001all right well now call to order this meeting of the franklin county public school board and are there any public comments no ma'am no public comments first we'll start with new business and the first item is create virtual academy teaching positions we're requesting for the board degree the following positions to be funded by cares act funds for high school virtual teachers for middle school virtual teachers and for elementary school virtual teachers the recommended motion is to approve the creation of virtual academy teaching positions as presented okay you've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion to approve so okay so what is is this tell us better yep so uh charlotte's going to talk in great length tonight during her instructional services update she's going to talk about the virtual academy this is uh really
002as a result obviously and the situation that we dealt with this year what we decided to do to lessen the burden for our teachers who were having to do both things is to create a virtual academy for parents and students who still wish for the students to remain in a virtual setting next year this these positions which are obviously going to be funded out of cares act funds will allow our in-person teachers to focus on in-person instruction and it will create an academy structure for elementary middle and high for those students who have chosen and will choose that pathway okay and so is it thought that this is going to be one year and then we'll see potentially i think what we what we do is we look at it at the end of this
003coming year let's see if there's still any federal commitment to continuing uh and if not uh and it is something that's successful and is part of what we would do then we would have to look at you know how we go about education and uh this this um has allowed us also to directly uh create some positions that something that ms henson brought up when we did the allocations and that was you know we we dropped some numbers so we had to eliminate some teacher positions we're able to now provide these positions and some of those folks can apply for these positions and you know so right now some of those logistics are still uh up for we're trying to find spaces in schools because these are going to be people that work we are
004going to have to be in schools for instance let's talk about the four elementary school teachers we would want them to be able to be there with other third grade teachers or fourth grade teachers so they could plan together and make sure that the content that we're covering is similar whether it's a student who's staying home or students coming in person so we'll be in in buildings we just don't know exactly what right so if by chance these positions work out with a cares fund and i think you touched on this how are we going to pay for them next year and the year after and the year after if we choose to keep them if this is something that we choose to keep moving forward we're just going to have to look at our
005application formula that's that would be the only thing that because again that's the only way in which we receive funding to pay for more teachers wouldn't it be hard though to get a teacher to apply for this and it'd just be a one-year thing not necessarily in that let's say for instance it's a tenured teacher we still have to provide a position for that person even if this goes away so let's say that a 10-year teacher takes one of the middle school virtual positions um at the end of the year wants to go back into the classroom we would have to find a spot for that person well there's another thing easier yeah we had what how many teachers was what was it middle field or whatever that had their allocations good it was across
006the board we had some different so several teachers were losing their jobs and they either have to go to another thing or they can have one more here here they could apply for these positions but we know for sure that the cares fund will cover that one year absolutely and that's all we get to keep with the cares money so you know is it one of those where if we don't spend it then we lose it right we have to spend 85 on direct instructional purposes so it will allow us to get some some additional funds this we're estimating you know it's cost around a million of the 5.2 that that we're you know being allocated so uh definitely enough to cover the costs for this coming year so is the program already set up
007we made the yeah i don't want to steal her thunder so she's going to talk a little bit about that jim masters has been really kind of driving the bus and he's got a lot of really good information as well about that actually he said if you all have any questions i might text him need to jump on and share some information all right all in favor indicate by saying aye aye aye the next item is create summer school positions and similarly our intent is for district summer school positions to be built by current staff that will be paid an extra duty stipend that was a previous you always previously approved that however in some cases part-time temporary staff may need to be employed in order to provide services for all students for this reason
008we are requesting the board to create the following district summer school positions again to be funded from cares funds and those are 15 teacher positions to be paid at 31 and 25 cents per hour 15 instructional aid positions to be paid 20.83 cents per hour and in addition we need to create 25 bus driver positions at four dollars per hour and ten bus monitor positions at sixty dollars per hour to be paid from cares funds the recommended motion is to approve the creation of summer school positions as presented you've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion to approve i'm like a motion cooker all right are those dollar amounts kind of similar as to what they're being paid now just on a hourly basis versus an annual basis they're they're similar to for instance
009like when we pay teachers to do ess yeah it's it's pretty sick and that keeps us in budget uh in terms of the care sponsor being able to provide and that we're looking at it monday through thursday four days per week three hours a day instructional now when we burp this they get time and hay were they getting say 25 now they're getting 30 31.25 is what we looked at the ess funds were 25 i mean i and we've been really surprised in our honesty with the number of people that have expressed interest in doing we were we were kind of concerned about certain grade levels and but we have a great deal of interest so how do you come up with the numbers how important charlotte's going to address that also with her thing
010again warned me to steal it the next item is code of acceptable behavior for 2021-2022 the 2021-2022 code except that will behave in the handbook as a task for your review on approval recommendations to approve the 2021-2022 code of acceptable you heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion to approve somebody is that a second sir have there been any changes kyle do you want to address that very minimal changes if it was a change it related back to a policy that you already updated it had been reflected in the handbook but other than that there are no uh procedural district by things that are being changed and start outlining policy all right all in favor indicate by saying hi all right uh the 21 22 board meeting schedule the revised uh 2020 2021 board
011meeting schedules attached for your review the remaining 2020 2021 meetings will be held at central office to our in-person and virtual options due to both the 19th members of the recommended motions to approve the revised 2020-2021 boarding schedule you've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion to approve okay question oh i see okay i was giving it i'm sorry but now we have the 21-22 board meetings and that's 2021-2022 board meeting schedule is attached for your review and approval the recommended question is to approve the 2021-2020 board meeting scheduled all right you've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion to improve [Music] second okay any questions all right all in favor indicate by saying hi bye all right motion carries uh now it's stepping down lane sanitary suit a sewer easement is needed
012for an adjoining property to the maintenance department purchased a few years ago the easement will not have a negative impact on franklin county schools sorry the easement will not have a negative impact on the franklin county schools maintenance facility the recommended motion is to approve the seven-time lane east memphis president you've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion to approve can you elaborate on this what's going on yeah so we were uh approached with the need uh for this sewer easement mr fields has been dealing with um those votes mr fields would you like to address this from the board yes all of this is an easement that they're requesting they're hoping to build some future lots on the property adjacent to our maintenance shop and it will not affect our property in any
013way as far as the building goes um i was out there with the engineer and with the property owner so it will not impact our our property at all other than having to take up some sod and bury a uh a ditch but it's far enough away from the building it will not have any impact on the building itself you know i assume that's out front next to the stepping down road area it actually it actually is uh the majority of it is out front but it will cut across the little lane on if you're going out stephmantown lane toward elkhorn creek it actually cuts across the little lane there on the right that joins uh the the farm that they're hoping to add some tracks to well i think that area there is blood
014from it anyway that ditch line requirements all right uh all in favor indicate by saying up bye motion carries um reports to the board superintendent's personnel actions personnel actions being taken since the last meeting of the board of presenting our information and reports from school council draft minutes from school site based decision making councils are presented for your view hi everyone i guess i'm bringing the thunder as mark referenced multiple times this evening so rebecca is going to pull up that report for us to view yes one moment i gotta plug in oh you're fine here i can get it plugged in the threaded low battery i know that happens fast okay you'll go up to the first slide rebecca there you go okay now the second slide sorry we don't have this attention no
015um i just got it today so yeah i can email it to you if you'd like okay we have a couple of updates to give you this evening and can everyone hear me okay all right the first update is for summer scholars 2021 our summer programming that we are using cares funds to fund um we have received content proposals from 11 of 13 schools and we also have a plan to facilitate preschool opportunities at one school so all the preschool kids may attend one site most likely at the village is there feedback rebecca just a little let me turn it down a little bit oops hang on i've got to escape okay no more than when you in person [Music] okay i'll go on ahead but the diverse activities included in their proposals um including
016content and credit recovery social emotional learning science technology engineering the arts mathematics reading and math interventions and field trips we were pretty pleased with the range of content that they plan to offer this summer the next task we'll be working on with the building coordinators is to provide a list of the proposed expenses the enrollment of students and their transportation because brad is ready to make those bus schedules we've met with wendy in food service and she will be doing feeding sites at each elementary school and will add sites based on the enrollment numbers at the middle and high schools and she will provide breakfast and lunch for multiple days and on thursdays probably something for them to take home for friday as well we do plan to be able to report our progress to
017the board and our community we're going to use iready to collect and post data k through 8 and we'll also ask our high schools to collect and submit data so we can analyze their summer school implementation it will likely be related to some credit recovery and how many kids made up their classes those types of things for high school um the buses will be running from june through the end of july i think most agreed to stay away from august so that the kids could have a little break before school started again and we're going to use our state ess funds first then september the end of september and then federal cares we have budgeted 1 million for this initiative even though we don't think it will cost that full 1 million to um summer
018programming to make up to recover the content from this year that maybe may have some gaps um you saw earlier the creation of position for bus drivers bus monitors teachers and aides and earlier last month you also created teachers and aides this these positions that were created today were the same pay but it was for folks who aren't currently employed so if any of our folks are getting um a pink slip but they want to work summer school this will cover their job in july and then any new teachers next year who are graduating and they want to apply to work as an aide in the summertime they would be able to do that until they get their teaching certificate and then of course we've talked about those college kids who want to eventually work
019in franklin county school and they would also be invited to work as an instructional aide in the program and yes larry you were you were correct last month we talked about how we're trying to raise the pay a few dollars on the salary schedule so that we can incentivize the number of employees who would work so any questions about summer school okay and you can ask questions at the end too rebecca the next slide our update about virtual learning academy uh mark mentioned jim on spring break jim worked on um several the organizational pieces for our department but as of today 166 students or the parents have completed interest survey for our virtual learning academy 68 elementary students 38 middle school students and 60 high school students and reasons cited for their interests include health
020concerns of a student or family members preference of virtual learning refusal to wear a mask and citing positive aspects of this year's virtual experience um some parents it just worked out for them and they liked the schedule so that was their reasoning for for asking to do virtual there will be an application process um and jim is working on that our next steps include and they're all happening at once we're going to need waiver to kde which you'll approve at the next board meeting and that's an attendance waiver so that they don't have to be present in in seats and they can do the virtual learning option it also will provide the waiver to do elementary school your case ones and twos because currently um that's not approvable i think in the law so we
021kde is asking that we do a waiver for that we're working on the application and acceptance processes we want students to be successful and we want to ensure that their parents will also commit to that so we do have some things in place for that we are going to purchase the platform in the form of programming which will help our teachers so that students can access all types of content in addition to our curriculum and we're going to be working on teacher hiring training planning and parent family communication now on the new business agenda today you approved a total of 12 created positions to be paid and as you can see we have 166 kids right now who are interested we won't hire all 12 positions if we don't need them so if we don't
022accept a certain number of students we'll only hire the number of teachers we need to adequately service those kids and this is a you talked about earlier um the funding future funding for this once once they're enrolled as our student we will receive funding for them they're our students so that would count as part of the allocation in the future um and we do need to look at the allocation formula but we're going to use shares funds for this and we've budgeted in our cares funds the money for the teachers and the money for the platform so i was very interested to see the number of elementary students higher than anyone else that was i looked it up today and so this is our most recent data do any of you have questions about the
023virtual learning academy go ahead charlotte it's melinda and i'm a little bit confused i don't know i i couldn't hear you on some of the things on the application for attendance tell me again what are the what's the criteria to attend the virtual cabin well we're developing that what we want to ensure is that students who have not participated this year virtually they're most likely not going to be accepted into this virtual learning academy the requirement is that they needed to show success this year it's fine if a parent and a family says oh my student was successful with virtual learning but then their their records do not indicate the same so we're just going to do a double check of those things and make sure we have that in place also we want to
024bring them together as a community and a family and there will be some face-to-face opportunities for them they don't necessarily have to be required but we intend to build a community with this online virtual learning academy and we hope that we can be successful we think something is really well in this in this environment and what are the dates again for this academy it would start the beginning of school saying it would follow the same calendar that we follow and and also something i didn't mention in my notes you know we intend to advertise this um there might be some homeschool families who choose to enroll in franklin county schools because this is a viable option for their family very good so we might gain some enrollment so thank you for answering my question because
025that was what i was going to ask about home schoolers absolutely we welcome them they would have access to a platform edmentum is the program we've done some initial research jim is working on that we've done one meeting with them but they offer um some some ctc programs that are interesting because that was one question i talked to john sanders and he also said kids could still come to opportunities at ctc for a scheduled period so we're going to need to work around all those types of things for kids who still want welding and the opportunities that ctc okay any other questions about virtual learning we'll keep this on the agenda thank you okay next is supplemental gear we mark mentioned this at the last meeting and we put our survey out that day as
026of today and parents have until may 1st to let the local board know their choice we only have 89 responses or i shouldn't say only we have 89 responses 40 elementary school students and i list the grades there 8k nine first 13 tickets or third grade three fourth grade and three grade 11 middle school students five six three seven three eight and then 36 high school students and you can see eighteen ninth grade nine tenth grade four eleventh and five 12. then we had two that were not applicable they didn't ain't you know they just didn't answer and they did weren't interested i think they did the survey because they thought they needed to but they said we're not interested um so as you can see a lot of the the folks are elementary folks
027that wish to repeat that year lowest numbers in the middle school and from a district perspective it doesn't really affect class sizes at any particular school these are these are spread out across the district you know the two high schools i think there might have been a few more western hills in franklin county um we attended a webinar today and many of us were on it with k-a-s-a where wayne young talked about they did a deep dive into this senate bill and they talked about the khs double a eligibility rules and that's the message i want to send to parents those eligibility rules still apply so if your child is 15 or 19 as an eighth grader and a senior respectively you still age out so if they've been detained or already done an extra
028year they won't be able to play in eighth grade or as a high schooler if they're older than 15 and 19. so you know that that's something for those thinking about it from a sports perspective it will negatively impact our graduation rate so they track our cohorts and they track the number of kids who start as a freshman and they graduate and they give us a percentage for that and then um they do the same for five years so any student who stays in high school that will affect on impact our graduation rate in a negative way the supplemental year is different than traditional retention as the students would be receiving a different experience than they received here for the same grade level i do understand it more so than i do retention um a
029retention i try to get like i said last month we have to guarantee that a child receives nothing different than they did the year before it's easier to do that with a supplemental year they aren't going to be virtual learners for three of the four nine weeks they would be face to face and repeating the grade so i do see this as a little different than a retention um but that's just my personal input on the map and when citing reasons for supplemental fear only one parent cited athletics and the need to replay a season others cited and mostly special needs of students their child desire to repeat the grade level due to coven some also cited non-applicable reasons and quite possibly completed the survey by mistake um so i'm not sure that all 89
030would be wanting the supplemental year and we still have some time they have until may 1st and my understanding is well we're going to vote on this may 3rd because that's the board meeting before june 1st um or you could i guess do it at the working in may but what questions you have and all of us can chip in on this because i i probably know the least amount of supplemental gear in the room now how was these folks contacted did did we do the robo call or else we did we did that mark did the phone calls to let them know that it was on its way and these are the folks who responded and i think the principles did also did notifications let us know if um your child would like a
031supplemental gear we made sure we did the district announcement and then the schools followed it up yeah i think i got two i mean i think this is something that will be developed along the way and also it seems like it's not going to take as much development as the summer program and the new virtual academy this is to me is going to be just more students who are in our schools next year than we had expected yeah probably right now at about 85 kids i don't think it calls for us necessarily to hire teachers because of it and costs any more than it normally would it's in pockets across the district so yeah those students that have filled it out account for about 1.4 of our overall population um so the thing that you're
032going for the things that you're going to have to weigh over the next several weeks before you make this decision and that's why we provide you with the kde guidance document that we receive and on that webinar today you know there were superintendents from just about every school district on there with the leading legal you know person in the state uh wayne young with kasa and by the end of it wayne young even admitted that he was as confused at the end as he was at the very beginning it's it's a it's a two-piece piece of legislation as you'll see this is 11 pages long guidance from kde so spend some time looking over this we'll share any other information that we can with you we do know uh the things that charlotte mentioned there
033are are accurate in terms of it will be a negative impact to graduation just simply because use the example of if you're a ninth grade student and you would want to do the supplemental year so you do the supplemental year next year as again a ninth grade student the way the federal legislation is written in terms of graduation rate is if a student doesn't graduate in the four years then they will count against you as a quote-unquote drawback and even though they're not a dropout but that's just the way the calculation so so those are some of the things that you'll have to consider as as you're looking at this what and i really love what kyle was on the webinar too what wayne said was this in honestly this was a pretty well intentioned
034piece of legislation to help kids and they're unfortunate there are quite a few unintended consequences to it i would just say i mean if we can help the kids and the kids want to do it and parents want to do it i mean somebody's going to kick me into the table i don't care about the graduation rate it helps a person i don't care about the statistics although i understand it might push us down a little level but it did you know and that was what one of the superintendents from harlan county said today on there was this good they've been a very very high achieving district and if just a few kids get put into that graduation rate rehearse their numbers they could become a csi district and so he was just you know
035very adamant about that and ultimately we have to i think we always have to keep in mind you know we got to think about kids and regardless of anything else i think that's what we need to keep our eyes and like i said if then failed and they could have took guests that this people could fail you know and going home and then window because uh that's dropped out once they did they failed and wasn't able to get their credits and they were good and and what you'll see is it's a little bit um concerning and frustrating is just how pbe is interpreting this two-piece piece of legislation and what they're saying in terms of what how grades work how you know credits work and all those things so again we'll spend some time we'll
036try to put together like a summary for me um when i read the regular idea the left page document came out last week i felt like there were barriers put in place that i did not see in the law when you think of supplemental year a kid's grades can only change if they fail the course the new grade will change it so if i'm a ninth grader and i failed three courses i can change three grades the other course is i cannot gain any additional credits so you know there's a there's a fine line between the kids that have found two two classes i can get them caught up within four years because if they repeat you can only gain credits for courses you failed at high school so uh if a kid takes a
037course and makes an a in it but he didn't take the course previously and failed it it goes with a transcript but it does not count towards your overall gpa and it does not count towards your high school graduation so so that that's the sticky part for me right now now when i didn't say this today expects tomorrow after a meeting in kde that version two of this guidance will roll out well you need to move the target and it'll be moving yeah or five years yeah i mean i think yeah now one of the things that so if a person take let's say algebra or something they didn't take it this year and they you know they've done good at algebra one they can they take out two and and be able to that
038wouldn't give them any extra they can take it it does not count as their math credit though they cannot gain their credit for a quarter that they have not previously taken so that that's where those that just have one or two abs if we could catch them up they're gonna be more beneficial possibly i mean but then there's the other side of it too so i think you really have to look at case by case what scares me is i don't want parents to sign up for something but they don't know yet what it looks like because we don't know what it looks like right so hey it makes total sense for me it's the high school when you get into the credits that i really struggle with because i don't want to see a
039kid repeat a year and gain one credit or two credits and have a much better year this year than last year it's just you know so like if they got a d at one year and they got an a the next year and still be indeed still a d and they have to take it again they have to take the exact same classes that are a supplemental course that is related to it okay but for instance if you take down for one and pass it supplemental is not geometry point even though it's another math course it's not related to algebra but even if you take that course so basically they're going by the transcripts as electives that do not come towards graduation and we're still we're still investigating the dual credit piece where they could
040get college credit so they could retake some courses but they also may be able to be dual enrolled and take dual credit they wouldn't necessarily get scholarship and may have to pay for it but if i'm going to take an extra year i'm going to try to take some dual credit courses but yet more to come on that what i'm more concerned about is that only 36 high school students parents of high school students responded and i can't guarantee you we have more than 36 failed classes this year so they're going to repeat the year anyway you know i mean when we get down to it they're repre repeating freshman year if they failed all their courses and haven't participated and we definitely have more than 36 in the district so we will we will
041continue to keep you updated so you can make your decision and it's all or nothing am i correct mark they either have to vote to say yes or no that's right um it is you're going to approve either all or none and um yeah the as you read through the guidance you'll see and thank you for making that point those points kyle and charlotte you'll see some of the things that we were talking about that other superintendents saw today and are concerned so i have one more slide of pretty good news and also i'll end it with something super positive that we're pretty excited about our um diversity equity and inclusion committee is going to have a district meeting tomorrow all levels are represented at the schools and we're going to take a look at
042whose voices are missing from the room and compile a list of other stakeholders to join this work opportunity we also invite any of you to participate on the diversity equity and inclusion committee with us tomorrow's really a planning meeting for the work we want to get done but we'll be defining what equity looks like in franklin county schools over the course of several meetings we plan to bring a policy a diversity equity and inclusion policy to the board and we're participating in ongoing professional learning we have been all year um and as we think about our mission vision values beliefs our promise to the community we want diversity equity and inclusion to be central to our work so we know as a board you do policy work you approve policy and you also improve what's
043funded and what we fund is what's value so how can our future funding decisions include that shift in perspective to focus on diversity equity and inclusion i'm pretty pumped about this work and think it will bring about some change in our district some very much needed change um again let me know if you're interested in serving and um we'll send you an invite link to the committee are you going to invite students to participate absolutely one of the things one of the recommendations is that our students take a look at our policies and let us know are they punitive policies how can they be more inclusive so this work has lots of directions it could spin and there's a lot of work to do and i think everybody is looking at this work so i'm
044excited about it any other questions thank you charlotte very very much okay thank you all all right the next item is the super antenna report uh be very brief two two items to talk about one we have been in contact with the horse park or graduation and they have enhanced or increased the level of capacity to 35 which will allow our high schools to allot tickets anywhere from six to eight depending on the school franklin county high school may be around six per student and western hills may be around eight but they're still trying to you know exactly get those numbers but that was good news because just a few weeks ago they were at 20 and so up to 35 we will be able to have an in-person graduation ceremony lastly we are working
045on uh charlotte mentioned the mission vision and promise something that we have not done here is is something that we're keen on doing is the development of a promise to our community to our staff to our students to our families to our parents and we have uh three of our principals who are taking superintendent classes are leading this work and it's jennifer perkins tracy klein and matt osborne and we are asking for a board member representation on our committee to help us with the development of a promise statement we are not changing our mission because our mission is fantastic it's simple it's first it's exactly what it needs to be but we are using that mission in our and these ideas to develop a promise statement which will then develop the work of our strategic
046plan for the next three to five years so love perhaps one of you on on board please consider that think about and let me know if you are interested in that and that's all i have all right we have the consent agenda is presented for your approval the recommended motion is to approve the consent agenda as presented you've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion to approve the consent agenda i'll make a motion to approve all right any questions well i have one the fiscal court grant works but what is that are we getting a grant from them or yes so um funds received are overseen by the brisket coordinators and uh also sara vivian and they're going to be used for basic needs for students so yes the fiscal court is giving funds
047for these schools that's a thousand dollars per school all right all in favor of the consent agenda please indicate by saying aye aye any opposed all right motion carries [Music] all right we're