001by saying I. >> Anyone opposed like sign? Motion carries unanimously. Presented are presented are the minutes from the August 7th work session. Do I have a motion to approve the meeting minutes as presented? >> Do I have a second? >> I second. >> Any discussion? With no discussion, all those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. >> Anyone opposed like sign? Motion carries unanimously. And now I will turn it over to our superintendent, Mr. dispatch. So again for the superintendent report this month we have a video that we can post online as well but it shows some of the great things happening within our school system. I point you to our video. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] So, I would like to thank everybody. The ribbon cut as you saw in
002the video was an amazing process. The community came out heavily to support their schools and we appreciate that. Um, open house was amazing in each school. You saw some evidence of that on there as well. The back to school the city put on. We thank for that for our community and our kids and everything that the school board and the community have done to get that new school where it is. We appreciate it. First week of school went great and but we really like to thank everybody involved in that. So our parents community, our bus drivers and specifically our students, you know, with a new procedure at the elementary school, it's new for everybody. We appreciate everybody's patience. So thank thank everybody for that. I'd also like to point and to our screen and it's
003on the agenda as well, but we have nominations for our athletic hall of fame moving until October 3rd. So we'll have this fly out there that they can scan the QR code recommendations for that process and it is open till my comments. So at this time I'd like to call upon we'll have the safety board from the school system. Good evening, Chair Morris, Superintendent Brim Larard, and members of the board. Um, it's my pleasure to present tonight the 2025 social circle schools safety update um in regards to highlighting newly passed legislation enhanced system readiness and holistic safety approaches. Um, so one of the most encompassing laws pertaining to school safety is House Bill 268, also known as the Georgia School Safety Act. Um and as part of this act, it requires that all schools develop
004a comprehensive safety plan um with four main purposes and that is prevention, preparation, response and recovery. And for social circle, this process started back in the beginning um of this summer in collaboration with Walton County Emergency Management, uh Georgia Emergency Management, Social Circle Police Department, Chief Guest, um as well as Chief Zidell with the fire department, um and also Walton County Sheriff's Office. So, we've had lots of collaboration making sure that our comprehensive safety plans um are are there to protect our students and in in the case something does occur that we're prepared to respond to today. Um so, very thankful to our community um partners for their partnership and helping us develop those strong plans. Um, also too under House Bill 268, uh, is, um, an increased real-time collaboration with school resource officers. And
005what that is is basically breaking down barriers where schools and resource officers can share information on students that they have. So if we know something's going on in the community, the school is informed so that we can provide resources to help out with whatever's needed with that. Um also, um part of our central office team has we've um started working on the behavior threat assessment process back at the end of last school year as well. Um and so all of these um enhancements under the new Georgia law, most of them do not go into effect until the next school year, but we are well underway of having these plans in place uh for this school year so that we're ahead of the game. Um and then additionally to the behavior threat um assessment process, I
006wanted to note that in this the whole point of that is to um identify anyone who's going through any um troubling times and to provide them with support. Um that's the whole point of the behavior threat assessment is prevention um over punishment. So we're really trying to be involved with students when they need support um so that they don't become um feel like they're isolated. They don't have anyone they can reach out to. Um and also too requirement under that is that all schools are now required to have a mobile panic uh button system. U thankfully social circle realized the need for this and this um we've had strategics in place for over 5 years now. Um so social circle's really been ahead of the ball game in regards to this mobile pin button um
007which does allow teachers and anyone in the building to alert um any administrator as well as law enforcement um in the event of emergency. And I'll be going over some a couple more updates here on our next slide. So, as you can see with the strategics update alert, although we've had this in place for over 5 years, we are continuing to make improvements with it. Um, that includes providing badge updates to all of our um outdated badges this year. We also um streamlined our 911 dispatch integration. So, anytime that we put a school in hard lockdown, it notifies 911 instantly um without anyone calling. And then also too, we are working on digital mapping of each one of our campuses. And what that will do is it'll allow any first responders to have access to
008things such as AEDs, um, fire signatures, things in the building, they'll know exactly where they are so that they can get there without having to find things. Um, and also too, I want to highlight that as part of the stronger um, connections grant that we received in FYI 24. Um, we successfully installed the Epic system over at our new elementary school. And I know that that has been a huge blessing to Dr. Hardrove and her staff as it serves as an audio enhancement system where it provides students with greater clarity, easier to understand what their teachers are saying. Um, and it also too ties in with our alert system. So, in the event we do have um an alert go on, it provides us with a faster response such as integration with um screens throughout
009the school um and things like that. And so on our next slide here, you'll see um under House Bill 147 um is the school safety and anti-gang endorsement was added by the um Department of Education this past year. Um and I spent most of the year last year um completing this coursework and successfully completed it at the end of last year as well. Um and this information gained by completing this endorsement will help our whole safety teams really make sure that we have access to the most current and relevant information um as we plan and prepare for the future. Um also under House Bill 147 is to make sure that schools have a district reunification preparedness process. Um and so we've spent lots of time this uh whole summer working with um our school level
010safety teams, district level safety teams, as well as our community members to make sure that we have sound reunification um plans in place for a variety of different scenarios. Um and on our next school slide here, uh moving on to our information and system readiness. Um I also had the opportunity to attend the school safety and homeland security conference this summer. Um, I attended that with our SRO's, Officer Edwards and Spivey. Um, so we were able to have good collaboration there. Um, as well as hear from like the Barrow County Task Force. Um, Sheriff Jud Smith with Barrow County. Um, as well as Superintendent Leuff from Barrow County Schools to hear all of kind of the before, during, and after what happened, the tragedy at Appalache. um so that we can make sure that we
011learn from everything they're learned from in the event we ever have to go through a tragedy like that. Um in addition to all that, once again, just making sure we have access to real relevant information that is current in the law enforcement world. Okay. Now, on our next slide here, you'll see uh continuing under information system readiness. Um there's several different things we have in here. Um multiple layers of support and safety for our students. The first one is our campus census. updates that we have families complete every year. Um that is done to make sure that in the event of emergency we have emergency contacts so we can contact them in real time. Um so that is completed this past school year as well. We also have access to a free app right now
012uh known as school dog and this allows administrators to document all things safety whether it's a concern or phrase uh where we can go back and look at that data to identify trends and any holes we may have in our safety plans. Um, in addition, we have fate detectors installed at our middle school and high school, alert our administrators in real time. Um, and so once again, it's not all about punishment with that. We do have um programs in place to help students um realize the dangers of vaping and things like that to make sure that we're helping them uh prevent uh any future damage to themselves. Also, we have a program called GoG Guardian. Um this is a communi computer monitoring software um that is basically like the eyes of a teacher over the
013computer screen all day every day because um when a student has an issue Chromebook whether they're at school or if they're at home if it's not school appropriate it's going to alert the teacher as well as administrators on what it was they were searching. It'll screenshot uh whatever they were on and it'll actually categorize um what that thread is if let us know if it's an urgent need. Um and so we hit those at all times of the day. So that's an excellent safety fe feature as we know that it's very hard to monitor our children on devices. Um in addition to that, we're very blessed here in Social Circle to have full-time school resource officers in each of our building. Um once again, they are not just there to show safety, they're there building
014relationships with students. Um and that goes a long way, I think. Um in addition to that, we realize that safety is not a oneperson job. And that's why we have multiple people on our school safety teams and district safety teams um where we're constantly completing tabletop exercises and collaborating on how to improve safety and social circle. Um and then we always start with our new hires. We provide training as soon as our staff members come on board to let them know how we keep things safe and social circle and that's always reiterated with the school safety teams um after that district orientation. And then finally on my last slide here, I'd like to highlight uh what we do to um instill a preventive culture, practices, and holistic safety in our students. Um one thing that
015we are actively building right now on our website is a one-stop shop where you can find these resources and don't have to do lots of clicking. So we do have several state reporting tools offered on our website. Uh, one of them is our bullying form that allows anyone to um who maybe sees or is a victim of bullying to report that. Uh, we also utilize the see something, send something gap. Um, as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's online tip system. And so we're in constant contact with GEMA um, in the event someone reported something that's local here to Social Circle. U, once again, I thank the the board members and our superintendent for a very strong code of conduct. Um, I think that it is very conducive to learning and it allows our
016administrators to keep students safe. Um, and lastly, uh, probably most importantly with all of our safety plans is that I think social circle promotes student mental health and well-being, um, above anything else. Um, that really boils down to having um, a school social workers, Miss Annlair Mel and Josyn Holton. um down to our student success coordinator, Miss uh Crystal Sanford, to our school counselors. It's really a collective effort of um promoting the mental health and well-being of our students. Um and in addition to that, we complete district relationship mapping. And what that is is we list every student in the district on a spreadsheet and then we share that with every staff member to see who has relationships with the student. So when that student's going through a troubling time, we can reach out to
017that staff member who can connect with that student. Um and finally, uh we meet the needs of all of our students through our TSS or multi-tered system of supports. And so based on the students needs, we're going to identify them, um and make sure that they have interventions in place, uh to be successful. Uh so this time I welcome any comments you may have and I thank you again. >> Thank you. As you can see, safety is top priority system. Increasing your support. Students can't learn unless they're producing All right. Thank you, Mr. Remlard. Um, next on our agenda is public participation. However, we do not have anyone participating in tonight's meeting. Next, we will have a finance update from our CFO, Miss Nicole Cross. >> Good evening. So, tonight I have a short report.
018June is the end of our fiscal year. So we have until the end of September to close that process with this date. So I'll update you closer to that time. Fresh way change for schools June collections were allocated to social circle Christian school. So I also don't have an update on that. So we'll have July collections next month. So I do have a new elementary school construction update. So we are our total construction cost payments have been 32.5 million. We have a balance of 3.4 4 million. Our state reimbursement is at 1.8 million. This is 90% of reimbursement and so we will not get the final amount until we have the closeout process. Hoping to get all of that wrapped up pretty soon um because there is a pretty long delay getting those state funds
019back. So hopefully we'll be able to um have that wrap up here pretty soon. Are there any questions? Maggie, did you want did you Okay. Sorry, misread that. All right. Thank you, Mr. Crossing. Um, next we have action items for the board to consider. Um, updates for the listed policies have been shared for our review. The board will review recommended recommended changes and be prepared to vote on these at our September regular meeting. Um, and we have an action item to approve the listed overnight trips for our middle middle and high school students. We will consider these as a slate single slate. Do I have a motion to approve the overnight trips as presented? >> Do I have a second? >> Any discussion? With no discussion, all those in favor, please signify by saying I.
020>> Anyone opposed? Like sign. Motion carries unanimous. We have an action item to approve the Walton County East Lost Referendum update. Do I have a motion to approve the East Loss Referendum update is presented? Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Any discussion? With no discussion, all those in favor, please signify by saying I. >> Anyone opposed, like sign? Motion carries unanimously. Do I have a motion to adjourn our meeting? >> Do I have a second? >> All those in favor, please signify by saying I. >> Anyone opposed like sign? Motion carries unanimously and meeting is jured. Thank you.