WCS Board Work Session 2021-05-13

001e e e good evening and welcome to the monthly work session for the Williamson County School Board this meeting is in session um I want to thank Deputy Phil hunt for being here with us thank you Deputy hunt um and we will quickly proceed to our agenda uh but first of all I just want to um talk about our parameters for the night these are no different than than they normally are um the first is that as we are asking questions because this is our discussion meeting um that everyone gets us a chance to speak before we repeat speakers uh if you want to speak please raise your hand and I will note that and then call your name as your turn comes up um would ask that everyone um in their questions and in

002their demeanor tonight be respectful to each other and also be respectful to staff and um we've got a lot to talk about tonight so we'll go ahead and get started uh the first first item that we will be looking at tonight are the items on the consent agenda does anybody have any concerns or questions about any of these items I don't see any then we'll move on to our next item which is the superintendent report uh Mr Golden all right thank you madam chair uh like I sometimes do I am going to start out with a what I think is a great little uh pictoral history of the the school year uh with some positive some new things that we've just uh gotten information on since the board last met after we uh we walked

003through that we're going to talk about three things I'm going to talk about health and our safety plan uh then next we are going to spend a little bit of time uh talking talking about fostering Healthy Solutions and then I will spend some time talking about curriculum because I know those are some just in time uh questions that many of you have uh so with that Brian if you would let's get us started uh We've titled this portrait of excellence and you know our mission and our vision to to focus on academics arts and Athletics and so we thought it was worth a little bit of glance at uh at where we where we have been this year one neat thing that we received uh information on just a few days after the April board

004meeting was the US News and World Report uh high school rankings came out there are 385 public high schools ranked in US News and World Report uh they they rank I think every single High School uh and all 10 of our high schools are in the top 177% of that 385 the top 10 four of our schools are in that in that top 10 they're the only top 10 schools that are comprehensive high schools that don't have an application process every other High School in the top 10 is a magnet or a specified academy uh for students in the state of Tennessee y'all that's incredible uh the only comprehensive high schools in the top 10 and we had four uh and um I I'll go ahead and name them because I know you all are

005wondering it was brenwood Ravenwood Franklin and Paige in the next tier the top 20 we had four more high schools in that next group of the top 10 uh and that's Nolanville Independence Summit and Centennial so in the top 20 of the 385 public schools in the state we had eight and I'm so excited about that that was so so so great to see so so we're very excited about that and y'all that is worth shouting from the rooftops that ranking so we're excited about that I want to give you a little bit while you look at some photos um during the pandemic our students teachers and staff they've stayed focused on instruction and on learning uh we've done Hands-On projects we've done Chromebook work uh you can see some really neat examples of what

006we've done robotics all those things that ought to be happening on campus during the during the year uh and we are very proud of that I hope you are too uh in addition to that uh we had a first for the district the highest ever number of AP Capstone diplomas we had 49 students this year year earn the AP Capstone diploma uh and that uh that is four high schools of total 49 fa viiew Independence page and Ravenwood are all doing the AP Capstone and just so you know the Capstone uh designation for students requires them to take both an AP seminar and AP research class uh in addition to that they must score three or higher on on both of those exams Plus on four additional AP exams so 49 students manag that uh

007we're so proud of them and that's that's pretty incredible we have some awards and I am only going to list for you uh some students who are competing at the national level right now uh on uh at some of those National competitions we have 27 27 different students or teams representing Fairview Middle Fairview High page middle and Page high in the National technology Student Association competition 27 students representing us at that national competition students from Spring Station Bill and Summit High are going to be representing the state of Tennessee and US of course in the National History Day competition in five different categories 10 Deca students from four of our schools sprintwood paage Summit and Ravenwood are going to compete in nine different categories at the national competition students from brenwood paage Franklin and Ravenwood

008are going to compete in seven categories in the National Academy of TV Arts and Science Student Competition five teams from brenwood middle Woodland Middle and Ravenwood high are going to compete in the National Science Olympian another national competition uh for the first time ever Franklin high is going to send uh a team to the National JC leadership and academic bow so we're excited for them and looking forward to seeing how they do and then finally teams from Brentwood middle and Ravenwood High qualified in the world Vex robotics competition those are just those are National competitions that our that our students are able to compete in right now got some more photos of those uh of those competition winners as part of that performances you know Carol always uses phrases like the show must go on

009and and phrases like that and y'all the shows did go on I know many of you went to some of these performances especially at the middle school level just this past the past two weekends we had a lot of great theater performances we were able to get those theater performances in and what a contrast uh from last spring when uh you know when across the state of Tennessee everything was shut down so we're so proud of our students being able to to to perform in uh in in these uh in these Arts you can see if you look at those you know that that extended from the fall to the spring and we were able to get in those performances in uh in in music as well Athletics you all know some of this already

010uh that uh that um we've had to reschedule some games and matches especially this fall football uh was completed we had Summit win the state championship uh we had competitions throughout the school year uh and there were times you know last spring people worried it wasn't going to happen but uh we were able to make it happen and I'm so proud of them and know that all our students had those experiences that will stick with them for a lifetime so we're we're so proud of that and finally our Traditions have continued we had the homecoming praise uh bands performed found creative ways to perform uh for our for our families we were able to have uh prom you see the tug of war with our elementary students a lot of neat things going on uh

011through through the Traditions that our schools have international day at kinro we're able to do all those all those things and I'm so proud of uh everything that we've been able to accomplish this year finally prom prom happened this year uh and it it's so neat to see those things those things that really just drive home uh you know what what the camaraderie school is all about so I wanted to thank you I want to thank our students our faculty for putting that hard work in and and I know from time to time someone some of might say you know you're too positive uh we we do the hard work here we do the hard work here but when we have opportunities to celebrate we need to celebrate and uh so I'm very proud of

012us getting through this school year in an excellent fashion we talked about it in April we're talking about it again today uh and it it for many many folks it was a hard year but I hope that you all see that for so many of our students this was a successful year I do want to let you know that teap t and ready was completed um we have been told that we should expect those scores May 20th the last day of school is May 21st teachers are working you know the next Monday which is the 24th if those scores come in like the state expects we expect to be able to add those to our students uh to our students some record to their GPA and you all remember as a reminder uh those scores

013can count to increase a students's grade but not decrease a students's grade this year so we're very curious to see how students did on those uh on those scores I have a quick question about that does does will the results of the scores add a second round of invites to the summer program if someone who wasn't caught with whatever metrics you were using prior scores not proficient will they be invited this late in the game or how will that work so we we don't intend to make a specific invite unless it's a phone call here and there to double check with a family uh we do have some spots in particular classes still available for students uh and so there's that possibility um you know we used our screener at the elementary level ases web

014uh to to send those invitations out what we do know and what we have committed with our principles at the middle and elementary level is if there's an opportunity and there's a spot to fill we'll give someone that opportunity are we going to press someone at this stage no we're not but but there is there are a handful of spots still available we have 10 different sites uh for the summer school program uh and uh and if there is an opportunity we'll take it and since you mentioned that Miss prya I I do want to let you know that we have about 1600 or so students districtwide who have committed to uh to the summer program it skews very heavily towards Elementary School students uh a lot more Elementary School students than middle Common Sense

015tells you that I think right it's going to be hard to get a middle school student to say yes I want to do that I have had conversations with my peers other superintendents around and that's fairly common that's what many of us are finding this year with that new summer school program that a lot more Elementary I will also tell you that um uh we anticipate uh about a a three to2 ratio of teachers to teachers assistance so we're going to have a lot more teachers assistance in that program that we normally have on a in a regular school day so that's that that's the little slideshow presentation okay and Madam chair I know you and I talked and Mr prey actually uh hit that pretty well because um I'm open to any questions about

016that before we hit the uh the health and safety planning discussion don't see any other questions all right next um we have on the agenda um and we made sure everyone saw that there was a reference to it and uh want to thank Mr galbert for asking us just a double check to make sure there was a reference on the agenda safety planning after the 20 20 2021 school year uh and so I'm going to give you the short version and then give you the explanation short version is we uh intend to switch from mask required to mask recommended or encouraged uh FR next Friday the 21st when school lets out so that's the switch uh and so let me give you a little bit more uh meat on that's on on those bones the

017board voted for that return to school plan back in July and you all know that that included the Mas requirement gave me the flexibility to make changes our biggest oncampus adjustment uh over the course of this year uh was switching from that metric that got us started if you all recall that very first week uh to realizing that we could adjust more and I specifically remember Mr Cash and Mr Mitchell at one of those early meetings saying can we drill down can we drill down a little bit more and you know to try to maximize keeping students on campus and we were able to do that at the grade levels we were able to do that at individual schools and pretty quickly we learned that that metric is a good look to see what's going

018on in our community but what was happening in our buildings was able to drive us a little bit more so that was a huge change in the fall uh um more recently in the spring about six weeks ago we eliminated the mask requirement Outdoors because there was a big change so as an example already with the outdoor graduations there's there are no mask required um because we were able to make that change um and and so I see two big buckets after Mike Fletcher and Mandy Thompson our our nurse director and Gary Anderson brought this to me I see I see two big reasons two two tipping reasons why we are not going to ask you to vote to extend that school reopening plan and allow us to just switch uh number one for the

019summer um we're going from Full campuses with every class full where we can't we know we can't fully socially distance to about 95% of our students being done for the summer about 1,600 in summer school we have a few hundred doing extended school year our numbers are are are really low and our pupil teacher ratio is H 15 to1 in the summer program so we're able to spread students out more in the classroom and we've concluded that the uh that the guidance that still is out there recommending that we require mask in school indoors is not applicable to what we're going to be doing in the summer so U our our professionals have made the recommendation that we we in the math requirement today school RS now uh another big one is the vaccines are

020now available you know you know adults have taken them have had that opportunity just this I think this week I'm trying to remember if it was Monday or Tuesday uh the announce was that students who are 12 and up children who are 12 and up can take the vaccine we expect over the course of the summer that projection is going to continue and we don't project a need for this in the fall we don't project a need for a safety plant in the fall I recognize that could change if it changes we'll bring it to you but we're not recommending that we ask for any vote related to that um and so so so those are the big ones and of course I have Gary and Fletch and mayy here to answer some detailed questions

021finally I do want to address quarantine Madam chair and that will that will finish up my comments on this we don't know when that will end uh we asked the health department about that we got an answer today that they're still doing that but what I can tell you is that um with our students being socially distanced in the summer uh we are not going to do the seating charts the seating charts were designed to address the closeness and who might be close to someone with a positive case uh and we've had that conversation with them to let them know you know they'll be doing their their their investigation and certainly want to honor that but but based on what we project um in our summer program at those 10 sites um we don't see

022the need um for that um and uh Madam chair that's that's where we are with a help we expect to we expect to change and um next Friday got to give one extra addition things are changing fast just a couple of hours ago we saw some reports that the CDC uh has has has just had a press conference where the uh director of the CDC talked about mask and vaccines and so Gary and his staff are looking at that right now if we are able to make a change even in this last week of school uh based on those changes we will still continue to make those changes so I am open to questions thank you Mr Golden um Mr um just quickly I'm it's difficult for me to see you so when you raise

023your hand raise it high okay uh we do have um three people who have requested to speak missa yeah hi so I am of course going to bring up the fact that we told parents from the beginning um that we were going to follow CDC guidelines and this came up at the March meeting where um people were being asked to make the choice for next year whether they were going in person or online and many people switched from online to iners based on the fact that we were saying at that point we will continue to follow CDC guidelines and so I'm encouraged by the fact that the CDC like you mentioned today has updated their guidelines for people with vaccinations and things like that I just um don't think that the elementary age students will

024have access to a vaccine by the Fall so I'm not 100% comfortable saying it's okay for them to have masks optional if they don't have access to it yet so is there any data or anything I I do also appreciate the fact that our district has kind of led the charge in dialing it down to our local area to say yes CDC guidelines are for the whole nation and so we have to figure out what works here it's speaking to our local health department and so maybe that's a part of it but do we have that data can you share those numbers to say why it's safe to make that accepting you know masks optional for everybody at this point for fall yeah well number one we're projecting that the need won't be there based

025on the speed with which things are changing um but to your question about data I would like to ask uh Mr Anderson or or Mike Fletcher or man Thompson to give you some other some additional detail Gary yes can you hear me no no where is he the back no no that's okay we can't hear any of that [Music] they're a little bit low we really need the microphone since we are broadcasting can you hear it now yes all right right every week actually every day I track number of case where they are what schools Etc this week we are actually half what our platform good news for us since our we have switched there's been more middle school students Believe It or Not than high school students who have come down with Co so

026we're thinking that's going to be really a really good indication of when 12y olds not also today in our research found out the F about by September is going to ask for emergency authorization for children from two to 11 to get vaccines we're already already testing on that we're asking asking for that Mr Mr Anderson I'm sorry your microphone's going out again Mark says I need to do c right Mr Anderson you can come use my mic actually be better off just I'll slide over and let him speak at mine okay can you hear me yes all right the trends are all heading in the right direction for us right now to be able to to uh say that we recommend and not require The Masks the other items that we do that we normally

027do as far as cleaning and trying to make sure everything is set up right in the schools we're going to still continue to do that there's one aspect that no one has really brought any light to that they that don't you don't even know about and that is our HV vac systems are so Advanced that we exceed all the CDC and the requirements that are required of us to do for air flow we also have some filters that have some micro technology and then to take elements out of the air that also help and we haven't really talked about that but the CDC added that's one of the most important things now is to have that type of of capability and we have had that all along but our numbers have dropped so much that

028as of today in the county the whole County not just our schools there's only 244 cases of covid right now so we're seeing this trend and it has dropped every day now for the last three four weeks those numbers have dropped we're seeing these Trends being very positive for us we we and because we have looked at every situation not just County we've looked at not just Federal not State not County we we've looked at it school by school class by class program by program and we've been able to make decisions and get students who or adults who have Co out of the classroom as soon as possible the other item that we have found is since we had our um vaccination right now we haven't had anyone any adult in our schools have covid

029that have a vaccination and the number number was only five last week total and none of them had vaccinations so we're seeing that these vaccinations really work also want to bring up the number of if I can find the right sheet here the number of cases here it is we had last week H sorry trying to find the right Pages 32 schools had zero cases of covid 30 two of our schools 15 had one or two cases and only three schools had more than two cases in those schools everything has trended the way we've been wanting it to Trend we also have an awesome nursing staff not every district has the luxury of having a nurse in every program Mandy Thompson heads that up Fletch works with them to make sure things are taken care

030of and there's one other aspect and I really wasn't aware of this until recently we have 12 of our nurses are certified and many it is national board certified School nurses we have 12 of them there's only 36 in the whole state so you can see we've got the makings to do the things right and make sure we can do the best job we can that we can take the step to to make a change great my next question is I went on the CDC website just to see what the most up toate for K12 schools information was um and they had the five Basics masks distancing washing hands um I forget number four and number five is quarantine and contact tracing can you explain why oh and then underneath it it said if you're

031going to prioritize anything it should be mass and the distance those should be the two big ones so can you just give some information as to why we can we're we're focusing on the masks and making them optional rather than taking away contact tracing and quarantine which I feel like is a bigger burden on the students and a bigger burden on the teachers to provide education while kids are out of class things like that well the contact tracing is not up to us as far as that that's a responsibility of the State Health Department under laws written in the 1800s so that's in place as far as as the mask goes is one of the main things that information we've really looked hard today trying to find if they've updated yet they have not updated

032that since back in uh back in the winter so we're looking for an update we reached out to the state we reached out to the local health department and they said there have been no updates yet there is indication that there's going to be some loosening but no one really knows what it is yet as far as how that goes um we we feel we still feel very confident that what what we're doing and what we have been able to do will will still be good for our kids and our in our staff and then one last question to clarify kind of a procedural question I know when I was first elected on the board I had a really hard time differentiating between operational and what the District administration handles and um policy which is

033what the board handles and and the budget and things like that and so I from correct me if I'm wrong but what I'm understanding is if we were to want to implement a mask mandate the State Board of Education has said that that would require the school board of the District to create policy and then take a vote and you could legally have a mask mandate but we're not going to do that because you all are saying that it's looking like it's safe and okay to not do it so we don't have to take a vote at all because we're not going to implement policy unless someone calls it to a vote am I correct Mr Golden answered that but okay what we what our team did was recommendations that right you can hand so

034our understanding of what the state board has said on that question you asked is that um it would require a board vote to require mask and they would recommend that you have a policy in place to require okay so um Dana I know Dana is participating by Zoom so miss OS Brooks just I always just wanted to get you to double check me when I give answers like that yes uh superintendent golden is correct the guidance that was sent out by tsba to board members was that the um school board has the authority for a mask mandate and their recommendation if we were going to have a mask mandate would be to set that in policy uh so your character characterization is correct since the recommendation from staff is um that mask be recommended or

035optional legally there's not a requirement at this time for a policy obviously um we were talking about the summer if things were to change the numbers began to go back up or the recommendations from staff differ that would require a mass mandate then we would bring that back to the board so that the board could vote on it great thank you that's all thank you Mr Pria next is Mr Hall I'm sorry I couldn't hear you sir I was just alerting you to rickp being that is chivalrous that's just what we were talking about at the start of the meeting uh Mr Wimberly thank you well first of all I have to say it is good to see to really see everybody here today that's exciting uh but I'm sorry I'm confused so I think

036you're saying that mask will continue to be a requirement through this school year unless the CDC changes its recommendation in the next few days yes sir okay all right so for the summer for the 1600 students you're saying that you are recommending that or that mask will be optional but you're recommending mask yes okay and for the start of next school year did I hear you say back to normal we have no projection at this point so uh we we number one we don't anticipate that we will ask to require at most we anticipate an encouragement or a recommendation or an option um I do believe that perpetually from now on mask will be an option you know nobody's ever going to stop someone from wearing a mask um so so we don't have any

037recommendation to have any require ired safety plan in place along the lines of what we had this year and it's because we are projecting that the vaccines and the CDC guidelines will have evolved so much over the summer that it won't be necessary so as of the end of the school year which is how many days next Friday next Friday there's no mas requirement in Williamson County Schools that's correct and that could even change if health department and CDC recommendations change in the next few days yes as you all know we've made it a point when there's a change in the CDC guidelines to change uh and so I don't want to sit here and tell you that we 100% are requiring them for for the next week and a half if for some reason

038the director of the CDC makes a change tomorrow I don't think that's the appropriate thing to do so we are requiring them through Friday uh unless there's a unless you hear otherwise okay thank you I'm sorry no I get that's that's a good good clarifying question Mr gal thank you m couple sorry I put this up for a reason I I didn't want to breathe into the mic the um so I asked and I asked the health department I ask you guys to send some questions to the health department um they didn't answer my questions but they gave me some talking points on vaccines contact tracing and mass right and so um I guess I'm I guess I'm a little frustrated that for the the lack of the lack of transparency we've asked we've asked

039them to join us for the last two board meetings and they have politely declined um what do we I guess first of all what do what do they think um about us not following their guidance on on this uh on the on the mask in your conversations with them I'll let Gary speak to that we haven't specifically told him that we are we are not following that moving forward the only thing they have said is they are hopeful that we will continue for the rest of this school year because they know things change for us in the summer so that's the only thing I've had and that's that's been from the local but we're not you know we're not following precisely what they say they recommend but we're not we're not following that to the

040letter of the law and that's just we're just moving forward with it because our Trends are different remember CDC Trends are National and we're looking at us and so that's why we're we're making this recommendation feel very comfortable doing it okay well I I mean I'm I'm completely fine I'm I'm actually fine with it I'm just I'm just trying to I'm trying to understand the rationale because um because all year we've said that that we are Educators and they're the health policy experts and in in face of all the data that suggest that everything was doing well that we weren't spreading the the virus in the in the schools and that the ineffectiveness of quarantine and the massive disruption on the education of of quarantine and yet we continue to uh to completely follow we

041we stated as missia said we stated again and again and again that we're following um the CDC guidelines and Tennessee Department of Health recommendations and so I I guess was I'm trying to understand what our what our stance so our stance hasn't been that we're following necessarily that it's that in our Judgment at the time based on some other criteria which seems to be the lack of availability of the vaccine or lack of the number of people that have been vaccinated that seems to be the the criteria that we're using uh for whether or not we're going to follow the the guidelines or not is that fair uh my rationale ultimately after hearing from our professionals is we will have completed the school year and the the guidance is based on school being in session

042and when we go from a full School in session to about 5% or so of our total students scattered around multiple schools then the guidance was not intended for that uh we have honored as much as we could and you remember our goal to be to to to be on campus as much as we safely could and follow what we feasibly could and you all remember if you if you think back we knew on the front end we couldn't be socially distanced and a lot of school districts just stayed out because of that and we recognized that wasn't feasible so we quickly put on put students on campus and did what else we could now we have complet we will have completed the school year followed the guidelines that were designed for being in school

043and in the summer it's different for this fall we project there are going to be so many changes that it's not reasonable for us to come and ask you for a vote to require mask when we don't project it's going to be an issue okay so I guess so so then what is what is the criteria that you are going to base the recommendation to come back to us to have a mass recommendation or a masked mandate again come fall there is no fixed mandate or amount that we're going to look at because like I said we're going to look at our own schools the with everything changing I mean changes daily I mean the stuff from the CDC and us I look at our Trends I look at it by schools and I can't

044say right now well GE if we have a point such and such or this many cases it's going to be trending I'm going to look and see what that looks like and then I'll go to our professional uh professional staff and see what we what we should be doing so you're going to use the data to look at at and and and our professionals are going to make the recommendation we make a recommendation to the superintendent and the administrative staff and and we have always looked at the data the spreadsheet is just a synopsis of two of the data points I use I look at a whole bunch of data points and I look at what's going on school my school if there's say there's a case excuse me where there's two or three or

045four students in one school that have covid we're going to find out why are they coming from different areas are they coming from one event and that that's data points for us to know what we need to do and so that's that's that's how we break it down so so I get that there's data points but what is the what is the measure like there there's got to be an objective measure with all the data that we have like at what point are you going like you you should you should be able to say at at this point we are going to um we we think that this is a like I mean if it's a green yellow red whatever the whatever whatever the whatever the data points are there's got to be there's got

046to be some objective measure or else it's just subjective and it's just based on whatever feels right at the time I mean I think I think everybody everybody deserves to know that people if we're gonna we're going to choose to not follow the CDC guidelines it's fine with me but what are the what are the measures and what are the objective measures that we're going to we are not choosing not to follow the CDC guidelines um ultimately in you know in the context of mass what had what has evolved for us is it would take a board vote so what I'm telling you all right now is we don't project that there's going to be me for it and as I sit here um and you know listening to our professionals looking at the CDC

047guidelines what they're telling me is we don't project that the CDC guidelines are going to be there this fall if they are there that's going to be a significant factor in us bringing that back to you um and and I know we struggled with this all year you know that you know we you you you you asked us a few months ago can you make a decision for for the fall early you know earlier than now so that people can have a chance to decide whether they wanted to be online or not Etc and a few months ago our answer was no we can't but as we sit here now knowing that next week we will have completed the school year what I can tell you is knowing that your return to school plan that

048you all V voted on and approved is it it was for this school year it expired what I can tell you now is we our professionals don't see the need to continue of the Mask requirement because of numbers and because and this is me talking you guys have tons of reasons right we talked about that my conclusion was we're out of school and the whole plan the whole CDC guidelines for school and and the the factors that that led that led that and are gone once school is out and so I can't justify bringing you a request to require mask if you're asking what will trigger us asking you to require mask in the future and I think that may be what you're getting [Music] um I don't know what the health authorities are you

049know I don't I don't know what factors are going to cause them to address it I can speculate is it going to be a variant of the virus is there going to be something else that comes down the pike is there going to be something new that triggers that triggers this again uh I don't know but what I'm hearing from our professionals is with a vaccines efficacy that they've studied they've had conversations with the State Health Department about that the fact that just this week it went from 12 and up with the her immunity discussions that we've had everything I've gotten from our Professionals in consultation with with the state folks is there's no need to plan for that I will give you one other brainstorming thing that we've done it's not directly related to

050that we're talking about we've had this one event that in our professional experience is the First Health event in decades that has triggered this kind of thing maybe ever maybe maybe it's you have to go back to small pox even Polio I I I I can't find stories of schools shutting down there there's some wisdom in US thinking about do we we plan for the next eventuality knowing it's happened once um do we do we have conversations with local Physicians about um do do we get a a local group together as an Advisory board for us to do some prevention work and so we're brainstorming over issues like that as well we're not just saying hey we're done we're moving on so I guess so what it sounds like you're saying is that you're really

051only making a decision on summer and you project that there won't that there won't be a need you're projecting you're actually projecting that the CDC guidelines or the Department of Health recommendations will change but if they don't then are you are you going to be coming back to us and asking us to to put back in place the the mess I mean heard I know I know you're looking for something definitive and I can't give you something definitive because it's the vagaries of Health I I am not going to sit here and say we will ask you for ask if something doesn't change um because there's been so much change I I can't I can't give you that and but but what I can say is what I've told you we don't project it I

052don't think it's reasonable for us to ask you for ma um if you all feel like you need to in June put something on the board agenda to vote to not require them we can have that vote but I'm not recommending that what I'm telling you is I am not recommending that mask but I have to be realistic enough just like and this is the struggle we've had all year hoping for something definitive knowing that that that the pandemic isn't definitive um but what I can tell you is again we have evaluated it based on the CDC guidelines for the school the return to school guidelines doesn't apply this is my these are my words here you would use many other different words doesn't apply to the summer our professionals have said we just don't

053see it don't ask for mask and I respect that okay um can I ask I just want to ask a quick question about quarantine um so we're projecting that quarantine will not happen in the um in the summer because we won't have any close contacts to U by by definition we shouldn't have any close contacts even if we have any positive cases we are required if if if if someone tells us that they have a positive test and sometimes it comes to us sometimes it comes to the health department we're required to tell the health department they then would do their investigation contact the case and and investigate further out if kids ate lunch together that still could be contact Trac but we're not the ones that going to be able to provide that information

054because we're not going to have a nurse at all the schools during the summertime for every situation so it's going to be the health department is going to be doing on their own they already realized that that that they're going to be doing their individual case contact and doing it so I can't say it's not going to be quarantine because that's not that's out of our hands so I guess so come come the fall um let's just say let's say the mass mandate is is not there um and the and the CDC guidance is the way it is today with they're saying that we're we're safe at 3 ft instead of 6 feet but the quarantine guidelines don't change and they're still at 6 feet so our our class charts are still um are still

055impacted by the quarantine and so if they ask then we're going to give them the class chart um even though there's a discrepancy between the CDC guidelines of what's safe and what's quarantinable right and I mean is that so we recognize that there's a that there's a discrepancy between between those two policies not trying to be cute but the CDC threw everybody under the bus because they said it's safe at three feet but you are still the quarantine up to six feet right so the three feet being out there is that through everybody for a loop saying well why are we saying 3 feet you're still going to quarantine at six right when we get back into school and we have regular regular classes they're going to be closer than six feet every class CU

056you know the way we look at it you can only 12 to 15 kids are the most you can have in a class and be six feet apart so it's this still going to happen if they're still quarantining and they're still using that metrics So based on our policy are we are we going to have to because with quarantine comes a couple of things one we're we're providing information um and my question is do we do we need a policy or do we need a board vote to talk about quarantine if we are providing them information and we've got we've got to talk about the requirements for what we do with students who are because a quarantine is an absence unless we unless we deal with it in a in a proactive way which would

057be which would defin by definition would be kind of a change in policy around um around the the pandemic again so well it part of this depends on our nurses professional responsibilities but let me answer it as best I can if the health department ask for information related to a contact Trace as a professional as the one responsible for our district I am not on my own going to refuse to answer their questions I think when a health authority asks you for questions we have that responsibility to ask if you all and you've heard stories you know it's been hard to track down but you've heard stories in other districts but if if you as a board don't want that to happen that is a potential board vote because as the chief executive I I

058can't say knowing the scope of of of of our children and our health issues that that um we're not going to answer your question so that's one example of something that you you might vote on that's the best I can answer that so there may be some there may be some examples of of things that you might want to vote on if if if you're not pleased with the decisions on so we could take a board vote to restrict our our Communications to the to the health department from a seaing chart standpoint and not provide only provide those things that are that are closer than three feet based on CDC guidelines and those would be the seating charts that we would we would provide them from my perspective now I will I do have to

059respect our nurses licenses day on and madam chair this is Dana OS Brooks I will say from a vote Mr galberth if if that is something that y'all the board wants to see in policy then that would be something that we would probably need to look at monthly um because things are going to change so what may be appropriate in um just like if there was a mass mandate the guidance that tsba has given you as board members is to review that monthly so keep that in mind as as we were talking about updating policies or in this case actually creating a policy that's fair okay we have we have six other people who have questions uh Miss Cleveland okay and just to follow up on that if we just um if we make it

060a policy I just thought that month by month that would delay any kind of decision so it doesn't sound like a good idea to make anything a policy because if we have to wait and meet we can't react as fast so just a thought um mine is just on quarantine again um but mine is do we and I appreciate the relaxing the mask with the health department do we have any data because we're getting a lot of data about the mask and everything but as far as the quarantine do we have any data that it's actually working so in other words do we have positive cases that come from you know kids that are contact tracing and in the contact tracing do we have of those numbers I mean is it really working or is

061it just something they're putting into place because that's what they think they want to put in place because I don't I don't see I don't understand it's working because I'm just thinking logically Common Sense kids are together before school kids are together after school and probably not social distancing and so yet as a school system we're responsible for contract tracing and it it just doesn't make sense to me and I don't see any data that it's actually working so and I know that you probably can't answer that but that's I'm very confused about this well there's some numbers out there that been thrown around nationally but we have asked the health department they do not track it they said because of the variables involved that if even if someone's quarantined they could still go get

062it somewhere else like you said if they don't stay home or a relative or someone brings it to to them so they're not tracking that data um and we don't we don't track it because we don't know what the kids are doing when they're away from school so we're ultimately so our district is ultimately responsible for the Contact track scene because they're not doing it outside because if somebody outside says they have a positive case they're not going around to those people and requiring them to stay home now they ask them to but do they stay home and so but we're responsible for man ating the quarantine and kids mandating to stay home and it just seems like we're taking on too much responsibility of what's happening in the county without much data or proof

063that it's going on within our school system I you know I I M Cleveland I I do know what you're saying what I can tell you is we we have and I know it's it's frustrating to hear this but we have not been quarantining we have we have had times and you all may recall where the health department never did quarantine someone right and we never said hey you've got to get out of here because we think the Health Department's going to do something in you know two days or three um what we had what we did do during sum of the year is tell people hey this we have heard this and you may be hearing from them um but I I get what you're saying I I get your frustration early on I

064saw one study that indicated that that particular study somewhere between 1.5 and 2% of the quarantine individuals um you know ended up testing positive that was not local that was a document I read elsewhere I have not seen any research and Gary mentioned that as well but I get your point and I would think it would be a lot less in Williamson County just the fact of our numbers at our schools that would be a lot less and I just think when you weigh the quarantine and the learning loss you know you just it's to me quarantine be worth not doing the quarantine and then keep the kids educated so but and I know we all feel that way but and I think I think a key piece of this uh is and it's tough

065for me to to speak sence because I'm always going to be slightly off right but generally speaking what we have heard what superintendents have heard from representatives of the health department is um they are projecting that herd immunity is going to be somewhere in the 70s to somewhere in that range percent of uh of of the community who have the vaccine uh the comparison we heard was that compared to um small poox and and measles those are in the mid to high 90s per before her immunity hits um so one of the things as a non-scientist I'm hoping for is that we hit those HD immunities and a lot of this becomes new we don't know when that's going to be right okay thank you Mr C uh thank you madam chair I just got

066one question when does the uh School opening um plan stop Friday uh May 21st thank you that's all I have what time yeah what time what time Mr Hall thank you mam chair um so couple things to clarify or you just to to verify so quarantine does not apply to anyone who's vaccinated correct staff or students once someone is fully vaccinated which is determined by two weeks after either the second dose of madna and fizer or one dose of the Johnson and Johnson two weeks then they're not subject to quarantine originally they said it was 90 days we tend to think it's going to be much longer than that they just haven't had enough time to research that and figure it out so currently it's 90 days that we would be working off that the

067health department would do with well they've actually kind of taken that down I think okay is that right I'm sorry I forgot they add that it you have to be asymptomatic at that time thank you okay thank you let good clarification um and I know you have this conversations with them regularly but I I hope that that's something the the quarantines you have experience into everyone's point about the effectiveness of those versus the the impact to the students um you know it's been tough to hear from so many people about things that the kids have missed out on especially the kids who gotten multiple letters over the course of the year and inherently I understand quarantine is for the health isolation is for the the folks who have Co and and quarantining inherently applies to

068to healthy students but it's really tough to have to spend that amount of time multiple times over the course of the year and I know we've all heard that and have great empathy for that situation but I hope that that's something that can pivot as well in those conversations and that that's something that they're considering and that we're providing that feedback at the same time I'm not comfortable saying okay let's not help with contact Trac because I would assume that that applies to more than just Co like communicable d diseases in general for things that we may not even be experiencing right now we could be setting a precedent that is really harmful potentially in the future that we would really do well to revisit if if we were to do that so I would

069I would like to see fewer kids disrupted you know in in in general but I wouldn't be comfortable saying we're not working with the health department I know that that's not on the table as part of the discussion um but it's just you know kind of a thought that has come out but I think we all want absolutes and and there's been so much uncertainty over the last year that it's totally reasonable to look for objective measures and kind of an algorithm to say okay this is this these are the triggers but early on when we had a specific single metric we didn't like that either because it was too simplified for what we were talking about it was based on community spread in the ABS of additional information then that triggered then it became

070let's trigger a discussion with the health department which inherently becomes a subjective measure and I think that's just part of the nature of this and and for any closures we don't have a metric for inclement weather we don't have like okay this percentage of ice cover in the community or this windshell value uh we don't we have a rough metric for General illness right I think it's like 90% attendance triggers maybe a closure but for those things there's always going to be a subjective component to that so I'm comfortable with what you're what you're saying for the summer and fall I say let's take the win here I think this is a real positive and I'm optimistic that the trends are going to continue as they are uh it's encouraging that so much more of

071the community has gotten vaccinated on a very quick basis so um I'm comfortable with the plan or the lack of a plan for the fall um and I'm quite encouraged by what I'm hearing tonight thank you Mr Hall Miss can I say something about the quarantine the the quarantine is is the biggest issue with with residence Williamson County not as much as the covid cases the number of quarantines what the uh CDC says 14 days and come out in day 15 then they allowed 10 days come out day 11 or seven days with a test come out day eight they have a test after the sixth day the health department here says we're only going to go in the 14 if you want to do the the 10day and 7day you're welcome to do that

072but you have to track it keep up with it so we have taken on ourselves responsibility to be able to do that so we can get people out of quarantine faster so that's one thing we basically cut it down the possibility of cutting quarantine down in half by doing it that way than Miss Emerson thank you um I'm excited to hear that Dar that's taking it down and giving a more reasonable um time to interfere with our lives um and I agree with you Casey about taking the win we we really need to embrace what we've got um and the potential that we can start not only in our communities but in our schools and the families get back to something that is not so it it's a little bit more reasonable I think and

073it's much more optimistic the the the tax that we're beginning to take and I think we can go in a thousand different directions and a lot of them are going to be negative about what could and maybe might happen it's not at this point and the fact that we are in a place where we can embrace EMB what we've been able to accomplish keep an eye on it and do everything that we need to do to preclude it from happening again to the point that we're able to do that um I've got people that are going to be thrilled absolutely thrilled to know the mass mandate is dead that it is gone and the fact that we are from I be one of I mean it is just it has has been a Bane on

074people's existence and and the quality of life and the fact that we are going to allow people to make their own decisions about how comfortable they are with a mask or if they need to wear one or if they don't and so I really think that that is GNA be that's going to be a huge thing and anybody listening to this tonight I know is going to be very pleased this has been a major concern for my the people that are in my district and my and people around me and I'm so delighted that this is a really great piece of news thank you thank you madam chair we're encouraged that we're there um quarantines have really eaten us up uh and you know the the if we're encouraged that number one mask are there

075number two we're going to have a lot fewer students are going to spread out so we think we're going to have some impacts on both doing a good job Mr Wimberly um I can't follow Andy she said what I wanted to say thank you sure I I have one last question I think and then we can wrap it up so I if you've said this I apologize I didn't hear it in the way that I thought that it resonated with me um so obviously we're in a we're in an evolving situation with this pandemic and we've talked about how you think that we're going to get to the point where um masks will be recommended but not required for the fall but I want to know what do we do we know what is evolving

076in terms of quarantines you know do we think that there will possibly be more limited quarantines as we find out more about the virus this summer um and also you know my second question is you know you referen this law being written in 1800s in the 1800s is there any um you know is is public health looking at these laws to see if they're even applicable anymore and encouraging updates of these laws I don't know about public health looking at it I know some legislators have have have mentioned about it uh what we are hopeful of is when the CDC makes a recommendation to the health departments all the states that we're hopeful that that six-foot window will be dropped down to the three-foot that they said that's one of our main hopes will happen

077we do not we do not know Health Department when we contacted them today they didn't know either so we're we're hopeful that that could have a big impact okay okay but nothing anticipated about uh closing the window even more the the time period the duration oh no I don't think there will because there what they have said is that you can still catch it in the prime time I better look to my professionals back here is like two to five days is the prime but you can still get it up to nine days is that good [Music] C [Music] dep so if I may just for those who are watching this paraphrase what Mandy Thompson said in you know if if I missed something we are having conversations and we'll be having conversations this summer

078with the local Health Department about streamlining their work in contact tracing because every time we have more vaccinations when somebody has a positive case that information needs to be shared to minimize the um quarantine of the individuals is that accurate that is accurate okay great thank you all right well we got through the first item on Jason's report in an hour and 13 minutes so um let's move to the next item um Mr golden thank you madam chair I want to give you an update on the work of fostering Healthy Solutions and of course you all uh voted unanimously to to approve Foster Healthy Solutions and I know you all had uh your your thoughts because we worked through a number of months before we finally reach the point of making that decision uh and

079for me uh a a huge part of that is to to explore and find ways to help our students feel safer right and and I know you all have been thinking about that as well so you got an update from uh from Vicki Hall our assistant superintendent for human resources about the Foster work I thought I'd give you a little bit um some of this is what is what you know already but I feel like there's value in sharing this publicly so um a key component of the work The Fosters are are doing is to find out from our community what needs and concerns and fears our community has uh and you know that uh that uh we um included some surveys so we took the board policy followed the board policy on surveys uh

080that included giving parents the opportunity to opt out um for any student surveys and you've all had that opportunity look to look at the student surveys um and I know some of you have shared that with me that you really appreciated the way that that language was in those surveys uh not leading uh a student to any particular any particular thought but we have about we had about 177,000 students who had the potential to take the survey we submitted it to 8th through 12th graders uh and about 250 uh opted out their parents opted out of those 17,000 we actually had about 7,000 completed in about 1,800 partially completed so we didn't force anyone to take the the survey we gave them the opportunity we did it during non-instructional time so somewhere close to half

081of our total 8th through 12th graders actually um replied to the survey and I'm no survey expert but I've heard that that's a pretty good pretty good number uh for uh for surveys maybe even excellent um parent surveys were distributed uh we had about 5700 parent um parent surveys completed and about 2400 partially completed I know that from a just in time perspective there's a question about forwarding uh the link and the technology that The Fosters used was designed for that link to be used once so if it was forwarded and it had already been used the technology was designed for it not to be usable uh the the uh the second time um and so what Vicky Hall has told us is that fostering health healthy solutions will be able to determine if the

082surveys were forwarded and we'll provide you all and us with that information in their in their analysis uh finally we did employee surveys and and we distributed those um and uh and that time is closed as well uh we had a a little over 1,700 surveys completed and about 330 partially completed and Vicki I think maybe we had about 4,000 total recipients of that survey something in that in that range a little bit more than 4,000 yes oh closer to six we send it to all our part-time staff every Everybody all right so we had we had a um um around 2,000 surveys either fully or partially completed uh and uh the listen and learns continue and of course that's a very different venue for uh for our stakeholders sharing the next uh listen and

083learn is tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. uh and uh links for that are printed in well I say printed or included and in focus and we've been making sure we do that but it's also on our website on the front page of the website uh in the calendar there are going to be two more sessions um this Saturday at 7:30 a.m. in noon and you know they're trying to find some different times if folks want to participate and I want to remind everyone when when they talk about listen and learn the the design is for them to listen and learn from our stakeholders so that they can ultimately share that information with you all as board members different venue from the surveys that were sent out to parents uh and then finally the the June 4th

084and 5th will be the final listen and learns same times as uh as this month and um Carol and her department will publish those links as well uh for those who want to participate so that's a much more participatory you know a little bit more public way to share than the uh surveys that are that are Anonymous um and so the The Fosters have also done something very different they've gone back and looked at um our our school handbooks they spent some time in our office uh and uh got some copies and and did an analysis of that we don't have the results yet but they're going to be providing a report early in June to us on their review of our student handbooks I'm just going to toss out one bit of speculation I'm

085guessing that um that one of their topics is going to be consistency by grade grade band uh for those student handbooks rules rules from school to school and how they compare to their peer schools um and but so we're very curious to see their conclusions um on on that um they also have a uh a team of our folks administrators teachers students staff and parents that are meeting together and working in pairs or small groups to draft outlines of goals and objectives for where we go from here to make recommendations ultimately to to us and make recommendations to you uh as I've said repeatedly we're not going to just jump on on something we're going to make sure that we're we're thoughtful that we're deliberate about um what we do with the information that they

086share so that we can find ways to serve our students better and make sure it's driven by our local needs not some national agenda and to that point what this isn't I make I made sure to say this the last couple of months this is not uh them creating curriculum for us this is not us promoting critical race Theory it is us trying to find ways to serve our students better and you all are going to be the drivers here uh you voted for this unanimously to approve it and you're going to be the drivers on where we go once we get the information from our stakeholders Mr fiscus I think Dan had his hand up first I'll I'll be shiverers as well okay okay great go ahead you go first you had your hand

087up before I did oh thank you madam chair I just have a couple of questions uh do we have a total up to date on the listen and learn participation I'm not sure about that Miss Hall May Miss Hall do you have totals on the listen and learn so far how about how about you know since we started a total that's not that's not that's not good that's that's not good uh another thing I wanted to ask is um how many parents were sent surveys did you say uh Vicki I'm I'm trying to remember the total number of parents who were sent surveys those out 80,000 okay okay um and then I wanted to know how how you picked your committees for this and were there any board members on there so ultimately to answer

088your last question there are no board members on there you all are the ones who are going to be receiving information and making decisions so the purpose of this is for you and us ultimately to listen to what's being presented not not to uh you know to let to give those stakeholders an opportunity to share with us so that you make the final decision uh those decisions were made um It's a combination principles uh finding from students uh uh Administration we we uh we shared and asked uh um individuals if they would be willing to participate and I think you need to take that into account you know when you get the information and any recommendations it was designed to be it was designed to be a a broad spectrum um of of roles uh

089here in the district but I think that's a good question to ask because um whatever comes out whatever comes out from our recommendations I think making sure that everyone is represented is a is a critical question okay thank you Mr fiscus thank you madam chair and so along with the other data points and so on they're going to they're going to give that back to us and with a report are they also looking at um discipline data and and and those kind of uh reports that happen at the school level that might also feed information into this uh yes okay and so we'll see um when they give us a report will it be um recommendations or will it just be the data and then we'll spend some time with that and they'll come back

090or what yeah that my vision of this is they they present what they have for us we make sure that it's in a format that's that's presentable that we that we you know go through it to make sure that we that we can get you grasp of it and put it in a form that you all can grasp as well Miss Hall I will ask you to give some details about you know what what that's projected to look like because my understanding is that they are going they know they're taking in um information from a lot of different platforms and they're going to give us an overall analysis of that they'll also break it down for you so you can see what platform that particular piece of information or data was gathered from they'll provide

091that analysis and then they will also provide recommendations things that they suggest or next steps for you as the board to take going forward Mr H thank you madam chair U can you refresh my memory and what is the length of the current engagement that we have with fostering Healthy Solutions 30th through June 30th okay and then so I imagine you know they're going to come come back with the report and like the end of this first part of the engagement uh a couple of questions thinking like next steps for the board are you going to then likely propose okay we have a continued engagement and here's a phase two of this that will be subject to another board vote and how do you how do you anticipate like judging the success of this first

092component uh so I'll answer that second question first uh I anticipate an analysis of of um of issues in the schools from a from from a parent and student perspective and some potential goals to improve how we serve our students uh and of course I don't know what they are yet but that's that's what I anticipate um the next question we're going to ask ourselves when we get those is do we need The Fosters to help us take the next step of taking those goals bringing into you helping you decide on appropriate goals and then action steps and we're going to do that analysis before we automatically say we we want to to to retain them to to to do anything more but that's the analysis uh look at the data determine appropriate goals based

093on the data um and once goals are set through your work determine appropriate action steps if the action steps for me are that critical piece do we have the competence internally to to establish appropriate action steps to make progress on whatever those goals are and what would be the the timing for that given that it'll be happening over the summer is that something that we're g to be well it it it'll be it'll it it won't be in July okay um it'll probably be right when school starts back we're going to present these to you in June uh and and then I think there'll be some time for us to process through it um and so I'm not positive that um that we'll have goals proposed goals to submit to you in June now the

094Foster's commitment is to get those to us but we've got to look at it and determine if we think that makes sense for our community I have a suspicion I don't know this Madam chair uh that this will be a significant discussion item next month um and then you all and where we are you is going to drive whether there's a vote on it in June okay thank you Mr galber so um so regarding what you just said so you think we'll you think we'll have we you said they were going to report on some some of the things in in June but are we going to get the like the final report in June or will they'll be will they be reporting on something past that Miss Hall can you give some details on

095that I I think to answer your question they'll be they'll provide us with a report on the research they've done and um the all the data that they've gathered and suggestions to make they're also working with that core team um and they're that's where they're really getting into drafting like objectives and goals and and and things to build that um plan around I I don't believe they will have a plan like for you to vote on at that time I think that will still require some additional work um um with the with the district by the district so I guess you're G to you passed around a Madam chair you T you passed around a list because we're going to have a have a retreat sometime in the next month is um I guess my

096recommendation would be that we might um we might have that in hand before we have our Retreat so that might impact one of the maybe one of or two of the dates on on there okay not wouldn't be necessary just just a yeah yeah we'll we'll look and see we can yeah if we can go out any further I talk a little bit more about that report too yeah in the not the superintendent report the board chair report I'll talk about that more changing jobs up here uh let's see we have uh Mr Hall wants to speak again but before he does I just want to ask one question so I just want to dispel something that I've heard a lot um and we did not we did not start this work because of dearest

097WCS is that correct um that is correct we and I to to put more you know detail in that uh we we did it for a myriad of reasons that date back really for years uh many of you have participated in some of those meetings that we would do quarterly cultural you know got described at various times as cultural competency committee Etc and in much of what I heard as I as you all were considering me for superintendent and in my first year as superintendent and into this year as well was there's been a lot of talk and yet problems still pop up uh that we still get those those awful stories in the in the media about something bad happening I heard from students I heard from Young alumni that they experienced issues uh

098you know whether for M multiple multiple issues um what you know not not just r but sex discrimination Etc where they were afraid to report uh and so it became clear to me that we've been going through years of trying to address incidents as they happened we had policies in place that you know 10 years ago I thought those were excellent policies and on paper they are but if we don't have a culture where people are willing to trigger the policy we need to topend some more time learning from our students and parents why that is and see if we can proove that so it's the whole package okay of what of what we've learned and experienced um that ultimately led me to have start having those discussions with you what six eight months ago

099or so thank you Mr Hall thank you madam chair and I I agree with Jay if if we can have some of this information prior to the retreat I think it' be a really good uh table setting discussion um will we have access to the raw data from the surveys in addition to the summary report this all the raw data is really to be housed by fostering Healthy Solutions um they will provide us with a lot of the data um we could probably make a request for the raw data if that is something that the board wanted to do it'd be something I I found it helpful in the past because it's you know in some of the surveys that we've had some of the some of the responses did not seem to exactly correlate

100with the comments so it was helpful in many cases to kind of review some of the comments in particular um I know there's a ton to look through but I I've found it helpful in the past because I I do think the surveys when they get aggregated lose a little bit of that so I can tell you Mr Hall if I may I know that they will provide you with all of the comments so you'll definitely have all of that we can we can request additional raw data if you want it but you'll definitely get all of the comments okay thank you I don't see any other questions so we can move to our next item Mr Gold right thank you madam chair I do want to address curriculum and I want to thank uh

101Mr Cash for asking that to be on the agenda and it's on the tail end of the agenda but um I wanted to share with you and those who are watching uh publicly um the the the a little bit of the detail of the uh curriculum approval process at the state level so I've got a PowerPoint I'm not going to walk through every detail of this you all have actually seen this in email format so Brian if you would pull that up uh so the this in this starts with uh the state curriculum selection process uh and I just want you to get a grasp uh at least quickly of the complexity of it and here's some big points the state goes through adoption cycles and they're basically every six years uh there was a

102time um you know about a year or so ago about when Co hit where there was some talk Statewide hoping that the state would delay the ELA adoption because so much was happening with Co um that didn't happen the state still required the ELA adoption English language arts and uh and so that started this school year we went through about a year and a half process so back uh back in November of 20 2019 uh the board appointed a committee uh to review that and the committee had a little over 40 people on it um we went through the process of parent reviews Etc uh so that's you see some detail there I'm not going to belabor that next slide or do I have the I have the clicker um and uh and that includes

103the Tennessee Department of Education approving uh the uh the materials that that go down to the schools the LA to make choices um in ela in particular there were three selections that were comprehensively K5 selections uh the three were um wonders uh CK and wit and wisdom uh and so we really made it a focus to try to find that package that could do all rather than peace meal there were a lot of other little pieces that did small things here and there U but those were the the the three um three uh packages that the state approved that that U that I think we spent most of our time on evaluating textbook selection committee reviews all that looks at feedback teachers teachers all get feedback and and and share their choice and then the

104board votes on the on the materials uh for ELA particular which is you know which we're in the first year of um the uh the majority of somewhere in the 60s percent the teachers chose know wh winstom uh so I just felt like it was important for you all to know that that that uh we have parent input teacher input Etc uh through that process so um you see some of that uh detail so you guys you guys see some of that um that I actually just spoke to in that in that next in that in that last minute or so and you see some extra detail we are actually going to post this rather than talk about each particular bullet point tonight uh so that families can start seeing the process of what we

105go through uh with selection um but here's a key that that and this is me speaking I'm going to actually ask Dr Allen to speak to this as well uh one of the things that I saw with Wht and wisdom and heard from our teachers and heard from our parents was that it had the it was designed to actually increase students leile level by giving them interesting reads and uh and and what we heard is that that's happened for a lot of students that it that it's it's been more intriguing it's triggered more discussions and you all gotten those emails too from some parents who said who said it's been good in that context we've heard from teachers that the structure is good um uh and then you all you all see the uh the

106approval but I wanted you to to to see that now what we have heard just just in these last few weeks especially is is concern over the content and questions about grade level appropriateness so uh I wanted you all to know that last bullet point especially that our instructional staff continues to V the readings even after the curriculum is approved and we're in the first year of the ELA adoption it's a six-year cycle um our staff has been and is doing that I'm going to give you a couple of examples uh and then uh actually asked Dr Allen to to fill in um we had some families ask about a particular particular novel in the fifth grade curriculum uh and they asked about some of the historical accuracy of it plus the scope of of

107of of issues that were addressed it was a Civil War era novel um we actually looked at that and said you know what that needs to be double checked and we we pulled that and we're going through the process of reviewing that particular novel uh at fourth grade there's a there's a series of novels that uh that our folks uh have looked at and said you know what after going through this there's a lot of it's it's it's a it's a series of to use maybe I'm using an inappropriate term kind of dark and and a little bit you know frightening with you know violence and and you know students been reading things like that for decades that have elements of that but um our professionals looked at and said boy that's a lot all

108in a row so they had a conversation with the producers of Whitten and wisdom and are working on some alternative text uh for next year couple of examples but I want you all to know that we continue to V that um in addition to that vetting especially in this first year of this adoption we know that we'll be able to tweak and prepare and uh and and as we go into year two on into those other years but we also have that reconsideration of instructional materials policy that even after our vetting we know that there's that that every parent raises their child the way they want the way they should and we want to make sure we respect that so we we have had in place for a long time that opportunity not just for

109reconsider reconsider reconsideration of instructional materials to ask us to reconsider but also uh to uh um to to um opt out and us to provide something else uh and so one of the ways we trigger that is to give notice to families that there might be a a tough content in there for families to choose to opt out so I want to make sure everyone knows that we we have that option as well um I've probably overdone this example but my oldest example in the 15 years I've been here is To Kill a Mocking bo uh that uh that we have had families from time to time opt out because the nword is in there uh and so we make sure to warn families of that uh and and that's just one example but we

110do have those examples from time to time um so uh Dr Allen if you would share some detail of what your staff is doing in this first year of implementation of R wisdom the the the the value and the challenges that you have had yes thank you uh thank you superintendent golden Madam chair members of the board uh good evening it's good to see everybody in person so um Mr Golden you covered a lot so I I'll just I'm I'm at at fear of uh repeating some of the things that Mr Golden says I want to make sure that the board has all the information that I have and and I'll start by probably upsetting some of my other curriculum Specialists but our elementary Ela adoption is the most important adoption that takes place in

111our district um because it is uh I would consider to be the most complex and teaching students to read and early literacy um is difficult it requires us to follow the research and it it requires us to be systematic and so um it was important for us to to get this one right and honestly when we're seeing our early returns um on just the fact of students making gains as it relates to reading uh our staff is really excited about it and so so we think we made a good purchase but we also recognize the fact that there are ways that that we can improve it um the first part of the the the piece that I want to share with the board is there's been a little bit of confusion about State stand standards

112and curriculum materials so I just wanted to address that just just quickly um the standards tell us the state standards and our scope and sequence document tell us what is expect expected of our students in ela there's somewhat vague to be honest with you it's its main idea its theme it's those sorts of of pieces the textbook adoption process uh that you lay out in board policy that we follow that honestly is one of the most transparent processes that we have that engages more stakeholders probably than any other process that we follow or I would put it up there against any of them that tells us what materials that we'll use to help our students learn those standards and so we meet the standards through the implementation of those curriculum materials so I wanted to

113start by just kind of separating those two pieces out um the instructional materials this year in Elementary Ela um are a little bit different in that they are content based meaning that kids go deeper into module studies focused on a theme this method is somewhat of a new method but it follows the most recent research on how students uh learn to read um it's also the method preferred by the Tennessee Department of Education and as I mentioned also aligns with the most recent research um it's honestly probably different than how any of us in this room learn to read most of us probably learned to read through a basil Series where we read a series of stories that oftentimes were unrelated to each other um but we just went from story to story to story

114to story um this is different these are modules these are in-depth studies um uh that focus on content knowledge and that's what all the research right now says is the best way to teach students to learn so that's why we've we've moved in that process Mr Golden went through the adoption process which as I said is is um a process that includes a lot of stakeholders um ultimately two pieces of information that I wanted to share it's a little that's in addition to what Mr Golden share we had the textbook adoption committee which has a representative from every school but we also had over 40 parents that were represented on that textbook adoption committee the textbook adoption committee sort of acts like the Electoral College if you will they have the right to vote and

115select the materials that we use but we actually ask every teacher that teaches Elementary reading after you've reviewed these materials which do you prefer so our Electoral College I don't know if that's a great example or not but they take that information and uh ever since I've been here and as long as as as I've Been Told they followed the recommendation um of staff and in this case Mr Golden mentioned it was 60% it was probably closer to 70% um the the other uh um teachers that were reluctant to go with Whitten wisdom wanted to stay with wonders and in talking with some of them that was just a familiarity and I think now in speaking with those teachers what I'm hearing from them is now that they've got their arms wrapped around the complexity

116of wit and wisdom and the depth at which it teaches our students to read and the Lexile Lev levels as Mr Golden pointed out the teachers um from what I hear are are seeing the results from our students the other piece that I wanted to mention excuse me about the adoption process is we after we gathered all that information and our textbook adoption committee was ready to make a recommendation to the board uh we called other districts around Tennessee that were piloting Wht and wisdom because again we wanted to get it right now in full transparency we called those districts because we wanted to see hey what are the what are the outcomes that you're seeing from students we we also as a byproduct of that wanted to ask them are there any issues related

117to content that you all are experiencing right now we heard two things we heard that this is a tremendous program and we're seeing great growth out of our students from the districts that we call we also a little to our surprise now that we've coming to the end of the year we had zero comments from the districts that they had run into any concerns about content and that's it was a little it's a little surprising to me now after going through the content because as Mr Golden uh mentioned earlier our department does especially in looking at the fourth grade we do find it to be a little bit heavy and so we'd like to provide some things that are a little more uplifting and we're going to make some of those changes um in the

118fourth grade um during the implementation this year just to share with you what has been shared with me and I believe believe that my my curriculum Specialists have done a great job of putting their ear to the ground and getting in and helping our our teachers support uh support our teachers through this process we've heard uh a few comments as it relates to second grade I've had a total of my my my department has had a total of four emails um two of the emails or three of the emails were were basically asking um we've been learning civil rights Heroes for a while now how much longer are we going to be learning about Civil Right and the answer to that is that module is about seven weeks so three of those uh emails that

119we heard were were um related to that topic the other in the vast majority of the concerns that we've heard um are related to the fourth grade as Mr Golden mentioned contents too heavy a little too depressing primarily the books Hatchet woodsrunner and walk to moons in that series um some of our teachers have said you know we've not had really kids that have talked a lot about this with us but but we're just as teachers looking at it and saying it just seems to be a little too heavy um so we've worked throughout this year with our coaches our our our Ela Specialists to make some modifications and some coaching opportunities um for those lessons um some of the modifications can include doing certain parts of the book as a read aloud certain modifications

120may be um eliminate a small section of a book um or having conversations before and after a piece of the text um our teachers do a really good job I have to have to give a shout out to our teachers they do a really good job of notifying us ahead of time at the district office he I'm a little bit worried about this content my curriculum Specialists do a great job of supporting those teachers through that um and and we've seen it be successful this year so we're we're happy with where we are um moving into next year as a result of those three novels in a row we've asked wit and wisdom to work with us to develop the curriculum to remove one of the texts now removing a text in wit and wisdom

121is more complex than it would have been when when you and I learn uh uh to read when we were younger pulling out a single novel or a single story when it doesn't scaffold or build upon previously learned content is one thing doing it in our curriculum now at the elementary starts to pull at the fabric of our entire curriculum because it's it's it's a K through five learning opportunity um and when you start to pull at that fabric at some point we risk um the the fabric pulling completely apart so we don't enter into that lightly that conversation lightly and we want to rely on the experts to help us through that process um what modifications do you suggest that we make if we do select a new novel help us by building the

122curriculum that matches previously learned material and sets the students up for success for the material that they're going to learn down the road so it's more complicated than just removing a text um and and moving on about our business so we're being slow and we're being methodic and my department is following the research and we're following the recommendations of the experts now having said that as I've shared before you know we're we're little concerned about some of the content right so we're going to continue to try to make that better we're going to continue to try to make those modifications without pulling at the fabric so that it pulls away um uh from the entire curriculum because as I mentioned when I started this this this conversation um it's the most important thing that I

123believe that we do in our district and that's teaching kids to read to understand complex text um and and to set them up to be as successful as they can be in reading so slow and methodic and following the research is really important to me in my department um and I and again I Maryann Gilbert Karen White Jenny Lopez and the people that are in my department that have been NOS to the grindstone on this curriculum from day one this year are doing two things really really well that I want this board to hear they're doing really really a great job at listening when teachers or administrators or uh parents or community members call and they're doing a really really good job of making modifications along the way without completely pulling the fabric so the

124curriculum falls apart so as we have looked even without board recommendation bless you um we we have kind of thought about some some recommendations that we have we want to continue to work with Wht and wisdom to to soften if you will and Mr Golden was searching for a word I kind of search for a word too with the fourth grade curriculum or make the fourth grade curriculum a little more uplifting so we're to continue to work on that and like I said we're already committed to making one change in that in that grade level already um we're going to continue to make modifications to how material is being presented without losing the structure of the reading program we are going to teach kids to read at the highest level possible at our elementary and

125you want to see some neat stuff go visit some Elementary classrooms and watch our teachers teach reading it's pretty exciting the the systemic phonics program that we have implemented the questions the socratic seminars that are taking place in early grade levels and hearing kids break texts apart talk about text and answer questions and ask high level questions it's pretty dang exciting um we also want to continue professional development I'm going to shut up in just a minute Mr Gold but two more things here we want to continue uh PD for our teachers to help them navigate any parts of the curriculum that they fail they feel may be Pro problematic we've reached out to all of our buildings and say don't go at this alone when you have a question or a comment or a

126concern reach out to us let's work through that portion of the curriculum together um and then we also want to continue to follow our board policy allowing for alternative assignments if needed we don't want to do that right we don't want students selecting those alternate text because that pulls away from the fabric of their individual curriculum and every single one of the students that are in our classes are that important to us to teach them to read so we want to find every way possible to modify the curriculum as we can so that every single student can sit through the reading sciss uh series and learn as much as they can so and if I may Madam chair one one last thing that's that that's a somewhat slightly different um topic from the Whitten wison

127specifically content for students is an ongoing and growing Challenge and it's largely because of the availability of content you know we have apps um you know the internet Etc making sure that we provide students with appropriate grade level content U that's consistent with the with the with the standards that they're working on it's appropriate for them is a constant challenge we have apps that are designed to be news sources and so new material is constantly being added um and that's an ongoing challenge that we're evolving to to try to handle a little better um and we've got work to do uh in in in in looking at that I want to make sure you guys know that we we know that um one example that you all saw I think last week um someone brought

128a particular video to our attention um and the content was was the specifics of their concern and when we pulled it up none of our teachers had had taught it but it's available if you look hard enough it started with a with a you know when you click play it started with a warning that said this should be watched with an adult and that was the mechanism for that and we know that you know it's the kindergarten may may have happened upon that and clicked on it either not read it not had time to read it not yet learned how to read that and gone ahead and watched it I I know we've talk there may be some students who say oh we gotta watch with an adult I'm gonna play it no matter what

129so we actually we actually restricted that particular app to elementary teachers so that they could be specific and select while we're going back to look on those kinds of things but those kinds of things are going to be ongoing I believe from now on uh and so ultimately we may we may even get more staff to make sure that that that that we work through this in on the curriculum side thank you Mr Goldman we have four speakers Mr fiscus thank you madam chair and and so Mr Gold Mr Allan Dr Allen um so I've met with some parents and their concern and and and I want to thank you too for your team because I met with you uh with the family around one of the texts that was removed and they were very

130appreciative um the concern that I've I've continued to to receive is more about the age appropriateness of the content um uh and so um if you think about it in terms of of parents having the choice to take their child uh when I'm I'm my child's children are now uh ones getting ready to co go to college you know uh the other one is already in college this was his last day of school thanks for that guys we there were PE this morning but we we chose what movies what books um they read and at what time frame they were introduced topics um and and parents that I've talked to this past week and and since uh really this these last several weeks and even today they're concerned about the appropriateness of the content um

131for example um second grade right now is using Grim's Brothers fairy tale uh Hansel and grle and and it's very graphic um and it's and their their concern was would we allow our child to watch that version of the movie if it's a Grims brother Snow White or a Disney Snow White and we want them to have accurate content right in terms of historical perspective but I think that's the part that that uh many of the parents that I've talked with are most concerned about yes there was concern there's concern around critical race Theory and we've been addressing that but I think when it comes down to it um the violence um um the darkness that you dressed before with the fourth grade level um but also just some of the uh some of the

132visual uh of the graphics that are in the books um because I I want our kids to to have a love for reading and I want them to develop their reading skills and and I was a science teacher and so it's very important that they know how to read to be able to do those things so so so I would that would be one of the things that that has been brought to me um and so I don't know as you as you your team continues to review um are there opportunities through working with wit and wisdom to talk about that um that particular um idea around age appropriateness Dr Allen can you turn Dr Allen trying to get his microphone to work is it all I he we good okay so first of all

133thank you for the question this great question it it keeps me up at night um because we have a a common goal with some of you that I've spoken to Mr Cash being one of them and I shared this with Mr Cash as well um that goal is we don't we want to put we want to put material in front of students that doesn't scare I mean that's and and and um we want them to be excited about reading what I will share is that our teachers are reporting to us that kids are reading like they've never read before they are loving these books um I'll also say that many of the books that are calling being called into question right now have been taught by our teachers for years in our system at the

134grade level that they're being taught right now um now that's just kind of some historical knowledge we're sort of in a bind um as it relates to uh the age appropriateness with what's being presented to us from Whitten and wisdom um are they in conversation with us yes will they completely rebuild the curriculum just for us no um I had to really twist some arms they had to pull a team back together just to rewrite the curriculum for that one module at the fourth grade um they did make us aware that there is going to be a Wht and wisdom 2.0 um and we have been very we have been very clear with Wht and wisdom I myself in conversations with their team letting them know the feedback that we've received from from our community

135and from our parents so I'm optimistic that moving forward we will we'll we'll have some better options um but really what's causing this Mr Golden mentioned it earlier is one of the changes with this new reading program is to put higher level higher Lexile level material in front of our students um because there's been a shift in in the theory behind how to help students reach grade level um reading and and in the past it's been just write books right so find your Lexile level and read the book at your Lexile level now the research shows that if we do that those students will always stay that amount of distance or Lexile level behind the other students and so the idea is to put High the highest level text possible for the grade level in

136front of the kids um and support them in the classroom so that they're stretching toward that grade level material when we do that it brings in to question some of these pieces that we're now looking at and saying is that appropriate for fourth grade um and I don't want to be the moral compass of that and quite frankly my team is struggling with being the moral compass of that right so we've relied he heavily on the recommendation from the Tennessee Department of Education saying that it was age appropriate for kids we've relied heavily on the experts in Reading saying it is appropriate for kids we've given feedback to them saying we believe that some of this is Maybe notop for our kid and so work with us and so a a very long answer to

137your very direct question Mr fiscus but um we're struggling right now with that to make modifications again without unraveling our curriculum um but wit and wisdom has been respons uh responsive to us they are working on a 2.0 it won't be ready for the beginning of next year we're looking at the fall of the next year uh for it to be ready um but I I do see light at the end of the tunnel and I do feel like that we can we can make some progress and we have a common goal to work toward that honestly I will say though that what what I've experienced just in in uh at least the last 10 years of doing this um that's difficult for every family right and so it's hard to find that material that's

138at the highest level that doesn't have something in it that could draw objection to so we're trying to balance that I've received a flood of emails recently that said don't do anything with the curriculum man my kid is loving it it's it's got my kid reading where they they've never read uh the volume like they're reading right now and so we're we're trying to balance all that but we certainly want to keep the kids in the classroom so that they don't have to opt out of it so the so the text that they're reading so um the the fifth grade level I've got here in front of us river between us was the one that we addressed boys of War those are scripted from wit and wisdom is that correct it's not that we were

139given three or four books to choose from and we we selected those those particular titles okay that's correct can can I interject something here please Mr sorry Mr Cash we've got some other people in but this I had this put on the agenda this is supposed to be discussed later are we going to discuss it now yes we're gonna no we're gonna discuss it later it's on the agenda for you to discuss later as well okay no problem you're you you can go and or you you are in this group to go well I've got a presentation here Mr chair and I was just wondering I mean Brad's got some great points and I'm sure there's other people and I've got a lot of information and um i' just like to you know I mean

140if we're going to do it later that's fine I'm ready well you you have also s signed up to speak in this group of speakers as well um that's what I wanted to say but I mean these are a lot of questions that we're going to piggy back on and and whatnot yeah I did know that you know so why why start all this all over or if we're going to do it later let's do it later so we can focus in on it and Madam chair if I may uh Mr Cash and I had a had a really good conversation this morning I let him know that I was going to get that um that overview of uh of of where we are with curriculum um and I'm fine I'm fine either way okay

141yes it's when board member requests something it's put on as an item for discussion but if no one objects we can see Mr Cash's presentation during this discussion if is everybody okay with that proceed sorry to interrupt Brad fine yeah and just uh so also we have we have a request for a break yeah so why don't we take a 10-minute break right now and then uh Sheila you're up next then Elliot then Dan then Cy I did have I did have a couple of questions left if that's okay and it's not necessarily about um wit and wisdom but just about the reading programs so are our students still able to do the Accelerated Reader programs where they you know they I know my kids did when they were in elementary school and so on

142where they could select books and be tested on those books outside of what was being done in class so buildings still have the option to do the accelerated rear program if they if they would like to we don't lead that from the district office okay okay okay that was a question that was asked today and then something for us to think about later in our discussion we probably don't have that answer yet um that the bill that was passed in the legislature um do we foresee that impacting any of the books that Wht and wisdom has chosen around civil rights issues um and is that something that we'll have to address with Whit wisom it's something that we we will need to review I've actually asked Miss osbrook to be prepared to give some detail

143about that it's passed the House and Senate it was an amendment to another bill um I don't know that the governor has signed it yet but I can't help but anticipate that he will uh and that particular piece of legislation has a number of items that uh that um schools can't do and then number of items that they can um and basically what it said we can't do are items that we don't we don't do right um but I will say to to to Mr uh to to to Dr Allen's Point earlier it takes constant professional development right and making sure every teacher is appropriately uh prepared for those questions um and Madam chair we can we can address some of the details of of that with Miss osbs after a break if if you

144prefer okay let's let's take a 10-minute break e e e you think what thank you board me too board members if you'll please take your seats we're having a continued discussion about curriculum and our next speaker is Sheila Cleveland OH I'm on oh thank you okay get myself together here okay I'm on the spot uh anyway I was just going to make a comment about that and um thank you Dr Allan for your in-depth description of what's going on that really helped me a lot quite a bit um I just wanted to make a comment that um and it's based on uh an email the has received you know the the children's values start at home not at school and I know there's a lot of pressure saying that we do instill those values and

145I don't agree but and and all we can do is try to provide well-rounded education which we do in fact do and and we have very the parents in our community are very diverse and their opinions are very different about what should be taught and we'll never please anyone but what I really love is this email and I believe it was District n that did it um put out but they said I've always viewed education as a partnership between the parents and the school it is the job of the teachers to teach the facts and then to ask the questions to promote dialogue among the students it is the job of the parents to continue the dialogue at home and share their views on the issues as well as listen to their children's thoughts we

146must all remember that we are educating our childrens to live in an increasingly diverse more Global world and I I couldn't have said that better I think we need to continue on this path because we need to keep our kids learning critical thinking not only education but in life and if we don't do that we're doing a disservice to our children so thanks thank you Miss Cleveland Mr Mitchell thank you madam chair um first off I want to tell Dr Allen how much I appreciate his passion um for about the goals of our curriculum right and and your efforts to remind us that what what our goal here is to drive reading uh through through the choices that these children have um you know this is going to be a constant and and recurring concern

147it's always been there since the beginning of of public schools I I remember my mother talking about her indignation as a high school senior not being allowed to see Gone With the Wind because of the single cuss word you know and and and so the progress it's always been there it's always that this subject um the couple of things I would like to point out to us and Dr Allen as you and your team go forward and Mr Golden as well the this has been a dark and heavy year and if any any of us that have been to a medical professional this year we're all one of the things they're all asking how are you feeling you know do you have trouble getting up are are you having are you having thoughts of self

148harm you know everybody is got their antennas up about depression and and the negative impacts of the pandemic it's a real concern so I think I would like to encourage you all to take that into consideration as you're looking at the curriculum going forward that I do think the the dark and and uh as you said heavy material that that these children are our children are might be have available to them this year is probably a little bit bring brings additional concern to the table one of the thoughts I've had is you know even adults YouTube has has sensors that spend all day long reading objectional material looking for objectional material to yank and Pull and those people are are consistently given um Psy Support over over the amount over that dark and heavy and

149material that they at so it's so it's an adult thing too right that but that's my that that would be the one thing I think I would bring forward is that you know we do we do have a concern on suicide in our with our with with our children and and uh um we we want to make sure I guess as your your point earlier we try to uplift a little bit more that would be my thought and guidance thank you okay um m Mr Cash thank you madam chair and uh sorry about the interruption Brad but I I thought you know since this is on the agenda that we need to you know open it right up but uh you know I've prepared some stuff and I've uh you know uh I want to

150piggyback what what Elliot said you know we've this was a heavy lift uh starting school in the fall uh teachers jumping through hoops unimaginable um um you know a lot of things happened uh this is a curriculum that that really didn't have to be put on but it was um and uh you know that added another burden to elementary teachers but you know they they they got through it and everything and I think most of the things that that there's issues with are in the second grade curriculum that uh it's just not age appropriate in a lot of people's eyes uh in fourth grade some of the some of the books and whatnot but um I think a lot of it is you know people are really paying attention and you know it's just the

151whole atmosphere of everything going on and they're getting into this stuff and they're really looking at it I I had a meeting and uh I gave a 10-day notice I had 200 people show up and I mean it was like oh my gosh now now what do I do but I did have some information and I told him we'd be talking about curriculum because you know I've had some emails uh and some that I I still don't like I don't know if they've been investigated or not but uh few little fellas aren't too happy with the curriculum and I won't go into that right now but um but I did I I I I had folks out and you know I mentioned second grade in uh the Civil Rights Act and you know I'm thinking

152about my own kids my grown kids my grandkids and I'm thinking you know who's GNA understand this and uh I'd like to stop right now thank Dave because I think him and I have probably spoke about three hours on these issues and uh we we don't agree on a lot of stuff but uh and but I I do thank him for his passion also Elliot but I really think something needs to be done um we are dealing with babies we're dealing with kids there everything is so dark today it's it's unreal I mean just look at the news and whatnot but anyhow I prepared this and let me just read this and go through my my presentation and you know and then we're going to will be opened up for questions and and I'm calling

153on my fellow board members you know uh I this is the staff and and Jason's job and whatnot and you know I'm looking for for ways to work through this curriculum and whatnot and tweak it if we have to um you know so let me just uh start out uh you know I requested the ELA curriculum be put on the uh agenda for discussion tonight wit and wisdom uh but before I I really want to discuss any of this I'd just like to First say uh I want to State for the record that the concerns that I have and those that were brought to me months ago have nothing to do with recent legis ation or uh any uh acts related to public school CRT the concerns that prompted me uh to research and rethink

154W wit and wisdom were concerns from parents teachers and administrators over the de developmental inappropriate content being presented in some of the text being used I'm not advocating for us to discontinue uh our adopted curriculum because I understand understand that our teachers appreciate the structure of the series and find most of the stories age appropriate but I do want us to know what is in uh the adopted curriculum that has some parents teachers and administrators telling me that the content and some of the text is truly uh developmentally inappropriate so again the concerns I'm here to address as a representative for others has nothing to do with politics any seat CTR concerns or any Tennessee legislation the concerns are related to the developmental appropriateness of breeding content we we place in front of five and

15510 year olds I gave I handed out some sheets and it's got some of the books highlighted um and you know you can look these books up online too but they don't give you the the the big picture of what these books are talking about um some of them I find you know intriguing for a guy my age but uh Dave and I have had had conversations and I said well why can't we let the teachers have discretion well really there's no discretion because it's the structure that's that many teachers and principles uh you know I I talked to my own principal she said the structure is awesome um but when you start drilling down like Dave was alluding to earlier there's no room for adjustments there's no room for another uh a book or

156a literature okay it's just it's straight down and it's a script and the teachers are having to do this to the script and that's uh I've got a list of things that uh that you know they they had said um but you've you've you've had time to look at that and uh but let me just re reinstate the concerns are about developmental stages of children and how these topics are not appropriate uh to their abilities to truly understand the teachers parents and administrators I have spoke to believe these topics are too confusing and too complex and another person I that I've known for years in uh counselor type and and psychologist type uh she said there's just too much stress being put on these children you know my thing and a lot of parents and

157and people are saying let let the kids alone in elementary school most Educators believe that learning is as developmentally age appropriate progressional process when children without the ability to understand topics that are outside of their scope of reasoning all kinds of unsettling thoughts misguided ideas misunderstandings and concerns arise I want to be clear that the content in the complex literature even the complex historical facts need to be taught and discussed but only at the developmental age appropriate time these topics in in my opinion and the opinion of others that have reached out to me are topics that are not age appropriate for elementary school if Whitten wisdom is the vehicle the means to uh the desired outcome of the standard-based teaching and learning you know the Mastery of reading then why not insist on age

158appropriate text and stories for our very young and vulnerable students in speaking with some of our teachers and counselors there's a real concern over the emotional and well-being and mental health of our students when they are introduced to topics they are not emotionally or cognitively ready to understand all of our elementary students need to feel safe and need to be cared for loved and a part of their school communities they will ultimately face the realities of these types of topics soon enough so for now all I ask uh is that we consider seeking ways to modify some of the questionable curriculum which is in wit and wisdom I have some thoughts and ideas of my own but uh would like to open up the floor for feedback uh you know we we've heard some BR

159from Brad and and I can piggyback on that um I've heard quite a bit from Dave um you know about how the the curriculum is is constructed and whatnot and you know they you you know and I'm not I'm not saying anybody's not being truthful or whatever but you know he hasn't had a lot of feedback stating that this is bad uh for kids I have some other folks have met with folks about this uh you know with with complaints but uh I mean you know maybe maybe we ought to uh consider a an anonymous survey from teachers and see where they're at after after looking at how how we all started this year in the chaos with with a pandemic well now after settling back in and really looking at it they may have

160some some ideas or or changes that they would like to see so you know I mean uh it's not all negative it's not all positive but there are some issues here that need to be looked at um you know what grade level uh Jason or or Dave um what's the average grade level with wonders what's the average child are we getting them through third grade at a third grade level you mean in the past yes well as you all know our students have done really well um and you know what what our professionals look through in this new research is taking them to that next level uh and continuing to to challenge them and and help grow them you know in Reading to to you know to to the point um that that Mr Mitchell

161emphasized uh so so yes they did well with wonders U the projections that we have are this is the next step and so we all we all are are always pushing to do better um that's a challenge that that I have't have heard for 15 years I've been here we're doing we're doing good enough so we are constantly looking to do better uh for students uh and and the you know if you think about the international competition uh we we continue to push the state emphasizes growth more than they emphasize academic performance so how do you grow High performers you you find creative ways to challenge them Beyond where they are and that's part of the wise you know of of this but I just don't you know and I like I say I've discussed

162this I just don't see where you know degrading the family unit and uh there has to be a a big deal going on in a family like in Hatchet for instance the mom and dad are having issues the mom is having an affair uh and all this stuff and then they put him on a plane and send him away and well the plane crashes and he's left with an axe now I I want to get the book but why do children have to hear about the dysfunctional family and so many of these books are about dis unctional people dysfunctional families we've got enough divorce and issues with parents kids we go you know we've got hundreds of kids that go from one parent to the next three days here four days there all their life

163and then we've got those little kids that tell their teacher everything that happens in their life because that's their that's the only person they can vent to and then we start reading some of this stuff about mean people being injected into these kids like that that second grader so I think now if I think I've got some people that want to ask questions so Dan are you are may I open the floor back to the comments now well if you don't want to hear from me no more yeah Oh I thought you were done well you said you said I want to open up the discussion so I thought well I do I but I you know I'm I'm explaining what what what I see and feel and what so many other people are seeing

164and feeling and my question is is do we have to do we have to do chapter [Music] one or do we have to do we have to go into the suicide do we have to in third and fourth grade talk about you know um the the military troops from Great Britain walking in a city and town and and running the women out naked and the kids and kill them and using their skin for leggings I mean I you know and then then you know we talk about being vetted and then we look at uh between uh two rivers is that what the the river between us the river between us I mean we're talking we're talking about quadron and quadron balls and prostitution in New Orleans theying the Civil you know uh not civil but

165yeah Civil War during the Civil War what are we talking about prostitution and and survival and sexual sexualization of women when there was thousands and thousands of women in the South that were starving to death with nine and 10 kids to feed I mean why why do we where do these books come from that's that's my that's my point so you know these are just some of the things and then then the two moons book I I mean I'm still trying to figure that one out and I'm I'm over 50 maybe even a little more go ahead open up for questions okay thank you Mr Cash uh Miss Emerson oh sorry I as a teacher I love books I love reading and and kids are easily captivated by information in text that is of interest

166to them but for peete's sakes some of this is geared not to edify but to tantalize and to get some of these kids thinking in ways that I think are not healthy and I I think we can do so much better there's wonderful literature out there some of it has been around for you know maybe a hundred years or more but it's still good it's got a great story it's got complexity it's got action it's got all kinds of things you don't have to bring sex and all this physical stuff into in for the kids especially young ones I mean it's it to me it's pornography it's a it's a it's partly pornography when you're exposing young children that don't have the mental capacity at that point because of their age and their experience in

167life to be able to kind of sort through this and sift and understand that you know this is not every day this is not for all people this is a story and and I think especially in these days is is so many things are going on with our nation and and we've got to be more positive about the information and the way that we present information to our students it it doesn't have to be pornographic to capture their attention you know there's lots of wonderfully written complex books out there that stir your soul and make you want to read it make you want to share it with your family or your children um but it doesn't have to have all of these elements it it just doesn't and I think we're making a very destructive

168decision for some of these kids that are not age level appropriate in terms of being able to embrace and understand and disseminate this information in a way because of what what it can do and some of the parents are not they don't even know some of the these books that the kids have read and are expected to read and I just it it hurts my heart as a teacher Who Loved what I was doing and there are so many great books on all different kinds of levels that can capture and encourage and and get kids to want to read and want and want to engage in all kinds of terrific things some of this stuff is out there it is but dog G it do not need to expose some of our children to this

169and it makes me ashamed that as the one of the you know the the the top county in the state of Tennessee and and our highly functioning students to be exposed to this kind of junk it's just not right Mr galberth Mr Wimberly oh are you was that it I'll add just a little I guess I got a question your mic please surely I'm talking loud enough but the uh I mean what do we Dave can you compare what we used prior to this in terms of in terms of the subject matter and I guess in terms of the of the complexity and the difficulty I only need one are we okay yeah so um appreciate the question so um they they are very different uh the the Lexile levels are what's really creating our

170problems really to be honest with you because a lot of the the the books that we're talking about in fourth grade um now we have taught those our our te some of our teachers in the past have chose to teach to teach those at the fourth grade level but oftentimes they might have been taught at the fifth or the sixth grade level so um it is an increase in complexity um and and what's different about wonders um was that these the books that we're reading now and and what's part of the reason why our students are are enjoying them they're books that you can buy um anywhere right so these are these are books that they put we put in the kids hand they're reading the books where in the past it's been a textbook

171that they were reading stories out of that weren't really related to each other so I'm excited about the increased level of Lexile that our kids are reading but I'm also concerned about obviously some of that heavier content um and and just to for for a few points of edification as as I have the mic um just to to you know I want to make sure that I'm being fully transparent I have received uh from my team concerns about the fourth grade curriculum so I know Dan mentioned Mr Cass mentioned that I hadn't received um a lot of feedback and um about some of the concerns about it I have they've primarily been around the fourth grade I also want to share that our students have done really well in the past comparatively speaking to other

172schools across the state but our most recent teap data 2018 2019 which gives us data to suggest are our students reading on grade level or not 33% of our kids as addressed by teap in grades three through five weren't reading on grade level they were below um and so we feel there is room to grow and we feel that that part of the reason or part of the way that we can grow is putting higher level text in front of our students because they can um uh they can reach that level with support from the teachers so um but again I'm just sharing some some feedback with you I I want you to know that that my team hears the concerns as well and we share in some of those concerns and we're trying to

173find ways to make modifications without as I mentioned before pulling apart the fabric of the entire curriculum so Mr galbert did I answer your question I know I went on to ask answer some other question definitely did as relates to the the difficulty um but with as it relates to the subject matter I mean is there can you just can you see just a difference in the um the the darkness I've heard a lot um the just Advan subject matter with the sexuality and the killing and and these things like I mean was that stuff even was it ever an issue or could I mean was there was there questionable text prior to to this curriculum yes sir always questionable text really at every grade level um however much uh more heightened this year um

174um but isolated to certain portions of wit and wisdom fourth grade being one of those but yes absolutely um uh um a definite uptick as it relates to that now in some of the I would also say in some of the the the concerns some of the feedback that I've received from my team and from my teachers is that when you pull portions of a book out in isolation they sound awful you know I'm a dad too guys I got a daughter I got a son I'm just like everybody around this table trying to do what's right for the children of our of our County and so I start I question these as harder harder than you all question them right I'm I'm in there with my team be beating them up and um just

175just like we're we're beating up this topic right now and so what's been shared with me from my team is that when we pull out in isolation it looks really bad um and when we look at it through an adult lens it looks really bad and when students are reading the text in the classroom Guided by the teacher they don't even gloss they don't even they don't even focus on those topics right the theme of hatchet that we've discussed I've had conversations with teachers and teams about that after the students finished that book there were zero concerns that came to me there were concerns on the front end and we helped the teachers work through that but what was shared with me is that there was Zero Focus From the students related to um the

176infidelity that we've we've brought up here that it was all about survival and that the students latched onto the theme of the book rather than some of the individual pieces but again I asked some of those questions that you all are asking me right now which I think are very fair questions well I guess I I just it frustrates me that that that all of these that these texts were chosen um by somebody for a reason and and and definitely it's obvious that they were they were pushing the the reading difficulty but the fact that they throw some gratuitous um infidelity and suicidal thoughts and they like and they just like it's it's it's intentional and it's um and it's meant to desensitize us to um as as Dan pointed out just the the core

177traditional family like I mean it's it's it people are frustrated that they're that that we're yes it's not the focus but it's it's gratuitous and it's it's made to oh well everybody yeah nobody nobody stays married anymore anybody's in for and and they don't even notice it and that's the that's the problem like they don't even they've been desensitized to it and it's not even an issue oh yeah it's not not a big deal we just kind of gloss over that piece um I mean that why do we have why do we have stuff in there that we're just having to having to gloss over and hope that they that nobody pays any attention to it and I I just can't believe that there's not a that there's not a v big rigorous rigorous rigorous

178um text that we could that we could use a curriculum that we could use that doesn't have nearly as many of these issues it's just it's just concerning I mean Ian Dan I appreciate Dan's kind of focus on this because I mean out outside of I mean I was I was unaware obviously before all this um before people started bringing it to to my attention I don't have any um I don't have any young kids anymore that are that are reading these texts so I just appreciate Dan's efforts and I mean and all of you guys looking at it but I mean at some point I mean you can you can only you can only pull out so much and you can only work around it so much before you say you know should we

179be looking for another solution so thank you Mr Wimberly I think we have were having a discussion tonight that school boards have been having ever since there were school boards uh beginning in the early 1900s and I also think that just about everybody in this room with the exception of the reporters and the security and some of us on the board have all said or something that that age appropriateness is important um I don't I think if we took a vote on it nobody's going to vote against age appropriateness and we've heard Dr Allen talk about his concerns we've heard Jason talk about his concerns we've heard them talk about some of the things that that they are currently doing to address some of these concerns and and you know as Dave said he's got

180professional Educators who really know this stuff well who are concerned about some of the content so it seems like to me um we've established that we're in agreement anybody disagree I didn't think so everybody would agree so the question you know then really becomes what are we going to do about it and you know Dr Allen is working on it um and his team is working on it um yet it's something that concerns you know you know the professionals are working on it but US representatives we're concerned about it and and you know and we're going to insist that it be worked on so to me the question is really okay then um you you professionals um what are you going to do about it you know and and we've gotten some answers and um

181it you know to me you know some clear bullet points a diagram or something that says this is an initiative that we're undergoing and you know the result of this initiative will be that we will be in a better place we will not stop the controversy this board will talk about this and Boards after us will talk about this as long as there are School school boards and we should we're supposed to that's our jobs but it just seems to me that that that a definitive Initiative for lack of a better word you know might be in order and not that you're not already doing that but perhaps that could be packaged so US representatives can understand it and so the community can understand it does that does does that offend anybody does that does

182that sound [Music] unreasonable nope Mr Wy I'm I'm the next speaker uh and so if I could just tag on to that um you know we have we we have had a lot of discussion about this tonight um we've also heard from a lot of parents on the side of this issue who say we like this curriculum please don't change this curriculum but it is the first year of adoption and and we do need to assess so if I could tag on to that I'd just like to say can we hear from um Mr Allen or Dr Allen next month a report you know what what um what the curriculum department has heard and what they you know what they uh feel like um you know what the inputs were you know teacher inputs student

183inputs um Community inputs and and what their recommendations are based on this first year curriculum yes ma'am I think that's a great idea and uh and they they they've already started that work as you all heard so um I think that's a good plan and Mr Wimberly to your point this this curriculum um discussion that we've been having in the community prompted me to order off of Amazon my favorite book from the grassland Elementary library when I was 9 years old and the book is tuned out it was an award-winning book about um a a young man whose brother is a heroin addict and I'll just read you read the whole thing no no no I'm just gonna but this was this was my favorite book in at grass and Elementary um other Summers will

184come and go but the summer of 67 will not resemble them the drug scene is no longer centralized in New York or San Francisco it has already spread from colleges and cities to high schools in the suburbs it will probably affect before it disappears every young person in the country so I I'm looking forward to reading it again but I just want to make the point you're absolutely right this is an issue that that school districts and school boards deal with over time next up we have Miss Durham my question is more around I guess the as a policy making board should we be addressing any of this from a PO policy perspective and like coming up with parameters at all that would exclude certain content or is there something that already kind of lists

185out areas or topics we would not want to allow in the curriculum at certain grade levels we do have some policies that describe basic expectations uh for curriculum I think probably the best thing to do would be for us to include those in what we did do in June um and it it includes language like conflicting thought making sure different perspectives are shared I can't recall off the top of my head um if there's anything any any list of prohibitions um but I think it's what us being that's what I'm yeah more interested in because I completely get the fabric you know the weaving and things that you wouldn't want to disrupt but it feels like there's a way to keep the continuity in the learning and the rigor without layering in content that's questionable

186or you know feels unacceptable to parents so that was just my thoughts Mr Cash thank you for that Angela That's that's another area we could look at but i' I'd just like to to say you know what we we've got and we know this we've got one of the the most well-educated workforces in this country we have created curriculum I mean five six years ago uh we said no we're not buying this or we're not buying that you know we've had enough of the big curriculum company and and we put together a plan this board put together a plan and agreed on it and said you know what we can create a science curriculum and we did it and saved the county millions of dollars and then we came back and set up the another

187room for the social studies and if you look at the social studies it's it's it's a great curriculum I understand Ela is much bigger and it kind of encompasses you know literature and everything else but I think we need to use those people I know we've got reading Specialists here in this school I know that there's there's so many so many people with so many talents that uh can help fix this and help bring this together to to satisfy uh parents and whatnot and you know I I know I know uh there's there's people on the other side there always is but in this in this social agenda today you're going to have conflict we can't we can't satisfy everyone but but we can start looking we can look at the majority we can really

188look at the majority again I can't I cannot specify how much and where I feel about the the degrading of the family unit we don't need any more of that we've got enough as it is and some of the books are you know out there you know like like uh Mr Allen said we've been teaching these books for a long time but teachers had more discretion they could they could use their discretion and you know they could still test and they could still use worksheets and whatnot but you know I think that's what's hurting us more than anything with wit and wisdom is it's just it's structured but structured so tightly that we can't move around in it and I think you know with with the help of the skill sets that our people have

189that we can uh we can probably do something about this and uh What uh Mr wiy said I I agree totally you know we we need to have some some feedback and you know like you said maybe a chart or something but you know we need to follow up on this and and keep folks informed thank you very much Mr H thank you mam chair uh one of the favorite thoughts I have frequently is that multiple things can be true at the same time and I I think there's truth in everything that everyone said tonight and that there are concerning topics and at the same time we want to challenge our students I we need to have this mentioned before critical thinking and and as somebody who tried to read you know out kick my

190coverage with reading when I was growing up I'm probably still traumatized by reading the outside things that you know probably were above my grade level but um you know and I I appreciate Dave what you had said about like you know these things keeping you up at night because we can talk about oh we're we're tweaking this and we're gonna this is just our first year but every kid this is your only time in fourth grade so those kids this is their only experience we can tweak it in the aggregate but for that experience that one kid is affected by what is happening and I know that we are taking that into account we take that very seriously I'm just you know I know this is a tough spot when you have to tweak these

191things because it's like probably like moving a battleship it can't turn on a dime and so many pieces are interconnected it does sound like there's a feedback loop that is working but not as quickly as we'd like in these in in some of these particular instances and I guess you know to the to the comments or to the uh plan discussion for next month I'd like to know more about what you know wit and wisdom hears from other districts and are they are they kind of tweaking that that that we're not just going it alone and saying hey can you do this for us what's their feedback loop like and uh you know H how how easy is it for them to make these tweaks for the coming years so I I appreciate that that's

192a concern that many have expressed and I can also appreciate the frustration that it can't happen quickly these are not easy tweaks uh to make so um I appreciate the challenges and I appreciate the concerns that everybody has expressed on these things um so um I look forward to further discussion and I appreciate the the conversation tonight on this topic I can give you a short bit and then uh and then we can talk about it in more depth uh in June the gist of our our conversations with them have been if you haven't heard it yet it's coming would you mind repeating that if you haven't heard it yet it's coming in our conversations with Whitten wisdom concerns oh from F other than us yes yes oh okay gotta sorry Mr Welch so now

193locks up and eyes bu the reference so I think first I want to sort of point out is we have a policy for reconsideration of instructional materials and textbooks so there's a thing in place already that the the board has established where if there is question materials to be reviewed uh there is a process for that in place and within that process what we had touched on earlier was you know well should we have some of these standards it's right here as well uh I'm not going to go through all them but I'll read first structal material should be chosen for values interest Enlightenment of all students in the community Stu should not be exuded because race nationality political views the writer St language every effort made to provide materials that present many points of

194view and on and on censorship discouraged um Etc so we have that structure in place uh already current um we can always review and and look at it but it's it's there it's not as though this is the first time that has ever been brought up in fact what I would say is you know if there's ever been a Golden Age of Enlightenment where people were satisfied with entirely with the curricul in schools and texts that were being taught I would love to know about but Whitten wisdom was one of three options that the State Board of Education gave us to choose from one of three options that there were entire K through five and not you know yes sir okay and of those three you said what 60 to 70% of our teachers suggested

195that this was the the best of the three yes okay so if we're taken to the extreme like some the things we have let's replace wi and wisdom okay fine replace it with what replace it with one of the other two options that are available to us that combined got about half of the recommendations from our own teachers that the other one did uh this is not to argue that everything is perfect in place we've heard that and it never will be and there always will be people people who are unhappy with it but think we need let's focus on some of these specifics we're talking about very much generalities here you know children should not be exposed to violence killings things like that you know I think back some well some of the books

196that I really enjoyed as a you know as middle school or fifth grade or what have you one was about a 12-year-old boy who was kidnapped and abused uh physically abused used locked up in a shed by his abusive alcoholic father he escapes he meets up with a slave who's about to be sold off they they Race For Freedom uh horribly violent book right that's Huckleberry Finn another one I like is about children who were Shipwrecked on an island and turn to murdering each other and bullying even paganism you know worshiping animals that was Lord of the Flies another one about two teenagers from very broken homes they were in a gang they murdered a rival of another gang another one of their friends was shot by the police while he was robbing a store

19712 15 year old boys uh at the end of it you know one of the protagonists dies in a fire That's The Outsiders about some of the other you know uh line Wich in the wardrobe great book see what happens to asan in it I think we're all very familiar with that uh I know my sister I was been big enough my sister loved holes that was one of big ones it's about children in a prison system who have to dig holes in the desert you know are very abused uh The Book Thief great book class literature backdrops Nazi Germany so a lot of these things you know again let's look at the specifics let's look at it in context look's look at it in the whole and if there is something there then there's

198a policy for it right here already in place and let's do that and if there's a problem with the policy or the procedure then let's fix that but let's not just holler and scream and stomp about oh you know it's we can't teach children kids bad things um you know if we do that there'll be nothing for them to read and again I kind of go back to you know the force for the trees what is the the purpose of all of this it is to is to have children get that foundational basis of being able to to read think critically to be able to build on that um you know what it seems like is we've seen some tremendous growth with this program it has been successful again not to to defend everything about

199it yeah absolutely there are some things need to be fixes you know Dr Allen is very upfront with that um you know the George bir George some of the things that it has last year uh if you go to Mount Vernon I had the opportunity to go to that last year you see a lot of this there at Mount Vernon at at Washington's home the way it's presented in context and there are busloads of young children being brought and walked through there in displays you know every single day so not to not to say we don't have issues because of course we we we will always will and every District always will just because there is a wide array of opinions and views on it and we always need to look at it but if

200there are those challenges let's focus on what those are specifically let's look at it in context with in the whole and not generalities and then let's take it to our policy and our procedure and let's go ahead and go through that and fix those things that we can um thank Mr galber thank you madam chair um sorry my my computer will not pull up the the uh the policy on on our Wi-Fi spot so my kid can search YouTube videos from everything but I can't look at policy so I'm having to look at it on my phone so um so thank you Eric for this 4.43 and I um did know that this outside of us reviewing all of our policies um and I'm going to take my ear off because it's way too loud

201um the uh as I did outside of reviewing all the policies on uh in in there in its entirety I completely forgot we've not used this uh this policy so I would I'm just I'm just reading through it but um I'm going back to what Nancy said as far as uh I I will as part of your report for for June are are we going to solicit feedback from stakeholders around this I think we have some already so we're going to talk about that and how we can um okay because I I think I think it's I mean heck we've sent out a we sent out like 50 surveys um in the last month and we we've been not apt to do that in the in the past but um I would I would certainly

202appreciate it and and if we and I think I mean I I think Dan would probably agree um that we let's follow this policy and let's look at and see if we want to um to follow this for the reconsideration I like I said I I'm speaking out of ignorance here because I haven't been able to finish the policy as far as what what it entails but I would I would I would think that getting getting feedback would be a part of that process and I don't know I don't know when so well to that point Madam chair um I I mentioned three policies uh in the in the process of uh of instruction materials and they're 4.41 4.42 and ironically enough 4.43 uh so uh yeah I I do encourage you you know this

203is the kind of discussion to Mr wimberly's point that is super valuable for for a board to have um I do encourage you to look at all all of those uh and and and it does talk about parameters and expectations and I gave a couple of examples of that but I I think those are those are some valuable reads for you as a board these come up when they come up and often they you know they sit quietly for years thank you mram I'm actually good thanks Mr Cash yeah I just I just like to say you know it's I think this has been a great discussion and I think we pinpointed areas um you know we probably do need to get into policy more but I I just you know through this whole year

204um I think a lot of folks have just lost you know the the Trust In in the board and the trust in the school system you know due to the pandemic and everything and I think a lot of this is writing on this also we we've got to we've got to earn that trust back uh I've had to tell people much like you folks you trust the schools to teach our kids what needs to be taught we rely on betting and we trust what they say you know there's over 125 books involved with this you know it's kind of hard to read them all and you know but let's let's get back into the business of you know kids kids being the the number one thing right here and getting parents to trust us again

205and and work with us I I think that would help a lot too and and if we have policy to go by that that's also an asset so that's all I I've got thanks thank you Mr Cash so we've had a really thoughtful discussion here that that has represented lots of different stakeholders and perceptions and thoughts and opinions and the action out of this is asking for a report from staff next month about what they're hearing from stakeholders and what their recommendations are so um thank you all for that um next up is our operations report Mark Samuels thank you madam chair good evening board I'm going to shorten up my uh my report here I'm not going to take the hour and a half to Dr Allan's report for just few quick points one

206you may have read the paper there is a little bit of fuel issue in the area we had a WebEx with um EMA this morning Jeff and I have been talking about this for a couple of days the pipeline is back open product is coming into the Nashville area uh we have a little bit of a challenge of our drivers finding fuel but it's there we have stocks here on this compound that should get us through there so we it's diesel it's locked up it's diesel so um which is actually a good thing that's our primary need so we do not foresee any concerns or issues with h transporting students tomorrow and through next Friday secondly um on the planning and zoning inside Allison's folks continue to work on bus routing for summer camps and

207I want to mention this specifically so you and parents who are listening for those who are signed up for summer camps and parents who signed up for summer camp and chose transportation we are putting those routes together and in some cases that will take students from the sack site they were dropped off in the morning to the summer camp and then back to the sack site as it may be necessary so this is a new one for us and it's pushing us back on on bus routes for the fall but I wanted you to know that that's part of the service that we're trying to provide for this summer uh on the construction I sent you the report yesterday the two things I really want to celebrate right now is we closed on the Cox

208Road property yesterday okay I asked Kevin today is it built yet elementary school and he walked away okay the other thing is you may have heard and um Mr Golden put in his email to you Monday night um at the County Commission meeting the the new mayor of Spring Hill got up and basically told the County Commission don't worry about getting the land at at WLS Lane don't even worry about voting on The Resolution that we forward to them uh we're going to support the school district we didn't know exactly what that meant Monday night today Kevin and all we had a good long meeting with the city administrator what we were told is on Monday night the Spring Hill Bulma is going to meet get together they should vote on a resolution which we

209anticipate or told would allow us to move forward with closing on that property and then bidding that that um work so we got our fingers crossed while we're talking about other things Monday night the Spring Hill Bulma will be hopefully talking about us and get a positive return there and Madam chair pending any questions to the board that includes my report and if I may mad chair I want to hit two points um one for each of those two pieces of land one um the Cox Road property which is in the Triune area um I had a call from someone in the Blackhawk subdivision who had said that they had heard that we were running an entrance from the school property through the subdivision that is not our plan just in case you hear is

210that Gary [Laughter] Anders um so so if you hear something uh be very clear that we are not I'm running an entrance through the neighborhood it's on Cox Road uh second um on the wils lane property uh the uh mayor Hagman was was very gracious to spend time with us and review what we were doing and say hey in consultation with um with uh with their city manager say hey you guys got you guys have a good plan we're going to make this right and I want to thank Mr Mitchell for facilitating that conversation what you can I say something too I am hearing a lot of uh of Kudos and celebration from the people um in the page Zone about just the the looks of the facilities the the buildings that are going up

211uh so much so that we I tried to convince my son did not graduate so that he could experience the new building he didn't go for it but uh no it looks incredible and and I know it's still a lot of work left to do but um there is a end in sight and the people are excited out there thank you sir please extend your comments to Kevin Fortney as well on the job Mr Question um with regards to I'm looking forward and loving I love watching all the U the buildings get close to completion and I can't wait to to see a couple of the new ones um but uh with regards to the the britland middle school is there do you have a a timeline of when the when the public might be

212able to to see that because that's really exciting and I look forward to that process we're still working through some of the Design Concepts I provided y'all some of those where we are now um and we we have a the designer on contract now to to actually pay him for the work that that they've done I don't have a FB schedule for that but um um I mean later in the summer first of the year first of the school year oh I think it will be later this summer I think at best had some people ask what I can tell you is if you go over to the page schools and see the three story buildings that's going to be our future in certain locations based on the real estate that we have yeah I

213think the question the question that at hand is is just one to understand where the where it's going to go where it is what is shape is gonna look like and more importantly how are we going to pull it off while school's still in session on the same site which is which is really the the more important piece in my mind thank you Mr samels board chair report um Rick and Sheila y'all will get ready to make your legislative report I'll go ahead and cover something else first but just a little tip off um there is a piece of paper circulating about um possible times for a June Retreat is has everybody seen that okay we're if sitting next to okay if you will continue to circulate that pick pick your top two choices uh

214there are four dates and we've we've had a request maybe to to push that Retreat a little bit um we will definitely take that into consideration um so those are the dates that that we're looking at now um I'll get with Vicki and with Jason and see if we can if we can work in um you know something about the report or a preliminary review of the report from fostering Healthy Solutions uh secondly that um moment you've been waiting for that legislative report from Rick Sheila T well the legislative uh season is basically over so this probably shouldn't take but about 45 minutes with us here so um several things to report on as you recall tsba had uh eight pieces of legislation that they um uh and thus we supported all eight pieces of

215those legislation uh passed um would you like for me to go for through a quick list or do you all recall what they were okay you got it okay good the second uh big piece of legislative news um relates to several things that dealt with money so I'm going to defer to staff to to give a bit of report on on what happened uh to our money during the legislative session Rachel if you would it's been a year since we've all been in the same room so it's a year would you like for me to go to the next item back to because that's kind of the most important one I think or my opinion okay so uh this is going to require some staff we've got it I think good go ahead ra so

216your question was what has happened with our money that we have coming for us there's been um several things I'm not exactly specifically sure which one referring to we do know we have S3 money that will be coming that will be in next year it's about $5.2 million for us the focus of this being on learning loss and so we are in discussions now as to how that money will be used to go in forward there's several different other grants that have come through um and you'll see them next month um related to the summer summer camp Bridge Camp and again that's about4 million that it's been allocated to us for those particular PR with the center um also a couple of other little items that we may be able to apply for and not

217apply for so go ahead and tell me if there was something other that you specifically wanted me to address I I have one more to add um the BP hold harm was there's a lot of discussion back um you know a few months ago early in the legislative session basically what was passed was that school districts would would be held harmless from the from the reduction in students for the year but there would be no growth money this year that's the gist of it so the net loss for US based on what we typically get is it about four million so so uh they they they covered everything but Healthy Growth I had I had a conversation with one of one of our legislators yesterday about um where that growth money goes this year making

218sure that whatever they did with it was non-recurring um so that they can be prepared the following year to return that growth money so the that impact on us is 4 million okay all right okay uh the the other one of the other things that passed was kind of mentioned earlier uh was the critical race Theory Bill if you want to call it that but basically what this bill did was threaten funding of school districts if teachers discuss systemic racism and other Concepts and certain other Concepts about racism sexual bias and other social issues uh it was controversial I suspect it will continue to be and Jason kind of alluded to this earlier but you know the real question as far as I'm concerned to staff is what does does this mean to us if

219anything oh well first I would like Miss OS Brooks to give a give a little bit of description and Miss OS Brooks if you would um speak to the second section of uh of that bill and and what it is making sure the state expects of us and superintendent golden if you could tell me which bill my um internet cut out about the time I heard my name uh Mr Wimberly spoke to the uh what he described as the critical race Theory Bill okay yes so um and you may not have heard me I asked you to focus on the second piece of that bill with with the expectations from the state so the um this was a piece of legislation that happened in the last few days of the legislative session it was actually

220um a piece that ended up the house bill and the Senate Bill were differed so a conference committee um took place and a conference committee report for the majority has been issued and that was issued May 5th it has not yet been sent to Governor Lee for his signature so it is still a bill you did receive from superintendent golden earlier today board members an email that set out the position of the Department of Education and at this point the Tennessee Department of Education has not issued any guidance um and they said that in fact they will not per their General stance until the bill is um signed by the governor at the end of this bill it's about um this amendment the majority committee reports about 16 pages and towards the end of that

221it talks about there are some items that um would not be discussed or included some Concepts but then there are also some Concepts that would be discussed um and that would and that superintendent golden is what you want me to cover is that correct okay so the pieces that would be um covered would be history of an ethnic group it would also be impartial discussions of controversial aspects of history and um impartial instruction on the historical oppression of a particular group based on race class na um national origin religion or geographic region and the last topic um we could also be discussing historical documents and that that covers in that particular Bill what um what context would be would be so the short version Mr Wimberly is we we believe at first glance that it's

222going to be consistent with what we've been doing so no significant change for us uh no but but it just it just reemphasizes the importance of uh of of care in what we do okay thank you uh also I'm going to throw this over to Sheila there was a kind of an interesting uh zoning uh piece of legislation that uh she's done a good job of tracking yeah this this one um was on our was on my radar for you know a while and it's one that tsba opposes and it basically is about Open Enrollment and this bill would um require us to put on the website the number of um right now when we put on we say open enrollment we say the number of seats available in a school um now this one

223says we have to do it by grade class and program level at least 14 days before the enrollment period opens so that puts a lot of stress on us and then also which is even more interesting it would if once we have like the teachers that have their students or bus drivers or teachers that have their students in our school system you take away those then whatever's left over we do open enrollment if there's more applicants for the enrollment then it goes to a lottery system yeah so that is something that wouldn't turn out good now the good news is though it did ended up landed on the governor's desk for Signature but there with also an amendment it was originally um asked to be effective the 2122 school year it was pushed the 2223

224school year so that allows for it to come back next year next legislation session for um discussion so they're hoping tsba hopes to have more discussions to tweak that a little bit more so the obvious question based on what you know and still a lot up in the air does this sound like something that will impact us yes um yes significantly uh you know you all know we do annual open zoning my one practical concern I mentioned to miss Cleveland is this is asking us to drill down to individual classes um and so that's going to be a very very what the reason I don't know the I don't know the reasoning behind it but the the existing law up to this point um was really borrowed from us years ago we had a board

225policy in place and a lot of that a lot of the law about open zoning just had exactly our board policy language I don't know enough history about this to know where where it came well what I found and especially after um digging deep in a lot of these legislation um bills they come from certain districts that have a problem smaller districts so for instance that if there is an open enrollment there's some um people that get privileged getting into certain schools and I think that's what kind of sparked this yeah I mean I doubt that there is a school system in the state that does more resoning than we do so it seems like um we need to really get our antenna up and work on this yeah for next year because it could

226be well intended for those who occasionally reone but for those of us who do it often could be what it be a logistics nightmare pardon what happens to feeder patterns then if you get into one of those and down the line oh the lottery yeah it just you can be assure that when Sheila said that Rick there was a zoning bill I thought whoa zoning zoning certainly sent up a red flag and I'm sorry is there anything else we should add no I'm good and on that I'm sorry did you say it's on the governor's desk now so this has already been passed it made it to the governor's desk but with that Amendment so it's it hasn't been sign it's going to be on table for um next session well Shea Rick thank thanks

227for all your work this year monitoring the legislature and I really think that um the the Wonder Twin approach was really a good one you know really the under twin approach was really a good one you know for you guys to work together it's been are we discharged we thank you um the the last item that I just want to talk about real quick um Mandy has already left I think but um we wanted to say a special thank you to our nurses this is their uh day after Nurses Day appreciation um as we know they they have um they've really had a a huge burden this year and they have uh approached it with so much spirit and vigor and resilience and uh just made all of their work such a positive thing um

228so we are very appreciative of them and also if if there are still any people um watching this who are teachers or bus drivers or for staff um we we want to thank you as well for everything that you've done this year for every moment that you took to reassure a child or help a child or um go that extra mile for a child it is so appreciated so thank you okay so that concludes the board chair report and now we will move on to new business um the super intendent evaluation this is an an annual agenda item for May and um so our all of you have received the evaluation um our charge is um to review the evaluation uh in preparation for voting to accept the compiled scoring on Monday night the rating

229period was August 20th excuse me August of 2020 to the present so that August was the start of the rating period um so I want to see if anyone has questions tonight uh that they would need answered in order to to um make that vote on Monday night and then after any questions uh Jason will give us a response to the compiled evaluation because he's had a chance to look at it as well yes M Mr Mitchell so thank you madam chair in in years past the comments were were not annotated to individual people is there a reason that that was changed this year uh Miss OS Brooks can you answer address that sure um this is Dana OS Brooks Mr Mitchell we looked back um last year superintendent Golden's evaluation did not Happ any

230comments previous years with Dr Looney and with previous uh superintendent they were handled both ways some with comments and some attributed to the speaker and some without um attributed to the speaker okay I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you well I just don't remember it being a so um I'm sure your your research is better than my memory but miss I'm sorry were you gonna say something else well I just was gonna was gonna say Mr Mitchell because I could not remember and I I knew last year H superintendent golden did not have comments that was not a part of his evaluation and it was requested by several board members to be included in this year's evaluation I did go back to research um because like you I I couldn't I didn't trust my

231my memory um without looking into it so thank you any other questions I see Angela over there okay if there are no other questions if if you look at this you know there's a lot of information here so if you look at this and have questions between now and our meeting please do contact our attorney Dana OS Brooks if you have ADD if you have those additional um things that you'd like to address prior to Monday night and now Mr Golden you would like to thank you madam chair uh first I I want to thank you all for doing this uh you you're elected and it's basically a volunteer position and I know you've heard me say that before and uh and it's a i it can be a for both you and me because

232it's so public but I appreciate you all doing it I will also tell you that I've had a chance to review it and it generally reflects the conversations that I have had with each of you over the course of this year uh we you I had four goals set all covid related uh and over the course of this year you have been good to me in that you have shared your opinion about the decisions I've made once the board gave me that discretion with that uh with that return to school plan uh and so I very much appreciate you all being upfront with me over the course of the year uh about about your thoughts on that uh when I when I saw and we landed on those goals I knew that it was going

233to be difficult for me to to um to have everything perfect because of Co and because I knew that that you reflected our community and the in the scope of thought in our community is very broad but again because you've been upfront with me over the course of the year I very much appreciate that um I'm I'm I'm looking at those comments and I think you know like everyone else we all have uh opportunities to grow and uh I'm you know I'm big on self analysis uh and so I'm G to I'm going to continue to work on how we as a team grow and continue to serve those students better I want to continue to look for opportunities to grow I don't want this to be a caretaker Administration and I think you all

234know that um we've uh We've introduced some some topics that have the potential to be very difficult but it's because we're looking to students first uh and we're looking at students with empathy uh and we're trying to work as a team so I I do thank you for uh your your feedback thank you Mr yes cland I like the way the format I like how it related to strategic our strategic goals and it was I really like the format of this thank you and we will be setting those goals again in in August so have be thinking about that okay uh it's time for the Rachel farmer show uh our Schoolboard budget part of the evening and so the first thing on the agenda is the approval of the general purpose School fund Amendment 5.21

235SRO Grant Miss farmer thank you madam chair um yes first we one we have up is the $35,000 grant that we were receiving um for Creek Side Elementary it's the second year for this I believe Mr fler it's the last year that we will qualify for this particular Grant but it is $35,000 for the SRO service help expenses to is that a Federal Grant it is AAL any other questions okay then we'll move to the next item the approval of general purpose School fund Amendment 5.21 literacy training Grant Miss farmer this particular Grant is related to a reading initiative the reading 60 initiative by the state um early leacy training to K2 teachers um we have 400 eight eight works of 50 teachers each um they have to complete a twoe training um this summer

236and once completed they are eligible for a, recycling and so the amount on this particular Amendment would allow us to account for the th cycling and benefits assciated board members any questions see any next item approv general purpose School fund resolution 6.21 additional student Support Services expenses legal expenses have been higher related specifically to student support services and they have some funds that are in their front private agency line that we move and use to help cover those Lo expenditures as well as having use 50,000 of it will come fund balance and 200,000 proposing to move as an category transfer from the Contracting private agency line to services for a total of 2,000 any questions board members the next item approved general purpose School fund resolution 6.21 trustee commission this is an annual expenditure we

237pay each year trustee commission is based on the taxes taken in and so projected taxes has been a little bit higher so like we was go ahead increase the expenditure line related to commission um fees as well and that would be for $250,000 any questions Madam chair if I may add some piece I just want to point out what Rachel said there that the tax um receipts have been higher than anticipated um I learned at the uh Williams eni's presentation earlier this week that sales tax is about 2% above this time last year um and uh and that's really encouraging given given where we work the next item is approved general purpose School fund resolution 6.21 Esco payment again this is another ual expenditure that we've had since 2017 related to our Esco agreement with

238the county um and they have basically build us for 1, 8257 126 is our portion of that yes Mr galber thank you madam chair Rachel do you may might have this for Monday night just as part of this report but um just an overall um Roi on on this project compared to what we were promised at the um at the beginning Mark I know Mark's really familiar with with this but you might you might know better Mr galbert I have the ROI year to date okay Al the top of my head I don't know total um we're about $41,000 over the estimate year to dat okay yeah i' love I'd love to understand just kind of overall how this how this project has paid off compared with with what they what they said i' would

239just like to see how close it was and right now we have Sav $3.4 million a little over that in the three and a half years we've been on it and uh more more to come okay and if I may for Miss pri's benefit I'm guessing you don't know what we're talking about uh so uh there there's there's a state program that facilitates Capital Improvements through um return on investment for for Energy savings and it allows school districts to do those Capital Investments rather than incurring debt through the County government is designed for the Energy savings to pay for and that's that's what that's what this program is okay next and final item I believe in this category oh no sorry flip the page approv general purpose School fund resolution 6.21 covid-19 related needs again

240we're at the time of year where we're looking at our accounts um as you know Co U gave us some expenses we had not necessarily accounted for on the front end when we budgeted last year um and Super Subs is one of those things that we agreed to go ahead and staff and so what we are requesting is an inner category transfers student Support Services um had several unfilled positions and so they have available in their budget lines related to salaries that we can move down to help cover expenditures related wasn't just Super Subs we also had as you know lesle homman Jud hman most of you but Jud came back on 120 day contract um to help with the budget this year and so part of the 46,000 for supervisor director um line is

241related to what her contract projection would be and and um also some CTE teachers had more experience than what we had originally budgeted for and so there was a need to also increase that line so the total recommendation is $2,396 th000 inter category transfer to cover those expenditures I see no questions next item approve general purpose School fund resolution 6.21 oh oh that's a different one covid related needs general purpose again we're clearing up our accounts um and we had several expenditures related to covid um that we are now going back and and we've told you a few times that teema FEA did not where we had applied originally for reimbursements um we have now been Deni those reimbursements and so um we need to Now cover those expenditures because before we had assumed that

242we were going to be getting um that money back and $956,000 is what we were requesting it would come from fund balance um at this point and as you there's several lines I can tell you online school apps or for software technology we did have additional work with stars counselors um internet for the kajit is the 400,000 contracted Services was additional cleaning specifically extra cleaning that we paid for um and then we had some other supplies materials and well the other supplies of materials is related specifically to PP expenditures that we placed and then the last other equipment was for the thermal thermometers so that's where all those line items came in we do have a couple of questions here um Mr galberth thank you madam chair uh so Rachel the fact that the previous

243line was in um inter category transfers and this um this Co related piece was is being taken out of fund balance guess that's there's why why are you doing that versus taking it out of other line items was it all in category of for personnel for the other was personnel and we know that at this point in time those positions are not going to be staffed clearly it's the end of the school year and they are not going to be staffed M money is there there's still expenditures happening within all the other expenditure categories and so we elected to go ahead and take it from fund balance as opposed to trying to pull from Individual accounts because if we're if we're short we we can't be we to be in compliance we can't be over

244on any individual line item and so you're cleaning that up corre and so we're cleaning that up now so we will be we will be under on other line items Absolut that will offset this fund balance so it's not really Tak correct that's just where we have to P from that at the moment for it but yes there will be funds going back into fund balance that is correct Mr Hall thank you mam chair so I know that the we were hope maybe hoping to get reimbursed for these and were any of these things um motivated by that or was it absolute needs that had to be had to be addressed and that we can still benefit from in the future uh those were needs that we had to have and some of them we

245can benefit from in the future kajet or or example we're you know we're going to you know keep those devices Mr my question was actually about the kajit I'm surprised they wouldn't didn't the department of EDS say that they were going to provide internet for all the students in the state we did get some internet we did get some funding for kajit okay this was additional it was not full fund Mr Mitchell thank you madam chair um Rachel I thought I heard in the previous month that that we believe that the stimulus uh bill that's been passed will maybe pick up some of these might be opportunities to apply for funds that FEMA and didn't didn't cover right we thought they were going to cover and the I they changed their mind is that are

246we actively applying that's correct and we have gone back and reapplied um for some others the there's still a little bit of opportunity need to go back and reapply again for these but yes some that were closed we're we have gone back and with Esser 2.0 and if you remember last month we did put money back in the fund balance um through a resolution there we had a little over 600,000 um of the S 2.0 funds we put into fund M into fund m so is there a possibility uh I guess my curiosity is where where do we feel our our cost versus reimbursements are at relative to covid support and because that's been somewhat of a of a political discussion at the national level that you know local local government bodies such as ourselves

247were were having to fund unexpected items due to covid and there was was definitely an intent to try to relieve that take that cost out of our out of our regular budgets do do what overall where do we think we Ed up we are trying really hard to break even on this where it's not I can tell you we are appealing two situations with FEMA um two items that we feel like that what they came back and told us was they didn't think it was a necessity and we do feel like it truly was it was things that particularly related to sack um where they told us get you know if you can get daycares of working where people can have that service and we did it and it was beond so the state we

248actually have a meeting tomorrow afternoon at two um to try to talk through with them and see where we stand so we are still trying um to get that all of what you have here um I guess said we are reapplying we have tried to go through and everything that we've been denied to pick it up in another area Sr 3.0 um still can potentially can go back and recapture some more and so we're kind of at a a place I believe where it's how much more do we just keep trying to go over the same things and how much do we just say okay it was an expense and we're moving on we've tried really hard and and if I may Rachel give give my thought and you tell me if you think this

249is accurate um Esser 3.0 has the potential to be the Tipping Point for us but it specifically has to be related to learning loss uh and so um if we can get enough of that for Lear you know learning loss without having to fund new positions or new programs to cover that to to to spend that learning loss that's going to be our Tipping Point um also we are at least from the peers I know relatively unique in this because much of this funding was based on economically disadvantaged numbers so I'll give you one example so T when you say that you mean title one typ it's closer to it's closer to um Food Service evaluation um as as an example um we're projected to get about 5.2 million from M 3.0 Metro School are

250over 170 million to to give you some perspective on the difference between us and some of our neighbors based on those numbers so most most of the districts got more money than us just to put a blowing thank you approval of the 20 2122 revised general purpose budget you remember way back when we approved our bu Budget on a Monday night Tuesday we found out that they were going to increase our costs for uh medical insurance and so um the County Commission um asked us when we met with them in the budget to go ahead and account for that change it's a the the cost is 2,973 283 is what our total cost for that additional 600 um per employee and that is our expenditure so they said go ahead would like for you to

251incorporate it into your budget this year and then um instead of trying to do it as a budget amendment um in July and so also within our conversations with the County Commission they questioned online school and how we came up with our budget for it we go back um we had projections for what we felt like the program was going to look like and the actuality of where we are now was different so since we were coming to you to make the adjustment for insurance we did go ahead and adjust the Staffing um what we need in Staffing what we originally budget for what we think we actually need Mail based on our numbers um and that also reduced the amount of expenditures by 414 I'm sorry $514,000 and so what we're coming before you

252now is a um budget request for 414 m579 $134 um what you originally approved was the 42,1 19851 and the result the difference is the net of those two the increase in insurance and the reduction in the Staffing expenditures related to online and and Madam jff I may add a little bit to that you see the net you you may recall that I mentioned last month that we were going to um propose some reductions in the online budget based on us having more you know firmer numbers we have about 750 students scheduled for online and I and I do want to mention that Mr Mitchell um has uh has uh has asked that we talk about this in policy and really you would have preferred we jump back you know even earlier um for an

253application process and so we're going to be working on that over these next few months on the budget side of that um I want to make sure that you know when when I look at this one thing that jumps out at me is um uh um increase the number of designated teachers that is based on us actually doing the math on pupil teacher ratio in each particular class uh whereas when we budgeted for it um we anticipated that it would it would pull the the equivalent number of teachers out of individual schools but because of where those individual students fell this is actual M Madam chair if I my I guess thank you Mr Golden what what he was referring to is my request that we consider a policy around um prohibiting on students from

254re-enrolling in an on online school if they have not been proficient previously in the online school in other words forcing these taking that option away from students that have not demonstrated proficiency over the last one or two semesters of an online of online attendance and therefore um similar to like I the analogy I was giving is that if you you're not passing you're not allowed to play football or volleyball or basketball right you've got to be proficient to participate the same thing I think ought to apply to the online program if you're not passing then you need to go back into a brick and mortar traditional classroom and we're I don't believe Mr Golden I'm so I'm Madam chair I'm off subject here I ini so you're fine I'm just but but I would like

255to know what are we doing to vet for those type of students because my concern is you your comment was you wanted to implement that a couple of semesters down the road we potentially will have two years worth of nonprofit students as opposed to anyone well we'll have a discussion about it and we'll we'll talk to the board in June about that so yeah I initiated that just because it was on my mind whether we do it as a policy or not I think we've got to have something to make sure that these students don't don't continue to struggle thank you missa I guess this will come up again but I just wanted to throw a quick comment to that um I think we have to be careful about faith and offering um a free

256and appropriate public education to all students and their choice of whether they can do it in person online shouldn't be dependent on their test scores because that would go against Ida and Ada and we wouldn't be giving I mean if they have a disability or some reason why they're not scoring proficient that could uh become a legal issue so just to Mr Pria you took the words right out of my mouth she's not an attorney but she plays one on TV all right um I think that was our last item under um budget and finance related items so now we're moving on to board policy first reading uh policy 3604 public records request Miss OS Brooks thank you uh chairman Garrett so in our um review of policies on an annual basis I reviewed our

257public records request policy um have made some clarifications on page two that um we would not re accept a request um via social media and they would either um need to be as described above which sets out our requests for inspection which are orally in writing or in person um that would have instead of receiving a request via social media um no further changes in this policy until page five it's an eight-page policy it does set out specifics as to what form of payment Williamson County Schools will will um accept we will accept a um personal or cashier check if the check does not clear then we would not process any further public records request until that person makes that debt uh right and then there is also on page six um going on to

258page SE seven the other change which is failure to inspect or pay for copies um and this sets out if a requestor makes two or more requests to view public records within a six-month period and they fail to view the P public records within 15 days um we would not comply with any additional records request we do have a way obviously um if it were someone who fails to to view them because of an emergency or something like that there is the discretion in that but if it is a regular habit um they're we would ask them to come view them before we continue to provide public records request and same uh similar provisions set out regarding not paying for copies um But continuing to make public records request so those are the recommendations for

259that policy any questions yes Mr Welch so on the the fees for the copies does this only apply to physical copies of it or can the digital copies still be viewed uh physical copies and Miss OSB correct me if I'm wrong yes that's correct we um if to view a um record there is no cost to view it there may be a production cost uh the first hour to produce a document and that's producing it as well as going through and redacting it the first hour is free of staff's time uh so there there could be a charge but to view to your question view no no charge um there would be if someone wanted copies then there would be the production cost as well as the copy cost okay that was my followup question

260because a lot of those pii or other right so correct so the for that information having to print it out black it out everything because it could not be present that which could not be uh viewed online without First hours spre and then well we've got kind of two different prices here I'm sorry one is like kind of a per page and the other we're talking about per hour correct so our copies um we charge 15 cents per page for black and white copies right I'm seeing that here it's per hour that's thrown me off sure so no that's a fair question so um depending upon the request some request if it's a if it's a request for instant for a contract it it would probably take less than an hour for um staff to

261find the contract for staff to review the contract and produce that contract so there would not be a charge for that however we have received requests for up to 1500 emails um it takes you know average an email 2.5 pages per email um most staff can review and redact about 50 emails so when you do that math there is a charge um it's you're going to get that first hour free and then there would be an estimate for staff time um of how long it would take because that would take numerous hours um to comply with that request okay yeah yeah that that so that the the district is not held hostage by ill actors correct and and as most um as most know with policies we we create the policy and and then there

262are often times adjustments that we need to make the longer that we you know have the the records request policy and I think the last time we did an overall hul has been a couple of years ago in the interest of too much information um we actually have a program that allows us to to Black Out Lines electronically okay rather than print and you know Sharpie it Mr galberth thank you uh Dana do I think I asked something similar in our policy committee but um it just got me thinking when when we have a when we have an hour limit first hour is free um is there any cumulative nature to that is that is that per request or per requester um so there is sure so there is language in the policy um if

263it's an aggregate request or if it in the statute as well and that first hour free is from the is from Tennessee uh code annotated we didn't determine that our legislators did um there is also language in the statute as well as a policy if it if you can prove um that you have numerous requesters working in concert um there's some some pieces that set out in statute as well as the policy so um typically it is per requester and again it really depends upon the request obviously if it's a lengthy request that's going to require hours and hours of Staff time then um we're going to follow the law and follow the policy and and you're going you're you're typically going to in response to a request you're going to to send them your

264estimate of the amount of time that it's going to take and right and then and you're going to get there their written approval of that of that estimated cost before you before you start the work correct that's correct now I will say there are sometimes that if it is um one request for a contract that's four pages long um we may just provide the contract right but yes typic the typical um way that it is handled is they receive a letter that tells them whether or not their request is granted um it may be denied because they may request a document that doesn't actually exist um or they may request a document that because of confidentiality um there's there's numerous exceptions set out in the law so what if one of those exceptions applies then

265they would be given the reason why um because of confidentiality privacy attorney client medical information um teacher evaluations are exempt from the statute so that would be set out um but yes we would say here's the estimate of the cost as well as the estimate of how long it would take for the district to produce the document um and that depends upon the length of how long it's going to take to redact and review the information um in addition to the task that staff already has to accomplish um unfortunately we don't have one person who's dedicated to do nothing but public records request although I'd be fine if if that needed to be added to the budget at some time at a later date okay thank you okay I don't see any more questions on

266that one so we'll move to 5.100 Personnel goals sure so this is a um a new policy and um just as a little bit of history in 2019 General Assembly passed legislation requiring the State Board of Education to adopt a policy on educator diversity uh recently the State Board of Education adopted that policy so um the policy requires local education agencies um like Williamson County Schools to set goals for educator diversities uh diversity sorry and so this is proposed new policy to be in compliance with state law as well as State Board of Education um and just so yall know these goals um have to be submitted to the Tennessee Department of Education um in the 2021 2022 school year um the department has told us that they're going to provide samples and other resources

267in regard to implementing the diversity goals in the district um so once we receive that information from the Department of Education we will communicate that in in the future to you in addition After we receive that information and create goals uh board members you will also be able to review those goals any question I don't see any questions the next policy for discussion is 5.22 separation practices for classified employees this policy you remember the last two months uh we board members you adopted new policies for separation practices for tene employees as well as non sened employees and this is a a new updated policy separation practices for classified employees and what you are in essence doing what we currently have is a discipline procedure for classified employees which is 51064 um we're asking that that

268you adopt instead this new policy of 5.22 it will replace the old policy this sets out the same parameters that we set out in the two new policies for our tenur and non-tenured employees suspension dismissal resignation and then retirement so this is keeping in line um number one with the statute but also um what we've already set out for our certified employees thank you Mr Mitchell thank you madam chair um did did WCA have any input on this policy this is the classified so no WCA is the professional employees this is for um um the U strictly classified classifi exclusively okay I will tell you that um we regularly talk with the WCA about issues related to uh to the professional employees and this Clayman is here so uh next policy is 6405 medicines this

269policy um has been updated to clarify the process for allowing students to self- administer asthma medication during school hours uh Mandy Thompson with our uh head of our nursing department has reviewed the policy and is in agreement um there are also on the a three-page policy and on the last page um there's also been an update in recordkeeping with the State Board of Education regulations so in addition to updating it uh to clarify that process for our students we've also updated it to be in line um with the with the new recommendations from the State Board of Education and you'll see that on the last page as well as um some sighting references have changed because of the the new new update from the state board I don't see any questions then we have a

270policy for deletion 5.30 51 family's first Corona virus response act yes board members you may recall um we adopted this policy in June of 2020 and the policy was set to sunset in December of 2020 at the special called meeting in December of last year staff recommended to delete the one line out of the policy that basically sunset this policy because our recommendation was that was what was right to do for our employees um moving forward with um Corona virus and and board members you voted I believe unanimously to to delete that so we told you at that time that we would bring it back um for deletion at the end of um this school year but we wanted to provide the benefit to our employees um even though federal government only required it through

271December of 2020 so we brought it to the um to this may meeting and we'll be asking you to vote on deletion we will also be asking for you to vote on deletion in June so um it will if that if both of those votes pass then at the after the June uh board meeting this policy would be deleted and that that benefit um would also be no longer for our employees any questions no questions Miss osbrook thank you so much our final agenda item for the night oh our next to last agenda item for the night is 2021 2022 late start days to increase your lifestyle level this is the penultimate agenda um so Madam chair the the late start days U um memo is before you uh and this is U an annual

272item that we discuss and request of you and this plan reflects our tradition of having the late start days so no change from what we had in previous years I will tell you that um our teacher leaders uh and many of our Administration um talked very very seriously about the possibility of um some asynchronous days over the course of the year and ultimately I decided that it's just one thing too much um for next year um I will tell you that um we are very serious about um doing some more brainstorming and finding more collaboration and planning time for our teachers U many of you have heard the phrase professional learning communities uh um we know that that's another step to increase uh um uh the quality of what we do for our students and

273I want you to know that over the course of this year that we'll be talking with our teacher leaders about finding um better ways and more efficient ways and even other potential extra time uh to to increase that opportunity for collaboration Mr Hall thank you I will I will claim the manle most inconsequential question of the night at 10:24 are we have we moved away from the ter power Mondays um they we're still going to call them that um but they uh just for for clarity purposes we called it late start just so people would know it's not an early release but we still talk about the possibility of early releases too the elementary schools are still discussing this as well this particular Pro proposal does not include elementaries this year but just know that

274all those issues are on the table for the future I don't see any questions about light start slow Mondays and then the final agenda item for the night approval of Williamson County Schools representative for growth plan Coordinating Committee thank you madam chair um there's uh the the there's a process that the county is starting with all the municipalities to review their growth plan and when you see your Urban growth boundaries all the all that discussion uh is a result of some work they did about 20 years ago um they're starting it back up and it's literally 20 years ago uh so um the the school system has a representative on that committee uh mayor Anderson has asked me to be on that committee the statute requires the board to vote for that so we'll be

275bringing that to you on Monday something you want to do uh yes I think I need to be there and answer the question yes I want to do it I want and need it this is a really this what what happens with the county and the cities is a really big deal they all have to actually ultimately agree uh it's a really complex project so s it is a complex project and it's all about it it's all about areas that the municipalities can can um um oh reone Annex thank you zoning was my the term I was thinking Annex and it drives development it drives housing um right what is I mean is is the county mayor supporting expanding these growth boundaries or I mean because it also affects tax revenue for at the county

276level I don't know the answer to that yet but he is committed to reviewing it based on the 20 years growth the general feeling I have heard uh is um this is long overdue it is it is but but he's kind of pushed back for for 20 years you know since yeah just real quick is this something else mly would be good to just sit in and observe these meetings would that be beneficial since she's so close to it yes um and uh they had an introductory meeting um this morning and there were a number of uh individuals who did sit in the back and watch go men and go quick board members I I just want to say thank you so much for your work over the past 14 months it's truly wonderful to

277see everybody in person again and um I really appreciate the the dialogue and um just the the interaction that we have with each other tonight so see you Monday adjourned [Music]