001I call this September 8th work session order. First, I need a motion to approve the agenda. >> So moved. >> Mr. Hammond. >> Second. >> Mr. Hammock. All in favor tool. Passes. 5-0. Next we have uh the superintendent report. Dr. Harden. >> Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, teachers of the year were announced on Friday and um that was exciting and it was uh it was fun to see how each of the schools celebrated their teacher of the year. We had 12 teachers selected and um it's not lost on any of us how important and meaningful it is to be appreciated by your peers and u so we're excited and we're looking forward to Thursday, September 18th for the banquet and appreciate all the support the board has provided. Uh since we last met, North Okone
002and Okone County high schools were chosen as uh 2526 best high schools and national and state rankings as released by the US News and World Report. uh they ranked in the top six% of the country and I want to stress that although high schools receive the recognition this is a K12 commitment and uh success so I all of our schools uh deserve accolades also five schools Dub Creek Middlebridge Elementary County High and Okone County Middle were recognized by the National Beta Organization So, I'm proud of that. I had a delightful week last week. Met with all three uh advisory groups. Uh we had uh 12 parents for the parent advisory, 12 juniors and seniors for the uh student advisory and 12 teachers for the uh teachers of the year. Uh and the purpose of this
003group is to provide um input from their perspective and I I know it goes without saying but the students had the most enthusiastic suggestions and uh and very good ones. So we will be following up with them. Um, East BLAST was uh discussed at each of the meetings and they had great uh feedback and are are willing to share it with the community since we met. The uh Hog Mountain Bowl was a great community event despite the rainstorm and they played and finished the game that night. So, it was we've had great fall of football, softball, volleyball, cross country, and competition cheerleading. Flag football starts soon. Uh, tremendous numbers at the middle and high school levels, and we're pleased that we're able to offer these extracurricular activities. So, that concludes my report for this month.
004>> Any questions for Dr. Harden? Next we have teaching and learning, Miss Whitaker. >> Good evening, Dr. Harden and board. Uh the Oak County Schools teaching and learning September 8th report contains four items of information and one action item. The first item of information presents results from the 2025 Georgia Milestones end of grade and end of course assessments. For context, these results are compared on the graphs to our Northeast Georgia Resa in red and the state average in yellow. The opening graph illustrates ELA proficiency levels for grades three through five with OKone County Schools shown in blue. Next, you will see ELA scores for the middle school. Here we have math scores at the elementary school and we have math scores at the middle school. Next are science and social studies scores. We test fifth
005grade social studies and eighth grade social studies and also eighth grade high school physical science. I would like to point out that every eighth grade student in our district takes the high school physical science course, a course that in many district is reserved only for the most academically advanced students. This reflects our commitment to high expectations and rigorous learning for all students. And finally, our end of course test for high school courses, algebra, American lit, biology, and US history. We are pleased to report that across all subjects and grades, we outperformed both the RHISA and the state. These results reaffirm OKone's standing as a leader in academic excellence. We're truly leading the way. The next set of slides displays our ranking in comparison to other school systems across the state for students scoring proficient or
006above. Highlights include in all tested subjects in elementary school, OKone was number one or two. Our middle school ELA scores, all of our ELA is in the top five performance in the state. Make sure I get where I'm going here. For middle school uh math, we are in the top 10 performance in the state. For middle school social studies, which eighth grade, we ranked number two in the state. And in high school physical science, we were number 18 in the state. Once again, this number includes all Okone County 8th graders who take high school physical science. These scores reflect the strong commitment and dedication of my teaching and learning team, our school leaders, teachers, students, and parents. I'm grateful for their hard work and partnership in achieving these results. They represent the very best of
007the best. The second item of information is the addition of new course offerings which expand opportunities for students while utilizing existing teacher certifications and available resources at no additional cost. These courses will start next year in response to requests from students, teachers, and school leaders. Courses will be phased in over time to ensure adequate advertising and recruiting. The fir for first course edition are in the marketing communications and promotions pathway. This course will be called promotional and digital marketing and integrated marketing communications. These courses focus on digital marketing and multimedia branding. The pathway is designated high demand which grants additional weight for CCRPI and successful completion will also provide students with the opportunity to earn a fourth ELA credit and will be recognized by the technical college system of Georgia. The second course addition is
008teaching as a profession. This pathway will expand opportunities for students interested in careers and education. This pathway broadens the scope of education from a K5 elementary focus to a comprehensive K12 approach. This expansion is designed to appeal to students considering careers in teaching and coaching at all levels. The third course edition is programming, games, apps, and society, which expands our computer science pathway. This course may count as a fourth math or science credit or when paired with computer science principles as a foreign language credit. The final course additions are in the government and public administration pathway with introduction to government and public administration and local and state issues. Each course provides embedded credit opportunities so that students earn two credits by taking one course. Both courses connect students to the engage CTSO which fosters leadership
009development, civic engagement, and community service. Through these pathway courses, students will also have the opportunity to pursue leadership roles within engage that would not be otherwise available. I would like to thank Natalie Stowe, director of CTE, for partnering with our schools to expand opportunities for students through these new courses. The third item of information is an update on our strategic plan and balance scorecard. The scorecard allows us to track key performance indicators across each goal area. As a reminder, our goal areas are student achievement and success, team and talent development, community engagement, culture and climate, and organiz organizational and operational effectiveness. Recent data shows that we are meeting many benchmarks while also identifying areas for targeted improvement. All schools have aligned their school improvement plans with district priorities, ensuring that our collective work is focused
010and coherent. Over the next two weeks, the teaching and learning team together with Miss Hornold will be conducting school improvement visits. These visits provide school leaders with an opportunity to present their improvement plans and outline the key action steps they will take in the coming year. The fourth item of information is Senate Bill 63. This bill effective July 1st, 2025, amends the QBE Act to provide homeschool students with equitable access to standardized testing at public schools. Beginning in middle school, homeschool students may participate in assessments such as the PSAT, SAT, and ACT at their zoned or participating schools. Homeschool students will not be required to pay additional fees or meet requirements beyond those of enrolled students. Districts must also post testing dates on their websites and offer homeschool students the same registration process as traditional
011students. Testing dates and registration procedures along with contact information for questions have been posted on each middle and high school website. The teaching and learning department has one action item for the September 15th board meeting. This action item is board policy IBB charter schools. This policy was placed on the table at the o August 4th, 2025 board meeting for public review and comment. And at this time, no comments have been received. It is the superintendent's recommendation for the board of education to approve board policy IBB charter schools at the September 15th board of education meeting. That concludes the teaching and learning report unless you have any questions. >> I have a quick comment and a question. Congratulations on those CTE offerings, the new courses. That sounds fantastic, especially with the teaching as a profession. We
012hear a lot about teacher shortages and different things like that. So, I think this is a great way to lift up a very important job. So, kudos on that. And I was just curious about your mention with the eighth graders taking high school physical science. What's the strategy behind that? How long has that been happening and why did they do that? I may have misheard that, but I'm just curious. >> No, that has been in place um for several years. I do not have the exact date on that, but I'm happy to get that information to the superintendent to pass along to you. >> Cool. Thank you. I had a couple of comment and then a couple of comments. One uh just talking about the education pathway. I heard my own fourth grader come come
013in. I can't remember if it was this week or last week. I guess it would have been last week, but just talking about um um that being presented out to the classes and to the students and and was really pleased to hear that. So, um was excited there. And then I did look at the balance scorecard. Um was looking at the percentage of teachers with gifted endorsement. I know that in the past that has been something that some schools were pushing for 100% gifted endorsement and then there were also um a number of things that the system did to work with teachers to help um them get that gifted endorsement. Is that still something that we're focusing on now or is there been a shift there? Yes. In fact, uh we have our final uh
014middle school that is Dove Creek Middle that is participating in the uh gifted endorsement process this year. Uh we as a district are uh funding that for any teachers who are not gifted endorsed, which then will bring all K8 schools uh up to 100% gifted endorsement. We are also covering the cost for any new hires that do not have a gifted endorsement that are in any of our other schools. we will be using title two uh professional learning funds to cover their registration. Uh we've had several retirements in the past uh couple of years and because all of those people had gifted endorsement, many of their replacements have not and so we have seen a dip in that number. We have also worked really hard to make sure that we are getting accurate data on
015the people that are sitting in the building and also outlining exactly who that applies to. So, do we count the principal and the AP in that number? Do we, you know, and those types of things. And so, our team has worked pretty tirelessly with uh the wonderful folks in HR to make sure that we have accurate numbers and we are continuing uh to track those numbers appropriately. >> Thank you, Mr. We have student services, Dr. Yansy. >> Good evening, Dr. Harden and board members. The September 2025 student services report contains one item of information and two action items. The item of information is our annual flu vaccine clinics provided for faculty, staff, and their families. Each year, we partner with the local health department to provide employees and their immediate family members the opportunity to
016receive the flu vaccine. This year's clinics will begin later this month and be hosted at 14 sites across the district. The 14 sites include all 12 schools, transportation and maintenance and the district site for ISC or here at the ISC for technology and central office staff. Uh I would like to take this opportunity to thank our school nurses for all they do to make this possible and it's uh to help us have successful clinics across our school district. Uh student services has two action items for tonight's work session. The first action item is an outofstate field trip for North Oak County High School's girls basketball team to travel to Gatlinburgg, Tennessee in December. The section The second action item is an out ofstate field trip for Okone County High School course to travel to Orlando,
017Florida to perform at Universal Studios in February of 2026. The superintendent's recommendation is to approve the field trips as presented. And this concludes student services report unless you have any questions. Good evening board members and Dr. Branch. The Okone County Special Education. Oh, >> he paid me to do that. Dr. Pardon. Um, the Okone County Special Education September 8th board um report contains one item of information and one action item. Our first um item of information is about our parent survey. The uh parent survey is collected because it's part of the state performance report card and that is required to receive federal funds. One of the indicators is indicator indicator eight which is the parent involvement piece. So the state um gives the every LEA the opportunity to do a survey that they collect that
018they give the questions and they collect the data um for to see parents participation and how their satisfaction is with the district. So the parents who receive who have children who receive special education services um report their facilitation as far as their involvement and and involvement and how they feel about the school improving their child's services and the results that their children uh receive uh throughout the year. We are extremely proud of the relationship that we have cultivated with our parents, the school teams, especially the administrators, the teachers, um our support staff, um Dr. Yansy staff, everyone that goes out to help support our special needs students. So in 2020 we had 427 parents that participated in our survey and we had a 94% satisfaction rate which is very high. 2025 we increased our parent
019uh particip participation rate to 768. Knowing that we were going to be increasing those numbers we wanted to keep our satisfaction rate high as well and it was a 96%. So um adding on to student ser uh to teaching and learning and all of the successes that they are um showing tonight. We wanted to talk about the parent survey and how the data is collected. parents are giving 10 questions in case you're a, you know, you're asked and they deal with as far as the efforts that the school does in order to partner with the parents and it ranges from one to six um extremely or strongly disagree or never to six strongly agree um always agree. So for the questions they are scored and they're tallied and they're divided by the number of responses
020that each district receives. If the mean score is above a four then the parents is determined that they are satisfied. That number of highly satisfied parents is then divided by the total number that the LEA had in responses. So for our responses for this um particular school year, as you can see how our responses have gone up statewide, there was uh 52,000 parent responses. Um that was out of 229 school districts. There was over 10% of the school districts that didn't even have 20 responses from parents. It's not mandatory, but it's part of the state's report card. So, we take it very seriously because we want to hear from our parents. So, the state average between large, medium, and small districts, the average of for eleas that collected parent surveys was 227. We were just
021three times as many of the parent surveys that we received in our district. So each year we try to beat it and we really blew it away last year. So this is the percentage of satisfaction as we continue to climb and receive um a high satisfaction rate. Last year was really 97.1 but I rounded it to 97. This year was 96.4. So I was not able to round it up but it really was only about a half a point difference and not the whole. So that's the the rounding, but we're well above the state and we continue to grow in our parent um participation and the satisfaction rate of all of our parents. And that's due to the um involvement that all of the departments have and the school leaders and teachers in our building
022that we are constantly um reaching out to them and wanting their input how we can do better. We want to know how we can do better. So the last item is an action item and that is our shared service contract. The shared service contract is one that we share with Northeast Georgia Resa which is the Georgia Regional Educational Service Agency. And we um share our OT's, our PTs, our aiologists, our vision impairment teachers, orientation and mobility as a as instead of contracting them ourselves, we do a shared service with our three 13 districts. So this year our contract is $458,77340. So uh it's a superintendent's recommendation that the board of education approve the northeast Georgia uh special service shared contract for the 458 um,773 and40 cents uh at the September 15th board meeting. Are there
023questions about um anything that we presented tonight? >> Question. >> Thank you. >> Technology, Mr. McCellers. Welcome. >> Good evening, board members and Dr. Harden. Coney County Schools technology services report for September 8th includes oneformational item and one action item for the September 15th regular session. Information item number one, classroom audio update. Tonight, I'd like to share an update on an exciting development that is already making a meaningful difference in our middle school classrooms. As you may recall, back in April, the board approved the addition of new classroom audio and intercom system for Malcolm Bridge Middle School as well as Okone County Middle School. We're pleased to report this initiative has progressed smoothly. Installation work began in May, starting with new network connections and in June, audio enhancement installed their classroom audio equipment. Before school
024resumed, our instructional technology specialists received training and then created helpful presentations and documentation so that our teachers could hit the ground running on the first day of school. Thanks to their efforts, as you can see in the photos, teachers at both MBMS and OCMS are already using their new system in their classrooms. I'd like to draw your attention specifically to the student in the green shirt in the image on the right. He is using the new Clear Connect translation software from audio enhancement. This powerful tool allows him to hear his math teacher instructions in real time translated into his native language. This moment captured in the photo is a perfect example of how this new classroom audio system supports learning for all students. I'm also pleased to share that these translation devices are now available
025at all three of our middle schools, including Dove Creek Middle. I want to sincerely thank the board for your continued support of technology integration and instructional innovation. Your commitment is helping us create a more inclusive, effective learning environment across our district. Tonight's uh or one action item for the next board meeting is board policy IBFG, internet acceptable use. Tonight's action item is the revision of board policy IBFG, Internet Acceptable Use, aligning with the requirements of Senate Bill 351, also known as the Protecting Georgia's Children on Social Media Act of 2024. The updated policy strengthens protections for students, reinforces responsible technology use, and streamlines language for clarity and full compliance with the new legislation. No public comment was no public comments were received regarding the suggested changes. The superintendent's recommendation is to approve board policy IBFG
026internet acceptable use at the September 15, 2025 regular session. And that concludes my technology report unless you have any questions. >> Thank you, Mr. Operations. Dr. White. Good evening board members and Dr. Harden. Operations has four items of information for this evening and one action item for this month's regular session. The firstformational item for operations is an update on our energy report. Our kilowatt usage per day or a thousand square feet has been updated for the month of July. Our secondformational item is our transportation update. For the previous month, we had one field trip, 74 athletic trips, six special education trips, 98 buses deployed for a total of 4,849 miles. Our third item of information is update on school nutrition participation for the month of August. Board members, you'll see that we saw a decrease
027in participation for breakfast of 1.14% and lunch participation of .004% as compared to August of 2024. Our fourth item of information is an update on the emergency repair of the storm water pipe at North County High School. Board members, you'll recall that you authorized up to $150,000 to repair the storm water pipe at North that caused a sinkhole. Repairs have been completed in this area. We will be working with the contractor to discuss the review of the remaining storm water system at North County High School and continue to take corrective action based on the condition of the system. Our action item for next week's regular session is a towable bucket lift trailer. Our current bucket truck has 37,589 miles and the front differential has failed on the vehicle. We have no other vehicle like this
028in our fleet and the repairs would not be cost-effective. Operations recommends a new bucket trailer as a direct replacement as it allows flexibility amongst the trucks in our maintenance fleet and is more cost-effective than purchasing a standalone bucket truck. The superintendent's recommendations for the board of education to approve the purchase of a towable electric boom lift from Yansy Rents for a proposal cost of $57,085 at the September 15, 2025 board meeting. This project will be paid for using eLost and general fund dollars. This concludes the operations report unless there are any questions. >> Dr. White facilities M. Rickson. >> Good evening. Keep it simple. >> Yeah. County Schools oper operations and facilities uh September 8, 2025 board of education report contains two items of information and no action items. The first item of information is
029the lead custodian meeting was held on Thursday, August 14th and was hosted by the team at Okone County Middle School. The team discussed the task frequencies and the importance of proper PPE. Our custodial teams are to be are to be commended for the rigorous work ensuring that our schools are clean for health. Item of information number two is construction update the districtwide generator project. Uh we're installing a fence around the generator at the IT building this week. We're continuing to compile final documents and that's the last things to close out that project. Maintenance paving. The paving is complete. The last punchulus item was completed over the Labor Day weekend. So we'll be closing that project out as well. the transportation offices design work continues for this project. Uh trying to work work out some details
030so we can figure out the best time to put it out to bid. And that concludes the uh facilities operation report unless there are any questions. >> Good evening board members. Dr. Deborah M. Harden human resources report this evening contains one item of information and no action items. Our item of information is an update on the recordkeeper for our 403b and 457 plans. Okone County Schools is transitioning its retirement plan recordkeeping services from Lincoln Financial to TIA. TIA is a nationally recognized leader in retirement services for education systems and offers enhanced resources for both participants and the school district. The switch will not alter any existing plan benefits or employee contributions. Instead, it simply represents an administrative change. Importantly, our financial advisor and primary point of contact will continue to be Canon Financial that manages
031the investments of our employees. This ensures consistent guidance and support throughout our transition. That concludes the human resources report this evening, but we remain available for any questions. >> Thank you, Mr. Communications. Mr. C. >> Thank you, Mr. Ransom. Good evening, board members and Dr. Harden. Communications report this evening has two items of information. The first is August social media information. Okone County Schools had 36 social media posts in August with an average of 26,827 views. For the month, 29 posts were viewed more than 10,000 times, including one at 97,000, one at 83,000, one at 75,000, one at 69,000, and one at 50,000. The top post for the month was coverage of the Hog Mountain Bowl. Posts from the game that evening and the spirit shown in all 12 schools throughout the day reached a
032combined 133,000 views. The top 10 posts for the month showed great variety, including football, the first day of school, school and bus safety, and the US News and World Report that Dr. Harden mentioned earlier. Okone County Schools gained 300 followers in the month of August, giving the district 29, I'm sorry, 23,594 across Facebook, Instagram, and X. In addition, the OCS newsletter had its most ever unique opens after being sent to its highest ever number of subscribers. The newsletter was opened 11,121 times at a rate of 71.4%. The industry average for education is 39%. We are so appreciative of all the parents, students, community members, businesses, and media outlets that follow and engage with OCS social media. Next is our August highlights video. [Music] And that concludes communications. Is there any questions for me? >> Questions.
033Thank you. We do have a need to discuss personnel and need a motion to enter executive session to do so. >> I'll make a motion that the board will adjourn to executive session to discuss or deliberate upon personnel matters as described on the affidavit to be attached to the minutes. >> Mr. Parish second. Mr. Hammock. All in favor? Passes 5. We're return to executive session.