Board of Education Policy and Governance Meeting February 27, 2024

001broadcast has broadcast has been set thank you so much the time is now 5:06 pm and the February 27th 2024 policy and governance committee meeting will come to order um I want to ask all board members and attendance if you are on the zoom if you can just ensure that your mic is muted and you're not speaking so we don't have any background noise we really appreciate it and I want to say good evening and welcome to the February 27 2024 policy and governance committee meeting I am Jonathan Briggs chair of the policy and governance committee and member of the board it brings me great pleasure to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and I look forward to our work tonight uh we will now have introductions of our committee members starting with board members followed

002by Administration staff then Board office staff and the board legal counsel um so I will turn it over to doesn't like we have our vice chair so I'm going to turn it over to um our um committee members um and um Dr Miller if you'd like to go to kick us off appreciate good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us uh today I'm Dr Wanita Miller member of the policy and Governor's committee and I'd like to also in advance thank the staff for the information and data collected to help us facilitate this meeting hello everyone my name is Ram Rivera Forbes and I'm the student member of the board on the podcast govern committee I'm also the vice chair so sometimes I am coming out of school when meetings are starting is that a

003military uniform you have on it is air RTC show your stripes see everyone I'm in RTC all right all right that's great other committee members um Miss Walker hey there yes I am Lolita Eve Walker I'm Vice chair of the board I am driving so I apologize for not um showing my picture but I'm just super excited as to the progress that we made together as a committee thanks excited be great um Administration staff good evening I'm Robin wush director of um government relations compliance and procedures and we have two special guests here this evening so I'll let them introduce themselves um good evening I'm christe Murphy Ballwin chief of Human Resources under which the office of equity diversity and belonging um is housed and good evening I'm David ree Jr director of The Office

004of equity diversity and belonging it's an honor to be here with you all this evening I think Mr fips Patrick this is probably good evening I'm Ral D Fitzpatrick heem and I'm the director for the Prince George County Board of Ed thank you all so much for watching all right and we can move to board office staff hi everyone Cindy Adin Board office secretary and assistance to the P PNG committee great and last but not least um our board counsil legal counsil good evening everyone I'm Dennis Whitley III I'm a partner at the law firm of Shipley and Horn and we are board counsel great well I want to just Echo um what Dr Miller said thank you uh so much for everyone who's taken the time to put together this um all the resources

005for tonight's meeting including the Outreach to um Administration staff members um and I think just the robust pieces that we've done around the policy development so I'm echoing um Vice chair Walker it's been a lot of great work and we're excited to continue that work we're going to move to item 1.3 adoption of the meeting agenda um colleagues before I call for a motion to accept the agenda for tonight please be aware that there are a few changes um so one after item 2.0 will consider items 4.1 policy 0101 educational Equity this is being done to accommodate the schedules of our visiting speakers and then two policy 2600 records and documents Management program policy 0125 nondiscrimination are taken off the agenda to give the administration additional time for review um so may I have a

006motion to adopt the February 27th 2024 policy and governance committee meeting agenda as amended so move Mr chair right is there a second it's been moved and seconded any objections hearing none the motion passes the February 27th 2024 policy and governance committee meeting uh agenda is adopted as amended um item 1.4 approval of the committee meeting minutes may I have a motion to approve the February 13 2023 policy and governance committee meeting minutes don't move Second Great it moved in second any objections hearing none the motion passes um uh the February 13 2023 policy and governance committee meeting minutes are approved we're now going to move on to item 2.0 public comment on agenda and non agenda items um tonight there are no public comment speakers this evening um but we do want to say

007that we're always excited to have um you know members of our public come and share their thoughts um so please if you're watching this um and if you have perspectives opinions even if you feel like it is a small tidbit um it's always useful for our committee and for the board to hear that and welcome you joining um so given that we have no registered public comment speakers um we'll we'll move past this section and then I do want to acknowledge um Mrs Welsh before I proceed to the next item Mrs wsh so we are moving into the next item right now for the um Equity is that what you're saying well we're going to pause for your question but then I think we're going to move to yes education Equity oh is that what

008you were doing ra in it for the introduction I don't I don't know what my question is what is it you raised your hand I'm sorry I don't I'm s i don't even I didn't even see it on I'm sorry I have no questions I apologize you're fine no you raised your hand and then it went down and I was like I feel like that was an accident but I want it was an accident I didn't even realize I touched it sorry it's fine all right so we're gonna move to item 4.1 policy 0101 educational Equity um I yield the floor to Mrs Welsh to introduce her guests and provide the committee with an update on policy 0101 education Equity so we are very fortunate this evening to have uh with us uh Dr David

009Reese who is our um director of equity diversity and belonging as well as our chief of Human Resources Dr Christy Baldwin so last at our last meeting we began the process of discussing and revising the equity policy and in the conversation I asked the committee whether or not they would like to hear from you uh Dr Reese in terms of the things that your office has been doing uh because I know you've been involved in many different types of equity activities for the school system and they every single one every single person on the committee was yet like yes yes please come so you are here this evening so we'd love to hear from you before we go into the policy and just hear because then that might cause more further discussion with the policy

010so if you would please um share your information that would be great absolutely um thank you uh Robin Welsh for the introduction and I have a question for the group do you see a screen that has data on it yes awesome I'm not sure how well you can see it but I want to start with a story and I remember when I was not in Prince George's County so I have a history in this system of being a consultant and then I was a student earning his Doctorate while working in the district um and that's a whole another story I can tell you all about that later but but then I joined in 2014 in the office of continuous systemic Improvement I left the district in 2018 and returned in 2020 in February right before

011the pandemic started and in that 18-month time period when I was no longer in the system I remember when this Equity policy came on board in I think April 2019 at the time I was working for an organization called the leadership academy based in New York City doing National Equity Consulting and I remember sending the current CEO at the time and some others some feedback on this Equity policy that I thought was absolutely outstanding and what it was aiming to achieve in Prince George's County and I was proud that the district that was still my home because I still lived at Prince George's County was um really trying to advance some very serious work at that time I did not know that I would return to the district just months later and I would have

012the responsibility of implementing that policy but I remember a board meeting when the then chair Alvin Thornton said that if this work is done well with this Equity policy it will pay the district in ways that we might not ever really be able to see or feel um because a lot of the intangibles in terms of satisfaction people feeling like they're belonging um reduced um needs for lawsuits and those sorts of things would come about as the result of meaningful action taking place so fast forward to 2020 um shortly after the murder of George Floyd are then at the time CEO wanted to do systemwide professional development on bias during that time since our office only had two people in it I took the opportunity to put some professional development together and I had a

013series of questions that I wanted got to get a feel for in terms of What mattered to PGCPS in terms of equity and I began tracking that data over time so on the slide on the right you will see that in 2020 there were 20 there were 9,625 responses to a question and the question at the top of the slide says when problematic statements for example about race culture gender religion national origin or other occur how comfortable do you feel addressing them it is important to note that we had about 19,000 employees at the time so the response rate was nearly 50% which is significant for Prince George County I got lots of feedback from people around the six questions to which they responded and they they knew that their answers were kind of framed

014the professional learning that we were going to do for the upcoming PD day but what they did not know that I was intentional in my design of the questions because I knew that the feedback that I got the quantitative data and the qualitative comments would be the anchor for how we would move forward as a district connected to educational um Equity policy 0101 we then asked the same questions in 2022 in another PD and we actually just asked them again today so that survey is going out and what you notice is that over the two-year period even though there's a different number of responses in general there is a trend where more people than PGCPS feel comfortable addressing problematic statements when they occur and I always have to start with some sort of data and

015evidence to kind of ground the work that we're doing so this is a very big picture data but it tells a piece of a story about a system that has employees and students who've been deeply engaged and having courageous conversations about all kinds of topics that generally have been taboo discussions in workplaces so since 2020 our office has really done a lot of work and we've grown from two people to now three Equity coaches one diversity strategy officer and one education support person and a director so we're now an office of six and our span and reach has been pretty incredible in PGCPS and I want to tell you a little bit about my theory of action around how I knew the work needed to move in the system with this policy even though this

016policy explicitly calls for the creation of a new office it was clear to me based off my history in Prince George's County that the work would only move if executive level leadership did their part in moving it throughout their divisions so prong one of the theory of change is to make sure that each individual chief and the superintendent or CEO is aware of what their role is in advancing Equity with whatever that might mean within their divisions and there are lots of different stories I could tell you all about how that work moves in operations in human resources in academics and in Communications and if you ask questions I can give you all kinds of answers and information about how that works um and there there's so much that I could share and I and

017I feel like like I want to make this kind of interactive so I want to get to your questions so that I can figure out how best to pinpoint um the specific things that you might want me to kind of speak to um so I'll pause there but before I open it up for some general questions Dr Balwin is there anything that you want to add or something that I should speak to more more pointedly um I don't have anything to add I think grounding it in the beginning part of the discussion um opens the floor to some follow-up question especially regarding the policy and how the work can continue to expand however I would like for you to touch on I think for the last three years we've done systemic professional development days which

018means from our executive staff to our bus drivers Transportation um one of the reasons why equity and diversity belonging is in Human Resources is because we are the One Division that touches 18,160 landscapes for our children for our students that they actually start with our adults so you actually do have a systemic PD coming up March 4th correct yes so on March 4th this year our focus is on black and Latino boys um last year we focused on national origin as a protected class which means um multilingual Learners and newcomers though they were our emphasis and the year before that we actually highlighted our brand new transgender or gender and and gender diverse students um policy and administrative procedure which um was an awesome experience for everyone in the system to learn about administrative procedures

019and changes as it connects to that marginalized population of students and staff members who are transgender and a lot of really good work came out of that um lots of eyes were opened with our systemic PD around ninos de pel where every single staff member got to kind of understand more of what the lived experiences are like for some immigrant populations and focusing on the experiences of our black and Latin youo boys who represent 65,000 of our PGCPS students and the hopes that we have for them in conjunction with the microaggressions that they experience on a day-to-day basis is is really Central to making sure that everybody feels that they belong so what this looks like is our office speaking with students getting students on panels and creating questions for the staff to respond to

020as Rec curate those videos we also create slides that have data and other provocative conversation promps so that when our school-based Equity leads and others turn key to professional development they're able to have all staff members engage with the same content but in different ways so from our office is small like we have a very very small FTE allotment but we spend a lot of time um doing trainer the trainer sessions where we learn so much every day about how to be better PD providers and really hear about how best to help people who are closest to moving the work and it's always a beautiful thing to watch how that professional learning kind of perme throughout the system and becomes more than just a PD day but it becomes a springboard to advocacy to people

021having hard conversations to pushing on leadership to pushing on curriculum to pushing on expectations so that more people have a better experience here okay and Mrs Welsh um I think maybe just to help facilitate the conversation I was wondering if you had the policy again that we could just um have a quick recap of I'm sorry I was M muted can you post it please Cindy so the policy is a revision of the previous policy one of the big things that got changed really was just the format for the how we now format our policies um but it did that much of what was in the previous policy Still Remains in the current policy um but it's more specific to what the requirements of a policy are supposed to have um and basically we have

022our policy statement that affirms the rights of all students to have Equitable access to Quality education that promotes College and Career Readiness social emotional learning supports and supports the holistic well-being of students and then it goes into um if you continue can you just keep scrolling down all these are position statements related to the commitment to equity for all of our students to be in Equitable situation and then we have uh the definitions which the adverse childhood experiences were pretty big in the previous policy so this is defined um and referred to within the policy and then if you scroll down further Cindy um they we it also talks about Community performance index measurables which students are always dealing with on a regular basis uh which impact their experiences in school and what we as

023um uh teachers Educators need to be prepared to um you know work with students on and then cultural Proficiency in terms of really uh ensuring that all of our staff and students are culturally proficient and have an understanding of other cultures and then it goes in again to educational Equity if you keep scrolling further down these are all these are purely just definitions that are referred to as we go through uh the policy and then if you go further it lays out um all the different standards that the policy is addressing um and so it first talks about the goals of educational Equity Equity within PGCPS and they consist of the following which again came from the policy previously and then if you scroll further down um Cindy keep scrolling please because we I did

024add language that was requested okay get back up there please um so one of the things that was requested in the last U meeting was now this talks about a welcoming learning environment so um um um chair Briggs I think you requested that we I also incorporate a culturally relevant p pedagogi as well um as diversity Equity inclusion and and belonging um so I did incorporate that in the welcoming learning environment and then we talk about recruiting and ensuring that our the our Workforce reflects the diversity of the student body and community and if you scroll down a little bit further Cindy can you scroll down further please um and then in terms of just keep scrolling a little bit further oh wait welcoming and empowering uh families to engage in their children's education uh

025and really being intentional about involving them as stakeholders in in the entire even in terms of decisions that we make related to our students and then um reviewing and modifying policies and procedures um where we work to ensure that we're not impeding any Equitable access for students and a wide variety of areas discipline extracurricular activities Before and After School academic resources all the different programs that we have for students and then we also talk about the PG direct educational Equity um be addressed in the system's local uh Essa our plan our consolidation plan and that the superintendent shall designate administrative staff person responsible for the facility monitoring implementation of those initiatives and then that PG pgcp shall consider Community uh consider Community CPI measurables and all the plans for new construction and Renovations of existing

026facilities um and in terms of distribution of academic supports and then this one I also Incorporated it was again a sort of a conversation that we had last from the last meeting of which um um board member Briggs I think you talked about also pgps will address student Behavior through the use of appropriate behavior interventions such as restorative practices and positive behavior inventions um supports which as PBIS evidence informed practices will be utilized to address students holistic academic well-being and social emotional learning to assist students in developing a sustainable mindset characterized by predominantly positive feelings scroll down please and then um attitudes positive relationships in schools resilience self- optimism a high level of satisfaction with learning experiences that particular language actually from the previous policy um and when you requested the um about the social

027emotional learning and the um the um also about restorative practices uh chair Briggs it sort of made sense to put all that together because it really does all go together in terms of when we're working with students and then it does uh direct the um the um board to the board directs the superintendent to develop action plans with clear accountability metrics and administrative procedures to implement the goals outcomes and strategies out outlined in this policy and then the superintendent is also charged with proposing necessary allocations allocations of capital Improvement operation budgetary funds and the hiring of professional development necessary staff to implement the set goals desired outcomes and strategies of this policy and scroll down just a little further to see if there's one more yep I thought there was and then the uh superintendent

028uh will formulate the pgbs equity plan which shall be required uh required submission to the for full board by the start of each Academic Year as identified by the board's approved Academic Calendar with a formal vote of affirmation by the board required no later than October 1st of the same Academic Year so I this I think this particular provision here really does uh um uh go to a commitment both on the part of the superintendent and the board in terms of ensuring that we're going to continue this Equity work and and go further to really make every efforts for all of our students to have an equitable education and Equitable educational opportunities um and then the last one which goes to Dr Reese's office this the board requires the superintendent to establish and maintain an

029administrative office dedicated to the implementation of the PGCPS Equity plan so that is it short of the nutshell I went through it quickly so I want to I want to give one additional Point um that I want to raise for the committee's attention and that is when this policy was originally written a equity focused strategic plan for PGCPS did not exist so when I came on board I worked with Dr goson and the person who was responsible for strategic planning at the time and we went through a pretty laborious and pretty robust process to create the t26 plan that we all see now and it was at that time that we decided that the equity Focus strategic plan that has csis critical success indicators that touch the entire system were became the administrative Equity plan

030so every single Chief should see how his her or their work um connects directly to some metrics that you see and that is the reason why the school board might not have seen this thing that came before them every October 1st that's really helpful context on both ends um and appreciate you all sharing all of that so I want to say the floor is now open for discussion and comments and you will be recognized in the order of your raised hand virtually if you can't raise your hand for some reason virtually um then um just verb know that you're interested in asking a question okay well I did have just um a few questions um and first want to say um thank you so much uh Dr Ree and Dr Balwin for the presentation um

031and just for all of your work that you're doing um because it sounds like it's having um significant impact on our student community from some of the the programming that you Shar that you're leading um and so that's really grateful I'm really grateful for that as well as I think particularly for our students that are um often un go unseen um because of their identity so I appreciate that I did want to ask about um Dr Reese you mentioned some of the initiatives that you're leading like you talked about the I think upcoming piece around um black and Latino boys um but I was just curious like how could you just speak to how you're breaking down the um how you're approaching education equity for this school year like how are you approaching this is

032it different populations or um what's your approach and if that question doesn't make sense I can clear well I I think I understand your question so we look at data every year to decide like what the area of emphasis would would be and as you think about instances of discipline instances of students not achieving at their potential and the types of um misunderstanding ings that we have seen culturally we landed on a focus for for Black and Latino males this year which also gets into reasons of overidentification for special education underidentification for talented and gifted in those pieces so our approach um with the system is to really help reframe our thinking around what does it mean to be asset based versus deficit based and helping staff understand the how pervasive it is for us

033to have a a deficit-based mindset when it comes to a lot of students and students of color and boys in particular and that those mindsets behaviors are probably the causes of some of our data looking the way that it looks so we really want people to be introspective around what each individual is doing to contribute to the problem um so that we get better and so the approach is to be evidence based around why we make the selection and then put supports in place for people to kind of reframe their thinking and behaviors okay got it um I did have a question so around so I know we have like some implicit bias trainings and safe schools and other things um are there any things that you would recommend that you just from hearing that

034quick retail of the um policy are missing um for example you know there's like anti-racist curriculums or there's um you know critical race here right there are some things that are politically charged but just curious if you have any uh recommendations well one of our book studies a couple years ago was a book called this book is anti-racist and during our summer learning series and we had about a thousand staff members who participated in it our Middle School uh rela supervisor then made that book a piece of the curriculum for middle school so that our middle school students are now engaging in these conversations around identity bias um microaggressions and how things show up so that they're able to advocate for themselves and I think that might be a part of the reason why we

035see some of the increased student advocacy uh uh that we see um but we also have created a new canvas course around bias that we're helping to support our school-based Equity leads for we're actually trying to now create a CPD unit so that staff members can get professional credit for engag Eng in that canvas course which is pretty well designed we can send you a link to it so you can see it but I think we have to be comprehensive and make sure that we invite all staff members to know how to call in individuals when they see problems versus or sometimes calling out things when they're problematic got it I know my time is up so and I don't see any other hand so I guess I'll go for another round Cindy um um

036and I don't want to dominate this so if you do have a question please but I do want to just say so as far as the training so CU I'm just trying to understand like when we talk about the policy at a broad level are there things that we should be recommending be included in here I know that we have the administrative policy that can you know be unpacked but um are there any things that from your kind of expert level um view um you think you know as far as being comparable to other school districts or being up to dat with what's happening are there things that we should be thinking about as a school board one thing I really want to elevate about PGCPS as a point of Pride for me is that

037all does mean all in terms of professional learning and so when our former CEO um brought me on board I said I don't mind being a small office um I have a lot of talent personally and we have a lot of talent within the school district if you give me time I will make sure that the time is well spent on professional learning that matters so as a board of education I would encourage you all as things are ever shifting to always pay attention to the time that staff members are required um or that that's allocated for professional learning around these issues and make sure that that is the thing that that we're emphasizing because we have quality professional learning that's happening not just from my office but from loots of other offices that touch

038cultureal responsiveness and I think that that is that that's the key thing that we want to protect quality learning time um for this adaptive work to take place we're doing this in a way that a lot of other people aren't in the in other school systems and I know it because my colleagues are like wait a minute you get like a whole you get days to do this and time with people and the whole like cabinets on board and they their minds are kind of blown by it okay that makes a lot of sense and Dr Bing you might be a to speak to the this piece too because it sounds like I don't know Dr re you correct me but is it that if trainings have to get cut this might be one of

039those ones that get cut um you said quality you know making sure that we really are emphasizing the amount of time that they have for the training um so I'm going to Pivot to Dr Balin and see if there's anything there based on what Dr reee said um I think what Dr Reese was what sharing and expanding on is it's it's not that it gets cut what ends up happening is that we do not have a lot of professional development days built into our school year calendar so um you know for high quality teachers and staff we need to have more days um that is one of the reasons why Dr Zuckerman and I took over the development of the calendar process because we'd really love to have look a long term on how we

040could engage in more professional learning learning um opportunities than what we have right now and just to give a very concrete example of that when we did the L the English language Learners who we now are referring to as multilinguals in our system and newcomers and we translated the professional learning to fit the context of Our Food Services employees by connecting to culture and food and what happens around the world and then connected it to our students and many of them who wrote on their hand form some were writing in Spanish some are writing in English the amount of ahas that they had around how they could do things differently in the kitchens and in food services and how they could interact differently with the students based off of what they now knew and understood

041was truly transformative and it's because of the operations team being very creative that they were able to create time and make time where that had not been the norm before so I really want to just impress upon like number one we have people who are being Innovative and leaders who are trying to make it happen but from a board perspective mandating it by policy or thinking of ways of really holding our feet to the fire so that it stays consistent no matter what the changes might be whether David Reese is here tomorrow or not I think is very important and I would just add on because I know your time but just also like we've ex expanded restorative practices to all of our safety and security staff um you know how awesome would it be

042if we could expand that to Transportation so you know like Dr re says all means all it's not just our teachers and administrators because children do what you do not what you say and so that is really a focus of Dr Reese and I to make sure um this work and these conversations span across the entire district and not just the in the our teachers and administrators makes a lot of sense okay um any other questions okay well I'm not seeing any hands but of course that doesn't mean that you don't have that we don't have questions it was a great presentation so that's a good um sign but we may get some emails and other Outreach outside of that and so just want to say that I'm sure you all know that you're um

043available for any of those pieces if uh board members committee members have questions about the policy as they reviewing it um so thank you so much Dr ree thank you so much Dr bwin for taking time out of your busy schedules um colleagues should this policy be Advanced for action or kept for further discussion I don't see much I I personally would like to have this for just another round of discussion um but Dr Miller I see your hand so I'm gonna turn it to you okay well why would you I mean why do we need to have another round of discussion you have your full committee here there haven't been any questions um so what will be the purpose of holding it holding off on it there are some things I want to just

044base off of the training piece want to include in there um maybe that's something that I'll just recommend to miss Welsh um so I think that's that's that's probably the biggest piece um but beyond that I don't think if there are no other recommendations if you all feel that it's pretty good to go then I think we can move it forward um but yeah I just want to make sure that we sorry I couldn't get to my hand Dr Miller will you finished already I not okay also Cindy can we have the timer up yeah that'd be helpful okay um so that was my answer to your question Dr Miller okay your answer was uh but is it something that you can get Miss um uh um Miss Welch can uh include in this um

045legislation yes so it would be recommendation based off of what we heard for an inclusion in this policy um which I can make today okay good okay well then I move that we move forward okay um I'm going to go to Mrs wsh I'm going to go to Walker and then I come to you thank you are you done there's a motion on the floor second hand before oh okay I was just gonna second it thank you so much okay great all right well so we have a motion that's been moved and seconded are there um any objections okay hearing none we're going to move forward with the policy being um Advanced with the additional recommendations uh Mrs Walsh so we need to discuss those recommendations now with the full committee because we shouldn't be

046CH making changes to the policy without the the full involved in that conversation yep so and I think that we have right now we have a quorum so we we have enough members to have that discussion um my recommendation is simply that the trainings I think the piece that was uh recommended around ensuring that there are um trainings for all staff members not just teachers so that language be included in there um to identify you know that we're talking about a number of different staff members okay also that there even though I didn't hear particularly that um there are any limitations on the trainings but if there were for whatever reason you know cuts um to a that that not happen to to this one so that's the other piece I would include in there

047it's just language M Mr chair yes um are we including Mr I mean Dr um Dr Reese's recommendation in ter I think it was no may have been Dr Balwin uh the um the time needed to uh provide these uh trainings in essence uh add add an additional date into the calendar year did we include that um I want to recognize you so you can include that to um Mrs Welsh because I think that that's a if that's what you would like to see in the policy um so I will turn it to you to just kind of state that again for Mrs Welsh that um we uh e extend the time or give the more time that Dr bwin recommended to um provide the training and put it in the calendar because I think

048that Dr Bolen isn't that what your recommendation was or comment was I I'll turn it over to Doc hi Dr Miller it was actually Dr Reese's recommendation so I'll turn it over to him um so he can make it cleark you absolutely so the um the idea that professional learning should be for every employee in the school district is a novel idea for most school districts that being said I am I wanted to say I was really impressed and proud of the fact that a lot of our um operations staff I could just pick on that division for a moment they did what was necessary as best as they could to make it possible for people who normally hadn't participated to participate and I would not want that to be based off of the the

049will and creativity of a chief of operations I would want that to be stipulated by policy so that if it's about cost for bus drivers if it's about cost for Food Service workers that they're able to come to work be paid and participate in professional learning and not have it um so that's what I think we need to stipulate in the policy specifically time for them and Dr Miller you still have time so do you have more that was it I wanted I I thought that that was a good point that Dr ree made about the time being extended and then I've thought as Dr Ballwin said that they had not been able to add it to the uh calendar so I I guess I'm saying we need to extend put this time that Dr

050ree is mentioning and make it a part of the over the yearly calendar is that correct Dr Balwin uh yes ma'am and eventually um when the time comes we'd like to bring it back to the committee and maybe consider to adding more professional development to the calendar in general so that we can um continue a lot of the initiatives and creating some systemic sustainability um we don't have a specific date right now but we do try to put in as much professional learning as we can um but it would be nice if it was set to say that once a year for example professional learning will focus on the equity plan or the Strategic plan so that then that dictates the entire system so why can't we do that now Dr ree just said we

051could put if we could make it policy rather than um man something U mandated well not mandated but something that uh is required for uh staff development to take place I I would just yeld that to the committee yeah well that's what the committee is asking I well I'm the committee I'm a one number one of four on the committee and I guess my question is I mean you all are the staff and you have to guide us in terms of creating policy as I see it so in terms of uh creating this policy and assuring that we had appropriate funding timing and whatever else is needed then we would develop the policy around that yes I think what we could say and I will yield to Robin um with her expertise and wording to

052say something that PE FR geores County Public Schools is committed to holding one professional learning day every Academic Year that's focused on Equity diversity and belonging and that is inclusive of all staff within the district does that does that meet your um what you're saying Dr Reese in some regards yes I'm going to give a a slight push to my to my my boss here who is pushing the name of my office in the policy which I think is important but I also want to note that the work of the equity policy and some of those definitions that we see there that professional learning could be provided by lots of other people in the system right now my office has been holding a lot of the weight for that in conjunction with others so I

053wouldn't be office specific but I do think that connecting it to the plan I mean to the policy is is what's most important yeah I think it's just education or well Dr mil your time is up so but we happy to happy to go to a second round if you want to share more um um and I want to knowledge but I just wanted to close out that idea and say that um yeah I think if we're just saying education Equity versus that that long list of titles that gets to the policy broadly um and I get addresses the issue um Vice chair Walker yeah um thank you so much I am actually in favor of a requirement of a policy to ensure that we have the right diversity equ and inclusion and belonging um

054training that happens I guess as an overview um to just say education I guess my concern is that educational can um comprise a number of things and where we're trying to get is the granularity for our population of you mentioned transgender for instance you mentioned um lgbtq plus if you didn't then I know that's in there and so the point is is that I think that we need to be specific around those because right now our policy doesn't hit it and we know that this is um now yeah that's where I wanted to go it matters and as we continue to I know I had Dr Reese at one of my um community events a while ago um I feel like was it Dr Reese oh I think so anyway um and I think that

055it's very important that we not only acknowledge uh that these populations exist but also that we need to educate on this for our Educators inside of the um environment just wanted to say that thank you and I think that we can we can dictate that through policy and then I'm ready to vote so um for clarity sake I just want to get something clear so what we're saying is that one day so what the policy would lead was have language talking about one day of professional development for inclusive of all staff um so you could have for addressing Equity diversity and belonging as well as there should be language talking about and just generically about training for all staff members because I do agree with Dr ree you don't want to just say oh well

056we're going to do this training one day all the year and that's the end of the story because that research shows that one day of training doesn't change Behavior you need to have ongoing training throughout so I think some generic language talking about we're going to make this a priority um and and make sure that this isn't that we extend time for training in general and then what I heard Miss um um board member Walker say is that so policy is not the place to put a lot of specifics but we certainly could include language addressed uh equity in terms of the different um populations of people that we have within the system that we're addressing in terms of diversity that's fine as long as we call that out that um training uh inclusive of

057then I I feel good with whatever is the right um terms to put in thank you so much and I just wanted to uh thank you Miss Welsh for repeating that all back because it makes a lot of sense um and and I just wanted to on a language piece for our committee um because I know that what we do is so important to the school district um I I personally feel uh have feelings about the word dictate because it's just you know there's a lot of heaviness with it and I think that we are requiring right like that is something that we're putting in there that's really helpful um language for us I think as we're saying that because we you know um there's just a caringness I think that comes with that word

058ver no problem thank you for the correction we govern that make policy around it where the Board of Education we definitely don't dictate I appreciate you clarifying that thank you um so Mrs Welsh please take under advisement the recommendations made tonight by the policy and governance committee on the policy 0101 and bring it back I'm sorry and move it forward for Action um at the next policy and governance meeting um thank you for that if you have questions about any of those recommendations um just let me know and we'll okay um and then guess I know you all are probably like so excited to stay on with us so if you want to stay on you can do that but if you want to leave you can also do that as well um Dr Reese

059thank you for acknowledging me um I would be remiss if I didn't make a statement um so it is not easy to work in a space where people are modeling professionalism and professional push um and so I just want to thank this committee and everybody who's on this call today for understanding that we get better when we can challenge each other offer alternative points of view and then move forward as a collective if we keep doing this as leaders in the system this is what our students will follow so thanks to all of you thank you Dr Reese yeah thank you for that well uh again thank you Dr ree thank you Dr bwin so much for taking time out of your busy schedules we're going to let you go to your life um and

060um you're always welcome back whenever you want to come are we gonna take a vote um because I think we voted do it again discussion sure well I will ask the question again and I think maybe that'll just help to so I would say call if this policy be Advanced for action or kept for further discussion Mr chair yes parliamentary procedure there's a motion that has been vote I mean second and we never and then we had discussion so we have to go back to that motion unless you ask me to uh resend my motion and um then make the statement that you're making but technically and parliamentary and procedurally um there's a motion on the floor that's been second we just had a discussion so we either move forward um on that or um

061uh the makeer of the motion is asked to resend that thank you for that clarification Dr Miller yes I wonder my request would be for you to resend simply because I know we you made the motion and then we seconded and we um voted because I said if there are no objections um and then we were corrected by Mrs Welsh that we had those additional changes to the policy so if you could resend your policy then I'll go back to ask the question again motion as that motion I will resend it thank you so much um so colleagues should this policy be Advanced for action or kept for further discussion it should be Advanced thank you all right and I know that we because we just had this discussion that we all feel this way

062so Mrs wilsh please take under advisement the recommendations made tonight by the policy and governance committee on policy 0101 and uh Advance it for further action at the next PNG meeting um but saying at the next PNG meeting I thought we voted to advance it it was to advance it to the uh General uh I mean the the the full board now I'm confus I'm kind of not I'm not clear on where what you're saying because you're saying advance and when you advance my understanding of Advance was that we have discussed this uh we uh took a vote and um that the vote uh we took a vote and and it was agreed that we would Advance it now when you say Advance you're saying advance to our next Mee I'm thinking advance to the

063next level which would be to the board now please misinterpreting it no you uh those are good questions U but I will ask that you raise your hand but um I'm going to turn it to Cindy who can give us some clarification um on this before we proceed So based on policy um discussion items do not have do not call for a vote so the question should just be either to advance it for action at the next policy and governance meeting or keep it for further discussion because right now it's still in the discussion phase yeah and I think Dr Miller is saying if we're advancing it aren't we advancing it to the full board for their consideration versus the next PNG meeting so is the language correct Cindy should we're advancing it to the

064committee for because after this stage we advancing to um vote on public comment for it to go out to public comment that is when it goes to the board right okay okay so so right now we we just in discussion we shouldn't have a a a vote or a motion okay so we so that is the that's the correction Dr Miller to your question I'm gonna go to um Vice chair walk I saying what you're telling me I will come back to you Dr Miller um after I recognize Vice Walker um I will come to you okay thank you question I mean thank you was actually going to just gain clarification on this I think um Miss Adeline from what you said just because I was also on the same realm of you know was

065holding us from taking it to our full board as a Next Step but I think what you said the clarification is we haven't yet sought public comment inside of our committee therefore we have to move it so I just wanted to make sure that was the um that was the Gap and after we do that then it advances can you just clarify because I had the same question thank you yes you are correct so right now we're just discussing ing the policies well the policy from the discussion as a committee we will then take a vote at the next policy and governance meeting that it be Advanced to the full board for the recommendation to seek public comment at this meeting we're just discussing are there other um and Mr Whitley I'll recognize you and

066then I'll go back to go to Dr Miller um for just any clarification if there's any left I'll see if Dr Miller has any questions I was just going going to comment uh that uh it was listed on the agenda as a discussion item which I think precludes it from being precludes action from being taken on it it would have to be listed on the agenda as an action item to be moved to the next step oh that is helpful too um so Dr Miller do you have any further questions well that clarifies it for me I I think I was confused when you were saying we would Advance it and I'm thinking we're moving forward but uh um Cindy clarified it when she says it has to go come back to our Committee for

067Public um uh comments so I'm okay okay just but just be clear this discussion point is what when when chair Briggs is saying advance to action it's to say we're going to bring it so now it's still to go through two review processes ogc reviews it the superintendent reviews it then it comes back and once it's finalized that and at that point in time you could still make some changes but but then the idea being that the whole purpose of it coming on the agenda is to take action so that we can move it to the full board for the recommendation for public comment okay I'm good thank you um Vice chair Walker I just wanted to tell the public we're not really this confused you know what happens usually chair um shair Briggs is

068that we have so much discussion on policy inside of this meeting that we never get to this point of not having not having a come back for future recommendations and so I just thank you so much for entertaining yeah and I also don't I mean I you know I know the public is watching and we want things to appear perfect but they're not and we're going to have moments where this is a learning experience for everyone right we're learning something together um I have no shame in it so I appreciate the clarification thank you for calling it out um and please continue to because if something's wrong then we want to fix it so um that is to Dr ree's Point that's the space that we want want to create where we can um correct

069each other and challenge it there's nothing wrong with it um so we're going to move on to the next portion of the agenda um and take care you all um so this is item 3.0 legislative updates um this is the May legislative committee meeting update um I will provide the committee me uh committee with updates from the May legislative committee meeting and then I will turn to Mrs Welsh to give U more clarity um around some of these priorities um so you know actually I think what I want to do is Mrs wilsh because I know we have the the tracker up here um and I likely feel like it's a redundancy for me to mention bills and for you to kind of fill in the gaps I would just prefer that I turn this

070over to you to walk through some of our um highest impact bills that were discussed during our made meeting on Monday um well okay so and then I'll be covering some of those highest impact bills as I go through our list is what you're saying right yes so Cindy can you put on what on the section that has to do legislative update there's that What's called the legislative exchange and I think that's probably the best thing to look at which is not connected to Ma at all it's a separate document that I sent you later this afternoon there you go so um I'm only going to talk about anything that is new where you see new because we previously addressed most of these last time and so I don't want to waste your time because

071I know we have um we have a lot and unfortunately um the first one I see should actually say support with amendments for House Bill 1317 so I'm not sure why is that version that's sitting here but anyway let me just go through these so House Bill 1317 allows for some additional billing for Medicare okay so that's the part that we support that we could be able to actually um because a lot of our students that receive special ed services they um many of those Services can be built for so the fact that we could actually build for some additional Services would be very helpful for the school system that what we don't appreciate within the bill is that it's actually mandating what you can use the money for and so that that is not

072very helpful for well first of all if you think our platform and governance the the legislature should not be mandating to us what we what that money should be used for that's a decision that should be made by the school system because we know best what our needs are so that's why we say support with amendments um the next one has to do with um uh criminal um the criminal uh Crime Of Violence School degree assault of School employee or subcontractor School assault reduction and prevention act and so there's an in the law there's this list of all these um crimes that are considered crimes of violence and you if you look through some of our administrative procedures you would actually see well one of our processes why we actually do fingerprinting this is a

073perfect example why we fingerprint every single employee volunteer and contractor is because what we're getting fingerprinted for the people are getting fingerprinted for is to see whether or not they have a history that they committed any of these crimes of violence because if that's the case then we these people are not allowed to work work for us or volunteer for us or contract for with us how so they have added on to that uh law where they would um include also that what they consider a crime of violence a second degree assault of a School employee or a subcontract subcontractor so of course we absolutely would um agree to that because that's that protects our employees and our subcontractors so that's that was a support um and then the the house bill at 9:30 primary

074and secondary element uh education Public School attendance children of Judges so that bill is talking specifically about allowing the um uh students of judges to attend they um attend maybe not the school in their County but a school in a um nearby County for the reason that if they're if they're hearing a case let's say in their County and their children are attending school in that county and the judge doesn't rule favorably or whatever it puts it does put their their children in a position of POS not being very safe and so this would this allows them to be able to say if you live in an Rundle you can come to Prince georgees or whatever or let's say you're a judge in Prince georgees and you really would like to that you're concerned about

075the safety of your children because of the cases that you hear so you like to send your child to like Anna Rundle or calvard or whatever so this just gives this is this just gives the opportunity it's it's really about safety of students and we do have that in our platform also um house bill um the next one um House Bill uh what's the next one down the line early pre kindergart and providers Hospital 1385 that one is actually talking about goes to the uh uh resident conditional tracking certificates teaching certificates excuse me and it goes that one has to do with opening the door for allowing um U the making it easier to recruit these teachers so therefore that goes to our platform related to Recruitment and Retention of employees the next one also

076the interstate teacher Mobility that um that is um again goes to teacher Recruitment and um it really does appear to that it would support recruitment efforts so we would want to you know support that bill also um the house center Bill 63 motor vehicle School Vehicle drivers medical exams that one specifically uh talks about um um um the bus drivers being evalu uh annually having a medical exam once a year and we actually make our our bus drivers get them twice a year I think no it's every it's once once every two years versus once every year so it actually would save us money if we did not have our our bus drivers having to get that many medical examinations so therefore we did support that one too and then if you keep proceeding down

077the line um and an initial teacher certification that one is also related to um um the um the certification requirements it it allows for some Mobility uh in terms of of if you're coming from other counties or other state not counties but other states and allows the opens the door for us to be able to access more teachers um because the teacher certific certification is not as stringent as it was previously um uh the next one if you um can proceed [Music] um me see 77 um my list okay so access to attorneys Advocates consultants for special education program now that one is again that belongs down with support of the excuse that one I'll talk to that in a second hearing notice and bid advertisement no this one student and School employee data privacy

078protection and we do support that again that it goes to the safety of student and School employee data privacy and protecting that data so of course that would be as Falls in line with the platform both in terms of employee for employees as well as our students so that we did support and then the last one has to do with um uh that one we just went over crimes of violence second degree assault of School Employees and and subcontractors I'm not sure why they it got repeated but anyway we are going to support that because it does put uh you can't injure you cannot be commit a crime of violence against one of our employees or subcontractors um um it's you'll be it'll be on the list for crimes of violence which helps that's that

079in the fingerprinting that'll get picked up also so now we're ready to go with supports of amendments um and the first one should be let's see um oh PG 30224 no keep scrolling down there's not a new with it can you scroll down a minute Cindy there we go uh coaches and uh Mental Health Training so we do support that with amendments because we do believe that our um teachers our coaches should have um knowledge about mental health issues with students however in terms of the degree of the training that is requiring and the fact that they they would they be right out in the front identifying students with mental health uh problems we don't believe that that that they they that they would the training they would receive would not put them in a

080position to be doing any type of diagnosis um so we would want that language to be amended and then if you go to um Senate bill um keep keep scoring okay Senate Bill 818 artificial intell intelligence and um privacy the policies and procedures so that one is um a new one again it came through we had discussed it slightly before H there's no real fiscal impact for this one but uh what it does do it's it actually this particular bill is fairly in line with with our policy however it is um it is requ it does require that we do collect information from vendors in terms of them telling us when they have Incorporated AI into their um their programs or the uh the things that they offer us their online programs and stuff and

081that we now have to actually provide data on that and the unfortunate thing about that is that not every vendor is going to tell you that often times we are ones that have to investigate to figure out whether or not AI has been incorporated into one of their programs so um and it is an additional administrative burden so that piece of it we are requesting that they um that that would be amended to eliminate that piece and then the next one house bill 1076 uh we do support the whole idea of ensuring that students get that that who are blind and visually impaired do receive their their textbooks that are converted to rail in time for the school year because that that is a problem I know that from experience in working in another school

082system um and so we did support with Amendment only because the concern is the time frame of when it's necessary to have that information in and the um the companies that do the the brailing having that done within a specific time I think that I think it was amended to March um and 15th however sometimes you have students that don't pick a program until maybe the end of this school year or something and so that it's not always possible to get the information um and get the the books on time if it's been a last minute uh decision the next one is House Bill 115 this bill is a I think a really important bill and a very important bill for you as board members to be taking a stance on this one is the

083County board of education budget notice transparency and education spending Act and the reason why this is so important so first of all then we have support with amendments because of course and I would think you all agree we do support transparency of the budget as well as transparency of our expenditures we're using public funds so of course the the public does have the right to see what we do with with our the money that we do receive um the issue is that there is a provision within this policy that talks about changing the language changing that if there is a change in categorical spending of even 1% and category then it that must go to the County Council or County government to be um approve that change and so for us uh for our school

084system that we're not talking I mean we'd be probably going to the County Council frequently just because 1% is just way too small and so our recommendation is 15% Board of may also believes that it should be 15% so this is an extremely important policy I mean bill that should be that I think would be helpful I will tell you that the hearing on that bill isn't until March 7th which is next week so that does give the opportunity to be able to um for for um for both this committee and individuals on the board to to contact their delegates and also write um uh testimony that would U recommend that uh um Amendment um chair BRS you have a question yeah I just wanted to really quickly fact check I know you said 15%

085for this bill want to confirm that it was 15% not 5% cuz I think I it was I think originally they brought it up as 5% but then I think they um I read somewhere that they then said 15 oh I know was in the Green Street meeting they brought up and said 15% so I think when they were having that vote they made that change to to because I do remember a board member from another County saying well it really should be up to 15% so evidently that must be what they ended up um wanting the amendment to what they were recommending as an amendment because they um Mr WAMS brought that up again last Friday in the Green Street meeting okay great um so anyway that one I did want to highlight for

086you and then if you go to all the ones we oppose so keep uh Cindy wait a minute oh we still have wait let's see we have a couple more and we did get this one changed um um oh Senate Bill uh 64 House Bill 818 and there's another bill that's out there too and I think we discussed this the last time but we did not discuss it U this particular one this goes to receiving of a parent who volunteers they can get income tax credit if in fact this the principal of the school and the board member for that District that school is located um get can sign off on the certification letter that says that per that person did the um volunteering getting excuse me getting the information for about the student volunteering

087or teacher parent volunteering is not a big deal because we have Raptor and Raptor does contract all that information that's our visitor management system but I think where the real problem would be in first of all making sure the principal was always available to sign off because many times they're involved in other things so the ship say designate princial designate and that I think it would be an administrative burden to then have to try to track down the the board member and have the board member sign off when that um you know and then move all this stuff forward for the uh volunte for the parents so what we recommendation would be just for it to just say uh principal design so that the parent could absolutely get the income tax credit because it does

088encourage Vol volunteering and we are very supportive of volunteering so um so that was it for the uh support with amendments and then can we go back up and go to the U opposes okay so these two bills we have uh we have all have had many discussions we put this on the opposed section because um the the board did um first of all our platform absolutely said that we would we would oppose those two bills um that that was part of the platform and then um you as a committee and the board did end up writing a letter to the delegation related to these two bills and and opposing them so that's why they're there and then if you proceed further down or uh keep wait can you slow get back up for one

089second please so I can see if there's okay sorry thank you um so then um House Bill uh 1171 we do oppose that we sent that to our health services uh department and they were very clear that actually this is a direct violation of the Maryland nurse Practice Act and that and also our administrative procedure that states no medicine whether it's prescription or over the counter maybe administered without a prescriber's order and and this bill uh actually says you wouldn't need to have any kind of of order from the prescriber you could just go ahead and give give out the medication um the next one uh House Bill 1219 is a bill that we um we um do not support and that one is mainly because it is an unfunded mandate um I mean right

090now we currently require athletic directors trainers nurses to have current CPR and AED training and we do have AED DS present in the schools uh but the impact was uh this bill would impact school personnel with the creation of the cardiac Emergency Response Team which would also be required for the specialized training and then they that team would have to be at every single sporting activity um and it would definitely impact us financially for non-duty hours for each Sports and activities because we would be paying for U all that um so um that that's for that one and then let's see what the next one is um how House Bill 1257 restorative practices so that particular um that one is being picked up as an opposed and certainly we can always discuss it but it's

091because it's funded mandate and it overreaches um the governing authority of both the school board as well as the superintendent um uh there would be funding would be needed to provide training to school staff at a number of schools being designated as restorative schools and the coaches would have to be identified um and the number of restored schools and would require additionally additionally salaried employees um the impact would almost create a dual position since there's another house bill impacting peer mediation and P mediation is a restorative practice so sometimes you hear people talking about like P mediation like it's something a separate thing but it's actually falls under the category of restorative practices so it is definitely a redundancy um and then um uh there would have to be a behavior a coordinator and a

092restorative practice coach which when the cost came together it was for um um because the it works out to FY 2036 so the actual cost by FY 2036 would be $19 million so um it's a pretty expensive proposition and we have we have expanded restorative practices in many the schools and continue to do training on restorative practi so it's not that we're against it we're very supportive of it but to have it mandated and UNF funded mandated to that extent is why it's being uh opposed um and then the next one is the um House Bill 1268 and that one is opiate overdose reversing medications and policy requirements so that one is um we already first of all we already have a board policy um that addresses the identification of drug overdose and uh the

093administration of Overdose reversing medication and training of staff so this is really an unfunded curricular mandate and mandates first of all the development of the of a policy which again is something that falls under the authority of the local boards so the board of education so that should not be something that's legislated um and um and then it's requiring things to be included in the health curriculum so that impacts the curriculum uh the next one if you keep going oh veterans STS excuse student absent that one is opposed because you're talking now about students having one additional day off um which is um um I don't think it's always good to have so many days off throughout the school year that because it's important for continuity and instruction to continue so um that one is

094a is opposed and then the next one is Asian-American History again this is a curricular mandate uh which is requiring um uh students to um be the curriculum to be changed the standards be changed and that again is a function of the Maryland state board of v and msde and then the next one is um um employee training and Holocaust Education study requirements and that again falls under the unfunded curricular mandate um and then public middle and high school start times for instructions so this particular bill they it wants to uh dictate to you um the um like what time schools will start and when they will end and again the reason that that one is opposed is because of the fact that it is absolutely um that's a uh something within the perview of

095the board and superintendent to make those kinds of decisions so we don't want legislation because that's not what's good for one County might not be good for another County there's you know so that's that's something that you all should be able to make that decision about um the next one has to do with um um let's see where do we go oh 1441 and 1445 and uh chair Briggs that those were two that were discussed at the M me meeting if you require if you remember um and that one both of those are very um um concerning mainly the the B unfunded mandates that our staff came up with the first year would cost us about $3 million first of all um it is putting um it extends the responsibility of the school system to

096maintain ongoing collaboration provider private providers it's it's putting a burden on staff fiscal and human capital resources given the large size of PGCPS current pre kindergarten programs um and then it's requiring that all these people with even within the private providers must um the uh participate in the professional development and all the meetings and the peer-to-peer meetings after the school day is ended which much of this C we can't mandate we can't force our staff to work after the school day and then um there's also um the having they would have to uh compensate Child Care staff would be an additional Financial burdens burden as well as um the um and our staff wouldn't even receive the compensation but the other thing had to do with the certification requirements of anyone teaching msde teaching a

097preschool what that's saying is that they would have they would only have to have Associates Degree for it to teach the preschool programs and this is does not it's not aligning with the msde C uh certification it's actually the certification that's required for par Professionals in the pre kindergarten classroom and um and that the our staff feels strongly that that is not appropriate that if you're a teacher of preschool you AB should be meeting all of the certification requirements and and I'm going to take it just a step further so I actually started an education as a speech pathologist and I taught a special prek class and even though that was children with disabilities I am absolutely convinced that our Preschool teachers are very critical players in the education of our students because they are

098the ones that lay the foundation for our students and if they are not adequately trained to be to be fully informed about all the developmental stages of students because when you're when you're looking at four-year-olds there's wide variety in Development coming into the classroom and they need to be able to prepare be able to deal with that and each of the developmental areas as well as their beginning the process of teaching reading and early math concepts that that which teaching of reading is very technical so it is extremely important that these people are well trained to do that job so uh that that in itself is a main reason why we would have difficulty supporting a bill which lowers those standards for those students and 1440 oh 1441 they're opposing 1445 I think is the

099one that they they have support with amendments but it's very similar to to the other one and so there for for the same reasons we are opposing both of those uh bills um and then 1485 which is water and swimming courses they those are being opposed that one's being opposed because it's a it's a curricular mandate um and there is um there was one I can you scroll down because I don't see it here but this is one that I think is is important for for oh here we go here's some more um there we go so um two House Bill 1175 is very important because that one has to do with it interferes with our ability to uh subcontract for contract for services and basically says we that we aren't allowed to do the

100Contracting and we if you look at the Staffing we have for our speech pathologist OT PT psychologists our Health clinicians these are all contracted Services because there's such a shortage in those providers that are very hard to employ so therefore we contract out so that for that bill to pass would be highly detrimental for the ability of the school system to provide the services they need to do for our our students and then the next one house bill 1400 student use of force this is a very interesting bill but it's um I did contact our student services uh de department at as well as our safety security and um Safety and Security Services uh department and both felt were not in support of this um and that in the sense that and so to some

101degree you know if a student is in a situation where they're getting bullied or his kids are picking on them or physically starting to attack them you can see why you um you'd want a child to um you might want a child to defend themselves and take reasonable Force against the student uh the other student however ever it increases the potential for actually more injuries to occur um more damage as well as you that means um in terms of like you would have to be constantly I mean what is reasonable force and trying to make a determination many times very subjectively in terms of what would be appropriate for the use of force and our our Safety and Security Services feel strongly that there would need to be mediators in every school that could work

102through this and mediate the issue with the student students in order to be even able to deal with the fact that students could fight back uh if they were in a situation so that is why um that's being opposed also um and that bill is a bill that's coming up on um three on March 6 also so if you want to keep um scrolling down Cindy and the next one [Music] um oh this one is um Prince George's County student s support specialist Network and success action plan this particular Bill requires that we would have committees in every single high school made up a wide range of employees uh your psychologist your your social workers your counselors your your principal your Vice assistant principls a wide range of people meet on a monthly Bas probably

103monthly or regular basis to analyze data to identify what why why is like attendance poor why is discipline you're having discipline issues or uh where are we in terms of how students are performing academically and in getting the information from the um um uh student services there are so many um things that are in place right now that we do provide um in terms of uh loads and loads of committees that work within the schools probably five to eight committees that work either addressing individual students needs or looking collectively at what's happening in the school as well as Maryland State Department of Education evaluates each one of our schools in a wide variety of factors and if in fact you fall Below in each of these areas they you get put on the list and

104you're actually required to put a plan together and then you are constantly being monitored by msde throughout the year man looking at your data to identify what is wrong and What needs to move forward so it would be highly done it and I believe the first year cost for that would be like $5 million so that's why that one was an opposition and then we have uh Senate Bill uh let's see 7 762 uh which is Maryland civil Excellence program and um that one let see if I can find it here this it has to do again with um just just quickly curricular mandate and which of course we're going to POS as well as I'll say Senate bill 98980 is similar and that it has to do with posing um opposing the um the

105curricular mandate and then um local cyber security preparedness and local cyber security support funds so that when the requirements that they're putting in place in terms of being able to um use the um use the particular do all the things they need to for preparedness this it's very um prescriptive and tells you exactly what you have to do the cost would run about a half a million dollars and we already have things in place to address all those and many of the other school systems do so that is why that was um um opposed as well and then Senate Bill 1058 again was in opposition and that was because of the curricular mandate many of these in the opposition group are really just curricular mandates and I think are we near the end here Cindy

106okay what's okay bills for discussion so can we bring this back up just scroll up again because it starts a little bit higher than that one okay uh bills for discussions um so the ones that I think are important ones to have a conversation about are the um one it has to do with the um the uh State and County Superintendent of Schools employment contracts and school leadership um uh course of study so um right now the superintend and we don't have a position so if the if the committee has a position that would be good then we could certainly put that onto the tracker um the currently um to hold the position of superintendency in the state you you must hold a superintendency certif certificate which is issued by msde and that means that

107to secure that certificate you have had to taken appropriate courses to um um in order to the superintendent so the bill now is requiring an additional requirement for the position um then you would be also paying the school system will be paying the the um the uh superintendent to take the course at an institution of higher ed and again that probably would be something that might be negotiated into their contract um with the board so that they um that would say they're required to take this training and the board will pay for the cost of the training so I don't um I'm not sure what your thinking might be on that but that might be one that you would like to um discuss to come up with a position and I I don't know so

108that's one to think about and then um the other if you scroll down further um so C the county Boards of Education student members of um this this one I wanted to bring up because rain and I have had a couple conversations about it and I actually ended up um contacting um the um um the policy analyst which goes to and I I can I just speak a minute about our policy at that moment because it sort of all goes together so that it makes sense for this that I think gives insight into this bill so if you remember last time we met and we talked about the student board member and the Voting Rights and that when we looked at Lexus Nexus and ogc looked at Dennis looked at it it looked like they

109had only written into the law the rights of the certain voting rights for this this past year for 20 starting in 2023 July 1 2023 and then July 1 2024 these rights went away and and language and the bill went back to what it was previously so I contact the policy analyst that was uh signed to the fiscal note for that bill last year and he actually then contacted several people within his organization and they relooked at the bill and so as it turns out he said that the bill is actually pretty difficult to comprehend because it's there's so many pieces to it this is House Bill 1079 and that from last year and that the the they keeps changing the data when this is for that and which is for that this and evidently

110Lexus Nexus didn't quite get a right so he took me to MGA they actually put the cide version further in another part in their uh program and so he took me to there and it actually laid it out and the student board's members rights will continue on uh for uh with for Forever Until another bill comes and changes it so after this year then those rights will be in place for next year too except that I did ask the question because rain had said that she had gotten information that said that Senate Bill 386 House Bill 456 that those were a that Bill had been amended and so it wouldn't change the student voting voting right and he said no that actually that does impact the different school systems and that that would be um

111that would actually um would change the voting rates of our student board member if the bill got passed now whether it might not who knows but but I'm thinking this is one that maybe we do want to take a stance on it if this is the Senate bill 386 so I don't know so that's another one that that we might want to have a conversation about and then did I think I hit everything in the in the exchange Cindy can you scroll up a minute just to make sure I didn't miss anything I think that's it so I know that's so much to go through at one time um so I I think we hit all of them so are there any specific questions about any uh particular bill um that we can talk about

112in more detail you sort of got I gave you just quick oversight on these bills yeah well I want to first start by saying thank you Mrs Welsh for going through every just probably 20 15% of that that list um so it's just it's extensive it's a lot happening in Annapolis and it's a lot to keep track of in addition to the details of the bill so um we we just want to recognize you for that um I'm going to go to um rain Rivera Forbes and Cindy if we can have the timer up um for questions to bills that have been discussed a board member Rivera Forbes awesome thank you sorry that my camera is off I did just get home from school but I first wanted to thank you Miss Welsh on um

113everything that you went over for sure and definitely getting Clarity on HB 1079 I know this has been in discussion for a long time and it's definitely been uh something that we were looking for a good answer on and I'm happy that we received an answer that's very positive for the future student members of the board I know that you did say that amendment was not submitted now I don't know what I heard from the delegate I know we testified and the day I did Testify the delegate that I testified with did specifically state that they submitted an amendment to the committee we were in which was the Ways and Means Committee for the house of delegation but I may not be exact so I'm going to also reach out to the delegate as well

114just to double check and make sure that amendment was submitted for the house bill of SB um I think 456 did you yeah for the house bill version because I know for that bill they did say they put an amendment through publicly so I'm just going to double check on that and and rain I don't know for a fact that they didn't do an amendment but what he did say that the that at this point the bill shows that if it were to pass that it would not it would that would impact the voting rates of our student board member because the bill breaks it out by county and County now I have a feeling that the bill might not pass only because the legislature just collectively put all these these um all the counties

115in there and I think many counties do not want the legislator D legislature dictating that that that's sort of a county thing that they talk to own delegates to try to move forward so I it'll be curious to see what happens but yes please do see what other information you can find out great um going to Vice chair Walker oh thank you Miss Welsh for that update and I will contact you offline okay thanks hey and thank you so much just wanted to um reiterate thank you for all of the work that done on this um I did want to know and um I guess chair Briggs you can bring this up after I wasn't clear on what the amendments were that that um board member Rivera was pushing on Rivera Forbes was pushing for

116I wasn't clear on what that revision was so maybe we can come back to that because that wasn't my initial question um the piece that I wanted to um talk about was for how are we ensuring that this I I know the answer I believe but how are we ensuring for the public that this information gets back to the delegation uh for our support with amendments our opposition and our support I just think it's important to say um even though I know the answer because I'm on the subcommittee but then the other piece of that is as we go forward for the ones that's for March the 7th in the hearings I'm just hoping that you can talk about the ones that um Miss Welsh specifically called out that would probably make sense for us

117to be there um for hearings unless you wanted to do that offline because I would love to testify for a couple that she talked about tonight oh I believe you're addressing that to me I was confused for a second are you addressing those to me yeah there were three and yes they were all to you thank you oh okay um well yeah so as far as the way that we um share this information is we send out a memo to um we've started sending out memos to the Committees at the beginning of the week um with um priority bills that we've discussed and as well as this list that we have here that kind of goes through our stance whether we support or oppose or support with amendments so we'll continue that process um as

118far as discussion around bill bills that were discussed by Mrs Welsh um because we we really take it week by week at this point as you know Vice TR Walker we're going to again have a discussion this week about bills that are coming up next week um and then we will flag those for board members um we've also the email that I shared with um the Committees I also shared with the board um and so we'll flag those in that email um in a separate email to board members um so that'll be the process we're getting it down it's not perfect as you know but um I think we're we're getting better and I think that the the more we do it it'll just become you know um rope memory and so we'll be able

119to kind of get things out faster and turn them around faster okay yeah I think it looks like progress I think it's amazing I just think we just need to let the public know I think it's awesome we should be cheering and saying yeah yeah yay I think absolutely and I think the next piece that I was looking for was the um I know that the March 7th one we'll talk about I think we still have um I think we still have the um details to talk about but because some of us are going there this week I can talk to Miss wsh about the ones that are priority firsted to be able to talk to I was just specifically looking for those that she had talked about today but no worries thank you yes

120uh Mrs wsh and I was going to say um I can certainly send send you a list of the ones like for the the ones that I just I referenced on today in terms of our position as far as for a week ahead I know Shelby already sent for this coming week but it might be helpful to have the information now because if you actually want to write testimony you have absolutely have to have it in the 24 hours in advance so it's if we're meeting on Friday sometimes that makes it a little bit difficult to get that information out so I can I can just pull from this list of ones and and send it over thanks and if there's any way Mrs Welsh to just to um Vice chair Walker's Point to standardize

121that would be so helpful because I feel like there are things where board members want to you know provide testimony they want to know in advance um and we have our meetings but I don't feel like they're always in enough time to your point to um one they're looking the next week so if there's some way to like look two weeks in a hit ahead which is what you're going to do um in response to the question I would love if we could probably have that like be a continuous thing I have an idea on that only because it already exists is if you just star the ones that are for hearings and that we should be actually testifying for because the document exists for like the one you went over that would be helpful

122so that our chair like chair Briggs can then help us to decide who from the board will be there so a simple star I think will be more than appropriate for the hearing testifying and then we can get ourselves together based on that because then we can um look back at the tracker which is also amazing and also look at the details and then in our next meeting we can update it but at least we would have already put in for public comment so I'm happy with that so it doesn't add work and and I'll talk to Shelby about this cuz she always comes up with good ideas for things like this but I'm thinking even starring it but also giving you the actual date of the hearing that because that triggers in your mind

123that oh I have this amount of time I need to get testimony and buy such if I just you know if you decide you want to do a letter or you want to test like that kind of thing so uh we we'll come up with something we can absolutely store the things that are currently on the exchange and add a little bit information there yeah I I think we can probably have this conversation off line for sure getting clear on everything um but yeah appreciate the convers appreciate the presentation and then I do want to have a conversation about the superintendent Bill to um that you mentioned um and I did want to just really quickly Mrs W because we went through that um early early education and early Elementary and um prek Bill uhuh

124which numbers those were 44 1441 and 1445 yeah so I did want to say that there were some things in there because I know that board members and and just folks listening there were something about um I think for hp1 1441 um the kindergarten teachers only needing to have an associates degree versus a bachelor's right and there was apparently interest from msea from moo but to your point that would also open the door to the certification piece and that conversation being an issue um so just wanted to I think you mentioned it but you know that sounds very you know appealing because it's like we can get teachers a lot more teachers in they don't have to have bachelor's degrees also there's the pay issue that exists their Associates is a lot more affordable as

125well as pay is closer um so just wanted to name that and see if you had anything that you wanted to add in addition to um I think any board members that might have interest in saying well wait do why do we oppose that you've already mentioned it um but just wanted to flag that so so the one of the things when they discussed it when they brought it up at May at the May meeting which I thought was interesting is that that that whole issue came up and so several of the made board members they they they were like no we don't want to lower standards plus it actually goes against with the blueprint says the blueprint is about having very highly qualified teachers to do the work and so this goes against that

126and they and there were people that absolutely felt strongly that there should be these we should maintain our standards for certification but then there was other people that said yeah but look then we can get for the reasons you just mentioned we could get maybe we get more teachers they have to get the associates degree or cost less money all these different things so I think you could probably make the argument either on either side it really depends on what is your priority in terms of um you know with the with the with the board members with the um students so um and what you want for the students to receive um um so it is it's one of those you know controversial issues um and our staff of course feels strongly we should maintain

127those those standards yeah exactly and I just wanted to name that because I know that they were saying that that specific Bill wouldn't impact the board as much as it would teachers um and their you know certification process so um we can move on I'm sure those are conversations we can have at a later time I do want to be mindful of time so we're going to move to item 3.2 blueprint implementation update um I want to mention that um we are going to work to get Dr Libby um to join the um our next uh policy and governance committee meeting um to share more about the blueprint implementation plan um because there are um some updated uh pieces that are needing to be submitted from the school board and from PGCPS about the blueprint

128um and we want to make ensure that all board members have access to the information because we are um integral parts of of the development of the blueprint plan so more to come Dr liby will be at our next PNG meeting um and then we're going to move to item 3.3 legislative update um Miss will you've already provided the committee with the legislative update um so if there are no other pieces we'll move to item 4.0 um which are items for discussion so there are now four oh yeah you're muted Miss W you're muted I just I just received an email this evening from the policy analyst one of the policy analysts who said that next week the bill is coming up for the um um House Bill 376 study of fees for of relocating

129to Prince George's County Public School System headquarters and it's an opportunity for us to provide any fiscal or um operational impact statements if we could have it into them by Friday because they would incorporate that into our their into the fiscal and policy note and so um at this point um and when I pulled the bill up to read it it does say that uh I thought they were going to change it but this particular bill that I pulled up off of MGA says the Prince George's County Council shall cover the cost of the study conducted under this section but I thought they had changed that so that the board of education so I don't know if MGA did not update that or not I don't know I'm just and and what are people's thoughts

130because I can certainly incorporate that into the fiscal note into the worksheet we have to send them um I'm going to go to Vice chair Walker who seems to have some ideas on on or opinions on this Vice chair Walker yes um from the last that I talked to uh the sponsoring Senator um it was going to be asked for the Board of Education to CL uh to fund it uh wholeheartedly however I do think that because the document in front of you maybe something has changed since then maybe we can provide if and um I I think that would be really helpful for the fiscal note does that make sense Miss W if we can provide I didn't hear that last part if we Sorry my voice I was going to say if and

131so if yeah if it is the Board of Education only or and it's both and the reason why I say that is because um the last that I spoke um to um senator Washington about this whose bill it is it was for the Board of Education to fully fund it so I think it would be important for us to do it now mind you something might have changed since then um so the point is you have a document in front of you that's a little different than what I have been LED to believe so I think just providing it given that is Friday would be helpful if we provided uh both thoughts okay perect chair breaks can give direction on that that's just my thoughts thank you yeah well I would just say Mrs Welsh

132if you can share that information via email with us um because I actually don't have uh I've not had that conversation with you about it so I would prefer to just and I just got it so yeah I'll do that yeah so that we can all just have be informed on it um I think that can be the good Next Step and so did you say that you'll have your assessment done before Friday because it looks like she has a deadline to get that back well yes whatever the deadline is um if you share it with us this evening um or whenever you can get it to us by tomorrow morning um then we can get we can get a response um to that um by the deadline is a goal well just having that

133shared immediately would be very very helpful okay I can be I can do that not a problem okay so we're going to move to item 4. items for discussion there are now four other policies for discussion each discussion round per person will be two and a half minutes as it's been um and we're going to start with item 4.2 um policy 5125 Student Records I yield the floor to Mrs Welsh to provide the committee with an update on the policy 5125 student records and policy 5126 student information so so um um when reading both those policies they really go hand in hand hand so if you had gone back and looked at the work plan you would see that the work plan actually says that we might condense those two policies into one so after

134I read through what we currently have and I looked at other systems policies and procedures it's the records and the information they always seem to go together so I what I did was condense the two policies and call it student information and Records so that it uh brings up both and basically um it's um this policy it's really driven by law for the most part and it the with the policy statement talks about the fact that the board does uh respect and recognize the rights of parents to in to re inspect and review their child's student records and um if they think it's in incorrect or misleading that they can request for removal or change of the records and if you scroll down Cindy um and then of course the fact that though it's really

135critically important that we maintain our student records and the information about the students and everything as efficiently as possible because it's important information that can be used for planning educational programs for students while the students are in school as well as postsecondary opportunities so that was the statement for the the policy statement for the board and then the purpose of this is really to provide guidelines ensure compliance with the federal and state laws for collecting maintaining and releasing information about students that is contained in Student Records so then I have a long list of of um definitions and I'm not going to go through every single one I will point a couple out so if you just scroll down Cindy um for each of the each of the definitions um so direct rein information is

136important can you stop one second please right there so this is information that's contained in a student's record of a of a a student it might have their their and each school system can designate what they consider to be directory information so going be the students name their address um possibly like if they're in sports which sports they participate in um there's a wide variety of things and actually in our and I should I had it and then I erased it but I do the our student Co um wrs and responsibility handbook actually lays out what has been identified as a student records uh student directory information um and then um if you scroll down a little bit further and I can pull that up in a minute but I'll take you to the policy

137first um so they'll reference throughout the policy eligible student and in that instance when they're referencing eligible students they're actually talking about a student who's 18 years or older because they can when Once you turn 18 you can make your own decisions about your records uh and and not the parents so then if you scroll down further um personally identifiable information so and that's all often you'll see reference to that in this policy as well as other policies so that includes um many things in um in this instance students name a parents name um parent members name address of the student social security number possibly or student number uh any possible personality not personality personal characteristics that would be possible identify the student um um just there's a wide variety of things within that range

138and that's referenc in the policy if you continue further down Cindy and then keep going oh I have a a mistake there but get you have records keep going Student Records include but it's not limit to that lays those out and then what it does not include I do have need make that correction anyway all the standards um are from um they're actually pulled out of fura out of f out of federal and state law uh to look at different things so these are basic standards in terms of Student Records all schools and programs in possession of student records must adhere to this policy and the company administrative procedure and all applicable laws and regulations including code of Maryland regulations 13 a08 is a error there 02 0.02 that that particular uh comar regulation lays

139out in great detail a lot about how we're supposed to be maintaining our records for students records and then we also talk about the fact fact that we also need to keep our records in uh accordance with family education rights and Privacy Act and the procedures that go along with that as well as the Maryland student record system manual and then um also the record should be retained in accordance with board policy 2600 so if you recall not very long ago we just did um policy 2600 so these two are going to be very related um and one has to sort of piggyback on the other um then we absolutely it's a responsibility of the school systems Revis parents of uh the current students and eligible students annually of their rights under furpa and the

140right the rights must be and they are are published in this our students rights and responsibility handbook and then this the superintendent should be responsible for developing a process for parents to inspect and review their child's Rec uh student record uh and request Amendment of the student record when they need to and then if you scroll down further cind yep um this they should the superintendent also must establish a process for schools to review Student Records for accuracy and relevancy when a student transfers to the next higher level so that would be from elementary to middle school then Middle School to high school and then when students graduate from high school withdrawal for any reason so um and this is important as a as a principal you do have the you are held accountable uh

141and this would be in the administrative procedure but the principal is held accountable for making sure that anything in a student's record is up to date and that it's accurate information and it's maintained in a way that um you can manage it and the state of Maryland actually gives you guidance on how to how to maintain the records and in what order um and then the only time that we would uh that disclosure of students personal identifiable information has to come from a with we can do that but we have to receive from the parent or the elig eligible student of signed and dated written consent and then um we can um disclose personally identifiable information and if it's been designated as directory information without the consent of parents however and we do have this

142in our student rights and responsibility handbooks parents are eligible student can opt out of having their having their direct information released um and they're given a time period for when they complete this form and send it in and then it's the school's responsibility to hold on to that so that they make sure like um they never share that kind of information like you know how you see list of students that are on teams or whatever that you would not be they would not you would not be allowed to do that if the parent had opted out so again that's an important responsibility the principal to have a system in place to be able to identify all of the students who maybe their parents have opted out and then um if you scroll down um if

143you scroll down um my husband just opened the door and my dog just came in and he was trying to get her out to go to the restroom go to the bathroom anyway so then um the let's see what else um and parents are supposed to be notified of that the opt out for the disclosure a year l also PR the school system shall provide on requests made by military recruiters or institu of higher ed access to students uh names and address and telephone number unless again the parent has provided notification writing that they do not want that information released um and the purpose of the release of the information this is driven by law is to inform students of educational and career opportunities available in the military and institutions of higher ed and then

144um the transfer of Student Records um with u Prince within Prince George's from school to school within Prince George's County Public Schools as well as to other school systems in other counties or other states is driven by uh in in accordance with the Maryland State Department of educations Maryland Student Records system manual and then of course our administrative procedures also address that so that would definitely be we'd be responsible for that and then finally if you keep scrolling down it says that all student record record shall be treated as confidential in accordance with federal state laws and regulations and no staff member shall furnish or use any list of students names or addresses for sending of advertising or any other purpose unless a specific a specific approval is given in advance by the superintendent or

145design and that the superintendent shall take appropriate disciplinary action against any employee who's found to have committed acts of un unauthorized release of Student Records because that that is extremely serious um to release any information about a student that you're absolutely not allowed to do and then scroll down further and then it just says that the superintendent is directed to develop administrative procedure to implement this policy and if you look under legal uh cind if you scroll down you will see that there are a wide W wide variety of laws that address all of these uh things that are incorporated into this policy and that's it okay the floor is now open for discussion and comments and Mrs Welsh I know that this was policy 5125 and policy 5126 did you want to walk through

146policy 5126 too or do you it's the same thing ipate I put them all together oh they're already are so they're already one and we will be coming up with a new number to go with that so it okay um okay I don't see any questions um the only question that I have for you Mrs Welsh is um that I think what would be really helpful um for me is if there's like a at the top of the introduction or at the end um just a reminder of why this policy was brought up for discussion because I know that um like I know sometimes we pull them up because they haven't been updated in a while or there may be a board member or someone who's suggesting that we change it for a specific reason

147um this one's a really important one so um I don't I don't have particularly any recommendations for this policy because you said that there's already laws around the storage of it um based on federal law so that you know employees already have to follow that um so I was just you know curious to know a bit more about why and if there's nothing there now that's fine so so just to that you know so that both these policies were on the list um if you recall at 9340 says that the superintendent must provide a list of policies recommend policies for the upcoming school year so these two were on the list and when when they actually were included we I think there was a notation that talked about the possibility of condensing the two and

148putting them into one policy and it was because the one policy actually even addresses No Child Left Behind so that so it's they're out of dates so that's why they had to get updated and then it made more sense to incorporate and put them together so that's why okay yeah that's from the early 2000s so that makes a lot of sense yes all right well if there are no other questions colleague should this policy be Advanced for action or kep for further discussion advance for Action okay uh any objections all right so Mrs Welsh please take under advisement the recommendations made tonight by the policy and governance committee on policy 5125 and 5126 um to advance for Action at the next PNG meeting okay we're going to move to um item 4.4 bylaw executive session

149I yield the floor to Mrs Welsh to provide the committee with an update on the new policy bylaw executive session Mrs W Cindy will you um show it for us please so just um so again this just takes us back to bylaw 9360 so each we each month each meeting I want to bring up a new section of 9360 for you so 9360 had a whole section that addressed executive sessions so now this particular one is just the previous one we did Regular board meeting so now this is specific to Executive session and U basically um the again this is actually in the law where it talks about what is allowed to be uh dis discussed in executive session and I know looking at the minutes that the board has for executive session it'll say

150that you have discussed the you're going in to discuss it doesn't give the specifics but it lists out which are the C areas within the law you're going to be addressing and then afterwards it's when you're when you come back out to have a followup you you might and you're voting on something that's not again the very specifics but it goes back to these reasons that um that you are um doing it so just very briefly and again this is all driven by the law one is that that you're going to go into executive session to discuss appointment employment assignment promotion anything to do with employees basically they're all personal matters and and so executive session also is considered a confidential session it's not open to the public your minutes are not open to the

151public they it's all confidential so Personnel definitely is a is a one big is a main main reason then protect the privacy and reputation of an individual with respect to a matter that is not related to public business that might be another reason to go in considering the acquisition of real property for public purposes and matters directly related to the acquisition consider a matter that uh concerns the proposal for a business or industrial organization to locate expand or remain in the State uh consider the investment of public funds consider the marketing of public Securities consult with Council to obtain legal advice consult with staff consultants and under under individuals about pending or potential litigation conduct collective bargaining negotiations or consider matters that relate to negotiations discuss public security if the board determines that public discussion

152would constitute a risk to the public or to the public Security in including the deployment of Fire and Police Service and staff and the development of implementation of emergency plans um prepare Mr or grade A Scholastic licens or qualifying exam ation conduct or discuss an investig investigative proceeding on actual or possible criminal conduct comply with specific constitutional statutory or judicially imposed requirement that prevents public disclosure disclosure about a particular proceeding or matter discussed before h a contract is awarded or bids or opened a matter directly related to a negotiating strategy or the contents of a bid or proposal if public discussions or disclosures were adversely would adversely impact the ability of the board to participate in competitive bidding or proposal process and then discuss cyber security if the board determines that public discussion would constitute

153a risk to the security assessments or deployments related to information resources technology um or would constitute a risk to network security information including information as related to passwords personal identifi identification numbers access codes encryption and other components of security system of a government entity uh or that there's a risk to collected assemble assembled or maintained by or for government entities to prevent detect or investigate criminal activity or related to an assessment made by or for government entity or maintained by government entity of the vulnerability of a network to criminal activity and then the last one is deployment of implementation of security Personnel critical infrastructure security devices so all of these uh particular items are are really important things that do need to be conducted or discussed in a in a closed session be either because

154of the confidential nature they are and you're protecting the privacy of individuals or in terms of the operations of the the business that the school system is involved with or the Safety and Security of the school system and the staff and students within the system so that and and again that that's it that's what the that's the open meeting act and that lays that out for you and then it's says that again of the a propur the board May hold an executive session meaning it any time and you have done that many times I've seen that on the on the board docks um the majority of the board members present and voting must vote in favor of moving into executive session and then before the board meets meets an executive session the presiding board member

155must conduct a recorded vote on moving into executive session and then make a written statement for the reasons for moving into executive session including a citation of the authority found in in the above that you listed the tops the the topics listed above and then the written statement shall be a matter of public record um so and and you have that I see that in your minutes all time where you've moved into executive session to address blah blah blah blah that type of thing and then the director of the board office shall keep a copy of the written statement for at least one year after the date of the executive session and all matters discussed in an executive session will be treated as confidential by board members and all parties in attendance so if you're

156in that meeting then you can't walk out the door and start talking about it and that um no fine fine final action may be taken in and I need to change that executive session Provisions for statements of positions or questions on point or order shall be made in regular board meetings um but the director of the board office shall provide an accurate record of all business transacted in the executive session um and there is uh no public comment during an executive session now there will be as we move through this process for 9360 there will be a whole section related to like the minutes for executive session because we'll have we'll have a a bylaw called minutes and then it'll talk about what we do with minutes for the board meeting regular board meeting and

157then for executive session and then you know even like our meetings these um the different um um committees that have so um that so that will get addressed in there so that's basically it in the nutshell this is basically I made very little Chang it is directly from what we had all agreed upon in 9360 but I certainly wanted to make sure you had a chance to see it as it sits alone by itself oh great okay awesome um the floor is now open for discussion and comments Mr Whitley Mr chair do we want to send a copy of this to the parliamentarian for his input it's like you're it's like you literally were thinking exactly what I was gonna say because we had a whole presentation Mrs Welsh uh I heard it okay perfect

158we we to the diets now there's a whole thing so I think so let's do that I appreciate the recommendation that's exactly what I was going to say um and yes I agree we should absolutely um send this to the parliamentarian just to look over it so will you do that chair br or how's that work or Cindy will send it over um if Cindy sends it to me I can send it to him um and I can send it through the superintendent yeah through our process that we have um and Mrs Welsh I um and Mr Whitley I'm probably going to need your help here so I actually did have a question about the previous policy so I wanted to backtrack from this one if there are no questions about this one do I

159need to close this one out and go back or can I say something about the previous policy but this is is this this coming back for discussion is I do you want to close this one out and then let's close this now yeah okay I'll do that um so since there no discussion um colleague should this policy be Advanced for action kep for further discussion excuse me what if the parliamentarian makes changes then it probably needs to come back to the committee yeah yeah you know what I'm I'm having a blonde moment here um so I'm going to I'm going to recommend that the obvious thing to do so U Mrs Welsh please take under advisement the recommendations made tonight by the policy and governance committee on the new bylaw and um bring it back

160for Action at the next PNG meeting um where we will have comments from uh the parliamentarian um Vice chair Walker well so oh I'm sorry but if you bring it back to action and if I'm also sending it to general counsel and they have some statements and the parliamentarian has some State there could be a contradiction like that I meant bring it back for further discussion oh okay thank you that was an accident on my part that's what I meant was further discussion um vice sh Walker yeah I just wanted to bring attention to the fact that my hair is color blonde and Miss Welsh I was gonna say the same thing that out there and also just a heads up that I have to leave I just didn't know if there was any additional

161voting that needed to happen while I was here you have one more policy if you okay sure thank you um so I want to just go back really quickly to item 4 um two um Cindy can you advise oh I would just want to say to Miss Walker we do have um policy 5.1 regular board meetings that actually do require a vote so it'll actually be because that one is going on for public comments it's going to the board so time wise you I was saying you on mute we couldn't hear you oh I was just asking around TimeWise he was getting that thing yeah TimeWise probably like 15 minutes I'm just goingon to make a recommendation really quickly um so for item 4.2 I was just going to say Miss Welsh and um I

162can probably send you comments offline but I was thinking about cyber security I know we had this whole cyber security breach and with students information just wanted to consider anything that might need to be in that bill around that I think we can just talk about it offline but um wanted to wanted to mention that okay so I'm going to move to item 4.5 bylaw 9210 chair I yeld the floor to Mrs Welsh to provide the committee with an update on bylaw 9210 chair um find my policy I think I had too many things going on okay um the chair Cindy can you uh share that thank you so that so I listen twice I listened to the video related to the chair and tried to make sense of our conversation in terms of where

163everyone wants to go so I what I was wondering and I'm certainly open to any suggestions you have but if you scroll down uh Cindy I so I we never did Define temporarily but there's also language that talks about vacancy which I did put a definition in for that because I thought maybe we Define that and that and that meaning like let's say I don't know tomorrow um JY mckin Murray's husband gets a transfer something they move out of state or something and we still have the rest of the year then that would be considered a vacancy versus temporarily maybe I don't know she has surgery and she might be uh recovering for six weeks so she'd missed three board meetings that might be considered temporarily now I'm just saying that in a context now

164Cindy if you'll scroll down to the other to the other part um I have it highlighted so so I um so we had in the event of vacancy in the office of the chair the vice chair will assum the responsibility of the chair until the annual meeting in December in which the election for the chair will be held so that's vacancy so it means she's not coming back so there it would be in this instance lolina would be filling in um then I have uh if the vice chair does not want to assume the responsibilities of the chair then the board will elect a replacement for the chair wait a minute oh right if the chair if by chance there's a vice chair because that was part of the conversation last last time was well

165maybe not every Vice chair wants to be a have the responsibilities of the chair so generally they would move into that position but that but if not then the um the vice chair there would have to be an election If the vice chair did not want to become the the chair then the next one is in the event of a vacancy in the office of the vice chair um the remaining board members shall elect a replacement at the next regularly scheduled meeting of the board which is what someone said now if you scroll down one in uh one more time Cindy and then I have or so this could be other language that could be put in or in the VAC in the event of a vacancy in the office of the vice chair the

166chair will select a replacement for the vice chair position this thing to the to the video I felt like we I didn't I didn't hear any consensus one way or the other but I did hear a conversation related to both so I put both those pieces of language in there with the idea that that tonight maybe we could clarify which one do you want and then I'll take the other one out and then if we can sort of try to get a sense of how long do you consider temporarily that it's okay then for the chair to return um you know something like that so I don't know that's those were my best thoughts thank you Mrs Welsh the floor is now open for discussion and comments your uh you will be recognized in the

167order of your race hand okay Vice chair Walker yeah thank you so much um Miss W for pulling that together uh the first piece around temporary um definition um I tend to I think you guys coached me on this earlier and in other meetings as well as to not put too much definition in it but around temporary itself I would think that you know it should not exceed six months I'm just putting that out there for us to be able to have a discussion on what that looks like and feels like um the other piece around that and I'm happy to talk about the duration but I think a duration um will be more appropriate than an instance um that's my thought and then the second for the committee to discuss now and then the

168the second piece I think your Clarity was really around if the vice chair role becomes vacant which could be because they moved into the chair role so there's a vacancy the point is that the person's not in that role anymore then who how do we feel that role and I think last week what was said was um from some of the committee members is since it is since we're moving to elections then it should be an election um versus it being an appointed because I was in favor of then appointment happening but I'm absolutely fine this is for the committee's perspective for a um a vote to be taken for that okay and all of these uh I'm going to say midterm votes are temporary until we have our uh real election votes which is

169in December so if any of these become vacant in the interim then we still it still defaults back to regular elections on December like all of this is temporary until our um December bylaws that state there just want to make sure we can include that as well does that I don't know does that make sense Miss Walsh so I'm just thinking um if that you're saying if the so I think we that's the one thing uh Dennis was going to put together a letter or whatever for the attorney J you're talking about the the issue of does the does the board chair leave in July or does it she let leave in December depending on how you interpret 1079 and so I think Dennis you were gonna I'm not even specifically talking about that per

170se talk about that in a minute uhuh what I'm talking about in general is If the vice chair's seat becomes unavailable right it's not filled anymore it's vacant that's the word if when it becomes vacant no matter when it is it has to obviously be before December so there's going to be a gap no matter when it is if I got if I move like any instance that could happen if a vice chair moved out or a vice chair got hit by a bus whatever the case is we're going to have a vacancy inside the road I move anything can happen right if that's the case then my seat becomes vacant or the vice chair seat becomes vacant what I'm saying is this clearly would be midterm what we're talking about right because otherwise we

171would have already had an election and this wouldn't be necessary for discussion so because there's going to be a gap between when mid year when midterm this is happening to Wi I just want to make sure somewhere inside of the uh the policy it states that these offices or these positions that's now being filled is until our regularly scheduled December votes for office does that make sense yes we have a Let me Give an example we have a December vote that's coming up right yes so if anything happens in the interim to that it's okay because that becomes temporary until we have our elections that happen in December that's no matter if I got hit by busting wasn't vacant or anything like that we have regular elections that happen in December per our bylaws that

172still has to happen any policy we enact now is I'm going to say midterm something is happening midterm that's making us have to trigger something else to beave I hope that makes sense if not Dennis hopefully you understand what the heck I'm saying so you can interpret my Babble over here no I I understand I I actually because of the definition I put for vacancy an an occupied position which will remain unoccupied until the annual meeting in December so then if you look at the language in the in the um actual policy it says in the event of a vacancy in the office that's when then we would would keep the language that the remaining board members shall elect a replacement in the next regularly scheduled meeting of the board so sound great okay yeah

173sounds like you're saying the same thing so um Miss this is Welsh I temporarily for me I find that um 6 months feels like a long time for it to be temporary so but I don't know what a good amount of time is like I'm almost wondering if temporary is based on notice so it's like if if the chair says I'm gonna and Sy I want to make sure you keep me on on like time um because I don't want to take any more time than anyone else but um that if the chair says oh I'm gonna you know um step away for a personal matter for you know a period of time two weeks I will be away I feel like a month or more than a month feels like you're stepping down from

174the role or you don't have the capacity to do the role so I feel like temporary it would have to be within like a a reasonable amount of time and two weeks seems like a good amount maybe slightly I'm good with that okay I don't know if that's helpful Miss so I'm just I'm I'm waiting to hear any other conversation okay all right and I just want to say for my part like if it's whatever language feels that fits like legal language that kind of fits into that you know if it's if it if it's not two weeks right if it's something that is more loose um but still isn't like you know too broad I just don't think anything more than a month is reasonable for temporary I just but I just um just

175real quick I kind of feel like oh can I be recognized sorry about that yeah so I'm and recognize the Walker thank you so much you know I just kind of feel sometime I'm good with the two we notice because that's what it feels like you put a twoe notice in for a job but what if um something happens like somebody because now we're talking situations that's why I was trying to be a little more broad six months it's a long time I'll just say that I just threw that out there for discussion but the point is is like what if something happens and somebody has to go to the hospital I agree that after I'm going to make it up a month of you not being there in a vice chair filling in then

176it feels like you need to actually you're abandoning your job and so therefore we for any reason that we need to move forward with the elections is that because that I feel like this is what's going to trigger an election right basically we're saying a temporary election for temporary purposes until we get to the um I know we're defining temporary and I'm saying temporary but for pausing purposes until we get to the true election right in December okay I'm fine with that um just that the the N the nervousness or the concern that I have is just that with two weeks it doesn't give I feel enough notice for a board to then come back we only meet once a month really to do board business and so that's what I was really thinking is

177that it just doesn't coincide yeah my um okay sounds like you're done um my request Mrs Welsh and Mr Whitley is just looking into maybe what other districts do um around if there's any language that exists and also like what what language exists around employ employment um because I think we can use that as a standard too you know you no one's going to let you work somewhere if it's like past the month and so I think we should be but I think also this is a unique situation too so like we only meet once a month you don't meet once a month a job so um something that's reasonable yes Mrs with with employees though you have FMLA so you could be out for a long extended period of time um and still have

178your job so then I so I would again that would be my recommendation is to look into what employment what employers say I I'm not an expert here so that that is a very helpful point and I appreciate you bringing that up okay um Vice chair Walker yeah the last thing I'll say because I really got to get on this other Zoom is um you know we do have R here who um has worked in another County and so maybe the touch base afterwards I won't put him on the spot now but might be able to give some perspective from another District as well because he's worked with Board of educations before so maybe R you could touch base with Miss Welsh to give your just you know opinion on based on what you've already

179seen to help with her research okay thanks that' be helpful that's great it's a great Point um so I I want to make sure we can vote before you leave so um colleague should this policy be Advanced for action or kept for further discussion um my sens is kept for further discussion so I'm going to say this is well please take under advisement the recommendations made tonight by the policy and governance committee on bylaw 9210 and um bring it back for further discussion at the next PNG meeting we're going to move on to items uh for review item 5.0 there is one item for review or action each discussion round per uh person will be 2 minutes two and a half minutes um so we're going move to item 5.1 bylaw regular board meetings colleagues

180may I have a motion to forward bylaw regular board meetings to the full board with the recommendation to seek public comment so Mo thank you second great so it's been moved and seconded I will now yeld the floor to Mrs Welsh to provide an overview of the new policy so the so basically again this is one of the policies or bylaws I should say that is extension from 9360 and it's addressing the regular uh board meetings and the only real change that that this po this bylaw is showing um based on the current bylaw is that we did change in the um in the um with the part of it where it talks about um the components of a regular board meeting and we did in we replaced the words board prayer so no longer

181should there be board prayer and instead of would be replaced with invitation to participate in silent prayer or reflection and then the other thing we did add was a um a component called U Community recognition so even though it isn't in the current bylaw that you do it all the time so that's why it was it added recommended that it would be added as one of the components to the to the um to this bylaw so so that's basically it this is just a section of 9360 addressing regular board meetings all right um Vice chair Walker do we not pray anymore in the board is it changing what we say like it doesn't need to be in meditation or something or silent what what happens with that so when we had that when we had

182when we addressed this I don't know how far back um several of you had gone to an nsba conference and in the conference there was this conversation about that you should not be actually in a student board I mean in a board meeting a a Board of Education meeting that you should not be actually uh M making it that everyone has to pray and so instead the recommendation was that you'd invite the participants to invite to invitation to participate in silent prayer or reflection so that's what everyone had agreed upon at that time now if if you think differently that's fine because it hasn't gone to the full board for any kind of vote it was really in commmittee conversation okay well I have some thoughts but I'll raise I'll wait to raise my hand

183thank you my hand is up well I think it's still your time I'm not sure if the timer was uh was but I think you definitely have more time Vice chair okay no problem Rec of Education to even read a meditation that's non- denominational or something that is uplifting for our Scholars each time so I do believe that we uh should read something whether we say it's a reflection or an education reflection something that denotes our um commitment to Scholars or ourselves or either our own commitment statement something just that we read that is reflec is my point I think we should still take the owners to read something and we can say that we invite them to uh receive the meditation that we are about to give and it's a short meditation um before

184I go to Vice um Vice chair Rivera Forbes and um board member Miller I'm going to recognize Cindy thank you chair um one of the um suggestions we had back when um Mr Fields was there was that we'd have a moment for silent meditation and that was one of the items we voted on to add on to the policy back in October 2023 yep I believe that's correct yeah I think it was just a moment of silence so that people could do whatever felt comfortable for them whether it's prayer meditation or whatever other um spiritual beliefs people have so I'm going to recognize um board member Rivera Forbes thank you chair uh I actually agree with board me Vice chair um Walker's view I think that maybe something motivational or maybe our mission statement as

185PGCPS being read instead if us having a prayer is a problem might be a better option a moment of silence is good as well but just in general if we say our mission statement it's very affirming and we know what we're there to do and that's kind of what the purpose of the was for guidance of the meeting so we'll remember what we were there for thank you thank you um board member Miller well I'm very passionate about having prayer you took prayer out of the schools and they've gone ballistic so now we're going to take prayer out of our board meetings this is my personal P perspective however if we're going to um change uh I would agree with board member a walker to have a meditation I would not mix a meditation with

186a mission because those are two separate as I see it um um they they're separate and uh we can just go into meditation and read something uplifting that would well that would be uplifting and then we can move into our mission because at our last Retreat we did discuss that we should have uh no we agree that we would uh begin um reciting our mission statement at the beginning of every meeting now why that did not start I cannot say but um that was uh something that we as a board agreed to so if we're going to make any changes I would still suggest that we have a meditation separate and apart from uh the mission statement because those are two different they have two different uh functions or meanings thank you okay so Mrs

187Welsh I think you're taking all of those pieces under advisement um they're very different yes I do think we need to probably get to like a consensus here around what it is that we're going to do um Mrs Welsh just want to turn to you really quick so what I hear is what I'm think I'm hearing is that so you could have both you could have an invitation to participate in a moment of silent silent meditation or silent prayer and then you could also have ADD in a component called the mission statement a recitation of the mission statement or something so that you're repeating it each time and so that people are clear because it is true that the prayer itself it was was not was really about just guidance in terms of guiding the

188board to do what they're supposed to do you know and do what's right for kids really is what the the whole purpose of the prayer was so you could have your mission statement and then you could have if if that's what I'm hearing if not we can do whatever it is that you would like to do okay well recogn oh I'm sorry let me put hard time get yeah I think that timer was for Mrs Welsh but yes I can come back to you um Dr Miller um go to Vice chair Walker and then I'll recognize sorry chair I think that was still Dr Miller's time I'm sorry oh was it okay okay um Dr Miller sorry that is your timer and looks like you have minute and 30 maybe if we can start it

189from minute and 30 that's where I saw it at when she started talking okay well my recommendation is that we start off uh with the meditation do the uh flag salute and then the mission statement and the meditation can be read um and or um yeah it can be read and depending on the person reading it because it it appears I don't know were there any complaints coming in about uh the prayer because the board has been doing this prayer forever and now we want to change so I'm not clear on the so I think Cindy uh Mrs watch I'll turn to you but I I do remember that I believe it was um board member Fields who brought it up and mentioned that he I think he attended a training or something those lines

190and thought that that was the idea was to be culturally sensitive and responsive was to have different approaches to prayer so I think that was the intent behind why he brought up that idea he was the person who brought it up I don't remember it being something that anyone mentioned as an issue um but Mrs Welsh you can clarify no I agree with you he did bring it up and I think it was because they had had and I think at the time board member buis strugger was also on the committee and they had attended the um nsba conference at which one of the sessions they attended had to do with prayer in Board of educ Education meetings and they that they recommended not to actually read a prayer or whatever but that you could

191have a moment of meditation or whatever I think that's how this all came about that makes sense uh okay I'm gonna turn to Vice chair Walker hi um yeah although I'm a fan in my own belief of prayer what I will say is um for US based on we're talking about today I totally agree with uh Dr Miller in that we do uh a meditation aloud or I even would be okay with us say putting it on the screen to invite people to read it as we say it um and then we do our commitment statement and include our I mean are we still doing the pledge of allegiance okay I just wanted to know if that was in training to so next so we have to do two pledge do the Pledge of Allegiance

192and then lift their have voice and sing We should we should just do them all yeah I know that sounds like I'm being factious but I I just think when we you know get into this uh you know religion and um prayer and things like that it just gets to be kind of touchy for some folks and um yeah and I was specifically asking about the pledge not being factious but I know that some religions um you know they just don't pledge to anything and so I just wondering how far this training went um is is was really my question yeah uh Vice chair Walker do you still have comments you got a minute 15 you good okay so I I want to say maybe um I don't know my recommendation is I'm just curious

193what the committee thinks about this I wonder if we throw this question out to the public because I feel like you know I don't want to speak on behalf of a person who is from a different religion or a different background who may not feel seen in some of those board meetings and that's the purpose of that training and so I would want to ask ask that question to those who are impacted by this decision um to really make it as you know um I think broad as possible so maybe the I don't know how you all feel about that if if the question that was asked intentionally was has has there been push backed I would love to know if there are alternatives what some of the public might think could be those Alternatives

194um um chair you talking about doing a survey correct yeah like a survey or something just kind of asking what you know what alternatives or you know recommendations I think they could help us to kind of narrow it down yeah rather than just legislating something let's let's get what the public feels yeah okay um uh board member Rivera Forbes thank you for recognizing me chair Briggs I um just wanted to add in that I also think we should reconsult the board members because I know this is a new board as well and it'll be even newer board after my term is up so it' just be nice to consult them and see how they feel about this policy as well before we make our final decision so Mrs Welsh I think that um we okay

195so I mean we we can still forward this to the full board but is there some way to get public comment like what in the process here Cindy where are we at with if we got public comment could we put something out there um while still forwarding this to the full so after voting tonight if we um if we support the vote and the motion passes it goes to the full board to be sent out for public comment oh okay great all right so we can be okay so that that works perfectly so colleagues are there any objections to forwarding the new policies to the full board with a recommendation to seek public comment yeah but can our recommendation be based on what we um just talked about as far as the recommendation and say

196that we made it based on input and so now we're getting their feedback if there needs to be any additional modifications I just want to get clarity on what we're forwarding I do too so I know what to make sure I have written the thing okay and I do want to mention that there any background noise if you're not speaking if you just especially to preserve any conversations you don't want the public to hear um Mr Whitley uh as Miss well said if the board could make clear if we're uh saying that we're going to forward to the full board that we're going to do a Medi a meditation flag and then the purpose statement or are we leaving it as is so the board just needs to give us some clarity as to what

197we're sending to the full board oh M may I resp to that uh yes right recognizing um board member Miller oh I agree with uh what Mr Whitley has said because we're saying uh separate things we're saying send it back I mean take it to the full board and then you have suggested doing a survey which I think would be a appropriate as well so do you want to hold on to this and uh take the recommendation that a survey be done before we do anything with that policy well my understanding was that we're seeking public comment and we could use in that public comment we I don't know if we can include a survey and then also the recommendation I heard was let's hear from board members which we're sending it to the full

198board for a recommendation so it felt like it fit with what we're doing right now the policy as is with those additional pieces um and we could just include that we are requesting information from the board about you know this uh about you know this this this the shift but we haven't made a decision because we were waiting to hear back from the from the public aren't we right we're going to have the survey and we're going to get the public comment so wouldn't that determine the decision so aren't we just sending the policy as is right now and waiting to hear back from the public before we make a decision that's how my how I was understanding it okay but you're saying two separate things is I'm interpreting let me put it this way

199we're talking survey and then you're saying public comment those are two separate things because when you do a survey you're asking the public uh what is their preference are they for continuing prayer or medit meditation public comment can come back if we get public comment that's the other thing but with a survey you're sending it out online or to wherever and um getting uh written feedback as documentation well we've received out of the 100 we sent out 70 people wrote back you know 70 % wrote back indicating meditation or whatever prayer so to say public comment and Survey those are two separate uh processes okay so um my recommendation is that we I still don't see the point in holding this policy I think we can still send it out for public comment and send

200out a survey I think we can do both at the same time so that is what I'm thinking if if folks object to that then let me know that you object and we can and if you have a motion to for some other way but my recommendation is that we move forward with sending it out to the board seeking public comment while also sending out a survey to the public we can always make that's not what you said at first so that's why I was making that clear that those are two separate things so I'm good with um sending it to the for uh input as well as at the same time uh develop a survey to send out to the public okay great um does that work Mrs Welsh do you have any is

201that that's fine I mean I think probably in the public comment period only lasts for two weeks so I'm thinking that whatever gets I know Cindy sends it out for it to show our new the different newsletters and stuff that maybe we put some language in there it specifies that as part of the public comment there will be this survey we' appreciate you surve uh completing that we can incorporate all that information in the collection of public comments but I think somehow you got to get the Public's attention because we don't get that many public comments anyway so I'm not sure they'll respond to the survey unless we get you know get their attention hey who could answer our survey for us now and I also Cindy just sent me something about we can't say

202something our prayer Cindy do you want to speak to that before we move forward with this no I was saying at the meeting when we because usually you presented to the board the recommendation to see public comment I was suggest suggesting sorry can we not announce it there at the board meeting public will like your input on prayer what do you think you know what what is your intake on prayer being taken off policy 9360 something to that effect yeah absolutely under the chair's report is what I was thinking perfect okay all right and I'm gonna go to Vice chair Walker and then I want to make sure yeah and I'm on two Zoom so I really gotta go for real so if we could just push it forward so the other thing that I

203was going to say is if you do announce that under the chair's report if you can just also add in our recommendation so we're just not leaving it out there our recommendation should this move forward should you have you know should there be concerns about it is is this is our alternative so please let us know if you still B I mean public are in favor of this which is what our standard has always been or if you're uncomfortable how does this feel for um a solution to make sure that we still are uplifting a community something to that effect so that they have a A or a B thank you okay think that's a good recommendation um and um board member Rivera Forbes yes so for public comment we're meaning just our um the

204constituents that watch the board meetings they'll decide whether we should have board prayer or not because I'm just a bit confused since I'm wondering I know like we usually don't consult on things we do in meetings so I'm just so it it'll be the standard public comment process where we put the information out to anyone in the public anyone can respond to it if you you want to tell your mom your friends your community about the fact that we have this which would be perfect it's a plug for you um and really kind of get people aware about it anyone can respond you know um you're a member of the of the public so that is um that's that is public comment I wonder will that give us an accurate review though no because I

205know we have a very diverse population but not everyone will respond right so I personally think we should keep it with just the board but you know I'm not against public comment either I just think if we want accurate results Just Between the board because was this policy already up for public comment well so public comment is going to happen regardless that's going to happen regardless like we're that's just what we have to do that's a part of our legal responsibilities we have to put you know anything that we discuss we have to make the public aware of it but um the survey is a separate piece that I think if you have particular pieces around that rain then we can we can work to craft a survey that you know is accessible for everyone

206so that we can really encourage and then we can do some Outreach efforts to ensure that everyone responds my hand is up want to make sure rain do you have um yes I was um okay I understand I know that we have a duty to do public comment that's not what I'm saying I know we'll have public comment at the board meetings I was just because I was confused on how this was being worded it's being worded a bit all over the place but I understand now what our goal is okay and I do want to be clear when we say public comment there's an actual like link people can respond to so this isn't like the people come on to a hearing and provide public comment there's two separate ways so that's a different

207way but I just wanted to clarify that for you um uh Dr Miller uh I just want to put out there that um us making this kind of decision impacts other uh govern go governing bodies the state legislature opens up with prayer their subcommittees open up with prayer um I'm not sure what the County Council does I haven't been to one but at one time they did have a moment of silence or prayer so um I'm just kind of I just don't want us to step out there and cause any kind of um disruption in other governing bodies uh Pro procedures so I think we might want to think about that as well yeah uh I think that's a great Point um if you are finished I mean I think that's something first all to

208kind of chew on and sit with so I'm going to go to Vice chair Walker if you're finished board member Miller yes I'm too thank you hey I just wanna as we make this decision I just I do align with rain on the fact that um um oh my gosh let me turn off my video on this one sorry is that um I I just want to be we're choosing to bring this in a different type of style for public comment is what we're talking about and I just want to be careful that we're bring that we're choosing one specific policy to bring in this format of um survey when we have a lot of them that I would want to survey the people for to be honest but I just want to make you

209know we're individually choosing this one and probably we have a rationale because it's been such long standing and there's nothing aside from a meeting that asked us to really consider this but we just need some um some um just definition if we choose this route so that we can let people know why this route is being chosen um which is different than how we normally do things thank you and I agree that we have a public comment um just method right now honestly that I I believe we could use but I understand a concern because now because of a meeting we're triggering a change I just think if that's the case we could be able to say that it did trigger our discussion and now we're bringing it here and these are the two options

210that we're looking at we would love your feedback and it's up to us to make sure that we're circulating that we could put a flyer whatever we want to do but just it needs to I believe stay inside of the policy of what we currently have because we just run a risk of what triggered us to make sure that this one followed a different one think I understand what you're saying um okay so are if there I see hands in the air still I just want to make sure that those are accidentally up Miss um finished or do you have another question um Mr chair I just can't get it down okay I can actually lower it for you Cindy do you have anything yeah um I was kind of going in line with um

211Vice chair Walker um because my thought too was staying in line with policy because when we look at um policy well bylaw 9340 we have nothing about a survey so we don't want to be going outside of policy so one recommendation I was going to give was to have that survey be created and sent through the board members newsletters so that way we are not violating any policies great idea very smart so I mean we can do this we can just do it in the way where we're saying in the in the box so um I think we're still agreeing that we're going to move forward with um uh with uh forwarding the new policy to the full board with a recommendation to seek public comment and then we will separately have a survey that

212we're going to provide to the public that we'll all work together on to ensure that it is meeting the standards and that it's also reaching broad groups um so um are there any objections to forwarding the new policy to the full board with recommendation to seek public comment Mrs Walsh I'm sorry I know you want to get done with this policy but P my concern is that if I almost think if you want to do a survey which is fine that maybe you should do that first before forward ing it to the full board and then any results we get back that might and the committee can have a conversation about it and then decide if they want to make changes to the language and then from there send it to the full board because

213if not your timing might be off you might go through the whole process hard get any public comment and you end up with this language and then you get these survey results back and then you're going oh wait I would I want to change this policy or by law I agree yeah I was thinking about that when you were saying what uh what um Cindy was saying about the next board meeting so I think that actually makes sense timing wise my my my my question is how do I frame this language so we can move forward um past this point um because that's where I'm struggling so I I just want to make sure that we're moving this forward are we holding this policy okay I'd say you're holding it and actually probably for discussion

214at this point because you're going to get these results back and then from the survey and Cindy's idea is great to send it out in the newsletter and then once you have all the results collected you come back and discuss them and decide if you want to make any more changes to the policy or the bylaw all right I got another question too how soon how long are we keeping the survey out because this this policy doesn't go to the board until March 21st so we have a long ways to get the survey together before it goes to board approval for public comment so do we want to hold it until April 25th hold it to June I don't I mean I don't mind holding it until June um I don't think it's a huge

215rush and I would like to get a robust set of responses on this because it is important I don't think so either hold Mr chair may I um I would just suggest holding this one till June yeah I don't I don't have any objections to that um as far as Logistics go to your question Cindy since you asked that question I I would agree with um with Dr Miller if anyone objects to that then please speak and otherwise when I move to questions um so I'm going to go to uh board member Rivera forbs board member Rivera Forbes can you hear me sorry okay my apologies um I don't think there's anything wrong with holding it I think we can definitely hold it well I don't think we have to hold it until June but

216it's understandable if we do uh we can't my apologies I don't think there's anything wrong with us holding it I don't think we have to hold it all the way till June but if that's what the committee wants to do then I'm okay with that as well we definitely need time if we're going to do a survey so I don't think forwarding it now will be the best decision considering all the views we got yep absolutely okay great um and then I'm going to Vice chair Walker yeah um sorry I missed why are we holding until June because of the new Administration yeah and it's not just don't see it's not emergency is that what we were thinking it's like not dire for right now right okay yeah I'm I'm fine yeah I'm fine with

217that I just feel like a survey gu I just feel like we're doing a lot for this one that is out of the ordinary of what we have and I feel like we can get the same um input if we just let people know that this is I think if we take it to our board for as we nor do and then get their input as well as get the Public's input then then we can prompt people out with you know that hey there's a change in this is something you should come to so I just want us to consider that between nowe I'm in but between now and that time um if we want to set a precedent for this what what prompt surveys and then who's doing them the policy and governance committee

218I just think we should think about that all right thank you points I have one one suggestion also I think maybe it would be good to just do a little bit of legal research on the whole issue of the um prayer within Board of Education meetings I sort of remember them talking about that they just they separated Board of Education meetings out from other government agency meetings and so it wouldn't hurt in the meantime while we're Gathering all the public all the survey results to do a little bit of research just to see if there's anything in in the law that may maybe causes us to think about it differently or something okay can you clarify again why sorry you were saying the legal reasoning again was for um what Miss W once adding adding

219land so previously they had spoken about Walter and I think board member booer Str had talked about from a legality standpoint also of not having not having because you're talking about students which often times you have student events going on in board meetings which it's not doesn't rise to necessarily the level mandatory but it does rise to the level of you can't participate unless you unless you come to the meeting so to some degree it is mandatory and now you are subjecting them to having to have this one period of prayer so and I sort of remember this from that conversation so I'd like to just do while we're waiting anyway getting survey results do a little legal research on it just to see if there's anything out there that gives any Direction one way

220or the other just so we have that information okay uh I think that's really helpful and that goes with your recommendation to hold um I'm going to go to student member of the board Rivera fors um if you are speaking rain we cannot hear you I'm happy to come back to you um my hand I'm sorry my hand shouldn't be up my computer's left okay no problem um I'm gonna go to cind and then I think we can wrap this up to move forward yeah um I was just going in line with what um miss Robin was is saying because while she mentioned it I looked it up and it says Public School boards are not an integral integral part of a public school system and must not advance or endorse religion School boards cannot

221schedule prayer as part of their meetings so we might we might want to research that okay well I think so I think what we're going to do is we're going to hold this policy um we're going to so we're not going to seek public comment on it we're going to get some additional research legal research on it um and and and I hear a saying that we still want to do the survey um but we'll just have this extended to a little bit a little bit later okay all right so um so that that is our that is our final decision um we're going to move past this policy and and it's being held for further information from Mrs Welsh and also for um a survey to be released Cindy sorry again so since we

222um already moved and seconded the first motion we got to amend the first motion oh to Second it right okay right um what was the first motion yeah I think oh it's a recommendation to seek public comment you're right okay then we can just send it yeah let's just resend that um that was me so I'm resending uh the the initial uh motion and we are instead going to hold the policy and um seek additional legal research on it as well as provide a a survey sorry again Dr Miller was the one that made the motion so she has to resend it right you're right okay I I I resend it okay all right and as I said we we've made the statement that we're going to hold the policy seek additional legal research and

223then we're going to uh release a survey to the public so we're now going to move on to item 6.0 committee recommendations new business governance there are none we're going to move on to item 7.0 follow-ups and next steps um follow-ups from previous meetings will be posted on board docs upon receipt um and next steps the uh next policy and governance committee meeting will be held on Tuesday March 12 2024 at 5:00 p.m. this meting meting will be virtual please check the PGCPS board web page for more information now moving to closing remarks in adjournment um I want to say thank you everyone for a great meeting that uh with great meeting with meaningful discussions and board policies um are there any additional business to bring before the committee this evening no business but I'd

224like to make a comment if that's okay with you Mr chair yes I'd like to come in um Miss Adin on her the minutes which she has provided for us and the research that he she has uh that she's begun to do um I just wanted to make it public it has been very useful very helpful and beneficial to this board member and I'm sure to others thank you Miss atlin yes Cindy is the resident MVP if you didn't know um and she knows everything she just acts like she doesn't um because she's humble so you you always deserve rounds of Applause and we are very very appreciative Cindy um so may I have a motion to adjourn the February 20 heard a second I heard a motion um so it's we moved and seconded

225any objection good night okay hearing none the time is now 8:04 this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone have a good evening more to come for additional emails from Mrs Lush and other steps good night can you call chair breaks can you call me when you get a chance