are fully staffed you can see the breakdown of the different schools where our staff will come from we've got ten teachers and staff coming from Claremont five

073from Glenwood one from Oakhurst for four from Westchester six from Winona Park 31 for Fabe and then one from right from middle school so you you do see that the schools that are gonna be tallies feeder schools we do have a little bit more faculty and staff from those particular schools because they had stated that they wanted to follow their kids so I thought that was great we have seven new teachers coming from outside of the district they're coming from DeKalb Fulton winnette we have a current instructional coach from Washington DC that's actually coming down to be in the classroom here and she actually is leading the equity work in her school district up in DC so that was a great hire two of the seven our current teachers of the year at theirs at

074the school that they're at and then two of the seven or also their current PBIS coaches so I'm excited about that with with the work that that we've got coming ahead oh then exciting time we're down to our top five mascots we've gone through a very thorough process to get to the top five we started off with just an open survey for all of our students faculty that we'll be telling next year and parents and the top five and no particular order are the turtles the Blue Jays Dragons Titans and Tigers so the survey will close tomorrow and and we're trying to find a creative fun way to reveal the mascot on the website one of the things that I am keeping my fingers crossed but the last time I looked at the surveys in

075all groups the same mascot is number one so that will make it very easy to choose the mascot if that continues so I'm hoping by in the morning is say the same just a few additional updates our SLT have has had two meetings and we're currently in the process of drafting our vision and mission statements we voted the other night at our SLT meeting to open up tally Street as a school that will have a PTO instead of a PTA PTA we had some good conversations about why we want to do that we've had some great support and I think it just speaks well to the community we've had some great support from parents from faith who will not even have students that will be at Ally Street who were coming to some of our

076meetings and given input because they just want the school to open up successfully so that's that's been great never understood the difference can you tell me PTA is a parent-teacher Association and it's a national organization and so you have to pay to be a part of the PTA and so they take some of your funds where PTO you do not have to pay to a national organization and so what we're hearing from some of the current PTA is is the cost benefit and analysis that they've done they do not see a huge benefit of being a PTA and so and then and it made sense because LAIV is currently a PTO and so Tali opening up a PTO made sense well a a little bit of update on IB I attend my first IB training

077March the weekend of March 22nd and so that will allow us to start the authorization process for italic Street to become an IB candidacy school the timeline was too tight to make the April 1 deadline with my training being at the very end of March so that will mean we will apply in October and then we will become a candidacy school in the spring of next cool year typically it's a two to three year process to become an official IB world school so that's the timeline that we're looking at but I'm excited to find out more about ID just some pictures this is always the fun part these were pictures that I took yesterday when I was walking around on the site that is a view of where the car rider line will come through

078and the two buildings on the left is the cafeteria and then gymnasium you can see where a lot of the scaffolding is up right there that is one of the entrances to the school and then that is a classroom building that still has the purple stuff on it that is a building B there's another view of it the scaffolding and they're doing a lot of brickwork over there it was great yesterday and then it rained and all of a sudden it was it was muddy again but they are bringing these big huge hoses out there now and actually I'm wiping down the drive so it's getting a little better this isn't building B which is the one that you saw this seal has the same insulation on the outside this particular building is not as

079complete as building a and you'll see some pictures from building a here in just just a minute but you can tell even in the building that it's not as far along we're making some really good progress this is a view of the grand staircase that you'll see from both sides when you come in who's gonna be really really nice this is in the admin office this is coming down the hall leaving the principal's office heading down toward the area where I would be able to access the gymnasium and the cafeteria so you can see the sheetrock is already going up so that's always a great sign this is building a so this is the one that's more as farther along and you can tell the the sheetrock is going up in the hallways and and

080the classrooms and I'm just so excited about this space right here it's going to really allow for good flow of students from the gym and and the cafeterias going back to their classrooms because it's a really large space right there so I've been very impressed with the width of the halls there is a just view of a classroom and this is unique and so they'll have blinds that we'll be able to shut during lockdowns and things like that so it's a great safety issue or a feature that will have a tally this is a classroom and that is a massive amount of space for a classroom I've never seen such big big classrooms and in all my schools including my one year in middle school these are just very impressive and another thing that's great

081is each of the classrooms will have a sink within their classroom and so that's gonna hopefully really help us cut down on germs and things like that during flu season this is a picture of our cafeteria the painting has already started happening in there so you can see the bright green the other side is is yellow you can see that kitchen equipment is already starting to go in and the freezer is right there back to the left near the ladder and so it's really starting to look like a working kitchen for sure this is staged area and the gymnasium and so they just painted this it within the last couple days so you can tell how bright and cheery it's gonna be for our kids this is a view of the terrace level that this

082is Talley Street that you see right in front so this is accessed off of our art stem room and also one of our classrooms so we'll be able to utilize outdoor space even inside of the building and then last this will be the front entrance from Talley Street and you can get an idea about how it's a two story to story interest is going to be really really nice and so that's the that's the latest so they are they're really they're working hard out there and they're really making some good good progress so I want to thank know and his department because they're really working hard great thank you are we on schedule my my dad was a contractor and if I would have to bet I would say absolutely no and they're there at

083all times all the time I'll go over there even on the weekends and they have people working so there when you're a contractor and you start looking at liquidated damages if you don't make time timelines I think that they really start making sure that it's gonna open on time so I have no doubt one of the things that we are very one of the things that we are doing I'm working with a court need to make sure we're sending out a letter to to each tally resident that matches the art what we say is a street address for tally versus what they may or may not think and so the letter clearly says if you're receiving this letter U or zone for tally Street and if that's not what you thought then you know contact

084me and we'll try to work it out so those are gonna go out in the next couple weeks thank you thank you very much I just want to first of all thank you for the update thank you all for your work on this and I think it's appropriate to mention since mrs. Newton is here that I also appreciate all the collaboration between your two schools because I think it is a big challenge for us to make sure that we can duplicate all of the wonderful programming and opportunities the kids currently have it faved because that school is established and it's a big challenge for you mr. Heaton to to do that on day one and really get as much of that up and running as possible so we really appreciate your collaboration I can also

085appreciate that perhaps mrs. Newton is getting some ideas for for new paint colors and things but you know from from a community standpoint I think all of us on the board can appreciate also how important it is that the perception that these two schools create equal opportunities for all of our families and students is very important and also for the staff to feel that way as well and so thank you for your work and working together to make that happen and let us know what we can do if anything to help with that I might add that I also appreciate your putting together the Provisional SLT or transitional I'm not sure what you're calling it but I appreciate that effort I'm hearing really good things just it all sounds very good so nothing but compliments

086okay should we move to our action items our first action item is the board policy manual could you explain what's before us today yes so this is version 1.3 not two you never saw version 1.3 that one because it was an interim version we were working on internally so you didn't miss out on anything the redline document that's attached to their shows - changes from the version that you approved last - this version that's in front of you today so those changes are highlighted in the red line mostly or all of them are changes that we just need to make in order to capture a couple things that are in old board policy that we felt couldn't just be done with an administrative regulation there had to be a hook somewhere in the board policy

087to hook it into so it's things like policy 2.5 safety security we added remember we had reserved that section and so we added in a statement there because there were several things we needed to hook some admin regs to there's just a couple things at the end of each section that were just as we were reviewing the old board policies we felt there was a need to add in something in each one of those in order to make a spot and then a change of title as we started using section 2.8 it really made more sense to call finances into the budgets and so those are what the changes are we're trying to also keep the the appendix updated so those links are getting updated as we go I have noticed that because of the

088way word creates red lines it doesn't look inside fields and so like the table of contents changed but it's not red lined some of the hyperlinks changed but they're not red lined so just be aware if those are really it's not any meaningful changes but if you're curious about like why didn't the page numbers get red lined that's why because their fields and so that's just an artifact of how word does the red line so but anything meaningful that changed is Ray is represented in red line in the document so for what it's worth it usually does rather in the field yeah it doesn't on their reservation you know I prefer it this way yeah and then the the other piece of this action item is all there's a whole bunch of policies again like

089last time those old descriptor code style policies with the letters that we can now rescind because we have replacements in this manual or in admin regs and so we are working our way this will be a huge chunk of the rest of those policies it may even be by next month that we'll be able to have completely eliminated all those the old policies we are working with Council on these to try to make sure there are some that are just a little more complicated and it's kind of beyond our expertise as to exactly what the wording needs to be and where it needs to say so we're working on those a little bit slower to make sure we capture them correctly but so the action item here is to approve this one point three point

090two version of the manual and rescind those board policies that are listed there okay just got oh there is a motion first you we have a motion we have a second second discussions doing a state the motion the reputation is to approve board policy manual version 1.3 point two and rescind board policies listed in the summary section of that agenda item discussion I want to thank you this is great to see the number of to be determined and the new administrative regulations what's on the end of the tunnel is in sight it's very close one possibility that I might suggest is that we keep those descriptors and some link whether we keep the appendix or not just so that when we do those legal reviews that it's easy for the people doing the legal reviews

091to find out where an our manual to find the codes that they're used to looking for but I'm very excited and we're getting very close thank you thank you well I really appreciated that work too and I really it's really great to see you when we put something forward but you guys have really sort of taken the laboring oar in a big way to clean this up and get it over the finish line so thanks to you and thanks to everybody I don't know the walls if they're all working on us but I I appreciate that it's being it's being done really in the spirit which it's great so thank you I have some other comments about the policy we can go ahead and vote on the policy but then I have a comment or

092two that I wanted to make strategic you can move to reconsider so that motion carries I had one comment was that and this is really because I forgot to mention it on the consent items but there's a personnel report and the personnel report has the equity connection of the equity impact in the board policy connection when it states the board policy connection at citing the administrative regulation instead of the policy oh okay I would appreciate seeing both because I'm looking and I'm going back to trying to chase it down yeah so so I don't have to go back and turn back and find out what the policy said that's but the policy then the the well that was a small thing the other thing was that in the thing about the tuition made me go

093back and look at the book and say well exactly where is the early childhood learning center and you know how do you have authorized authorization even to do this mr. superintendent there's no policy for 1d how quickly he knew that one that's the one I have to turn to a lot your favorite one isn't it but I think we need we need to have it we need it that's a gap that we need to fill in particularly because we have some particular preferences in regard to the importance of ECL C and so we don't want this to be an item that so for the future agenda we need that policy and while we have you saw yet I did recommend a possible change to capture that through and there's my Steve Madden but if he

094can take a look at that some time and good I think that's all I wanted to mention oh and the other thing is that if we could sit down and Courtney and look through the website and a lot of times it's user error we've come up with the new plan actually what we're gonna do is create a page that every link that references either board policy or administrative regulation goes to a page that explains to people here's what board policy is here's what administrative regulation is and then you jump off from that to the individual pages just so that folks have kind of a learning opportunity of here's how well this all connects and so we'll have Quick Links and we'll put it anywhere there's any connection to it like office of Superintendent board pages

095whatever there will be a link that says board policy and administrative regulations it'll all go to a common page so you can learn what the difference is and then from there you go to the it sounds great it still might make sense to show so I can show you the kind of errors I make perp says it so that you just made me think of an email I sent David and you may have seen it just the overall there was one link to a previous policy that no longer existed and it was broken are we doing a an overview of the website to catch all of those and we will a lot of it is because we're rescinding all those policies in the symbol system that once those are rescinded we will go through and

096find all those links that may have broken then need to go someplace else okay okay our next action I am is recommended approval of rfp number 19 - b 0 0 1 i suppose we should but well doctor duty and Jared and I just met last week to review the proposals that we had received and you unanimously agreed that the proposal from Georgia State University was the one that we felt would best answer our RFP but we did have some comments and so dr. Duty is going to take those comments back to GSU and negotiate those further into the contract and I do have that meeting set up with them by the way so what does that mean for what we're doing right now so what what you're doing is authorizing me to negotiate a

097contract with them based on that RFP and so I would negotiate that contract along with the feedback from the RFP committee okay do we have a motion movement discussion all in favor aye cheerful sighs carries I want to thank you guys as we've done before but this is it was really strong at the beginning last item is we have to decide whether we can you can you read the motion for us please I think I didn't write it down move to confirm Garrett Goble representing city schools of Decatur Board of Education at the GSB a governmental operations committee meeting should we move to a point Garrett our representative GSB a it also means I have to go to Savannah okay so we have a motion second okay discussion thank you you willing to do it

098you thank you a great job I the only comment would be for Courtney to if you have your prepared stuff for the positions if there's anything that that we have that isn't in the GSB a position pamphlet that whole thing just so that if that discussion comes up so I can make sure that I'm representing our collective position you know I didn't say anything during my chair comments but it seems like I had at one time thought that I should to just mention that we're I think we're all going to the end as a Garrett said the foremost I just thought that we should mention that we're doing this and far from being a boondoggle it's not something I'm excited about doing I'm excited about you good experience but it's a big business right in

099between two weeks of travel it's definitely a sacrifice for everyone to get away from work and family yes really trying to get some sympathy but I'm looking forward to it I think the word Papa this is our first ever monitoring report this is the process that we've enacted with the new policy manual where we the board provides broad direction superintendent interprets and implements and then reports back to tell us how they've interpreted it and what progress were making so let's hear a barrel and give a little intro a little just expound a little bit on what you were sharing so yeah this is a big piece of the policy monitoring or the policy governance process we've gone through and this is the crux of it right this is what's about to happen is how policy

100governance works and so I want to go through quickly the email I sent earlier today just to remind the board and let others know like what they're about to see and kind of how this process goes and then also just to give people an overview of what to expect so we create a we have the board policy monitoring calendar that's attached to this agenda item and we also discussed it at previous meetings and that basically tells when every single board policy in sections one two and four are going to be monitored and so when will a report be coming about that and so like Luis was saying the process is the board policy statements are often rather brief and then what we do is we interpret that policy statement based on what we've heard and

101the board meetings the discussion the community responses and what the board has written in their policy and then we put together statements on whether or not we feel like we're meeting that policy depending on an ends policy or an executive limitation the statements look slightly different but you'll see those on the on the reports and so we basically do the interpretation take a position and provide evidence for our position and that's what these reports will look like and we looked at a template last time regarding that and there will be the first one to share an actual report that way so what happens is we put this report on the agenda board members look at it in advance so we don't do a presentation when we come to the board meeting because you've already reviewed

102the report we can jump right into the discussion whoever writes the report Darryl in this case will be available to answer whatever questions you might have things for clarification one of the things that you'll want to do first is select which board member is going to be drafting the board response to the monitoring report because of the absolutely critical part of this is the administration submits a report and then the bore basically submits a report back to the administration and so I shared that template earlier today and we discussed that at the last board meeting as well but the idea being you're giving feedback of one do you agree with what we thought we our statement of compliance of are we making progress are we not making progress is it sufficient etc another one is

103just your feedback on the report in general did the format work did the do you want to see something different next time this policy is monitored was it the appropriate data where the graphics helpful like things about the report more substantive things about your feelings regarding the content of the report and then also sometimes coming out of this there will be recommendations to update the policy manual and so that would also be present in the board's response and so whoever is selected to draft that will listen to this discussion tonight and they will draft a response to the monitoring report and then that won't become the official response until the following board meeting so every time we have a monitoring report the next month you'll see the board response to the monitoring report and in

104between is when that person will draft share it with the board I assume they'll get feedback from other board members and whatnot so when we get to that next meeting you can then vote to approve that and the reason this process is so important is because then this is the formal way of telling the administration here's here's where we agree you're spot on here's where we think you need to improve here's things where we think you misinterpreted what our sentence was in our policy manual or maybe we just realized we should have provided more clarification and so then we use that response to recommend changes or to put new administrative regulations in place and one of the nice things about all of these being written reports is then when it comes back to do this

105monitoring again in the future we have something to refer to to remind us all what happened last time we monitored this what did we say we wanted to see happen between now and then and and things like that so that's kind of the process and that's just a process that we created internally so if we want to change it at any time we can but for now that's the process we've been discussing so any questions about that or where it all fits in alright now we're ready to actually jump into the report mm-hmm so so it sounds like you are not going to report but you're gonna feel you're ready to answer questions all right so we have no process we just whoever wants to jump down I have a comment that I've already shared

106by email should I share my my first comment is that well first I appreciated the format and the content of the monitoring report I thought that it's very useful and I think that it is a good sort of a trowel because I see a lot of value in this I think I like it one of the things that it did and one of the reasons that I think it's good is that it sort of puts on paper how you interpret the policy and it surfaces the fact that I interpreted our ends statement differently than you all have interpreted which is one of the functions of the monitoring it's write report the policy is that an end goal under academics and foundations is that students will demonstrate an understanding of and respect respect for human and

107intercultural differences in multiple perspectives and understand that this is one of eight or one of twelve end goals that sum up essentially all of our academic aspirations for the students and so this is where we addressed curriculum I mean doesn't have to be the only place but this is the principal place where we say a student has you know the end goal is for students to be able to do these 12 things and so that one number seven demonstrate an understanding of and respect for human to intercultural differences in that multiple perspectives I see it's a very broad topic that includes a lot the report addresses I think an important aspect of that very broad topic that has to do with really racial equity and how students feel they're being treated whether whether teachers are

108treating black and white students equally all of those are extremely important as we've talked about but they do not go to the breadth of the subject of a subject matter which I have no doubt that we're doing but you know where we addressed this in my opinion is through almost everything they do an IB curriculum which stresses understanding well you know human and intercultural differences in multiple multiple perspectives you know you know our students need to read books and literature so that they understand about other people they need to study history African American history European history in you know Indian history you know world history all of those things what we're shooting for is that we have a broad understanding of different peoples and cultures and etc so I think that we need in my

109opinion those things are all very important and they need somehow to be reflected I think that they are reflected in this number seven but the way it's interpreted in a report is much narrower it has nothing to do with the content of the report as it is except for that ya know do other board members agree I hear what you're saying and I understand the the need and I think you know in policy governance you start broad and so I think it's an actual thing that if we can come up with those collective ideas that you know are those better guidance on goals then we should add those I guess what where I would come from is in this initial report the fact that our number one priorities equity in the school district to me

110it seems reasonable that given the surveys which are available and for which we have three years of data that this would be a good place to start I think we can add on to that and that may be part of our board guidance into providing guidance for how we set the goals and what we want to see in future reports I don't have a problem with contents of the report I don't have a problem with starting with this piece I do have a problem if we don't think that we have a current goal that would require students to read history read literature or I understand different cultural perspectives other than black and white I think that that would be and I'm responsible narrow and that's not what anybody means and so it's it's we're on

111the same page I think it's just that I you know we don't have any other statement that those things are important except right there and just to clarify - as we go through the process there's times where we'll feel we need to update the policy itself based on the conversation like this and there's other times where especially early on we may feel like this was the first report and so the feedback from the board may be you've got to go into more detail or more depth in the next report right so if we have if we have a feeling that the statement itself is probably stands on its own but it just needs to be interpreted more broadly that can just be the feedback and we can make sure to incorporate that into our interpretation

112does that make sense that makes total sense the only the only thing that I would say is Kent strikes me as incorrect which is a hard word but you know what the heck on page 3 where it's it lists what we're going to do to address the results of the survey that clearly without doing a good enough job treating and people with cultural humility etc and we have three bullets for action items which have to do with culturally responsive teaching oh yeah and then it says that if we do the above then students will demonstrate an understanding of and respect for etc suggesting that those three bullets will satisfy the policy gotcha that's that's where I actually disagree if you were to take that sentence out and say that this is an ass back of

113it but not the whole thing because that makes it sound like that's all that's needed and once you've done it you're done I might be off track here but you know I think to begin with I'll say that I think this is important information and know as Garrett was saying this is one of our priorities and we have the data it's important to look at it so I think this is a very important report to look at however I can see Lewis's point and and I'm looking at our policies and I'm wondering if this doesn't also strongly relate to policy one point four which is character which is self-awareness and also social awareness so there may be overlap it's quite possible that in a given policy monitoring report in the future for a different area

114we may even refer back to some of the same data because there will be overlap between some of the different policies when they're monitored so what we do is like so this is the monitoring report for 1.27 right and so that's the only thing even when there's other there may be other connections to other policies that's we don't go into that because that will be addressed when we get to that policy yes and so remind me about the process of how you know how did it come about that this was decided to be the report for policy 1.2 B 7 so how did we get to this report like why this one yeah yeah so what we did is we list it out if you open up that calendar or maybe in your packet we

115list it on every single board policy and then we brainstormed as an administrative team are there certain times that certain things should happen right so are there things that need to come together because they're all related and it should be one like at the same meeting we're monitoring all those policies at the same time are there other things that because of when the data is available it makes sense to have that monitoring in a certain month through things like that and then the vast majority can be monitored anytime right it's just a matter of how recent your data is that you have available to look at and so we came up with that calendar based on that and we tried to balance it out over the 12 months of episode that every policy was monitored

116at some point and this one just happened to fall word in the March so that's the one that that came okay so that wasn't my question I'm sorry okay my question was hat was how how did we come to this like this data and it's very detailed and it was a lot of work clearly but how did we come to connecting that policy anytime you're monitoring one of the ends policies part of the process is coming up with how is it going to be measured and so we went through and created the interpretation so you start with the interpretation of what does this policy mean to us and then we look at what evidence do we have that can lead us to a conclusion about that interpretation and so that led us to these data

117and so that's why these data were picked because we felt like they were the data available to us that we could use to monitor that interpretation okay yes it does and so I'm just asking the question because you know if if we get to this point where there's been a tremendous amount of work done at a great level of detail and then we find that the board thinks that oh that wasn't maybe the intent of that policy should we maybe have a work session or something where we review maybe the upcoming quarters policies since we're doing this for the first time and say you know here's what we think we are proposing for the type of report that might support whether or not we are or support our monitoring of this policy like maybe we

118should have it where you're going we try to kind of do it with this way because we're barely keeping our head above water as it is and so I would rather have folks put their time into doing the best monitoring they can without kind of muddying the waters of having to think of head of how it might be monitored to then strategize of what it looks like these will not be perfect and we want like you may get a report and you say wow you totally missed the mark right none of these data are meaningful to what we were wanting and we're okay with that like that's acceptable that's fine I just wanted to bring it up cuz I wouldn't I wouldn't want anyone spending it too much energy on something that in the end

119didn't support the policy hopefully that will be rare if that happens just because having professionals work on this hopefully they understand pretty well what the best evidence is to monitor it with and what's available but there may be times to where you'll say this evidence was fine but we really wish there was evidence that looked at a B and C right so we would really like by the next time this comes up for you to try to determine a way that we can more closely measure those three things because it wasn't represented in the available data that would be fine to the conversation like an overlapping conversation I already warned Darrell that it would yes so this is specific to your report but it's a new process for all of us and and so I

120just wanted to talk through the process but we all know that these are going to like the first year and we were talking about this earlier it's like a new job you're learning what is expected at your new job and so the whole first year as we go through these I'm expecting it's going to be a learning opportunity absolutely that's exactly thank you for you want the good news is that all of the data is really important data there's no question but that it's a good survey that it's important and that we need to address the findings the only question I have is whether its policy 1.2 b7 or I would probably put it in equity them will be used in more than one spot right so it's not a question of whether it's useful

121in for that's worth what I would think of in terms of response to one point to b7 would probably start with a description that says well I would get the understanding of its what I've already offered which is that it has to do with the curriculum and and and such but then I would have a discussion of how we satisfy that and the IV curriculum emphasizes an understanding of respect for differences and it's emphasized throughout the curriculum in these ways and likewise the expeditionary learning curriculum to the lower grades has the same emphasis and so it would just be a few statements before you move into the specific focus of this report so that we're all comfortable that yeah yeah we've got that covered okay so I guess we can focus on the report now

122thank you but I'm glad we have that discussion this is what we need to talk about thank you so next step section um kind of piggybacking on David what you said earlier about the career fair and how how highly populated it was and we felt really good about it and I was just wondering if this would be the section and the next steps or it might be another section we're looking at the data we would say okay so the hiring and and and the questions that we asked I know that we were going to HBCUs that was one thing that we were adding to to that process but even just the type of teachers that we want that we feel like don't just check off the normal and usual boxes that we've had where they

123put ten years of experience and they have master's which is all great but is there a component now in our interviewing process where we're really looking at teachers we feel will champion what we're trying to do so that because a lot of these the numbers that are low for example are teachers teachers treating students fairly and teachers treating students with respect and so it's real data but it's disheartening to say the least and so we do have this great opportunity now we have a new school opening and all of these openings and I'm just wondering if it would be this section where we would need to see what we're doing differently in our hiring process and what we're asking for differently what we're looking for differently is that do you feel like that's I think

124we didn't include it because we've already made the changes and r-ready approaching hiring differently the vast majority of our staff are returning staff right the vast majority and so that's why you see next steps of like getting rid of the odd diversity training stuff about those staff so that's just a I mean it would have been like not a next step but a currently in process at something okay I have a number of notes I've been writing down so some of the things I would like to see in a report like this particular when you have surveys is participation rates it looks like that just pretty sure it was fairly high but it's not really easy to see what was the percentage each one of those block levels sure to be counted in CC RPI

125it has to be at least 75% so it's a minimum 75% the report to come out which is great that's a very high participation rate of that grade level taking it yes okay and we talked a little bit about this David earlier part of when we're not meeting the how is the phrasing at the very top not making reasonable progress making reasonable progress then I think the board's attention is going to to to get into that great area where we're looking at the actions and the next steps that are taken not so that we can be an extra cook in the kitchen but so that we can have a reasonable confidence that the actions being taken will and you you talked about this as well there are process steps I don't know the right words

126and then there are kind of results rated steps and so from the board perspective I realize this is the first report this is the first use of this data most of the steps that are being put down there or process or building the capacity to address the issue my sense of urgency and perhaps my irrational exuberance is to wonder where the results can you can you point us at when we can have the ax tation of those results-oriented actions and when we get there we're not there yet I had talked about this in the feedback of the various ways that other school systems handle these types of reports for me there there's an importance in saying here's our anticipated implementation here's the anticipated budget here's the anticipated effect size so that when we reach the

127end of that period and we're looking at the next report we can compare what we plan to do because nothing you know withstands impact with reality know the best laid plan reality happens things changed chance that you're going to implement things exactly the way you planned will be slightly different now the effect size may be larger or smaller and the budget you know how those things go sometimes things change I think it's amazing that you're being able to bring in tvis coaches and people that have a lot and some of the hires were very strategic so I'm not saying this to address this report but I'm saying looking towards the next cycle and the one after that participation rates just making it really easy and then in response to the thing about historical black colleges

128and some of the changes that have already been made there is that component to this that is a public facing report and I think it's really important for you not to miss the opportunity to list all the things that we've done and are doing just so that when people read this they don't you know it takes a lot of moving parts and a lot of kind of strategic maybe this is the wrong word but hustling to get this type of organizational change to happen so don't miss the opportunity to to state those types of changes I think that covers the gamut of what I wanted to cover I do think that I'm trying to resist the temptation to shoehorn other policy related goals into report and so I'll stop there okay just in general Darryl

129I think the the most exciting thing about this report is the next steps and so I am grateful for the thought that went into that because I think you know the data is great but what are we gonna do with it is the most important thing and reflecting on where we've come and how what we are currently doing to change that I think is very important so thanks for your work to make that robust and thoughtful I have one question just about the data and just and what you you already answered Garrett's question about the response rate and I was curious whether or not you what might think this would be interesting to know but do you think it would be interesting to know the percentage of black versus the percentage of white students like

130what percentage of black students responded versus what percentage of white students responded even though we are saying or you're saying that we have a seventy five percent response rate of the total student body do you think that that would be of interest and should we monitor that in any way to make sure that we are I guess getting a representative number of each group that's somewhat balanced so the way these surveys happen is they happen during class and so the chances of there being a difference is really very slim chance if we don't if if we're not hitting a hundred percent it's because like an entire class wasn't able to go do the survey it's not like the kids are doing this it's not sent home in there okay that helps so that so then

131maybe it's not a factor we should be getting a representative of both groups okay that's what I was curious about just the same survey I assume the same survey addresses many subjects other than what at all yes it's very robust and ask questions rabbit hole maybe but such as I feel not just respected by my teacher but I feel engaged every day I feel like there are hundreds of questions in the survey often look if you look up Georgia Student Health Survey I think that's what it's called right I'm looking really quickly oh you've got a thing you can you can look up all the questions and responses there too there was a study it was the Harvard School of Education put out a report a couple years back now but then they asked put

132a number of questions along those lines do you feel engaged everyday subjects like that and basically the finding of the study is that you could this is at a time when there's a lot of interest in standardized tests for value-added metrics how well the teachers doing what the study found is the positive responses to the question do I feel engaged everyday was everybody's predictive and useful and valuable as the statistical differences in value-added on standardized tests it seems like that is a question that we ought to be asking kids right and if everyone's feeling engaged and feeling like they're learning we're probably doing a good job if not there are hundreds of questions you just pulled it's a very broad survey and the other thing we're trying to get but running into some trouble is

133state-level data aggregated we can pull ups data for any district but we can't get the aggregated data so this was originally pulled together by arc Atlanta Regional Commission did the work for a RC and so I've reached out to our contacts there to see if we can get aggregated data because you can't get that for whatever reason can't get it with everyone together so we're working on that as well you know some of the responses made me wonder you know there are certain trends you know when they're young and excited and in middle school and they become puberty and teenagers I wanted to know what does a you know what does a high performing similar school district look like so that we could separate out we want all students to have seventies and higher but

134in the highest performing school districts what does it look like because it may still be that we see similar trends just based upon age and teenagers act I mean trying to interpret the lyrics was extremely hard I mean it's not like it's self-evident what's going on well you know there's an issue but you really don't have much idea what correlation and causation song well there's somewhat contradictory you know like all students filled they're treated fairly there's one set of responses and then another says all students who feel treated fairly regardless of race you know there's you know completely there's a my favorite part of this data like gets to the challenges with self perception data which is you'll see the chart in there that says I am treated fairly by my peers and it's not

135a very high percent and then you see the chart of I treat my peers fairly it's almost 100 percent right like it's the nature of self-reported data that you look at yourself differently than others but those as long as we know that going into it and is often intentional and survey designed to ask a similar to ask the same question in different ways to see if there's a discrepancy mr. Jones you asked about the engagement and so I looked at so the elementary survey questions grades three through five are a little different than the secondary questions but of the slice that I'm looking at in this moment and there are many more questions it asks I like school I feel like I do well in school that's a close those two might be a close

136approximation to engagement and it asks something very similar for the secondary survey around I like school and I feel successful at school but it doesn't ask directly around India about engagement I think it's interesting and this is again a little bit of feel but I think it's relevant because when I was looking through the policy manual because I felt that this addressed something other than the academic criterion that we had said I felt that this went to a different something that we all value but that doesn't land at one point to be seven and I thought well where would it land and I thought that we probably had either a goal or an executive limitation that talked about sort of you know not only are we going to teach these academic skills and etc but

137we're also going to make sure that every kid like in our mission statement that our kids are motivated that they feel motivated to come to school that they're taught in an engaging manner and that so I started looking for what policy we have that refers to that I couldn't find it and but I think we should have one is it something that's important to us and we're failing if we're not doing it yeah I think sometimes those bigger things like that fall into the very big broad ones of like vision and mission to write that means that forget doctor that we they do get monitored how am i efficient way do you see you're gonna have to stay tuned the vision and mission ones are really interesting ones to monitor because they are so broad

138right but that is where you get into some of those I'm not saying we don't need a policy like what you're saying but I do think it will get monitored at some level and what I also heard and appreciate about the in the column of it would be even better if for a future monitoring report was that it is I heard that it's not either this or a direct focus on curriculum I heard it as a focus on both so I could see a future report continuing to report on this and also bring in the curricular pieces and so in that way I think it kids what you're talking about if it could still get monitored if it's not somewhere else it could be monitored in this way around policy 1.2 b7 adding in the

139curricular pieces as well I believe one of those curricular pieces we already have a goal explicitly in the manual if I recall and that was students becoming fluent in a second language that's one that I would you know if you learn to think in another language you learn another cultural perspective implicitly so that that's one that I could see showing up in both places but I'm perfectly willing to wait for that you know it's one point to the 11 the the other thing that was very clear in doing this board policy monitoring report and also having conversations with dr. duty and other members of cabinet and huge thank you to Heidi and Anthony who helped with the data collection is that it it's a little bit of an artificial division in because we really believe

140and live teaching to the whole child in our district and so it's a little art that's why it's so easy to see a connection to character and I referenced that in the report that a future character board policy monitoring report is coming because some of the things that we saw in here actually put a little bit of a spotlight on the need there and so throughout as dr. duty said the policy monitoring report there will be direct links to other things or you'll see that they are very very interconnected which i think is the power of our good but just someone who just spent a lot of time with this data can you just sum up for us your your takeaway from it for example why you see some of the trends as being some

141of them good while other ones showed challenges and if you have any thoughts on why those would be and that I would just appreciate your kind of perspective and summing that up yes so one of the things that jumped out is that in the when you look at secondary and you look at the Civic social learning the last two statements that the students respond to and the last two statements are around I treat other students fairly and I am open towards different opinions and perspective students feel very strongly that they are meeting that what I found interesting was the disconnect between that and the perception of how they are treated themselves and it's so what's striking to me is how consistent it is from year to year breaking and out in the two larger racial

142subgroups that we have black and white and so that to me spoke volumes because there wasn't a year that felt like an anomaly for some reason it felt unfortunately that we could sort of predict if we were to cover up 17 18 we could probably predict 17 18 from looking at 20 2016 so that was disheartening to see that it was so predictable but it's also what we talked about when we will have eliminated the inequities we will not be able to predict achievement or discipline profile or a student's response to these questions by knowing the students race or ethnicity and we are able to do that with this and so it highlighted the work that we're doing and the importance of the work that we're doing which is part of why the interpretation is

143written the way that it's written and so in the culturally responsive teaching which l education and i be very much lim themselves the culturally responsive teaching practices that's one of the things that we have to make sure that our teachers are doing and dr. Huddleston is teaching an amazing course to some elementary staff and secondary staff through CSD University and of course that's not the entire staff and so how do we broaden the scope of teachers who experience the responsive teaching practices so that ultimately the responses to these change and you can see that as students get older the data become more disheartening so it looks a little better in elementary middle school there's a noticeable dip and then in high school is a pretty significant dip where there are some statements where it's in

144the 50% for students and so I think that students become more aware of the different treatment as students as they get older and I think that is why a lot of the work that we have exist sometimes focus on the secondary level and some of the bigger concerns that are raised from parent groups are also at the secondary level because it becomes more obvious in a different kind of way you know one thing I'm looking at the middle school answer is question number 15 and you know I'm looking at three years of data and this is the one question where the three years of data went down consecutively each year and my question is I don't know whether I think in future reports it would be helpful to have more years of data I know

145it's always dangerous when you ask for you know the state of Georgia to do the same thing for more than two years in a row we may not have more than three years of data and next year they may change it on us so I know I know we'll face issues like that but when I see something like this my initial you know jump to conclusion is to you know confirmation bias there does seem to be kind of a buzz at the middle school that I'm hearing about of kids being harder on each other the last couple years and so I'm reading a confirmation bias into this but I can't actually tell is it would not surprise me if there if you are seeing a trend like that and I shouldn't be shocking to us

146that the more we talk about inequity and the more we address these things people feel more comfortable or they recognize things that they knew was an inequity all along but they might had the words to describe it or they might not have felt the empowerment to speak up about it and so I don't necessarily look at that as a bad thing if it continues and continues and continues I would be worried about that but it would not surprise me a bit if in a lot of this perceptual data especially if we don't see dips like that as people just become more aware of their surroundings and what they're experiencing and and talking about it with peers and doing all the things we want them to be doing and one possible success in our equity or

147it could be that people say that things are worse because they're talking about it correct they're finally not it's not the quiet you know the hidden conversation but it's the elephant in the room people can talk about it correct that's how I interpreted this because on the racial perception racial equity perceptions have dipped direct lying down and unless I'm talking is making things worse which is probably not there are a lot of things that could play into it I mean even the political climate you know and everything we've been watching on the news for the past few years too could have influenced some discussions and in the homes and in schools I would say you know that's an interesting way to look at it we just can't use that as an excuse and we would

148need to back up I mean all of these things will be backed up with much other data showing academic performance and discipline statistics and all the other good things that we're working on too so that if we are showing improvement in those other areas then I think we can say that we're doing good work and our conversations are having an impact and that maybe this is more about awareness but if those other things aren't improving and there's still not improvement here or statistics are showing that it's actually getting worse than I would be very concerned so I think that those two all of those sets of data together will help us form a more complete picture well and remember to like it mentioned in the next steps about soar the students organized against racism like

149that's a perfect example a led by students of empowering other students to talk about these things and move this conversation forward and it may cause some some dips and how kids are feeling about school and things until we start embracing it and start getting to the healing point and not just focus on the on the negative aspects of of what's happening so suppose that makes me ask is and this is challenging because I don't have an answer you may not have an answer either but if we can have something other than just survey data historically there's been a great resistance to using survey data for a lot of the reasons that we've said are there any other points of data that we can use I'm guessing if there were it would already be in the

150report yep so one thing I just wanted to say about not only the content but also how we're monitoring and reporting this is that I first of all I appreciate that we're that we are attempting to shine a spotlight on some challenges that we continue to have but we're also talking about a report as a board at a public meeting that has not doesn't really feel like it's been presented to the public because no one else in the room is looking at the report that we're looking at right now and that's is kind of a change in the way that we've done things is in the past someone from the staff will present something and it goes up on the screen and we all kind of look at it together and everyone who's in the

151room and people from the community who have interest and learning it are hearing it with us and following the information with us and I feel like the way that this presentation in the monitoring report has has kind of unfolded is I feel like it might have had the unintended effect of sort of being more of like a private report I mean I know that this report is online and that people can go and look at it online but we don't have our meetings online we have them in a public room and a public meeting and where we kind of present and firm to the public and it just doesn't feel like this information is accessible for the purpose of a public meeting right now when no one else is looking at it but us and

152there's like there's you know one book back there but lots of other people in the room and there's not tons of people in the room at the moment but I'm just thinking about as we go forward how can we really reviewed data and hear information and talk about it in a way that is more public because I feel like and the reason its it really stands out to me is this is concerning data and if I were someone who's just sitting in the room I don't know that I would fully appreciate just how bad this is and and it's not up on any screens and we've got reports that are showing you know year over a year the gap between how white students perceive things in the school district is increasingly better than how black

153students perceive things in the school district and you know in 2016 adults in the school treat the question is adults in the school treat all students with respect it was a difference of two percent between black and white students in 2016 and then it grew to 8% and then it grew to 13% like that it's really troubling data and I just sort of it just feels like we're not presenting it publicly I know it's online but but there are some limitations with online with just accessibility to online and I don't know that it just it just doesn't I understand like in terms of our time it's quicker and these meetings don't last as long if we just review all of this at home and then we kind of talk about it and like we just

154have but I feel like the way that we've talked about it in a way that it's been presented it doesn't feel very public it feels like it's just a conversation that we're having that we're not really including the public end and we're happy to do it however the board wants that you hit the nail on the head I think the discussion previously was trying to be efficient with their meeting time which is why we don't do a whole overview of report and instead we make sure it gets in the board packet and gets out there but if the board wants us to approach it differently we're happy to I mean I think what we've done on things in the past and and maybe there's a little bit of a compromise or some middle ground here

155but there's been sort of a high level presentation from a staff member and then there's a more detailed report and so I think this is a great example I don't think we need to go through 27 slides but we could maybe go through three slides that kind of just present some kind of just you know aggregation of some of this information so that at least if people are here in the meetings or watching it at home and they don't have the report in front of them and they're they they know generally what we're talking about as opposed to sort of feeling like you're on the outside listening to a meeting that you don't even you don't even see kind of all the trouble spots and this one it feels like I feel particularly sensitive about

156especially given you know what what we're talking about in terms of X accessibility and calling it what it is and you know the elephant in the room I feel like all those themes are sort of resurfacing as we're having a conversation that I don't know that the public really fully appreciates just how concerning this data is because they can't see it at the moment but the next steps I think that's the most powerful page as well and so even if we had that on the screen so again you know the people sitting in the room could could see what we're talking about as far as the next steps are concerned so yeah I would I would second that with an e of maybe just a very you know smaller version of a review of you

157know what the report has and then if somebody doesn't want to go dig in deeper and look at all 27 questions they certainly can but yeah I think it did feel kind of weird that we didn't have anything kind of up here for people to look at in case they were just curious what we were talking about I think that's a good idea I will note that I think this format is one we had discussed doing specifically that we would do our homework in advance discussion and for the folks in the audience that I mean the point is that it's a board meeting it's our opportunity to do this work and it's a 27 page report full of statistics and so if we have arrow on one end what's on one the one for one

158tiny little segment right which is the point I want to return to in a second but there's just not enough time in the day or in the meeting for you to present it thoroughly however I think an executive summary to kind of ground just frame it and we'll kick it off and show kind of generally what we're talking about as opposed to just putting we think we've heard that's what the way you want to go and we're just trying to do what the board is asking could we also prominently display in large enough font maybe even a small one of those abbreviations a link to the report so that the people who watch these meetings at home can hit the pause button go read the report and then hit play again that's good I know

159that I'll be the the the counterpoint to this if I read a twenty seven or a hundred page report at home the last thing I want to do is come to the board meeting and listen to the 27 page or a hundred page report that I've already gone through and made extensions that my suggest I understand okay I understand I think an executive summary and just the synopsis a link to the full report and the board diving in for those people who are interested to go into the depth it gives them the opportunity to do so and makes it very easy for them to do so and I think that would meet I hope the needs to make sure that everyone in our public can have access to the report so circling back to the

160kind of repeating myself but for some reason I feel the need to that this is the one place in our policy governance that we asked the superintendent to explain how he is meeting this single direction that we've provided in terms of the breadth of the curriculum and so you know this is a spare the criticism that you get with this policy governance is that board kind of just it over and says do whatever and so the way that we keep things working is that you actually give us a report that addresses the breadth of the direction and this is a broad direction about curriculum academics and academic achievement this is where we talk about the academic standards that we've set for all of our kids and so the racial equity piece is a piece but

161it is it is a by no means it's almost different kind from the academic standards that were that we're addressing and my view primarily through this again I think it all fits in other places but when we do this report Garrett made the point that this is a public facing document and when our stakeholders look at it and say well how is it that you address you know multicultural education etc we're not we have to have an answer and it should have come in the monitoring report and if the monitoring report is there just solely to the equity initiative and not to the curriculum we don't and so I just think it's important as a public facing document frankly this I mean we're highlighting we're highlighting problems that's true we also need to highlight our

162successes we're doing a good job on this stuff we need to say so and so I think that these reports yes I agree but so it but but but you don't only say well I failed here you say look I'm doing a good job on these aspects of the problem I interpret the direction to require me to have a broad base curriculum it's you know there's a lot of stuff with IB and Yale right it could be great you know success stories to touch on the intercultural multicultural learning right we're doing ourselves a disservice and the board is actually not doing its job if we don't get a report on those aspects as well so and I hear what you're saying and it's helpful because I think you've interpreted the word act academics demean curriculum

163which is helpful for us because the word curriculum doesn't appear in here anywhere and I've heard it mentioned about a dozen times now the curriculum I just that's very helpful to see you know what I mean like new academics means curriculum or a piece of academics means curriculum now it's helpful to hear that I hear that I would say it a little bit differently that if not he if not if curriculum doesn't fit in this policy where does it fit and if the board has nothing to say about curriculum what are we doing that's all I'm saying oh oh waiting for the means to the ends the right part of it that's where I was gonna wedge in and these are the ends policies not the means policy okay so I think that's part of

164it that's that's a fair thing but it'd be kind of like saying that we succeed without teaching math and so whether whether we're talking about the math curriculum or the end goals related to math understanding you know you know like where do you where do you get in our teaching of the history of the subcontinent of India or something right none of that you could you could hit the ball out of the park if it's only about the racial equity just as long as the black and white students both are equally ignorant and neither's learning anything about other cultures and right no I would not say that because the you wouldn't be demonstrating an understanding if neither group was by the standards set forth in this report if the perceptions were equal that the teachers

165were equally sensitive over 70 persona the the yeah over 70 percent of the students was the goal said in the report not the gap between the two I understood I take the correction but my point is that it addresses a problem that doesn't dress the end learning goal the end learning objective what are the kids going to learn when they walk out of the school this report doesn't address that at all so you would like to see data that gets to like maybe test scores in related to academic areas that are demonstrating this multicultural or intercultural perspectives like some academic ends that are more curriculum related to my concern it would not have to be test scores it could be a discussion of how our curriculum addresses this object this learning objective okay which it

166does I mean I don't have any question that it does it could be the International perspective spotlight that we had and some type of you know that demonstrate an understanding of the the results in the outcomes that the students have of that it could be more of a portfolio based instead of a I always worry and you know I always worry when people say curriculum and I probably over do it because curriculum is a means to an end if we came into being more if like you were just saying like a portfolio based here are some outcomes from our curriculum in this area like that I'd be fine with i i don't want an ends report to end up just being here's all the curriculum we offer no that wouldn't be or may not be

167working you know anybody I mean though I have a feeling like I said before that you could go through and pull out the IB principles what it means to be an IB school because you can't be an IB school if you're not hitting number seven and so I think some words around that well we would have to connect though is the outcomes that are right to those principals it I don't know what I know is that it's not done now if it's not done here I would just query where it's gonna be done yeah it needs to be done somewhere to an ease point about the areas and those survey results where the gaps are growing it would be nice for me for us to have some type of a way to quantify you know

168for me I would jump to like a chi-square test or something like that it doesn't have to be that whatever works that shows us is that you know the the disproportionality there is it growing is it significant you know there's a certain point where if it's small enough I think we can move on to the other things and try you know it's what are we going to focus on and when do we know that that gap is big enough that it's a significant thing that we should be focusing on so anything that can help us with that would be you should I mean most of them are growing I mean less I'm reading it I think almost the majority of these are growing gaps and that's back to why I asked Darrell to give us

169his synopsis of what we're doing well and what were what our challenges are because that's exactly I think that executive summary that brings a lot of value because you we are depending on you who work with us every day to give us the insight into what this data means and what we should be concerned about versus what we should celebrate okay so who's gonna volunteer to write the response thank you willing to review thank you so much thank you we have the property tax study committee back on but they've already future future dates I guess this is our standard time to talk about how we stand with the board work plan what is there next well and there one of the things we need to think through is board training hours so right now you

170all have six hours between now and June 30 we need to find three more hours at some point so that can be things like some of those GS be a summit type things they offer the only one I know of for sure is actually coming up right away on March 19th they have a social emotional learning summit in Jonesboro there's the GSB a summer pre conference workshops so I'm in Savannah so if folks are planning to go to those if you go to one of the pre conference ones you can get that or when we reschedule or schedule our retreat time we can of course have a authorized presenter or trainer there and can get ours that way as well so just wanted to make sure you're aware and of course is the online option

171which is really not very but if you have to you know I would my preference would just would be for us to try to do this together I think it's more its most effective when the five of us are together with someone who can certify it or whatever so that it would recounts that that's my preference I think I mean I do enjoy videotaping myself at 10 o'clock in the morning doing someone new you really online exercise or whatever so you said this has to be done by the end of June or yeah and we have a retreat before then we don't but we needed to reschedule the one so we haven't done my and nothing at and the National School Board conference doesn't I don't think it counts guys because they're not Georgia certified

172trainers I share a knees preference that we do it I find most conferences and whatnot I don't get much out of most of those trainings they don't get much out of I find the stuff that we do together to be really beneficial and I have a strong preference for that so we'll get that scheduled one thing I'll mention I'd I think at one point we had planned in one of our work sessions to talk about how our strategic priorities are basically to make sure we're telegraphing our strategic priorities so that when the conversation comes to the budget that we can connect to the board strategic priorities to how they're reflected in the budget I don't know that we're going to get there before we have that budget presentation but I will put out there that

173we've done a lot of work in the past we're continuing to do a lot of work on academic extracurricular and activity and academic barriers to activities and I think that one of the things that I hope we can do is is is show what we're gonna do in the budget you know when the district doubles in size but stipends and support for these types of programs don't grow in lockstep with students then the net reflect is that we've reduced our support for these extra curricular and athletic activities and so I hope that can be something that we can show the work that we've done that we can continue moving that forward and find a way to discuss that in the context of making sure that it's reflected in the budget so that's right in line

174because we have to work sessions between now and the end of the year March 26 and April 30th which one of those is the budget one April 30th and so the March 26th one we could do the strategic priorities conversation all right those were the two topics I had down for potential work sessions March 26 and April 30 are what we currently have scheduled I have a I have one request that's just process which is that can we take the board work plan and append it to the back of every single agenda item yes I need an updated version of that like I think you have the original one I do mm-hmm because the there were two there were the like the board monitoring policy monitoring piece which is now that calendar that's a patch

175there so you took that piece out exactly so I think you've got the if you can get those delete those parts and have the updated calendar so I will send you that go through it yeah the other thing is that I was thinking that I don't remember on that schedule we had a discussion of ECL C but I would like to have that and particularly is can you can with win I don't know you know as we've discussed with the master facilities plan coming up I think we need to have a discussion whether we're on the same page about the desire to increase capacity and used to ition to subsidize tuition for others that kind of thing look we've talked about in the past but I'd like to make sure it's included at a time

176when it can lead the discussion on the facility's plan rather than follow so should we for March 26 then should we have strategic priorities as our topic and then April 30th the budget sure yeah are we I think the restorative justice report was also going to be something that we circled back on I think it's a little early for that and with the PBIS to make sure it's still yep another thing I thought I might mention laid it back to that house bill 53 is that it might behoove us to reach out to the city and maybe tasks to help look at options strategies moving forward just just a general item which is it's something that we both need to be working on and we might need some help I think we do need some

177help is that something you want me to work on yes I mean I'm happy to if you guys want me to agree I agree I mean I would ask I mean before we go down rabbit holes but just get some initial thoughts on options before we start doing anything I'd say emphasize with what Lewis already said but working together with the city on that I mean I feel like we need to make sure we know what they're doing already right and so we're not duplicating any of that but in conjunction with so the item I wanted to discuss I just bring up with you have two words okay without an executive session oh okay anything else unless you're are we this meeting is adjourned