001welcome to the board of education's november 10th regular session meeting please stand as we observe a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance led by ms satterfield the pledge i pledge the united allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice so mr mcmillan is running a little late but he should be here shortly and mr watson is unable to join us tonight veterans day will be celebrated all across their nation tomorrow and i want to take just a moment to recognize and thank all their service members and veterans as well as their family and friends who have served our country so well our schools will be open tomorrow and we will be sharing lessons and holding special events in honor of
002these amazing heroes just a reminder that knox county schools will be closed for the thanksgiving holidays november 24th through the 26th we wish a wonderful holiday to all of our students family staff and community the joint education committee will meet on wednesday november 17th at 11 a.m in the andrew johnson building boardroom there's also a policy review meeting at the same location that day at 1 30 pm board members do we have any changes to the agenda need so a motion to approve by miss horn second by miss satterfield all in favor and superintendent thomas would you like to recognize our we have some special guests tonight yes ma'am thank you madam chair it's always a pleasure to recognize our folks and our students for their accomplishments so uh tonight we have several and i
003would ask the board the entire board to join me afterwards for photos uh it's a little bit more awkward in here than it is across the street so we'll do all the photos uh together after we make the uh the recognitions here on september 30 centro hispano of east tennessee recognized members of the community with its annual latino awards knox county schools was well represented and we are extremely proud that our nominees won two of the three award categories veronica calderon speed an english language learner teacher at hardin valley academy was named the latino community leader award winner for her contributions as a catalyst for meaningful change in the latino community during her time at hardin valley she established a latino student alliance to give a voice to latino students she's also established partnerships with
004the latino student success coalition and centro hispano so congratulations veronica if you could please stand so we could recognize you [Applause] and congratulations and we'll get a photo and another have a certificate for you here in just a few minutes uh the welcome center of knox county schools which serves as a centralized location for our non-english speaking families was recognized as a latino ally award winner for going above and beyond to serve and further the opportunities of the latino community the staff at the welcome center works hard to build trust with our non-english speaking families and to provide them with the resources and language support they need to be successful congratulations to ell supervisor enos slicher welcome center manager jason cantrell and to all of our family community liaison so if you folks would please
005stand so we can recognize you congratulations and again thank you for the excellent job that you do every day for our students and families so meaningful so thank you as you know we've been working on a community initiative with ford next generation of learning and knox education foundation to transform our high schools so that all of our students are better prepared for success after graduation on october 20 more than 150 school and community stakeholders met and mapped out a shared vision to begin this process including nearly two dozen students from seven knox county high schools those high schools are austin east bearden central vargas fulton hardin valley and carnes this evening we wanted to take a moment to recognize these students for their participation and for sharing their experiences and ideas for the future while
006not all the students were able to be here tonight i would like to specifically recognize the following students who are in attendance and my list may not be complete but hopefully it is so uh if you would please stand as i call your name and remain standing until everyone's called and we will certainly celebrate your uh your support and your help for this endeavor that we're doing so let me get started with sydney allen sydney here okay ella blair okay justice hayes okay riley keegan emily seibel and leonard weaver leonard here okay again ron applause for their students have provided so much help thank you and i cannot emphasize enough the importance of the student voice in the work that we do and appreciate each of you for taking your time to give input to
007this process so now uh we'll take the we'll do the pictures the photos in the order of which we did so veronica will be first so board members if you would join me in the center and veronica uh there you go [Applause] so all right here we go congratulations [Applause] yes all right thank you [Applause] oh okay and we have robert gallon and elizabeth millsaps here today for our um government relations and legislative update welcome and thank you for coming thank you for having us thank you madam chairman members of the board we appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight we have a 25-page powerpoint that we're going to go through very quickly and we've done this in shelby county already and we got through in about 10 minutes what we did just describe real
008briefly what the bill does and if you have any questions stop us we'll we'll try to answer any questions but before we get into just quick background on class the organization we represent at the legislature classes the coalition of the four large urban school systems was established here in knoxville in 2006. we represent both the administration and school board members as legislation is going through nashville and since we were here the last time there have been four legislative sessions the first was held in january was a special session to address learning loss there were three bills that were passed very quickly the first bill we call the summer school bill and that set up the requirements for the summer school classes that were were held for the first time this this summer under this new
009law to address learning loss the second bill is the hold harmless bill on tcap results for the 2020 2021 school year um and the last bill that passed is a literacy bill that outlines how literacy is taught from kindergarten through third grade and then in our in our regular session this year there were a broad range of topics that were addressed by the general assembly we have a list here that we'll look through a couple of those there were several discussions around curriculum as it relates to gender sexuality we want to make sure that parents are aware of the information that students are receiving in schools there is a specific legislation to require student athletes to participate in this in a sports team based on their gender assigned at birth i think we've already seen
010some let some court challenges around that this year so that's certainly something we'll be watching to see if the legislature has to come back and take additional action to address there are some more flexibility around social emotional learning and then the stem advancement act there is a specific bill in place to prohibit common core designated curriculum another bathroom requirement bill we've highlighted here and then a particular topic of discussion this year was third grade retention that we all understand that kids who are not performing well in third grade are going to struggle as they move forward and the commissioner of education and the governor have spent a lot of time energy and resources and focusing on improving those third grade outcomes and a lot of those resources are tied toward retention for all students in
011third grades who are not performing at grade level we know that sometimes there are reasons and parents may have other wishes for their own children and the legislature has made it clear that they think that parents should be able to weigh in on those decisions for their children so this creates some flexibility for parents to weigh in around that retention and then during the regular session we had several bills related to vaccination public chapter 369 creates some exemptions for vaccinations several bills such public chapter 471 related to the textbook commission and that sets up a waiver process and then public chapter 479 the last bill on that slide requires all districts to have an open enrollment open enrollment period where non students can apply to go to uh schools that they're not zoned for you
012all have the good fortune of already having a robust open enrollment plan so we'll already be in compliance without a great deal of effort public chapter 493 deletes any references and creates a specific prohibition on critical race theory being taught in our schools there was a specific component to change the way that charter school employees can participate in group insurance plans um to offer more flexibility to those charter schools then public chapter 490 creates a path by which schools transition out of the asd the asd as you know has returned most of or is in the process of returning schools back to their original districts and this clarifies that public chapter 398 is another hold harmless bill and this is related to the adm loss that almost every district experienced during the pandemic last year
013there were about 30 000 fewer students who attended who were counted in the adm for the 2021 school year this bill held districts harmless as far as bep distribution i will mention we'll talk about this a little bit later there were some very strong feelings and a lot of statements said that this was the only year that the legislature was prepared to hold districts harmless on in this way public chapter 589 allows per pupil spending to follow the student when they are a resident at a residential mental health facility public chapter 96 specifically addresses the authority and who can make decisions to open and close the school during a public health emergency and gives you all very specific authority to do so public chapter 452 requires that a student who requests privacy in a restroom
014based on concerns around gender usage has the right to petition a school system and ask for a private restroom facility public chapter 453 requires posted signs if you allow people to use restrooms for their gender of choice versus their gender assigned at birth public chapter 513 is another vaccination bill it is specific to the coven 19 vaccination and prohibits mandatory covet 19 vaccinations we'll talk about some other bills were passed in the just ended a special session also related to this public chapter 519 requires districts to post your curriculum on the internet public chapter 161 clarifies some of the rules around reporting of child abuse to make sure that if a child has a concern about a parent or guardian that that parent or guardian is not notified without going through appropriate dcs protocols to
015offer additional protections for kids public chapter 188 creates immunity for teachers from civil action if a child is injured during an appropriate disciplinary situation and then if we want to look at public chapter 211 and create some flexibility around teacher licensure to allow teachers to teach a subject for a short period of time if you don't have a licensed teacher for that subject there's a specific definition of teacher for the purposes of teacher raises each year in public chapter 248 to make sure that those raises are first prioritized with people who spend more than 50 percent of their time in the classroom public chapter 261 says that uh the school is considered closed under certain circumstances for the purposes of how you determine your um teacher leave or use of paid or accrued um leave
016time paid leave time excuse me public chapter 287 uh requires training on detection of human trafficking that training for teachers public chapter is another bill related to temporary teaching permits then public chapter 552 allows students to take a new exam rather than retaking the a.c.t exam and it's a work-ready exam that would give the student a certificate that they could use when they start to look for a job public chapter 578 is a new turnaround pilot program the state's going to identify six half a dozen schools priority schools that will be a part of this pilot and what they will do is identify a consultant to come in and work with the school for three years to try to turn the school around but that is a limited unlimited time on that that pilot program
017it's also a voluntary program so it'll be principals who want to have this additional intervention in their in their building public chapter 595 establishes the mental health endowment fund 250 million dollars of the state's rainy day reserve will be used to fund this and the ideas the earnings off of this would be used to fund mental health programs and projects in in local school districts public chapter 125 on page 16 creates a path for reciprocity for teachers who are licensed in other states who previously would have had to retest to be licensed in tennessee public chapter 310 streamlines the procurement process a little bit so that it allows you some more flexibility around your procurement process public chapter 335 offer some additional protection around your school safety plans and cyber security to make sure that
018those are not shared in a way that someone nefarious might be able to access them and adds additional cyber security requirements into your school safety plans public chapter 378 changes the notification date when you have to notify a teacher of when they may be dismissed or reassigned at the end of a school year public chapter 417 creates certain exemptions for people with criminal backgrounds who work in schools and primarily that is something that may have happened 20 years in the past with no further incidents that the legislature talked very openly about how we all may have made bad decisions in the past but have worked hard to turn our lives around and shouldn't be perpetually punished for that but that that bill does specifically reference a 20-year look back if the offense was is more
019than 20 years old and it did not involve a minor or violence or violence you'd be able to to offer that person a job and i think the last slide we have uh dealing with the regular session uh has is uh the budget slide uh 120 million dollars for teacher salary 70 million dollar for bep grow uh you can see the rest of those numbers including the 250 million dollar investment in the mental health trust fund there was also in the first special session 86 million dollars appropriated to help pay for some of the requirements of the summer school and then i guess two weeks ago we were in the last special session the second special session of october and what you that slide has what we refer to as the omni but the covet
02019 omnibus bill and we know you've heard a lot about this bill there's been a question whether or not whether and when the governor would sign the bill he said this afternoon that he would sign the bill and indicated he would sign that on friday and that's important because every part of this bill becomes effective as soon as he signs it and i'm sure you're familiar with a lot of the provisions it does prohibit school districts from mandating covert 19 vaccines and prohibits adverse action if a person refuses or does not have does not receive the vaccine the next issue is mass mandates prohibits mass mandates unless the governor has declared a state of emergency allowing mass mandates and also there has to be a 14-day rolling average of 1 000 per 100 000 residents
021in the county it is measured by the county and even if those things are in place the mandate would have to be requested by the school principal to the to the district school board if that's approved the district would have to provide n19 mass to persons so that's everybody that would be coming into the school 12 years or older and similar mask to the n19 mass would have to be provided to anybody younger than 12. and the part where may um a lot of people have been speculating may be challenged uh there's an allowance for an ada opt out and the way the bill is trapped that it may be in conflict with with with with federal law but those are the provisions around the mass mandate the other part of the bill gives the
022commissioner of health sole authority to determine quarantine guidelines and then the bill prohibits any use of public funds for enforcement of federal covenanting related mandates and i'll stop right there see if there are any any questions again it's our understanding the governor is going to sign that bill later this week the second big piece of legislation from our special session last week was senate bill 9009 which allows for the partisan election of school boards that will be determined by your local party chairs that it allows both a partisan or nonpartisan option but your local democrat and republican parties will determine whether or not they want to have a primary for each of your races and political parties will nominate those candidates based on the rules that they have in their local party so some may
023be an elected primary and some may be a closed election within active members of party leadership depending on how your county is structured and before we talk about issues that we're going to be watching in 2022 i want to give a quick update on the education savings account that program is still funded in the state budget money's still in the base budget it has not been spent for the two years that that bill has been in effect because of the the challenge from shelby in davidson county the supreme court heard an oral argument in that lawsuit in june we're still waiting for the opinion so that is yet to be implemented so we want to share this list i think there are two more slides after this one of issues we're going to be watching
024in 2022 versus bep as you know the governor has appointed several committees to take a look at redoing the state's k-12 funding formula and all indications are that they are planning to file a bill in january or february after the work of those committees um and we're what i think there are three more two or three more town halls and i guess the biggest question that's not been asked answered definitively is whether there will be a significant amount of new investment in k-12 we understand there's going to be a reconfiguration of the formula but i guess wait and see when the governor submits his budget at the end of january to see exactly what's going to be proposed we've already talked about adm hold harmless in the bill that was passed back in the spring
025that did hold districts harmless for adm loss it's our understanding from a meeting or some comments at a bp review committee a couple of weeks ago there are even more than 30 000 students less in the system this year so i'm not sure what the situation is in knox county but it looks like the students that we lost have not come back and are more students that have left the public school system we're not sure exactly what that number is in our conversations with leadership and especially in the house they have indicated that mental health is going to be a big issue that they continue to address and one of the ways they have talked about possibly addressing that is funding more nurses and counselors so that's something that we have pushed for for several
026years so we hope that this is this year that they they finally lower those ratios and one issue i guess a combined issue the issue of attendance was the subject of a day-long discussion summer study back in september and so we expect that there to be legislation brought about chronic absenteeism and truancy truancy has been a subject that of recent legislation but there is a concern that even before kovid that there were the instances of chronic absenteeism were too high across the state and that's an issue we learned in summer study it's not necessarily something aimed at the urban districts it's a problem all across the state and then after the new required summer school we are hearing that there may be proposals for year round school obviously that will cost money we think more
027than the 86 million dollars that was appropriated for summer school this year but but that is something that we've heard from several legislators that they are interested in in discussing testing is a perennially hot topic at the legislature and we feel like this year after the legislature having accommodated a lot of flexibility around testing that it's something they will talk about quite intensely we will still look at additional hold harmless penalties for teachers students classrooms school buildings we'll look at a testing calendar i think that part of the discussion of year-round school means that that testing window may look at may look different next year because of where our calendar days might fall testing time limits and paper and online testing are a hot topic that i know that it's much easier and faster to
028score your results on an online test but there are a number of legislators particularly in rural areas who don't feel that that is appropriate for students just yet that they don't necessarily have the online skills that they might need so we anticipate a lot of discussion around that this year we also saw a lot of discussion last year around act in lieu of ten ready that that's already a nationally accredited test every student takes it already maybe we could use that in place of ten ready as ten ready has struggled with some implementation in the past so we'll continue to look for those we have to be certain that we are prepared to meet new additional federal standards for average measurable objectives and i think that there is a a policy discussion around shifting from
029standardized testing to progress monitoring to see how students grow throughout the year which certainly for younger children is something that i think we all would love to see more robust discussion around the legislature has strong feelings about tvos and we know that tbos is important to see to monitor growth in successful schools it's important to see changes in schools that are struggling so we will be watching to see how the legislature deals with looking at tbos again next year on those last two issues i'll mention real quickly we have spent in the last 10 or 15 years i've been involved with education policy we spend a lot of time paying attention to what florida does and you may have seen a few weeks ago governor desantis proposed a shift away from standardized testing to progress
030monitoring and evaluation of teachers and spoke very strongly against continuing standardized tests so be interesting to see if that becomes a national conversation but that's the end of our presentation be glad to try to answer any questions sorry we have one more our presentation is very long we try not to give you guys so much information all at once but there's just been a lot this year we will monitor the use of tanf funds in schools this year that tennessee has a large reserve of temporary assistance for native families and there are some specific school services that may fall under that umbrella so we'll be watching as the legislature develops their process the legislature has allocated a certain portion of those tanf dollars for grant programs so we'll be watching to see if there's school
031services that fall underneath that umbrella class size ratios are something that we're going to look at the legislature has talked quite a bit about flexibility around class sizes a through f grading for school buildings is a is a perennial topic of discussion here at the legislature that was postponed this past year because of all the hold harmless provisions for covet we anticipate that will be something that will be discussed again state takeover is something that we feel will be a hot topic this year that there have been a number of legislative leaders who have expressed concerns about individual schools and school districts covered policies and we anticipate them bringing some legislation to try and put more controls on some districts around that so we'll be watching to see how those fold out and we parentally
032list the last two because we know these have been issues in knox county particularly the portfolio model for teacher evaluation and required physical education on required physical education this is the first school year that that law that was passed probably three years ago now has actually been in effect and there were a lot of school districts that woke up in june and realized they were going to have to hire a lot of pe teachers that was not the assumption that was put forth whenever that bill was being passed we know that you you had that experience or you realized that a lot earlier than a lot of other districts but we expect uh some discussion on that because this is the first year that that's been implemented [Music] miss foreign thank you madam chair i
033have a question on slide 15 it's public chapter 552 the tennessee work ready opportunity program did you say that there's an opportunity for students to take a work ready test rather than the act so the act that's currently required for all students to take there's another option is that this would be the second if they were going to take the act for a second time the second test could be this work ready to us so they do still have to take these they'll have to take the act one time okay all right thank you miss ellen thank you madam chair um i just want to make sure everybody understands that while this is a lot of information the bills that they follow for us each year there are hundreds of them literally and they follow
034those bills and look at all of the possible implications for our large four school districts and they meet with us with representatives from those large districts every friday to find out if there are other implications that maybe they are not aware of and we all can discuss those and determine what our priorities are to really let our legislators know how those bills can impact our school districts so the work that they're doing for us is really huge i'm not sure we would ever be able to follow those hundreds of bills on our own so it's really greatly appreciated and thank you for traveling all the way here tonight miss henderson thank you madam chair thank you so much for coming tonight i know that we um you know have tsva as the service and i
035know the work that you put in but i am curious for my own records like what is the cost of your services to kcs like what do we pay you guys the the cost of our annual fee we charge each district uh 37 thousand five hundred dollars thank you and it's been that since we started working for you in 2009 so does anyone else have any other questions okay and thank you for coming thank you i'm traveling for that date thank you as the parents of public school children we appreciate getting to come and see you guys celebrating your own kids and seeing the work that you're doing so we enjoy working for you and are glad to be here thank you [Music] so moving on to the regular agenda just a reminder that the
036board had a detailed discussion on all agenda items at the september 29th work session meeting and miss copney we will turn it over to you for the agenda item eight consent agenda second so emotion by ms satterfield a second by miss horn any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9a approved second reading of knox county board of education policy d-100 fiscal management goals and objectives as amended second so a motion by miss fab a segment by ms horn any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9b approved second reading of knox county board of education policy eye 121 enrollment in college level courses as amended second so motion by ms fab the second by ms horn any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9c approved second reading of knox county
037board of education policy i-130 work-based learning as amended thank you fab a second by miss horn any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9 d approved second reading of knox county board of education policy i-140 homebound instruction as amended so motion by ms babb a second by ms horn any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9e approved second reading of knox county board of education policy i-171 interscholastic athletics as amended so moved back the motion by miss fab a second by ms horn any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9f approved second reading to rescind knox county board of education policy i 180 adult apprenticeship program so moved second it's a motion by miss fab a second by misowan any discussion all in favor any oppose motion carries 9g
038approved second reading of knox county board of education policy i 190 organization for instruction as amended so moved second so motion by ms fab a second by ms owen any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9-h approved second reading of knox county board of education policy i-210 textbook and instructional materials selection distribution and care as amended second so motion by miss fab a second by ms owen any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries nine i approved second reading of knox county board of education policy i 250 off-campus trips as amended so moved second some motion by ms babb a second by miso one any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries 9j approved second reading of knox county board of education policy i-290 esl program policy
039as amended second it's a motion by miss fab a second by ms owen any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9k approved second reading of knox county board of education policy i 370 graduation requirements as amended second a motion by miss fab a second by ms owen any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9l approved second reading of knox county board of education policy i 440 wellness policy nutritional standards for food items sold as amended second so motion by ms fab the second by miss owen any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries 9 m approved second reading to rescind knox county board of education policy i-441 wellness policy physical activity some motion by miss fab a second by ms owen any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion
040carries tna approved receipt of tennessee department of education safe schools grant for the 2021-2022 school year in the amount of 1 million 306 422.31 with required matching funds in the amount of and seventy four thousand nine hundred and fifty dollars that will be provided by in-kind services so moved second so a motion by miss warren a second by miss fab any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries 10 b approved receipt of tennessee arts commission student ticket ticket subsidy grants for the various knox county schools in the total seven amount of 48 one dollars designated to tickets and related costs for in-person or virtual field trips to art events second so motion by ms owen a second by miss fab any discussion all in favor aye nefo's motion carries tnc approve receipt of
041dollar general literacy foundation grants for adrian burnett elementary school cedar bluff elementary school in skip elementary school and hardin valley academy and the total amount of ten thousand dollars to be used as outlined in each school's proposal so motion by ms owen the second by miss henderson any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion carries tnd approved receipt of tennessee foundation for agriculture in the classroom grant for south blue middle school in the amount of 250 dollars to be used for the school's outdoor classroom second it's a motion by ms satterfield a second by miss fab any discussion all in favor any opposed motion carries cne approve user agreement and u world ap success grant for student licenses to an act learning platform for the 2021-2022 school year valued at ten thousand
042eight hundred dollars for austin east magnet high school second it's a motion by ms satterfield the second by miss fab any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries tnf approved donation of 1.1 acres of land from the little rabbit holdings llc located at clinton highway parcel id tax id 055052 with a tax appraisal of fifty two thousand seven hundred dollars so moved second so motioned by miss fab the second by miss owen any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries 11a approved contracts with e-loop green company incorporated helton and associates incorporated in neo corporation for provision of asbestos abatement and demolition services for the term of december 1 2021 through november 30th 2022 which may be extended for an additional four years not to exceed a cost of five hundred
043thousand dollars annually using maintenance and operation general purpose funds so moved second submission by ms fab the second by ms horn any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries 12 a approved fiscal year 2022 general purpose budget line item transfers in the amount of 85 589 for the period july 1 2021 to just september 30th 2021. so moved second submission by ms warren a second by miss fab any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries 12 b approved fiscal year 2022 capital improvement plan budget line item transfers in the amount of 103 540 dollars so move second so motion by ms fab a second by ms horn any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries 12c approved increase of 200.7 cents to amount of construction contract with merit construction
044incorporated for renovations and additions at powell high school so motion by ms bounds the second by miss fab any discussion all in favor any opposed emotions carry motion carries 12 d approved increase of 100 000 to amount of construction contract with path construction northeast incorporated for the gibbs high school stadium replacement project so a motion by mr mcmillan a second by miss bounds any discussion all in favor aye aye any opposed promotion carries 12 e approved schematic design of west high school softball facility by george armor ewert architect second so a motion by miss babb the second by miss owen any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries 12f accept annual charter school monitoring report for emerald academy second so motion by ms fab a second by ms owen any discussion all in
045favor aye aye any opposed motion carries 12g approved second amendment to charter school agreement with emerald academy second so most of my misfab is second by ms horn any discussion all in favor aye any opposed motion carries 12 h discussion and possible action on superintendent search second it's a motion by ms satterfield a second by ms henderson and ms satterfield did you want to yeah speak to this thank you um we will also need to take i want to we'll take two votes within this conversation but before we go there i also want to bring your attention to what the website will look like starting first thing tomorrow morning that's the screenshot of these two pieces of paper here so be sure to look over that and if you have any questions about the timeline
046in the search um so gary i'm gonna take two i'm gonna present two different motions so i should start with the first one within this conversation of the vote that we're in right all right well everyone know what we're doing that's what i would recommend i mean i mean you could just take one vote but if but if somebody wanted to tweak one or the other it's just cleaner to do yeah so my first motion that i would like to make is that i move that we approve the recommended community meeting schedule sorry oh the second motion is improving the timeline the whole time okay i just wanted to i just want to make sure i knew what the tutorial so i want to take out the community meeting and vote on that and then
047vote on the timeline okay so do we have collect form on the community meeting so we have public forum i apologize for that we do have public forum for the superintendent church all together so should i withdraw my motion to do that first no no okay so we have we have two people for public forum first we have helena rego no okay um and next we have lance mccold police station county residents and you have three minutes to speak thank you lance mccold knox county i spoke to you guys last week and some people said you need to tell them that again so here i am i want to say that i think um you guys are being too hasty with this plan the last time we hired a superintendent we had a interim superintendent
048who did a fine job of keeping things going while we did a careful search we have many fine staff within the administration who could be interim superintendent while we took our time to do a a careful search and i don't think it's it's really necessary to take the aggressive schedule that you guys have done um so that's uh that's my recommendation you know we it's i don't know it's the the old saying is you know you you decide or act in haste and you can regret in at leisure so i would i would encourage you to think about whether you really need to do this all this this fast i think that's the only thing i guess i do want to tell you that they no that's enough thank you thank you um so that
049concludes public forum on this agenda item [Music] could you talk to us a little bit about how the how the meeting schedule is expected to work during that day i've heard from several classified employees who are concerned about that being at 1 30 or are we expecting anyone who wants to be there to be there or is it just a focus group what exactly are we looking at yes so that was how we did ask that as well so this recommended schedule is for the idea of people to come but anybody can attend any meeting so if someone can't make it to the 130 they can come to this six o'clock the same questions are going to be asked at all of the meetings it's just the recommendation was that they have it within those
050groups because they usually have similar themes on what they want and what they're looking for so it just makes it um that much smoother but anybody can come to any meeting again i just want to reiterate that she did request that board members only attend that first meeting and not attend the other ones but you're free to go to wherever you like to [Music] can ask about that so they they want us to come to the classified employee one no we're going to the betsy okay i'm just looking are there i'm looking at these four meetings here are there more meetings to am i not seeing them on online there's a there's one that said oh okay okay i'm sorry yeah there's one in the morning that they recommend we come to and then the
051other ones would be geared towards those other groups but anybody is welcome to attend if they cannot make a certain time 11 30. yes all the meetings will take place in the same location so the le the 11 30 through the 6 o'clock meetings all of those are open to anybody that wants to attend them is that i mean like the the one that says 130 classified employees any classified employees that want to come can come to that is that correct correct okay and for anybody and if people want to go to multiple ones they can as well like it's open these are again it's segmented out like that because she said that usually things come out of the same like-minded people within the group so it just made it easy to break it down
052like that but people are welcome to come to all the meetings [Music] miss horn thank you madam chair what would it make more sense to do to switch the 1 30 and 3 o'clock do you classified employees at 3 o'clock and central office supervisors and principals at 130 because at least that would possibly you know classified employees at an elementary school at least may have an opportunity to attend one but if at 1 30 it's gonna be really hard for them to attend is there was there any thought as to from the from the committee as to why the schedule was in this order miss bound thank you man and chair actually because i have worked in the system i asked that question and i was concerned and um miss grissom said that actually um
053this is when they normally do the classified and it in the past has been the best intended of all of the meetings that were held that day so this is i think she did bump it up maybe or drop it down 30 minutes one way or the other but her experience has been that the classified staff are the best attended meetings at this time interesting okay and do we have a location on these meetings yet yes so i have been in contact with knox county and the public's work building on baxter avenue has a large space for us that they're willing to accommodate us and keep the building open longer that way it's centrally located to all areas of knox county and i believe it's on a bus line is that correct too so that
054way people can utilize that transportation is there plenty of parking do you know yeah yes yes okay thank you mr mcmillan uh thank you madam chair uh just comment in reference to what you were talking about as far as classified and when would be best to get them to come and this certainly is not meant to belittle anybody by any means but it's just human nature that i think if you if you had them come while they were basically on the clock rather than you know at close to the time they were going to get off from work well they you know a lot of people would think well i'm tired from the day i'm going home there'll be other people there i guess what i'm saying is that if you had it you know
055then you would get better attendance in my opinion um yeah this might be a question for um mr thomas with the classified employees how are we working with the schools to be able to allow them to leave i mean um um is there a plan to to be able to let that happen um because i'm sure that will come up very quickly um no there's not one right now let's just saw this uh this evening so uh yeah uh but we'll make a i mean we'll make it available for for folks to attend that want to attend we'll work that out so that there's no problem work wise miss owen thank you madam chair um i'm concerned that the letter really doesn't make it clear what the process is at all so um it's it's
056the letter that's in the packet language to make it okay i think i would start over because it just really says that it says when these things are taking place can you tell us which one you're looking at yes proposed form invitations um it says when these are but this one is just looks like this is just the community invitation from six to seven and it's not really clear that they could come to one of those others it's not i think our staff is going to be very confused about when they are to be where if they want to give their input so if you go down to the second one that's on the list it gives a simple invitation and i'm open to whatever recommendation and i would like for us to make that
057today um so whatever you think to clean it up let's clean it up [Music] think if we're going to get specific about it the the location is not here um it also doesn't say that they could come to a different one if it was more convenient so if that could be clear it up that would probably help quite a bit yeah i agree that we need best you know um to be more specific about this is the suit put in there this is a suggested time because it will be more geared to those people but they are welcome to come at another time and i guess for like our employees like classified employees if they are going to have to get off work i guess we do need i feel like there need to be
058some instructions going out at that time for those it really i guess it's the 130 people that are the biggest concern um central office i guess is a little bit different probably worked but especially for that 130 time i think if we're going to put it out there there have to be instructions on how they would actually go about being able to come i'll accept those changes um are those recommendations are we good there terry okay cool all right should i state the motion again [Music] right [Music] i move that we accept the proposed community meeting with the recommended changes in the invitations for the superintendent search okay so we have a motion and a um by miss anderson a second by miss bounds or miss satterfield just made the most of him and miss
059henderson really needs to second it because she's okay so we don't need okay so she's okay so satterfield made the motion this bounce has seconded it so are we done with discussion this is the first time satterfield made the motion miss horn seconded it oh i did i thought miss henderson did uh miss satterfield uh made a motion to approve the recommended meeting schedule and missed i need to accept these so yes i do i'm sorry i thought in satterfield i mean mrs henderson so sorry my fault okay so we have the most of my mystery filled the second by miss horn it's a it's a friendly substitute correct yes okay thank you so sorry right okay so any discussion on the substitute motion to change i have a question not really about that but
060looking at the timeline now we'll attend these meetings at least one of them and we're going to take that information as well as uh other information and opinions of ours and on december the 8th we're going to use all that to adopt the criteria okay okay i just want to make sure thank you but you're recommending that we go to the 11 30 all of us yes yes thank you i would like to see some additional community meetings however i'm good with this schedule with tsba so i think under the under the second motion is where i would discuss some additional meetings but i just want to throw that out there thank you okay so any more discussion on this mission by ms satterfield and second by miss horn all right yes mr jim thank
061you manager just a clarifying question if students want to participate in this discussion for the new superintendent they would go to the six o'clock community forum correct yes if they want to participate in what tsva has provided they are open to go to the public they're open to go to whichever one they want to go to but the one that people do not follow within those categories the public forum one is available for that one but you're again you're hoping to go to anyone that you want to go to is there any specific um supposed community input provided by tsba that students can participate in one more time is there any specific way that students can participate through this gsb program gsba program sorry there's the survey the there's a survey or the meeting yes
062those two things yes two options um and then whatever board member allen is going to present for after but within this system and in this process with tsva it's the public forum meeting for students and the survey as well okay okay so we are voting on the community meeting schedule with the friendly amendment you've made the motion miss horn has seconded and i don't see anyone else with their microphones down so all in favor say hi any opposed motion carries second motion i would like to present is that we approve the recommended timeline for the superintendent search [Music] second okay so motion by miss satterfield is second by miss fab and any discussion miss owen thank you madam chair um i would like to see our timeline expanded and i don't have a specific recommendation
063but i would like to see basically instead of adopting the criteria on december 8th i would like to see that moved out at least a month so that we can provide some time for additional community input and for student meetings i think our our goal in looking for a good candidate shouldn't be shouldn't be put in this box of getting someone quickly i'm much more interested in getting someone who really wants to be here and someone we really want then someone who may be applying to be a superintendent wherever and they might take some other position if that's where they are i don't think that's who we want i think we want someone who wants to be here so um i think stretching out this timeline would be very valuable to us in ensuring that
064we have what we're really looking for [Music] miss bounce thank you um i'm in favor of keeping the timeline but i thought help me out betsy and uh miss setterfield if we weren't going to possibly have other meetings just like towards first of january or whatever was that was i incorrect on that i mean i don't see pushing it out i think other meetings can be put the december 8th is just to adopt the criteria yes so the from yes so december 8th is to adopt the criteria that is very standard so to say um there's room for more candid like that that she can then put on the brochure that goes out to the searches right and so during that time that the brochures out there were can still collect the the we can
065have as many mean as we want to and so yes so like the criteria is not dependent upon these other meetings so the other meetings can be taking place without messing up the timeline and that still gives us an indication of what the public wants in a superintendent but it doesn't necessarily um change the board's criteria or the criteria that comes in through the survey and i think that the additional information that we could potentially get after the eighth is information for us to make sure that we're looking for those things in the candidates that are presented so maybe scheduled to help do whoever or however schedule some meetings in january before before the selection of candidates or even uh in december would be my suggestion mr ben a couple questions the state i don't
066see the stakeholder survey on the timeline is it starting tomorrow or yes so that's what if we are changing this agent we need to sit here and figure the timeline out for the rest of the day because the website goes live tomorrow okay now i'm fine with that i just wasn't sure because i wasn't really seeing it on here so the the survey will start and i do think let me see does it say on here when the survey starts and when it ends if it doesn't i think on this web page i think we need to be very specific of when the last date is for people to um to take it um that would be my one thing and then my this is just a question on the process and i feel like
067the three of y'all have talked to tammy a lot more so recruit quality candidates and then early february it says select candidates who who selects the candidates so say we have a hundred people apply who gets it down to the three or how does that happen getting it down to the three that we're actually interviewing can y'all speak a little bit more to that to my understanding tsba will bring us three final candidates that the board will then choose okay so we won't have any sense of who else has applied besides those three people i mean i think we can look through all of them yeah okay i mean we can well yeah i guess everybody gets closed um correct everything's open okay so oh go ahead well if i may she said when in
068the very first time we talked with her when she was on zoom she said that we could if there were candidates that a board member or a board wanted to review that weren't in the top three that we could review those is that correct right yeah you can pull them out yeah yeah but then how would we be able to move those two to potential candidates for all of us to consider yes i'm kind of wondering like and this is going a little bit to what miss owens has talked about and i'm also not trying to push the timeline i mean i i actually do want us to move this along but if we are having more community meetings that are going to impact who we're looking for and what we're looking for in a
069candidate that really only lets us look at those three people with those criteria is that right so because really it's really the only the three that we're really getting mr dupler can you speak to that a little bit because i think we had a conversation about that as well yeah be happy to thank you madam chair so the board's in charge i mean even though you have this search firm helping you out and this happened the last search as a matter of fact because there was that there was a certain number and i forget whether it was three or five i apologize but i mean you know there were a certain number of finalists so to speak but uh yeah it's just yeah okay but uh once once those finalists were brought before the board
070uh you know one or more board members decided hey we want to elevate you know another candidate up to the top that can that can be done easily you know and and and that just needs to be one board member asking that that be done and then and then you know at that point let's say it's five or in this case it's going to be three and and you say you wanted a fourth or a fifth not a problem that's done and then and then the entire board at that time is looking at say four or five instead of just three if they all decided okay i mean i don't really have a problem saying this i just kind of want to understand it better miss foreign thank you madam chair i'm assuming if we
071wanted to we could ask for the top five candidates so we you know we may we may want to do that we may want to say we want to see the top five yeah so the recommendation for the three only is because we have those full days that will be of the candidate going around and consuming staff and consuming school um but we can absolutely do five and then we'll have five days of board so each candidate if we do five okay each candidate will then come and present to us which will be five days right so that is a lie four or five i almost didn't even know if we could do we see we get their top five recommendations and as a board we make the decision which three to feel like we
072have a little bit more ownership of the three that move forward um that might be would make me feel a little bit better that's a little broad you know there might not be i i've done some searches for other things before and i mean sometimes you don't have five that really get to that top thing but i think that um you know i i think it would be nice if there are five that are worth considering that we're not having an outside group make that decision for us and it could come to us and then we ideally come down to three and honestly if i my thought would be as if we or as a group having trouble bringing it down to three we interview how many we think are really needing to interview i
073mean i don't want to limit us because of days but i think have the objective of only doing three days of interviews but don't cut somebody out just because of a three-day limit i would be kind of my suggestion that's just something i would suggest and i don't miss bounce i don't know if you were mr mcmillan okay and i'm sorry i have that one question but i have a couple other things thank you okay and i i think that's a good i think that's a good suggestion um so just a couple of things i think that we should go forward with the timeline that we have i would not be opposed to additional community meetings in january because i think the criteria that we're coming up with that we'll vote on in december is
074not going to vary tremendously from the criteria that we had the last time we did a search because it's it's a very high you know it's pretty high level so i think we're looking more from community members for additional comments on characteristics and things that are more that we can certainly take to um into consideration as we look at those those candidates so i i do think that um if we want to schedule additional community meetings i don't think that you know moving any later in december is going to benefit us i mean i think as we have anytime we have community meetings we have so few people that attend that maybe if there's if there are additional people who want to participate maybe it would be better to offer one in january because it's
075at a different time rather than in december um and i think those were my comments and the other thing too that i just made a note of that you know tsva is i think we we've hired them so that we can lean on their expertise in this process and if this is the the time interims that they are used to working with them within um you know i think they've that's probably tried and tested so i think we we need to trust their timelines and their intervals so i think those are my comments thank you yeah thanks um virginia i'm glad you raised that point because we spent quite a bit of time um addressing that and one of if you've ever done a search like that or even doing our student rep sometimes you'll
076see a gap like you might have the first 10 candidates or really close in scoring and then there's a drop off and then you you know wherever or the top five be really strong and then there's a natural break so we talked to ms grissom about that and she was willing to take that into consideration looking at where those breaks occur and the quality of the candidates and certainly bringing five if necessary she just said that typically it works better with a top three but um but i think we could and i think she indicated that that would be one of the things they looked at so like to your point if you had five you're not going to knock one out just because you're asking for three you know if there were five that
077were really close and all of their i expertise and i've never done anything as high level as this i mean this obviously will be the most important research i ever do but i do not because i think it gets very subjective at that right when you get those people that are at the top level and if we just say three so i do like having i i don't mind shooting for three i just want the flexibility of sort of having that if there are four that are just sort of very even i don't think we should sort of knock one out because we're we're knowledging yeah and that's what she indicated to us when we met with her okay i just appreciate having that flexibility mr mcmillan thank you madam chair uh just in reference
078to what was said there about i don't i don't really have a problem with the timeline and you can have all community meetings that you wish but remember once you get into this december the holidays you're going to have trouble getting people to come in my opinion to come out it's it's going to be difficult any time you do it but it's more difficult then and of course i don't know if this would would interfere with with anybody that would genuinely want to come and express their opinion but uh on tuesday nights we'll have high school basketball games all across county now we also have them on friday but we're not gonna do it on friday you wouldn't get anybody on friday night practically but um the uh i wanted clarification on a couple of
079things here um we're gonna interview the candidates in mid-february we'll select them in early and then interview them in mid-february and late february begin what does that begin second phase of consideration to me does that mean narrow it to is that where we're going to narrow it down to a certain number or what i don't know what i don't know what the phrase means in reference to this yes that's exactly what that means so this that 23rd date is these are the candidates let's start doing the interview up to five um but three those three days um are during that time that that you will then we will make that vote that's the time that the board votes on that other candidates yes okay and like late february at that that particular thing we're going
080to vote one candidate at a time yeah well i mean you said when canada we'll interview them all one at the time and then then we'll we'll follow that up with voting yeah so from my understanding the 15th 16th and 17th is when we will interview them ask all the questions and then on the 23rd that's when we'll have our another meeting to make our vote and so that'll be all the conversations um i guess the candidates couldn't be here but that would be our discussion on who we you know how would you like to how would you like it to be ready well i mean i just would like to see i hadn't i didn't look on that what y'all talking about about the i didn't even know it was on there as far
081as the as the uh uh the timeline to the to the uh you know the that aspect of it you said there were two things this in the online so you're wanting to explicitly say board takes vote well just just explain it a little bit more to the public you know as to what the process is this it looks really simplistic it looks like we you know to me now it's just me maybe maybe it's it's just me so on the bullet point where it says begin phase two with consideration clarify that on what that actually means yeah okay well i mean you sort of clarified it but you know but but do you think the the average person in the public out here would would understand if they if they saw that i think
082i should just say ford vote on candidates well if that's if that's what you're going to do yeah interview and then the following interviews vote you know we don't have to be real deceptive here we want them to understand i would hope and one other thing and i want to ask um it says early march offer contract uh mid-march announcement what's that like uh you're gonna give them a week to take it over or how many days are you gonna give three days five days i think that's more of the conversation between the um search reforms i mean we can make our own but that's a conversation with the search firm for the firm and then the candidate to decide when they want to take it i don't expect the candidate at this level to
083meet how would it be between the firm where the board yeah so we can set the timeline if you want to say you have to respond in five days you can it's this is the opportunity for us i would think i i don't care i just i just want enough and i think we should set the timeline okay so let's do it not the the board i mean not the firm okay but what date would you like it doesn't matter to me i mean in five days okay well i would think i would think five days you could decide whether you wanted a job or not you want the job before you wouldn't applied for it mr mcmillan do you do you think it would be acceptable to vote on when we approve that candidate
084that we could decide when we want to know could we do it at the same time that's fine okay fine i'm just i'm just saying that it looks like it's been left out here kind of in the open space a little bit that's what i would propose that may just be me and if it is i i apologize but okay so miss owen did you thank you madam chair um i agree with mr mcmillan i would like to see actually on the website some explanation of what everything means so that there is some clarity for the public to understand what's going on if we are not going to consider extending the timeline at all i would like to see some kind of student forum prior to adopting criteria on december 8th and is that a
085student form that you want the board to host a search committee to host how would you like that i don't think it could be either one i don't think it matters whether we do it or whether whether tsba does it but i i think our students deserve to have their voices heard and so what i'm looking for in this discussion board members is if you have suggestions also have like what do you want because i'm open to whatever we need to do but if you can give me the definition of the finite date what you want we can make that happen [Music] can't make happen what i want to happen so since that can't happen um since we're not it sounds like we are not open to spreading out this calendar at all so whatever
086kind of student forum can be put in before adopting the criteria that's my recommendation okay so committee members if you would like to um weigh in on what that looks like because we have the public forum and also the survey so what would that look like from you all's perspective [Music] can i ask if this would be a suggestion i mean i'm not trying to cut out any students but i would think it's more of our high school students are going to have more of an opinion than elementary and middle i mean that's my guess is who we're really seeking out opinions from not that i would want to keep a middle school or elementary school person from doing it is there a way because this is the one thing i think about the public
087forums that we do it's always hard for people to get there and things like that but we've got kids at school is there any way to incorporate at the high school level something at the schools i wonder if that's something that we can let our student rep lead possibly because to give ownership of the role of debt and we work in tangent with that and also whatever christie right and maybe with the community meetings that you're working on with kef is that maybe a possibility maybe kef would be um willing to help out with that as well with the student forums and mr butts us is out there nodding so that's a good sign so mr raymond how do you feel about that yeah i think that would definitely be a very good idea to
088have that direct student input and let it be clear to those students that hey you have this place to provide your opinion and input because i feel i do have concern where if you try to mix you know in the what we have right now in the community forum where you're mixing students with adults things like that honestly some students might be a little bit intimidated they just don't want to speak out in that kind of setting so it would be very good if we work out some kind of program maybe at individual schools that would be i think probably the best way to get as much student input as possible if we could work something out like that then that might be very good so yeah i feel like we can work and maybe
089you can work with mr lezos at knox ed foundation and maybe come up with a plan you know i think that's a really good idea yes so ms warren thank you i think that's a great idea um and i just wanted to point out the importance of the survey because tsba this is not going from my understanding and you can you guys that spoke with her about this can correct me but from my understanding this is to gather information it's not a discussion it's not a i mean it's it's just to gather comments and information so the survey is available available tomorrow is what november whatever it is 11th so until december 2nd so that's that's you know people have all that length of time to put those comments in and it's really i mean
090that's very effective way of communicating because when you come and you're in person yes you'll hear what other people say which is definitely an advantage but those those comments that are going to be in in in the survey are extremely valuable that going through the last search that's what i remember i remember the pages and pages and pages of comments and reading through those and doing what we're asking tsba to do which is to look for trends and similar you know ideas so i think that we need to i just don't think we need to negate the importance of that survey we will get thousands of responses we will get many many more responses to the survey than we will ever get with people coming in person so i just want everybody to understand how
091important this survey is i mean this is going to be this is key and being there in person it doesn't your votes or your voice is not going to be heard any more than the paper or the the surveys that we collect and speaking to that and back to ms babb's point then on this superintendent search timeline which i'm fine with can we add there that survey will be sent out on such as well tomorrow and then put the date when the superintendent survey closes because i think that would be helpful to have on this timeline i think yeah okay yeah so in the what i'm gathering um and so carly um well there she goes hey carly um so the input would be to clarify what this timeline means i'm also connecting carly with
092tammy grissom to have more one-on-one communication so that she would be able to tell her directly and so before it is live because what i'm not wanting is that it goes live and we have to come back and change and stuff so before it's live please get all of your what you need and how you want it because once it's live that's that's what we're rolling with um so carly will clarify all of these components as much as possible so that it can be common language to the public that was suggested from mr mike in virginia um and then raymond will take ownership of the student community conference the student input conversation so we're leaving that to you raymond okay what else okay um i have a couple of things one of them is very
093personal um i know at the last meeting i had on the dates that we were going to do the interviews and then tonight as maybe we talked about last week but i didn't hear it last week the date that we were actually going to do the voting which is february 23rd and i actually am getting on a plane that morning i didn't know if there's any way we could do it on the 22nd i would really like to be a part of that vote that's just a personal request for me if we could consider that i wouldn't have made i wouldn't have made my flight if i had known at the time so if we could consider that i would appreciate it on the survey can we just make sure it's offered in spanish and
094translated in spanish i just want to make sure that that we are offering that um and then i guess this is maybe to miss owens comments asking her so do you feel like what we're talking about with the students makes you feel better about public meetings or do you even want more public meetings i just want a little bit more clarity on that and then if we want more cut public meetings besides just the student ones we've talked about i do think we need to give ownership to someone to do them otherwise it's just kind of out there and it nobody'll take ownership so just a little bit more specifics from you the feeling that i'm getting from community members is that they they want to feel that they have had an opportunity to give
095their input and and they want to do that in person so that that is where that's coming from um i think my my concern is having input prior to adopting the criteria because if we if we find out that there is something some particular thing that is very important to students but we don't find that out until after we've adopted that criteria sure we can use that in narrowing our candidates but we've not put it out as our criteria so i think if we are if we are looking for genuine input from the community we need to get that prior to making decisions [Music] miss bounce so could we add a date in there well i don't guess we can add a date before tomorrow but have that i mean before school breaks for the
096um semester have the student get together with and decide a time and a location and get the information out to the students to have that before the um well i don't know it was just very small window there december i was looking after the eighth but if miss owen wants it before we adopt the criteria it would have to almost be the first week of december or the last week in that november for the student meeting is that doable mr jim i think if we can move fast enough i think that is definitely doable um i guess my concern would be if we did move that fast there is a possibility that some information might not get out there to where students know about that you know know that this is occurring so if they
097don't know about it then they're not going to be able to participate it so that would be one concern i would have if we did hold those meetings in november beginning of december but i think it's doable miss horn thank you madam chair okay so when i if you look at the next item the job description that we used um the last time we did a search is listed there so my question is when we adopt what we're going to adopt on december 8th what exactly are we expecting to adopt because this document has the job summary the essential functions the duties and responsibilities which i wouldn't think any of those would be different than what we were looking for prior i mean there may be some tweak but it's not those are not those
098are expectations of the job and then it lists education and experience requirements which the last time we had this discussion that was really the big thing was the education and experience requirements those were the the things that were we had some conversation around so in addition to this type document what is it that we are expecting to approve on the eighth so we probably would approve all of that same unless there's a lot of information that says we want x we want somebody with the uh higher education like terminal degree right unless that's a robust information but also on the 8th she's coming to report out what she gathered from the community meetings in the survey so it's going to be a full report but the adoption our criteria i don't imagine unless somebody's really
099passionate about that or we get a lot of input that says that criteria is going to change because our criteria is very it's aligned with what the state requirement requires and it's also very vague to make sure that we are able to get as many candidates as possible so right so i guess my question is what do we expect i just i'm not sure what else we're gonna how we would because when you put an advertisement out to you know and with a national firm you're gonna have this exact kind of thing so i'm i'm just not sure what else we're going to get i think that we will get um personal type characteristic comments from community members and i think that's what we want we certainly want that but i'm just asking for december
1008th for the purposes of tsba having something that they can then use to create a brochure which the you know that would include information about you know knox county even but what you know what else would would be in the documentation that tsva is going to use so do you understand my question like i'm just not sure that i think we what we want we can continue to gather past that date in in january yeah i i agree with you and i think that that will not push the student meeting because i think that that's the whole end goal is to be able to put it out there and it's got to be broad to get the candidates so you can't get in the weeds that you want somebody with brown hair and blue eyes
101i mean you just got to do a general criteria and then the meetings that follow up can become more personal characteristics of what they want so i agree with you i think just leave it like it is and have those work with uh kf and have those after that confuse you thank you ma'am chair and miss horn i agree that the the job description may not change but what you said about those feelings from the community if we are gathering that but tsba is making the selection then there's a problem there because that gives us information that they don't have when they are looking at those candidates and there's nowhere in here where we have an opportunity to share that information with them it's my understanding that the only information that they are taking in
102for their selection of candidates is information that they gather up until december 8th so you know if if they are not involved in any of that sure we can use that when we get down to those last few candidates but they can't use it in determining those candidates well i mean i think that we can certainly give it to them if they are not they're selecting candidates on february 9th if we've had meetings the month of january that information can be compiled and shared with them why don't we add that to the calendar yeah let's just add that we need to decide when we want to have any community meetings done by and that by that date which needs to be in enough time for tspa to consider it i mean i agree with you
103i think we want tsba considering these same things um so i think we just need to look in the timeline and put that on there would that help you okay i think that's a great suggestion okay so you're indicating that we host the community meeting as the board or i i ief kf so i also want us to also really think bigger and also have the opportunity to include the community on stuff and so community has the opportunity to organize and there's organizations out there that they can take the input and create their own meetings and say this is what we want i don't think that it should be us organizing because we add a layer of dynamics to two situations and so this could be under kef community means if they agree to that
104so i'm okay with that but i don't think it i don't think it should be our community meeting that we hold as board members i think we need some clarity on how that information gets from that community meeting to us into tsba so from the community meeting from that we're putting in place after the eighth any community meetings if other if other groups are holding meetings and and that's the way we want that to happen then what guarantees that that their input goes anywhere how do they get there they need to know how to deliver that information to us or to tsba and there's nothing here to indicate when or how so you're in it so she did share that she's willing to give email address and like anybody can call and recommend date like
105do what you need so that's something we can add on there if you want to give your input send it straight to tammy grissom from tennessee school board association is that what you're referring to i'm looking for an answer a solution well sure but they need some kind of timeline i mean we can't just tell community people go have your meeting and let us know because that doesn't that doesn't give them enough information so they need some kind of timeline for when and how to deliver that okay mr mcmillan uh in reference to to what y'all were saying there um it's fine to get community input and we should by all means but some people don't really want to be involved in the process they look to we elected a school board that's what you're
106elected to do you approach it and find the best person as a collective group you all find the best person and we'll you know we'll have to live with it uh there's there's all sorts of of different views and i hope we don't get so many different things that we start to conflict with uh with with certain things um what i wanted to ask was and and i don't know that anybody could answer it but um necessarily at this point but when we're considering these candidates anybody can apply no matter where they live and we're going to have i guess based on the timeline we're going to have a little over a hundred days at least between the time the person accepts the contract and the time they actually bob retires and they they actually
107take hope uh do we want to uh or is it important that no matter where they're cut they're from that they understand east tennessee values or does that matter i think that's something you can put in so in the plan that we purchased with tsba she's going to be able to talk to each individual board member and so if that's the desire of yours that's something you can lift up for sure well it is of mine you know i don't care if they're from uh alaska or uh you know wherever they're from minnesota or wherever i would hope that if they don't know much about the values of knox county knoxville and surrounding east tennessee that they would make every attempt to familiarize themselves with it during that brief period of time i think the
108taxpayers and you know people parents and stuff would expect that i really believe that no matter what the kids and you know or students i should say no matter what they what they think about it i don't know that they would disagree with it but and i'm just i'm just saying that you know but i just don't want to get too many people i mean it's fine for everybody to have their their say and and we can have people speaking other languages and stuff in the surveys and stuff but the bottom line is that you know we are here to select the person who we think is a collective group will do the best job to serve our kids and not scam thank miss henderson thank you madam chair i think i have two ideas
109that may alleviate this community issue i think one is having a deadline in the timeline for community input that's separate so like all community input is due by whatever day um [Music] january 15th and then kef can produce a memo to the board and tsva of the main community points so that way it wraps it up and it's cohesive if that makes sense ms thank you madam chair so question about the survey is the survey are the survey results going directly i mean will they then go to tsva for them to tabulate so then they're going to need those by before that december 8th meeting right yeah so the survey will close on december 2nd so that she can report back from what the community says so that could be a conversation do we want
110to extend the survey portion to that january 15th date i mean i i think that we have to i think that for tsva's purposes it needs to close on december 2nd so i think if we do anything else it has to be in addition to that and so the meetings that if if we accept if we go with what um board member henderson said the information that comes from those meetings will be used as our guide as board members to say this is what they're also continuing to tell us what we're looking for like kind of secondary information i guess from the same survey is that what you're saying i mean to no from like this just any other board yeah i'm not meeting any other meetings thank you miss yeah i i think we
111need to keep our timeline for the survey and the community meetings here and if we can if there's a way to get the student meetings at the different schools i mean i think that would be great because i mean i i don't think any of us want to not hear from the students i think it's just logistically and i do like the idea of doing it at schools because i think it would really get the kids to show up versus all of them i mean i have to say the kids that are probably most opinionated and have the most thoughts on this are your active kids that are really busy after school um so you know i think if you can capture them while they're at school i think that'd be great so i think
112we need to keep the december second thing but i do think we all need to personally work at trying to encourage people to fill it out putting it like on our social media things like that i would hope that all the schools like our principals in there i know they all send out um memos to parents and stuff like that i hope that all of our principals are encouraged to put the link for the survey in their messaging because that's i think really how you're going to get out to the parents and i mean while i want to hear from community members it's really parents that i think are going to care most and have the most opinions about their thoughts besides actual school staff i mean i think staff will and i think they're
113they're a community that we're able to easily communicate with to get them to take the survey but i think we talked about this last week if we put the information out there people have ample time to get a survey done just giving them two more weeks to do it i don't think it's going to get the people that really care about taking it to do it i think it's just getting the information out one other thing and this is just kind of a minutia thing kind of on our timeline and this is probably a carly harrington thing but if we can just put specific dates on it and then also check off or kind of change them to a different color or something as we have finished those items that kind of thing so that
114people realize that we have actually moved along in our timeline i think would be helpful okay restate the motion and we hopefully i captured everything carly i hope you took really good notes um here we go i make a motion to approve the timeline with the additional recommendation time like clarification on the website additional student focus input meeting and phase two consideration move from february from february 23rd to february 22nd and miss babb you had seconded the original do we need to add that january 15th deadline that you were talking about earth so that was part of the timeline clarification on the website so all the additional notes and stuff will be on there and i'll communicate with carly on with those dates and stuff okay thank you um i will second the friendly amendment
115promotion okay so we have emotion by ms satterfield in a second by miss fab is there any more discussion on that so all in favor say i i any opposed no motion carries are you mad at one more in this uh agenda item okay all right so at the board retreat we talked about getting a board to have a superintendent evaluation done and so our previous meetings we have voted for eleven thousand five hundred but if we want to get the additional board of the superintendent evaluation this is a superintendent evaluation that tsba will provide to us we will need to increase that by fifteen hundred dollars so i make the motion that we increase our country our payments to tsba to 13 and any cost accrued by the candidates visits what was the last
116part [Music] costa accrualed by the cure by the candidates business when they come into town okay okay so we have a motion by ms satterfield in a second by ms bounds and miss owen thank you madam chair um i would like to keep the evaluation process separate from from the selection process i feel like that just kind of muddies the water so i'd be happy to look at the expenses but i think it would be better to look at the evaluation separately i i can i can accept that but i want to see if anybody i just know that that's what we discussed at the board retreat and i agree with that rationale as well but miss bounds the only thing that i could think of is that it might be helpful for the superintendent
117or the people that are candidates that are considering coming to our system if they know kind of what they're going to be evaluated on so i don't think we have to i mean it's not like we're going to be doing the superintendent search in the middle of the candidate search but i do think it is very helpful because we rushed really hard to try to get the other one done so that superintendent thomas would have that information before accepting the position so i think it's kind of crucial for them to know that i would agree and i think that's how what that discussion centered around was the candidate knowing how they would be evaluated yeah i just i agree i think that we need to i would be in favor of approving that fifteen hundred
118dollars so that we can go ahead and get that rolling and um if we maybe you know maybe change the motion so there's two different motions but i i definitely think we need i would be in favor of going forward with that miss ellen thank you i i agree that it would be helpful for the candidate to know that um my concern is really that we haven't seen what kind of evaluation they might put out and if it looks anything like our board self-evaluation that's concerning to me because that's so so vague and difficult to work with and if we're going to end up with something vague and difficult to work with without knowing that that concerns me so i i agree that it should be there before the candidates you know the candidates should
119know how they're going to be evaluated in this district but i have concerns about the evaluations that i've seen from tsba ms warren thank you madam chair actually i spoke with tammy grissom today to ask her specifically about the evaluation and she explained to me she's been working with rutherford county i think most recently on their evaluation tool and i the way i understand it and i haven't seen it in writing but just in her explaining it to me there are three sections the first one is basically getting feedback i don't know if it's in a form of a survey but some sort of feedback from school principals and central office staff so something something in that realm the second part was i can't remember exactly but the third part i remember specifically was directly
120tied to the strategic plan so she explained it as a basically a living document so she actually um they had taken rutherford county's strategic plan and tied specific initiatives for that year into the evaluation tools so basically every year you're looking at what what will be the um what will be the things that you are addressing this year from your strategic plan so it's really it sounds very different than what we've done the middle section i think is probably maybe along the same lines as what ours would look like or part of it i don't remember exactly what it was but that the third piece was was quite different than what we do so i don't know if that helps anybody so so just to clarify this would um approving this would permit tsba to
121develop or work with us to develop a superintendent evaluation model but that is something the board would still have to adopt is that correct so if we did not like the end result i mean you would still have a vote or say in whether that was approved or not do we have a timeline for that no no timeline for that and i know what you said mentioned like we'll still have to approve it and i know a desire um that was brought up at the board of retreat was also to include a 360 survey so that would be something that we as a board can put into the evaluation they're just giving us the framework for fifteen hundred dollars because the framework that we have needs we need a new framework in a sense and
122so that's more but there's no timeline though but i think if it's going to be included in something for our candidates to be aware of then it needs some kind of timeline to be sure that we have it in time for that okay would you like to make your timeline recommendation how would you like just tammy to give the that can be often too i'd like tammy to let us know when it can be done [Music] i would think looking at this at least by the beginning of february and really maybe i mean because if we're going to have to discuss it i mean i don't know if we're going to have a special called meeting about it or something but when you start looking if you look at when they're selecting candidates we want
123them to be able to have something before they come in for their interviews i think and when you look at that which is mid-february that's where i'm i'm just concerned and maybe somebody needs to be in charge of talking to tammy just about what they are capable of doing because to me we almost need something to us in january to almost have only maybe even a special called meeting about it to be able to have them be able to give it to them to the candidates i'm just trying to look at the timeline this one yeah i mean i think from based on the fact that they this is also something that they are they do regularly they're going to have a framework that they would customize for us i wouldn't think that would be
124very time consuming for them to do so i would think that um by early february you know just guessing it seems like they'd be able to do it that's you know that's the whole month of december the whole month of january so it seems like that would be reasonable i just want us to keep in mind that board self-evaluation tool because that's concerning so any more discussion on this do we need to separate out the travel expenses and approve that too you kind of added it in but that's kind of almost a separate thing also it was part of our notion okay okay so miss satterfield would you like to do you want to the travel expenses well i i guess i was concerned if she was trying to move the um evaluation out to
125me the travel expenses definitely goes with the search i mean that definitely fits with it if it's more if we're moving a different motion for the evaluation i really don't care so if there's no substitute motion i'll go with the motion that was presented earlier um i moved that we purchased the superintendent evaluation tool at the cost of fifteen hundred dollars in any additional travel costs for candidates so we have a motion by mrs satterfield and i believe miss bounds did you second that okay so with no other discussion all in favor say i any opposed no one opposed motion carries 12i discussion and possible action on knox county board of education policy c121 director of schools qualifications and selection so motion by ms satterfield a second by miss bounds do we have any more
126discussion what what exactly would we be voting on just to accept like what i guess we actually probably could remove it could have been removed from the agenda um if anybody had anything that they wanted to change and nobody liked it yeah it was just to clarify it was on there last week in case we did want to make any changes but no changes were made okay so moving on item 12j consideration of a resolution proposing a survey for potential learning cottages for cova 19 related masking we do have public forum for this agenda item um is helena rego here yet did she come all right so chia saucer i'm sorry i butchered that um if you can tell us your correct form in your name and you have three minutes to speak it is
127not the first time it has been butchered stacias lesser knox county good evening madam chair madame vice chair and board the reason i support and feel so passionate about sending an open-ended survey with an additional comment section to currently enrolled parents is due to some remarks made by a board member in response to my criticism of the inability of the board to actively listen to parents find compromise and implement a plan for all knox county students the member said and i quote you will not find that listed in the state law regarding the school board duties and responsibilities end quote i disagree that is the job is to find compromise for all students can anyone here today answer what accommodations have the plaintiffs asked for what were their requests and were they denied prior to
128the lawsuit and what is the end result that these plaintiffs or the judge have for knox county schools the term learning cottage has been used at hardin valley elementary school since portables arrived on campus this is always what we have called them please send a survey to the currently enrolled parents and students to let them tell you what they want for illness mitigation in schools to keep their children safe a concern last week was that parents will assume with a survey that it will be implemented regardless yet surveys for the future superintendent will not guarantee that they will have brown hair have a doctorate of education on december 2nd an entire day is set aside for community engagement to hire the superintendent the parents are not able to give input on the well-being of our
129children for what is going on now in our schools on november 3rd not one of you offered to work together to improve the only idea that has been brought to the table to get us out of this mess that we have been thrown into this is a non-partisan board and i ask that you find compromise in order to help our children another concern was cost as of november 4th there were 31 unfulfilled educational assistant positions in knox county this gives the board roughly 580 thousand dollars of unused salary to make program and programs available for the students interested in a hybrid or a high risk virtual option additionally the unused salary could be used as hiring incentives to fill some of these empty positions that are so desperately needed please stop sending the legal department
130to ask for appeals that are clearly going nowhere instead send a well-researched proposal that gets all students back into the classroom with their beloved teachers peers and much needed fun finally please do this for our kids this is what they need thank you that concludes um public forum for this agenda item [Music] i said do we have a motion to approach a motion to approve this i make a motion to approve item j second so there's a motion by ms henderson in a second by ms horn ms henderson yeah i just wanted to talk about this a little bit more since there seems to be a little bit misunderstanding about this resolution um i know one question that i got last week was is this legal i'm doing something that you know is breaking the
131law and i just wanted to put on the record the law department was kind enough to come up with a memo that they circulated to everybody earlier today and i just wanted to read the first couple sentences of that the issue presented whether setting up alternative learning sites for virtual students with the medical condition that places them at higher risk of complications from covid19 violates idea ada 504 or other related laws short answer no so long as kcs provides an environment that is staffed appropriately and allows for an equal or greater number of students without disabilities to utilize the alternative learning locations which is all set up in the resolution you know at the end of the day we the judge has said we have a gap so we have in-person and we have virtual
132and he's saying we have this gap and his solution right now is to mask everyone when we need to be working on ways to fill that hole and fill that hole for our 60 000 students right now this is just asking for a survey it asks the question who's interested it costs zero dollars from kcs it helps come up with a plan and it's something that we can bring back to the judge the law department has gone back multiple times to remove this order but the board has taken no action we haven't brought any resolutions we haven't tried to fix any of our programs to alleviate this issue meanwhile other large districts that are more diverse are lifting their mandates broward county florida is lifting theirs on november 20th hamilton county lifted theirs on monday
133so i'm just trying to find a solution to take back to the judge that can help alleviate this problem so our kids are in a mass or at least the rest of the school year or into 2023. thank you i don't know who was first i think miss films was okay i was just going to say that after receiving the q a for miss henderson today and the communication from the law department which was very helpful i intend to vote affirmatively for miss henderson's proposal mrs warren thank you madam chair um i i too am planning to vote for ms henderson's proposal and as i said last week i appreciate you bringing something out of the box to to review um you know this the the concern that i have is one that will have
134to we would have to then look at if we decide to we want to go forward and that's what the speaker mentioned the lack of educational assistance that's that's not good that we have all these vacancies because those are actually the folks who would be doing the job that's the the funding would go to um educational assistance which is what we we are lacking already so that's my concern is how how that would work out but at the stage we are now what you're asking for is a survey which um as you said costs nothing so i i'm willing to support that and i i think that it'll be interesting to see what what we get back from that survey so i intend to support it also thank you miss ellen thank you madam chair
135i feel like it's very disingenuous and unfair to our parents for us as a board to send out a survey for a program that we know cannot be implemented in a timeline that would make a difference it makes those parents think that this is something that can happen within this school year when we all know that there's no portable classroom that can just suddenly go up and certainly not within the school year i mean even looking at at the cost it's not in our budget we need to figure out where that money is going to come from but that's not even that's not even relevant because we're asking parents to tell us whether they want to do something that we know we can't do and that's just not fair to those parents and i i'd
136like to ask mr oakes again to tell us how long what kind of timeline is he here yeah okay anybody anybody can tell us what kind of timeline would it take even for one portable classroom what would it take for us to determine the site have that site cleared and put in that portable classroom what would be the timeline for that thank you the biggest issue that we're facing right now is the actual availability of the building units we have two that are scheduled to be installed at hardin valley elementary school they were ordered in the end of october they're not scheduled to arrive on site until the first week of february and so the biggest issue that we have from a time from a constraint is being able to get our hands on available
137buildings we don't have portable sitting right now that are not being used because that's what we were looking at was did we have ones that we could relocate there are none in the system that aren't being currently utilized okay so if we put out this survey got all our survey results back came back to the board um got mr mcpherson to figure out where and how we're going to pay for these and then ordered them we're looking at the end of the school year before we would even have the buildings right i believe that's a true state thank you very much yes ms brown um yes a couple of things so if this appeal in the sixth circuit fails we're looking into next year being still amassed according to judge greer so i don't think
138it's unreasonable to at least pursue this however i know you've referred to learning cottage but last week after yeah last week after the board meeting i talked to mr oaks about the availability of space within some of our schools and there's not a lot but there is some space available in some schools so depending on the survey if there were not a tremendous amount of people that indicated they wanted to do this we might could use that available space that's in the schools with separate entrances for these kids to be able to access it so i don't think we shut it down just because we know thank you i mean my school had my district leads and the number of learning cottages in knox county so i'm very familiar with how much that cost and
139how many there are but i don't think we can just not do the survey because of that because like i said if the sixth circuit denies this then it could be spring of next year and we certainly would have time to get cottages in here but in the meantime we might could utilize some of the space in knox county schools according to mr oaks in my conversation miss henderson thank you madam chair yes that's correct and you know we may be talking about 20 kids i've talked to some experts they're saying maybe 25 kids if it's 500 no it's not doable but it's worth trying i haven't seen any other solutions come to the board are you talking about moving all of those 25 children to one place from the whole county we're going to
140see what this survey this is just for a survey which costs nothing to see what information we get back and it's another tool that we can have in our tool belt to take back to the judge to show him that we are trying and we see his the issues that he has with the program currently not being ada compliant and how we're trying to elevate that to make it ada compliant according to his order ms warren thank you madam chair this may be in the information and i may be forgetting it the survey does it it does include what school the student is zoned for or attends is that correct okay because i think that would be important to know so if it's not in there i would say let's make sure it's in there
141so that we know when we're getting a response it can be an anonymous response but it definitely we would need to know as far as zoning so i i have a question as well so is this a survey that would be going out to all students it would be going out to everybody so that way we can see who's medically fragile but it's also for everybody who is uncomfortable and wants to still be in a mass situation and we have to open it up according to law to everybody as well is that correct mr dupler that's a good question um so the i mean the survey would be designed to gauge interest and and like you said you're looking for the medically fragile but uh but because there there does have to be a general
142education component it certainly makes sense to open it up to see who would be actually interested so yes yes and we had talked um mr deepler and i've had so many conversations so mr doubler tell me if i'm incorrect in my understanding um when we talked about this it would give priority to those who are medically fragile since that is in judge greer's order and then um it would open up almost to a lottery system to those other equal amount of spots to the general education population thank you madam chair thank you miss anderson so i i mean there's a couple of different options on on on ways to carry it out but the thought is that it would at least be similar in some aspects to the voluntary preschool program uh which is carried
143out in the way that you that you mentioned there's the there's the special ed component and then the general ed component is more of the more of the lottery due to the interest so thank you okay miss owen thank you has the administration had a chance to consider where they would take those education assistants from would they come from the zoned school what program would lose the the assistance that we have to cover those classes i think what we need to do of course to get the survey back and then make that determination once we see how many people are are interested um no you know their space i think at carnes high school maybe their space at holston middle school i don't know doug are you aware of additional space at any of our
144facilities other than thank you but it just depends on how many kids and again we'll do whatever the board votes here we'll make sure we implement it will there be anything on the survey asking how far parents are willing to allow their students to travel to be able to be a part of that i mean i think we could include that in the survey okay so is there any more discussion on this and mike i'm i'm fine with the survey in asking parents i just would want to make sure that we are very careful in how it's worded because i don't you know it if there's a large response it probably isn't going to be doable and you know my big concerns from the staffing side of it because we are struggling to we have
145vacant positions now throughout the district that we're struggling to feel so this i don't that that's where my big concerns are yeah with it no i completely understand those concerns definitely and i think you know it's kind of two-fold it's can we do this if it is manageable you know it's a solution but it's also a tool to bring back whether it's judge grier or the appellate court of look here's what we're doing right now we're doing nothing and you know we don't really have anything to bring to the court so it's another piece of hey here's what we're doing we heard you and you know we're trying to figure out a solution from the board and in good faith yeah i would just want to be very clear and when the survey went out
146that it is just to gauge interest in that you know there might not be we may not have the resources or even the staffing to do it so that there weren't any expectations that it was going to happen because we sent out a survey i agree it should be you know the message that this is to gauge interest for sure okay so any other discussion so we have an emotion miss henderson made the motion um did miss horn seconded okay so we probably need to do a roll call vote on this do you think ms satterfield miss owen no miss babb no miss horn yes miss henderson yes miss bounds yes mr mcmillan no miss christie that's four yes votes three no votes and one pass miss satterfield did you want to change your vote
147no it's four yes votes four no votes so the machine carries [Music] no no it doesn't have to have a majority but you have to have a majority okay sorry sorry miss anderson it was a second of glimmer yeah okay sorry so the motion fails right okay so we will move on to public forum satterfield yes we have four people signed up for public forum first we have jennifer taylor please state your name county of residence and you have three minutes to speak thank you jennifer taylor knox county following judge grier's decision i found myself at a protest for the first time in my life fighting for my rights as a parent and for the freedom of choice for my daughters there i met an amazing group of parents who want nothing more than to
148defend the freedoms outlined in the constitution we didn't know each other and were from all types of backgrounds but none of that mattered what mattered was our common goal not anti-mask but pro-freedom of choice that means both the freedom for your child to wear a mask as well as the freedom of my child to say no every parent should be able to make that choice with their child unfortunately there are some on the other side that don't feel the same who believe that peaceful protests where we carry american flags and signs against mandates and walk our children to school shouldn't be allowed who believe a group of parents and children who move to the side of the walkway to say the pledge of allegiance is intimidating who when told by school resource officers we are
149doing nothing wrong decide to find another way to attack and get rid of us that attack came in social media a place built for lies and bullying a place that can destroy lives as you all know anything goes on social media one person can post a photo and say whatever they want about that photo despite knowing what they're writing is a lie and others will take that story and run and that's just what happened last month as a protest group we all carry our phones and take videos during protests to document what we're doing for our kids how our kids are treated when they enter the school and the harmful actions of those on the other side which have yet to be reported in any news stories in this instance a photo was taken of
150a member of our group as he dropped off his child at farragut middle and was posted to twitter by someone who knows he has a child at the school what do you think happened to that post social media took over someone responded calling him a pedophile then that got pushed along to others with comments just as outrageous to include someone posting a quote they received from a board member sitting here tonight so not only are complete strangers who know nothing about this man commenting that he is a pedophile a pervert and a predator after he just dropped his child at school but now we have a school board member weighing in well that man i happen to know personally that he has raised two beautiful strong intelligent and independent girls because he's been my husband
151for 18 years do you think he deserved what happened to him on social media because he was fighting for their freedom do you think our kids deserve to have their dad called a predator do you think a board member should have weighed in on this this hatred and vitriol from the other side has to stop we're not against those who choose to mask and despite lies in multiple news stories we treat everyone who walks by us with respect both masked and unmasked but we won't be intimidated into stopping our fight so to any media here tonight who's more intimidating a group of concerned parents walking to school together with their children or those on the other side who curse at us in front of our children and give us the finger as they drive by
152and attack an innocent man on social media next we have hannah taylor hannah you all have three minutes please state your name in county of residence my name is hannah taylor and i live in knox county um first i would like to thank those of you on the school board who have fought for our rights in regards to masks and tried to tonight pass programs that would help is reassuring and inspiring to know that some of you are fighting for students and parents to make their own medical decisions and not have them forced on us by the government or a judge currently there are 62 active cases of coven 19 among students and staff in knox county schools that is just 0.1 percent in the united states in the last two years only 474 school-aged
153children have died obviously that's not a good number but thankfully in knox county there has been zero meanwhile there is a bigger problem that has been ignored depression and anxiety in kids grew by 50 percent during covid there are over 2 000 suicides a year in the u.s in kids under 19 and in 2020 the suicide attempts by teen girls increased by 50 percent in 2020 the cdc director said that there has been another cost that we have seen particularly in high schools we are seeing sadly far greater suicides now than we are deaths from coven 19. i know from personal experience that isolation segregation masks lost education and threats of mandatory vaccines has hurt children far more than covet has i've heard from teachers principals and from some school board members that you can't
154do anything about it because you will be in contempt of court to me that's fancy for saying that you're afraid of consequences you can do something you can stand up and do what is right for the most people history has made something clear change is not made by compliant people thank god for martin luther king change is not made by weak people thank god for abraham lincoln we aren't asking you to stand up for something radical we are asking you to stand up for freedom for the choice to wear a mask or not i've heard so many times that it's just a mask no it's not it is government overreach and if we don't fight now we are setting a precedent and making it easier for the government to continue to push us around in
155the future we have a good example right here in knox county where sheriff tom spangler wrote president biden a letter refusing to comply with the enforcement of a vaccine mandate telling him i will not comply with this unconstitutional order sheriff spangler defied the president of the united states surely you can defy a judge for the health and education of us will you stand up or will you make parents teachers and children like me do it for you as sheriff spangler closed his letter we are still the land of the free because of the brave please be brave as well thank you next we have william taylor william taylor william you'll have three minutes to speak please state your name and county residence my name is william taylor and i'm here from knox county i'm here
156tonight to expose some of the lies and show you what the media hasn't really showed you you may have seen this photo posted on the internet the one my wife referred to a little while ago this is a picture of me that was posted on twitter and i'm not a social media person but this is what was posted by an activist parent who spoke at the board last month and attached to that tweet they said why are we allowing this man to video children outside fms student entrance while they while they walk into school at drop off and she claims i don't have any students there's my two daughters right there this picture was uh taken outside of the school as we walked in and this parent who claims that they uh their children are
157so intimidated and can't be around these people well this parent is uh is videoing us constantly out there with her child behind her the whole time her child so intimidated that spoke to the board last week so we say the pledge of allegiance she posts this picture of us according to her blocking the entrances to uh the schools to fargo intermediate school in this case and she goes right up behind somebody take a picture to make it look like it well this is the actual picture of what it looks like when we were saying the pledge of allegiance out there there's plenty of room for people to walk by and people were clearly walking by but what you'll also see here is a picture out front of farragut intermediate with her once again taking video
158and picture getting up in our face and taking pictures with her daughter who does not go to fargo intermediate who's so afraid and intimidated by everybody that she's parading through so the lie that she posted prompted a firestorm as my wife mentioned is that here's some comments this is only a few is this a pedophile you are allowing to video our children why hasn't this potential predator been identified and questioned we may need federal help can we give the students water guns filled with urine for you know self-defense arrest that pervert from taking pics of those kids and the poster the original one that posted it the parent activist she went on and liked every single one of those comments this is the one that's getting quoted in the newspaper knox news lastly someone my
159wife mentioned on the board here had chimed in and weighed in too saying if someone can get a video of him and show exactly how long he's there i can do something well miss owen here i am what something were you referring to i'm done mr dupler since i've been called out may i respond a board member's allowed to respond yeah thank you i would like to please what we have been sent over and over are still pictures and we have parents claiming that there are different people there for extended periods of time but we have nothing that shows that they are there for extended periods of time we only have still pictures and still pictures don't show us that and so i ask if you can send us a video we can do something
160well they haven't sent us a video and so there is nothing to do because there's nothing that shows that you were there for any extended period of time thank you that's comforting to hear from you i do appreciate that although i wish you hadn't weighed in on it thank you mr taylor your time is defeated next we'll have sam fitzpat patrick good evening madam chair members of the board my name's sam fitzpatrick i live in knox county with my wife and our four children three of them are in knox county public schools one of them soon will be the reason i'm here tonight is to ask you to please block access from student computers to youtube i think this is a reasonable proposal and i think there's three reasons i want to give you why
161i would like you to consider this number one youtube is hugely distracting as anyone who's been on youtube can tell you one v one video leads to another every time you watch a video ten more recommendations pop up and to a 13 year old 11 year old or eight-year-old that's trying to make the choice between doing delta math and watching clips from uh you know marvel avengers it's very very difficult to keep them focused and on task the second reason is that there's objectionable content on youtube and i know the school's filters catch the worst of it but they don't catch all of it and i just want to give you one example of what i saw in my daughter's youtube video history it was a video something to the effect of how to look
162and dress like you're 21 years old and featured in this video was a young girl maybe eight ten years old wearing a miniskirt sitting with her legs crossed in a very adult pose i don't want my eight-year-old daughter to have access to videos like this on her school issued laptop the third reason why i think this is a good idea is that youtube leads to excessive screen time and my wife and i like a lot of parents we really try and limit our kids access to screen time that's for good reason there's studies out there that say excessive screen time leads to interferes with sleep it leads to anxiety it leads to depression it leads to health problems like obesity there's one study that was cited by the in the journal of american pediatrics from
1632019 it was about tv usage but i think it applies equally to other screens as screen time increases academic performance decreases all this is to say that we know technology is part of our lives it's part of our children's lives but let's make technology work for us not against us i would ask you to please consider a top to bottom review of what online content is available to children and on school issued laptops and to please block access to objectionable or distracting content thank you very much for your time thank you madam chair that concludes public forum okay so meetings to turn you