WCS Board Work Session 2024-05-16

001well good evening everyone we're going to call the school board meeting together you're at the Williamson County Schools Works Schoolboard work session first item on the agenda is the consent agenda I'll give everybody a second to look over that and see if you've got any questions okay no questions there we'll move right along to the superintendent report Mr golden thank you madam chair and thank you board members for being here uh I anticipate that much of what we'll discuss tonight will be budget related because A lot's happened uh since since you last met but there are a lot of other important things that that have happened and are happening as well so I'm going to give you a little bit of an update and then I also have uh uh one detailed presentation related to

002one of my annual goals that's the transportation plan for next year and then second uh I have some information on some action steps related to our strategic plan obje Ives which was another item that that's related to my to my annual goals but first I I I want to touch on some key points for us as a school district we are one week out from school being out uh for for this coming year uh next Thursday is our last day for students uh yall it's been a really good year a really good year for our students so we're we're very proud of the work our students have done and our teachers as well that's a half day on Thursday for our students and then then our faculty and staff will work a little bit more

003to finish up at the end of the year uh as part of that and I know uh um Madame chair will give you some more detail related to this but our graduation ceremony start on Thursday Thursday Friday Saturday is our graduation schedule I did want to mention to you that Miss Durham and I actually invited Franklin Special School District's School Board uh to be dignitaries at either the Franklin High School or Centennial High School graduation ceremonies uh and they happen to be at the exact same time this year the exact the same day same time so you can't go to both um but we were having some discussions and and the the the the the thought came up that they've been a big part of the students especially at those two schools uh so we

004did extend that invitation to them I will tell you I told them I hope that this becomes a standing invitation uh for them over over the years um so uh related to related to that with our high school students we're excited about that also on the uh other end of our grade level Spectrum we expect to get our teap quick scores this coming Monday uh that means that we're going to be we're going to be working hard with third grade information especially to prepare our families for those students who might need to go to the summer school uh summer school starts in June and we're not that many days out from that uh so we're hoping that we will get those quick scores that that day so that our staff can do that work so

005our principes will do will be doing a lot of a lot of work work working on narrowing down those third graders uh who are going to need to make some decisions with their parents on that June Summer School uh program uh so I know that Dr Royer and Dr Allen are have to have a team structure plan for as soon as we get those quick scores from the state also I want to mention that a lot of when I talked about a lot of good work has been done this year uh since we've last met we celebrated the Arts we had a great program with our art students uh we also celebrated our military commitments uh from our students students uh really ran ran the gamut of military commitments from the National Guard to each

006individual Branch uh of the of the of the of military service um we have a lot of Roc commits with some pretty substantial scholarship dollars uh the Army Roc program actually gave me a big check for $1.8 million uh representing the total scholarship dollars for Army RC students for this year just just again for Army RC Navy of course was up there as well uh and we had some commits to the US militarys which was a which was a I mean that's a hard hard competitive uh uh entrance structure for for those acmy so we're very proud of our students who've made that commitment uh uh later on this year June 18th we're going to have our will Co which is our athletic celebration that will be our 10th anniversary of that and I know

007you guys have that on your calendar we schedule that after all the spring sports are complete because we're still in some of the championship periods for that uh also about two weeks ago we met with our PTO leaders and thanked them for their work this past year gave them some just in time information to prepare for next year uh we'll be working through the next few months Gathering up all their all their financial information uh because they do have that obligation to report that to us at the end of at the end of the year uh also last week we met with our booster groups uh and had a good brainstorming session uh with our athletic boosters over over uh over some best practices with them and uh we we're we're looking forward to continuing

008those discussions that actually had a little bit of attendance from bamb boosters as well PTO a couple of PTO Representatives as well so we're excited about where we where we're headed uh really on so many levels uh with with with our with our organization but I mentioned you to start that this month uh two of my annual goals reference uh reference some discussion tonight uh so the first one uh it uh referenced uh uh me giving you by May of this year Transportation plan for next year uh and so I have a PowerPoint with a transportation report we'll of course post this and you'll be able to look at this in detail uh but as we go through there I want to start with things that we've done this year uh where we are with

009Staffing where we are with with some of the experimental work we did with some pilots in the Nolanville area and then tell you where we planed ahe related to that and I I'm going to ask one interactive question have you all gotten more or less complaints this past year over Transportation than than the year before less fewer few the the number of Transportation complaints has dropped substantially there are many reasons for that I will tell you before we get started we have more work to do but I'm very pleased with the work we've done up to this point Brian King our assistant superintendent for uh for operations uh Gary Anderson our executive director for operations our transportation director Human Resources Etc have done a lot and so related to that I want to show you

010what we did uh with our bus driver training program uh so you see here in these bullet points uh we added five trainers we reduced the bottleneck this year with training I'm not going to speak to every single one of these points uh I don't want to just read through a PowerPoint but I but I I do want to mention that the new referral program resulted in 16 drivers so that those personal relationships uh helped us get some more driver candidates uh and the very last line here on this slide we graduated 34 drivers so far this year and and and uh Brian I'm I'm afraid I'm going to use the give the number wrong but that may be about triple what we did in the prior year human res we added a human resources

011position that you all may remember where we had somebody dedicated to those individual driver candidates to talk to them regularly follow up with them make sure that each piece of what they had to do was followed up on that we facilitated that so the big fundamental change we had was rather than allowing them to drive their training because they have to take four tests and all that detail we made sure that we were scheduling that for them and help them get through the program 34 new drivers but here's our reality well well let's see I'm going a uh 18 drivers that resign that's our reality we had 18 drivers resign or retire this year so we know that that proverbial bucket has a hole in it all the time and we have to keep that

012keep that flowing so we assigned 23 of those those uh of those 34 drivers uh to routes that were being driven by dispatchers up to this point uh and also to those to those drivers who resigned or retired and we were able to add a net 11 drivers this year uh in our in our program which in the last few years probably since the last recession we haven't had that kind of net growth and in our drivers um and you can see some of the other detail uh related to that with with uh with the routes that we had add we added three special special needs routes because we are increasing the number of students with disabilities who need that transportation and so you can see our numbers here 23 total buses uh driving approximately

01326,500 students so let's talk a little bit about our bus pilot program that we did over this year we had a lot of community meetings uh in different locations where we we got some feedback from our community about could a pilot work in your community and if so how and if not why ultimately we landed on the Nolanville area uh and and the mil Creek Elementary mil Creek Middle area to implement in essence Hub stops uh we experimented and and discuss the possibility of reducing actual service at the elementary level with a presumption that you would get yourself to school no matter what and we backed off on that based on the feedback we had from our families uh but we did reduce the number of hubs the the number of stops from our traditional

014half mile apart in these neighborhoods to a hub we had overwhelmingly positive response from our families mainly because it shortened the bus route time uh so students were able to get to the bus routes later they were able to get home quicker We Believe well let me add this one piece ultimately it did not save any bus routes but it shortened the travel time and gave our students back some minutes in their day uh so we found that it was it was very much a success and I know Mr PRI is taking a photo so I'm gonna wait for a second to go to the next slide uh so not save any we did we were not able to eliminate a bus route as a result of of the program so we so one of

015the things we asked ourselves was if we do Hub stops could we save enough time on a particular route to consolidate a bus route or might enough families say you know what I'm I'm not going to ride the bus anymore I'm just going to walk or I'm we're just going to drive our children to school even though we've been using the bus the net result was we didn't save any enough there at either one of those areas to actually eliminate a route did it eliminate some first and second thank you for that we did eliminate one second load uh in in in that experiment in that one area so we do have the potential to eliminate loads and that's a timesaver for students they don't have to wait for the for the bus to make

016that first round so thank you for that question so I would I guess I would classify that as a route how would you well we're still we're still calling second loads the part of the same route because ultimately we well it may be terminology but we were able to save one second load I probably should have put that in the in the slide it's still it's still a route for the driver and it just it just saved the driver some time driver to go to another spot where they were short a driver but it doesn't well but if that was if that was a if that was if that was not a double route but a single route it would have it would have I mean so it so we we both we ultimately got

017a we've just got to reduce routes um so but if you So when you say eliminate not eliminating um service for people so essentially those those students who were closest to the school would just have to go to the nearest could are eligible to go to the nearest bus stop to them that's that's that's right further from the school right so they're just walking away from the school by half a mile or a mile U rather than just eliminating their service altogether that's exactly right so just as a reminder Tennessee law does not if number one it doesn't require General Ed bus transportation at all but if you provide it you don't have to provide it within a mile and a half of the school so we had talked about in initiating this pilot should

018we eliminate service and say if you live within half mile or a mile or even a mile and a half of the school should we just say we're not going to provide the transportation part of the feedback we got from our community was that's very difficult because of the timing parents leaving home uh and and so ultimately we decided it was worth doing the pilot without saying we we just refuse to provide you transportation so what we did find was some families their CH their children committed to walking to the nearest Hub and some did just go on straight to school Mr wimbley so Jason what's the plan for next year thank you next slide ah all right so so Alison nley and her staff uh have a proposed schedule across the district to initiate

019the Hub stops in those locations where neighborhoods actually have sidewalks and based on the feedback we've received from those other communities are our appropriate locations to create the hubs so I have four and a half slides of our schedule here I'm not going to run through the details of it but Allison and her staff has have have looked geographically with a timeline where over the course of next year we will stagger the hubs uh so that we expand this uh across the district at those locations where their sidewalks and CH and children can safely walk to to to bus stops that are further away than our traditional stops um we know that based on the work we did we can't do this all at once it's going to take some staggering because of interactions with

020parents um making sure that we've analyzed uh potential risk at particular stops with a with a staffing we have to look at okay what would it look like if 26 students students were at this particular stop is this a safe stop we can't do all that all at once so our plan is to phase this in over the course of the school year and you can see you can see the the locations there with the schedule uh and and uh Allison staff has included the change in the text data source column which is basically the data entry work with bus driver review so we're going to do the technology and physical review of of these before we actually Implement so uh this is our August schedule and you can see the locations uh generally speaking

021we're in noville we believe that it was attractive enough to the we know families have talked I guess and so we feel like that's the best Next Step you can see some references to to paig and uh and Creekside uh and then move move on down through the rest of the community and we've got that schedule as well uh you can see that we'll roll it month to month SE setember and then with implementation of this next batch in November next batch of locations implementation when folks come back from winter break from Christmas break I'll let I'll give you a chance to look at some of those locations that may be in your area so Jason so each of these um like Winstead it it's so if you have five routes um it might only

022impact three of them potentially if they're if they're not if they don't meet the criteria that you say that's right that's exactly right and Winstead's a great example because Winstead is a large geographic area with a concentration of neighborhoods on the east side and then very rural on the west and so some of those communities won't be affected at all in those rural zones it's just going to be those neighborhoods where where we have sidewalks this may be going backwards a little bit but um what is your your um full capacity bus drivers if we were fully Capac you know yeah what what would that number be and then where are we thank you for that um I could pull the the our PCR Brian do you have that off the top of your head

023he's pulling his glasses out so this is a very educated it's not a guess but you know routes change yeah did sign up on but a rough number if we were to get rid of every first and second load now some first and second loads make sense just because of time so we wouldn't get rid of them even if we had drivers so if we got rid of every first and second load that would be ideal it would be about 30 more drivers to what we have right this minute and then did I read it right I was getting ready to write down 206 now is that or was that huh 23 so somewhere in the 230 235 range would be thank you and to my knowledge since I've I don't know that we've ever

024been where we didn't have any first in second loads at least in re recent times so yeah it's been about it's been about 10 years yes sir but that that would be the number of drivers that you would need present on a given day thank you but how many how many drivers would you need to sub drivers for sick about 10% or something like that yes sir and that's based on our staffing that's actually in our PCR on our on our budget report yes sir um and I will tell you also if we don't have a driver the time is consumed because we still provide the service so somebody might be making those hours from a revenue standpoint and from an expense standpoint a lot of that money will still pass even if we don't

025have the people because someone is doing the work Jason this is really good and I love this and I'm assuming you'll be able to provide us in short order the breakdown I can't he is your micone it is on turn sorry thank you will you be able to provide or do you have the breakdown in each of those um groupings the actual subdivision names that you're going to choose they're working on it we don't have that totally done yet but we can we can provide that to you okay that'd be great and I'll find out from Brian a good date to get that to you okay and uh I'll just I'll I'll skim on and then and then that's our last slide with the uh with the locations So the plan is by basically by

026spring break of next year we will have implemented this District wide thank you is this as a pilot and then what we talking about by next spring break we imple whole process that's correct so that is correct so we did the pilot this year we found it to be successful we had really good positive feedback from from our community we are going to meet with each Community um because there may be some differences from location to location we want to make sure that our community has that opportunity to share um but we believe that largely this is going to be an attractive move for for our community so we're not testing this out in other communities we know a positive reaction reive froming as yes we're going to come with a plan to do it

027but we will get that Community feedback because there may be some some differences in particular neighborhoods that are not apparent to our bus drivers that are not apparent to us so we're still going to get the community feedback so there's not a guarantee that every single place that we have these meetings it will happen um because there might be something unusual there might be a construction issue in a particular location that needs to needs to wait or there might be a hill that that people are concerned about those kinds of those kinds of things um so that's why we still wanted to have those Community meetings with our plans to give you an example uh we had a discussion in the we actually met at Hunters Bend if you all those of you who went

028to that particular meeting some of the families in Hunters Bend expressed concern about Crossing is it Lexington Parkway maybe the other maybe the other East West Road um based on their experience with drivers during the morning Rush that's why we're going to make sure we have those discussions so Jason is it fair as far as the the goal now of of this implementation um reduce routes if if we can um ultimately reducing time on the bus overall for as many students as possible and try to try to if there if we if we can eliminate some double routes then great if we're if ultimately we're compressing those double routes so students aren't having to get on the bus so early or stay on so late is that is that the goal is there cuz I

029know that there's much cost savings other than buses running for they're running the same amount of distance essentially because we're not eliminating routes necessarily that's right it's it's in this case it's not about cost savings as much it is is about time savings and and and giving the students a little bit more time in their day and shrink the time on the bus um now might that all might there be some few minutes here and there and actual work time for drivers it it's possible um and and and might we when we become better and better staffed might that spread that out yes well I for I for one am really excited I think this will the more we can do and I'd love to see I think we'll we'll reassess over over time and

030you'll be reporting back over time but um I'd love to see the the results at the at the end of the day um because um because I think we're going to see um a a very large increase in in satisfaction over there's I get that there's there's going to be a little inconvenience over having to go walk a longer distance but if we're if if we're not going to implement the parent responsibility zones yet the that that's probably where a lot of the negative feedback would have come from is those people that are closest that weren't going to be able to ride at all um so now it's just a matter of I think we FOC focus on our goal to get everybody to reduce bus routes in general and to get everybody there as

031quickly as we can yeah I think everybody can get on board that with that um and so I'm just for one I'm all I know you're not asking for our vote necessarily but but from a a cover perspective I'm I'm fully um fully supportive of of doing this so I appreciate it well thank you the the pilot showed us what you just described um but again we're going to be careful about it so we we're we're excited about it um Brian anything else you want to add and I believe we actually have a little bit more information about the disted implementation which I think we've basically discussed but we've got we've got some particular bullet points of of the conversations we're going to have with parents and just the logistics of how we're going to

032we're going to distribute that so Brian again thank you for Alison as well yes sir on that first um batch of um that you're going to implement yeah how soon do you expect parents in those areas to start hearing from the district about that we expect to talk to them basically when school starts okay so not it wouldn't be before that August date of that's right the official discussion there wouldn't be any preview of that or anything that's correct and so we did talk about the possibility of doing some of this over the summer um but ultimately we felt like making sure we had the appropriate conversations with parents who are actually there with their children that year was more appropriately started at the beginning of the year and the the five trainers that you

033mentioned were those FTE or were they were just contract trainers um we actually use the existing FTE in the in in our bus budget okay good um and we had we had those drivers that we hadn't filled so we we we did that we used that any other questions I know Mr wiber you had okay I just wanted to thank you for th this is very forward thinking and I I like the careful approach but I think it's at the end of the day saving families time and giving them more time with their children is so important I think it'll be really worthwhile so thank you well thank you it's our team they they they've done a good job we got a lot of work to do next year it'll be a busy year uh

034as an as an aside um on the budget side I can't help but say this our zoning department actually shows up in this in our our PCR in the superintendent line of secretaries and it's because of the way the state structures it y'all they are not secretaries that's just a one good example of of sometimes you got asked questions about about what's actually in our budget in our PCR all right thank you uh so if you would Tim next uh one of my one of my annual goals uh was to include a timeline presentation on 15 of our 28 strategic plan objectives to give you timelines on that uh we spent SP the last few months as a team putting together timelines and I actually have a document on all 28 of our objectives with

035a timeline what we call action steps on all 28 of of of our objectives um we spent as a team this is just the document I I'm going to start on item one and finish in 28 in about two hours we're not going to go through this document I just want you to see it and and I'm going to encourage you to look at it over the next few weeks uh I would encourage you specifically to focus on items that include Community input uh you will see some examples of that uh couple other pieces related to this each one of our objectives in in our three main focus points of our strategic plan are described at the very top of these action step timelines so the very first one uh as you see written there

036um I'm going to have to pull my document out because I can't read that um from the from the from the screen the first one is increased percentage of students meeting and exceeding State expectations on state end of year assessments that's uh that's um goal 1 one this will be a living document we expect that there will be changes from time to time over these next few years as as our teams and as our committees recognize needs that come up but I want you guys to know how we put this together somebody from our leadership team took responsibility for creating a committee for each one of these 28 objectives to get input from stakeholders on what elements were necessary to achieve this goal to achieve this objective committees included of course staff members teachers some

037of our classified staff but it also included some of our stakeholders such as parents uh PTO leaders law enforcement participated the Sheriff's Office participated in some of these we had students participating in some of these objectiv some of these discussions to create these action step objectives it was an incredible collaborative effort and it took time I am convinced that the time it took for us to put this together which was so different than what we've done in those last two or three iterations of strategic plans in the 18 years I've been here are going to ultimately ultimately lead us to a better product um so um I'm I'm catching the eye of some of our staff here who led some of those LED some of those committees uh and thank you guys for that I

038will tell you that as as our as our assistant superintendent group our leadership team took the committee uh documents and put them together we made some adjustments on timelines and y'all by and large did we not kind of move up a lot of the timelines a little quicker uh so it's pretty aggressive and so there we felt like being a little bit more aggressive was probably better than than not um but we know that we've got some flexibility if something comes up with uh with some with some adjustments um so again I encourage you all to to to to check that check those action steps and timelines uh as you know some of those have already been happening uh we talked a few months ago about uh the work we were doing to start preparing

039for the question of school start times we've already contract got our contractor to do some of that logistical work that's just one example of many um feel free to call with any questions uh and um we actually have the leader of that uh of those already set up I just don't have that on the document um but um the next question that I want to address that I anticipate might come up is how will we report our progress to you it's going to vary uh those of you who've been on the board a long time may remember those those uh memos in the back of the board packet on particular items I'm just going to tell it like it is sometimes those were prepared just a few days before before the board meeting uh we're

040going to be doing this in a more Dynamic way uh you might get emails from time to time if there's a committee meeting that was created uh we'll give you an update on where the committee is uh there may be a budget item that we come to you with uh so you're going to hear about the progress of this in multiple ways not not just some some report that's stuck in the back of the packet our goal is for it to be more interactive and more just in time uh as we progress if we make some changes in in this document with the action steps we'll let you know as well and you all will be participating um from time to time as well on that I know that I've just talked about the procedure

041of it without really delving deep into the substance because it's so it's so detailed but it certainly open any questions you all may have suggestion is what about maybe a share drive that could be just for just for the Strategic plan and that way if there's updates we can get an email that alerts us that there's an update we can go at our at our Leisure to read it I think that's a good idea thank you for that suggestion maybe saves you on having to create multiple reports and things like that good suggestion thank you Jason is this is this is this going to be posted on the website under strategic plan or how yes okay yeah right now it'll be in the board packet ldia will put that in the board pack after the

042after the board meeting we'll make sure to do that thank you how much of a challenge is it to find the time for all the meetings and you know is do you need more resources for this or are you able to do it with the time and people that you have long term we might I will say uh a lot of the committee recommendations for action steps included added adding people m a lot of our changes including included vetting and exploring that if if that makes sense uh we anticipate that long term this to to achieve these goals we will need more help uh that's that has a potential to be a a a budget request in future years so yes uh I will tell you our committees added that to their plates right and

043again we had a lot of community participation as well so we had some volunteer work on that um but yeah know that's kind of the nature of a strategic plan right if you set a goal it's going to take it has a potential to take more assets and just quickly looking at it it seems like there's a lot well so the the targeted completion date does that mean that if it's two years out does that mean that that team is lightly engaged now or is that the duration of the pro the scope of the those gold dates are completion of that action step uh so so the leader of that group who's leading that objective work will be setting times to for example start a committee some of these might say committee starts with an

044with that date so a lot of it's going to be driven by the actual language in that action step but yeah if it's an ultimate if it's an ultimate result you're going to have to do the work ahead of time and the committee is going to have to do that work but you are staggering some of this Activity thank you yes across the across those you know the the the whole length of it the dates are staggered we did have some consideration of that you know we had some discussion of well this committee recommended this particular schedule but we know something else is going on and so we did make some adjustments there but we know again it's going to have to be living a little bit on in that context I will say you

045trigger another thought in my mind some of the Committees had overlapping action steps and so we have a few references here and there to check in the other one yeah uh because there will be some interaction from time to time okay thanks Jason could you scroll down and let us see the uh most distant targeted date so this so you actually trigged another thought these these the way this is structured is per um objective we actually have another document that's cross referenced um every action step by time but I have not I do not have that here with me so I'll make sure that we get that to you that actually has all the action steps by time that so what is the targeted completion date if that's not by time well like May 27

046do what it's just not order oh oh I we just scroll down let's see which one is the farthest away there's a May 27 there's an August 26 yep August 26 26 26 yeah we had some 27's earlier in August 2 August um there's there's a May 28 in there June 27 so what's the life of the Strategic plan 5 years 2028 there aren't many in 2028 no yeah we've got some aggressiveness to so from a just from a reporting standpoint I think it' it'd be great just to see at a at a very high level our um our completion dates versus our projected completion dates just to know I think that'd be that'd be a way that you can measure um just how how close are we to uh to hitting those targets um

047we don't actually expect you to I mean I guess ideally you'd hit them all but I mean there might be reasons why you might have a blocker for you know from a staffing perspective or from whatever perspective it's fine I think it's just a high level you know by in total and maybe by by initiative and it might be that you don't have any completion dates yet yet which is yeah completely understandable but that might just be an easy way as opposed to showing that we we met I mean I I agree that those that the memos were were busy work yeah um and they weren't really weren't really giving us much information around the overall progress so that might be doesn't have to be that but it just I'm just thinking out loud that's

048a good suggestion we'll talk about that as well any other questions related to this again I anticipate that if you go skim through that you may have some questions obviously feel free to call Madam chair that's my report okay super thank you Mr Golden and board members next item on our agenda is the operations report Mr King thank you madam chair just a couple of uh construction updates uh Brentwood Middle School uh the assestment abatement and the old building is completed uh they're disconnecting all the utilities right now and as soon as school is out we will begin the physical demol uh demolition of the building uh this summer you for waiting yes sir Eric was very thoughtful in his planning thank you um page High phase four the gym is uh coming along great

049the ground floor concrete slabs have been poured um and the 60% of the wall construction is complete as of now and the transportation building we are complete with the utility relocation and footing we begin in about well once weather uh permits and then after that it'll be about 2 weeks before the walls start going up on our transportation building uh that's my report unless you have any questions and Madam chair if I may just add a little bit last month you all approved our safety technology maintenance five year fiveyear Capital plan request the commission approve those in full uh we expect they're probably going to go to bond market to fund that in November of this year uh and and we do not have any new construction projects in this in this year we' actually

050push those push those another year just as a reminder thank you Mr King okay next item on the agenda is the board chair report and I want to just stop and acknowledge that throughout the year we do a lot of work um and it does culminate in graduations which are all next week as Mr Golden mentioned earlier and do want to just take a second to call out who is GRA all the graduation dates and acknowledge the board members who are showing up so centennial's graduation is Thursday at 700 p.m. it's at their football stadium and Eric Casey Jason Dron and Josh will be attending so thank you for going to that graduation definitely celebrate those seniors for all of their accomplishments when you're there Franklin is th Thursday as well at their football stadium

051at 7:00 p.m. Donna thank you for being there Independence is Thursday at 700 p.m. at their football stadium we do not have a board member attending so if anyone is available there is a spot for a board member to attend that's independence Thursday at 7 23rd that's the 23rd at their football stadium Independence okay yeah yeah there a lot at the same time um van start our online program is Thursday as well 7:00 Summit High School auditorium Auditorium and Jen thank you for attending uh Fairview is Friday at 7 my baby girl is graduating and I get to hand her her diploma um that I will be attending that one obviously um Nolanville is Friday 7 o' at the football stadium Jen will be attending to represent her area Paige is Friday at 7:00 at

052the football stadium Josh and Dron thank you for attending um Renaissance is Friday at 5:00 pm at the 4th Avenue Church of Christ Eric thank you for being there to represent Summit is Friday at 7 o'cl at the football stadium and Dan will be representing and handing his granddaughter her diploma and she is summum L right awesome congratulations she he said that she takes after him um ravenwood's graduation is Saturday at 10:00 a.m. at Belmont University Curb Center and Jay and Josh are attending say thank you for representing and graduate too you have a graduate too oh are you going to hand the diploma okay manys congratulations Jay lots to celebrate this year brentwood's graduation is Saturday 1 p.m. at lipam University she thank you for being there to celebrate the the bwood graduates so

053have fun next week this is the the reason why we do what we do get these kiddos out to their Futures so lots to lots to look forward to um and for the rest of the agenda tonight uh we have had a couple board members request that we go back to the old way of calling on folks just for this evening particularly because we are going to be discussing the budget and of course Library policy and we feel like there's going to be quite a bit of discussion so I'm going to go ahead and call on people tonight um and want to make sure we do have adequate representation of the board members and make sure comments are heard and questions are answered and people get time to to really think through what they want

054to ask and say so we are going to do that tonight um and I do also want to uh acknowledge Deputy jino Fant Tony for being here tonight with us thank you so much for being here okay so let's get busy on new business the approval of the revised budget Miss farmer is going to take it from here and Madam chair if I may give a little preface uh to to Rachel's presentation related to the budget um we'll be discussing little bits and pieces in detail but I want to get I want you all to have a basic overview of of where we are we started this budget process in collaboration with County government where U mayor Anderson uh set a parameter that they were um going to request what for Budget purposes was a

0556% raise for everybody County government employees and and School Employees uh their plan at the County government level is 5% at the beginning of the fiscal year and 2% in January for Budget purposes that's 2% for half a year 5% for the full year which budget-wise is 6% because of the logistics of our of our employees with 10-month employees especially teachers uh get get paid for 10 months over a course of 12 it just is very difficult for us to do a midyear pay increase so we committed to to asking for a 6% pay raise in conjunction with County government so we've gone through a number of of meetings with education committee with uh with the budget committee and ultimately they are scheduled for June 20th to vote on our budget about two weeks ago

056two Mondays ago uh uh the County Commission budget committee met and uh and and made a recommendation to the full commission on the amount of our budget uh and they recommended taking the budget that you all voted on and reducing that by two two numbers and Rachel's going to give you the detail of it by an amount that the county had reduced their request of us to cover health insurance claims and by an additional 2.5 million uh for an approximate amount of 255 million so that's a little bit lower than what you all had approved uh that that discussion for that 2.5 million surrounded uh the notice we received at at the end of April from from the Tennessee Department of Education that the fiscal capacity indicator was stretching the Gap even further between us

057and so many of our neighbors across the state resulting in a net reduction of about 2.5 million in what we projected uh on the revenue side from state government uh so that was two weeks ago uh two days ago the budget committee met again to vote on What's called the Consolidated budget where they put together a document that is that is published in the in the local uh newspaper with a projection of how what the budget looks like and how they intend to fund it County government prepared a proposal for our budget our 141 budget our general purpose budget of a 6 Cent increase on the tax rate to cover what the budget committee had approved for us uh based on the discussion they had two weeks ago uh the budget committee voted to days

058ago not to include in that publication that proposed 6 Cent tax rate they did not vote to reduc their fund that they approved two weeks prior in other words they removed from their proposal a proposal to fund it with a 6-cent Tales sales tax increase uh so right now as we said the budget committee has recommended the detail that Rachel's going to give you we project that we don't have sufficient funding based on our projections to cover that and the responsibility will be on County government on June 20th to make a decision ultimately on what they fund and how uh so as we sit here today Rachel's going to present to you a proposal to to fund well to to reduce our budget based on what the County Commission budget committee recommended with their numbers

059there's a lot of details surrounding that we know there'll be a lot of work we've had a lot of discussions with individual Commissioners over the time but I wanted you guys to have that basic overview uh before we started the detail of uh of Rachel's presentation so Rachel oh I'm sorry we may have some questions already yeah well sorry coming in hot um question on that and and the context so I was looking back so we we asked for a heads up on the budget in February to get an idea and the budget presentation is in March and then at that time we find out that the health insurance costs are going to be higher than expected ultimately that changed but that was a curveball thrown at you at the last minute prior of the

060budget presentation and then the state revenue isn't provided to us until the end of April that's correct the new TSA Law requires tdoe to provide to the local school districts before May 1st their projections on the fiscal capacity indicator and that number based on those those multiple formulas that we've talked about cber and Tasser ultimately stretched us11 uh uh percent further apart from where we were last year the net dollar results about 2.5 million less from the state which is a which is a pretty important input into your budget that's right and when do we have to provide the budget by state law Rachel as soon as it passes we have to turn it into the state um they currently are they're as they pushed there's been for the last few years to have it

061done by June 30th and we will upload it and then the state still would have to approve it and they would approve it normally they get it done by the end of July so let me do a followup to to Mr H's question when do we have to get the budget to the County government to the County government we have to have it to them by April 1st wow by April 1 and we don't even know what our revenue is going to be until a month later right we have to base it on projections that's not really a question thank you any other questions before Rachel gives you the detail um as Mr Golden said yes when you originally approved the budget in March the total was 566 900 566 m966 and3 um the reduction

062for the insurance um is $ 9,400 375 um and then the reduction of the 2.5 that the budget committee asked us to reduce would be a total reduction of 11,900 375 so your new Total um that the budget committee on April 30th gave us was $555,000 60 60,000 5 I can't talk 555 million 6,228 um and so that would be what we would be bringing back to you um to vote on is those two items I'm going to go ahead and jump to the end of this memo that 2.5 million that we looked at at reducing um in talking with Bond Council we were told that if we had residual Bond money that was related um that we've pulled over into contingency because it would be a capital item we could use those funds um

063out of contingency in 177 to cover the cost and so we are recommending as well to do a transfer from contingency for 2.5 million the reduction that the budget committee for the commission asked for um and then that would that would cover the cost for our Chromebooks for next year let me give one little bit of information related to Insurance uh the county originally came to us with a request to increase our insurance spending by somewhere around $14 million is that right 15 15 $15 million so the we are based on the county need uh including in this budget an increase over last year of $5,499 265 so it dropped substantially based on their original request of US based on their research of claims but we're still having we we're getting a little bit more

064revenue from the state with with some growth um but that expense alone was about about $5.5 million more than last year Mr Brown I'm sure but I'm going to have other questions as we go through this but I I think it'd be helpful um for the benefit of us and those watching that to go back through and and remind us the original the Gap at one point was right after we learned of the $2.5 million reduction on fiscal capacity if I remember right the Gap was around $18 million is that right now the now the Gap is about 12 million so can you just walk us through what has happened what you guys have done and what others have done to get that down by six plus million we were at $1 million um we

065have put a moratorium on spending unless it is an emergency or the normal regular bills that we have to pay including utilities those kind of things and so we were able to go back and project fund balance of an additional 5 million right at 5 million that will be there for the end of the year that covered part of it um and then the $2.5 million reduction and so where we are right now um The Gap itself would be 10.2 million thank you so the thing that I want to point out is I had I had the chance to sit through I think three of the committee meetings maybe four over the last couple months a couple budget committee meetings couple of Education committee meetings and got to see some of the questions that were

066asked and and first of all you you both did a great job of answering the questions walking through it's very tedious um but I think the thing that's important to point out is that there's been a fair amount of work done already to get that Gap closed uh they cut us by 2 and a half million but you guys have gone ahead and even G further than that with your work so I just think that's important context as we walk through this uh that there hasn't there hasn't been just sort of a sitting back and saying okay you guys figure it out you've got has put a pencil to it and gotten to where we think we need to be so at this point laughing a little bit I think all departments are tired of

067hearing us say hey can you close this PO it's been sitting there if you're not going to use it let's close it and let's make sure cuz yes we are every day going through and trying to find any Penny we can okay that that's that's all for now Mr GTH thank you um so Jason can you a lot like Josh I'm trying to just re kind of go back and get a get our bearings on on the increases that we're that we're seeing because so a lot of our our our difference is less than the 6% raise that that we're that that the county asked us to match when they because that's what they were doing for their employees yeah um but I want to could you could you kind of go through the big

068big ticket items in terms of what makes up the increase from year overy year because we I know just I know we've got textbooks um 5 million or so that wasn't in last year's budget um because what I what I want to do is be able to I mean I want you to be armed with the with all the information to when you when you have to go defend the board's position in um in front of the commission and with you know Commissioners and the mayor but I want to I want us all to be informed as well because at the end of the day I think we're looking at a 4 and a half% increase in in the budget as as it as the Commissioners are are are saying hey we're going to reduce

069it down um but but then that that includes a 6% increase as well as you know 5 million in Insurance 5 million in um in textbooks uh some operational expenses so I'm just trying to help us with the numbers that's right so thank you for that so in essence the proposed budget is $40 million more than last year's budget comparing Apple St apples the beginning of the school year to the next uh the revised budget I think it's a it is a is it a 3 point oh I'm trying to remember off the top of my head that made Rachel the the increase over the revised budget it's 13 million is this the increase from Revis to what we're requesting 13 million over revised but to compare apples to apples from one year to the

070next it's about 40 million of that uh we have 12.9 in operational increases and that that's represented by $5.5 million for science textbooks which we're going through this adoption cycle this year Rachel correct me if I'm wrong sorry go ahead with the two and $2.5 million decrease um the total operational would be 10,435 873 so reduce that reduce that 12.9 by by 2.5 assuming we have that approval of what we have presented to you now uh that brings the uh the Chromebooks for the secondary schools to how much Rachel the Chromebooks would be 4 million 4 million so that's part of that that's part of that increased operational expense we have about 90000 ,000 increase in utility cost and janitorial services and is there anything else in that 900 Rachel was utilities and janitorial yes

071that's it all right uh and the uh the experience role for teachers based on our based on our uh our our PID schedule and there's a few classified experience roles too because we have a five-year five-year experience role for some of our classified employees is is 3.5 million the proposed 6% raise is [Music] 16.78% Mr Golden asked it was included some building Insurance vehicle insurance and workers comp insurance that were smaller adjust that was workers comp in the Ops but but the health insurance claims is not part of that that's an additional that's that 5.5 million in health insurance uh and then we have about 1.2 in new Personnel um that that includes um and I think if I'm not mistaken I may be a little percentage off on this the net increase in our

072staffing is 10.4 positions correct this year uh five of those are the new the computer science teachers five at each of the high schools based on the new state requirement so required by the state required by the state uh um of the remaining positions I may not get every single one off the top of my head but it includes a title 9 investigator based on the volume to comply with the new federal requirements for Title 9 uh that's um let's see we 300,000 of that is going to be flag football in Lacrosse oh thank you um as well we're adding flag football and Lacrosse uh new sports should have mentioned that earlier when I talked about our talked about our Athletics uh and then the PCR has those other those other few positions um that

073we're adding we are adding one uh uh operational assistant position just because the volume of of the operational work has gotten to where we can't maintain that um but but I'm not real good at math Jason so 10 on 35 3500 is Staff what is that the is that our our total PCR is about 5,300 5300 not 35 yet so that's that's not a big percentage right that is correct we project a total St student enrollment increase of 0.49% so we have stabilized and so our but our additional staff is half of that growth in terms of growth in staff yeah that's a good way to describe it um so that's that that's that that's that 40 million so short of so short of changing our staffing standards and most of that 10 is coming

074from custo from computer science that's based on a new state law that's right um then we we would have to in order to in order to give the give the full raise then we would have to we would have to start we'd have to figure out what we were going to cut out of our um either I mean it's probably going to be positions because we don't we don't have a whole lot of discretionary spending and every year we cut back on discretionary spending at the end of the year to fund next year's budget that's a good point so so you you triggered two two thoughts number one uh on the on the on the Staffing well I've lost the first one uh but but uh I I'll speak to the second one we we

075we when we budget we know we don't spend every single dollar uh but we do have to budget for those positions uh this year because of the moratorium we placed Etc um of our $520 million budget we have about 60 million that was in designated fund balance that we didn't spend and that's being used to fund the next year's budget so we when you talk about actual versus budgeted there's there's that difference and and I think Rachel it's somewhere around 11% of our total something like that 11 or 12% of our total uh of our total budget that we're rolling into the into the next year um and for the life me I can't think of my first my first one that you triggered well let me mention this also you talked about the expense

076side on the 40 million we did have increased we do project increased revenue from the state uh the base Tissa was going from 68 6,840 6840 to 7,75 to 7075 just remember that's the base that's the minimum amount the state says we as a team the state and the local school systems will fund minimum 7,75 and then they take the share of that based on the fiscal capacity so we have the the you know our share of that 7,75 bumps up so they did increase that by 3% that's the state budget so they gave a 3% increase to Tisa but it's really a fraction of that that we actually get from the state but we did get that increase from the state that and maybe I'm inappropriately describing it as a cola increase of 3%

077okay so that's why we're not that's why we don't have a $40 million gap because we did get an increase from the state also um a little bit of an increase in um property uh property tax projections based on new construction and uh the valuations are are basically the same because there there there's a reassessment next year ra some other increases on the revenue side they are pretty property tax is is about 2 million and then um sales tax was just a little bit not a whole lot about a million there um but then Tisa once we'll have an amendment tonight it looks like based off of this year we are going to get you know about between four and 5 million more um well about 4 million more in TSA funding for next year

078than we had this year about 4 million and by the way we did get the outcomes funding from Tissa that you all approved in last last month's budget of somewhere 5.2 million something like that uh that that was included in this as well okay we do have nearly all the board members ready to speak uh first is Miss Aria then we have Mr Wimberly next Mr Brown then miss Clemens then Mr Welch Mr Beasley that's who we have on the list first so Mr prio you go ahead okay thank you um I appreciated what Jay asked that was kind of where I wanted to start was just pointing out the fact I've been hearing from some of the uh County Commissioners that they have increased our our budget by 3 to 4% from last year

079but if you look at why we needed to do those increases a lot of them were things we couldn't avoid spending money on so it's important for the public to understand that um and then we have the fiscal capacity piece with the 2.5 million that the state said that the county has the capacity to provide to us from their end it's interesting to me that that then became something that they passed back to us they said no we're not we're going to reduce the amount by 2.5 because the state said no it just seems a little strange it seems like there's an opportunity to kind of work together and figure out if if the state feels we have the capacity how do we find it um instead of just cutting it from our budget and

080then um another thing I've been hearing from some of the Commissioners is a comparison to Rutherford County schools that we need to look at our budget the same way they have and I wondered if you could speak to that I know we talked a little today about how that's maybe not such a good comparison yeah a a commissioner did ask at the at the full commission meeting on Monday a question about Rutherford County's budget and then asked again the next night that at the Tuesday night budget committee meeting uh and what we know as a threshold is every budget has its own uniqueness and you really have to drill down into how particular items are funded in each in each particular budget uh so it's difficult for me to speak to Rutherford specifically without doing

081some drill down uh an example I gave was something I happened to know that they they uh there their payroll processing is actually hand handled by County government so that's just one example of how things could be different so our staffing and our finance department might be a little more because we actually do the payroll processing whereas County government does it for them so there's probably a lot of examples of that kind of thing where things might be handled a little bit differently but Rachel did drill down into what they have published as their proposed budget um uh I'm going to I'm going to give a little bit information on the revenue side and then let Rachel give some examples on the expense side that just really kind of emphasize that that proverbial apples to

082app really can't be done without knowing particular budgets uh Rutherford's projected State funding is about $85 million more than ours um now Rutherford under fiscal capacity is a net Giver just like we are except it's very close to the to to the 50/50 line so they they have to they are treated as if they have a few more students than they actually do uh but it's not nearly as pronounced as ours they're close to 5050 having to lose a little bit of funding based on the fiscal capacity that's that's the revenue side 85 million more from the state but that commissioner said I'm more interested in the expense side and of course I let that commissioner know well you all are the decision makers on the on the expense side but Rachel did go back

083and look at at some of those noticeable differences uh on the expense side from ruford which by the way is going to be a little bit different based on student enrollment uh based on the fiscal capacity document we got from the state we're at 41,000 and change in students that they projected Rutherford's somewhere around 49 or 50 in that particular document but we've both grown a little bit because that documents you know based on last year's numbers Rachel could you give a little bit information on the on kind of the big ticket expense differences that we've seen sure and I'm also going to give a plug for us too that if you go to our website it WCS by the numbers will have our actual updated um information it has enrollment there's always a question

084just a reminder about when we talk about enrollment are we including K12 or we including EC prek k12 and so all of that's broken down I'll just tell you I hate kind of looking at somebody's else budget because you don't know line by line what their thought process is so I can pull an isolation numbers out um and I don't want to misrepresent so I'm looking at Big categories but a few things that just kind of popped up um in looking at it Mr Golden um mentioned you know for payroll we are in our finance department I have eight employees that that process our payroll for Rutherford County those are County Employees they are not included in the school's budget at all so the fiscal um line for instance was one that was mentioned Communications

085was one that was mentioned um they have a Communications department and they have $10,000 in that budget so we know that they're not reported in that line those employees are reported in another line um another just so y'all know transportation we have those employees they contract out bus driving so those are not actual employees for them and so there is a contracted service cost but it's not the same so that's why I'm saying when you pull out and you do a direct comparative you have to know all the detail before you you can truly make that comparison the biggest item that I will say that stood out when you were looking at categories related to special ed just in document only we spend $40 million more out of general purpose for special ed than they

086do that does not mean they are not spending money on special ed that means they are probably getting state and federal grants that are supporting those expenses again our fiscal capacity who we are we are not eligible for all the same things that Rutherford County is and so $40 million is huge um when you're talking about that so we you know that's that's where we are again I think Mr Golden said their total revenue is $45 million more than us and so while we can say it is expenses when you don't when you're that far behind and we are directly competing with teachers and it's not just teachers it is maintenance work it is our Tas we have to be able to compete unfortunately for us we are not a corporation where we can raise

087our prices or where we can lower this we are government um and our Revenue comes from Two basic sources that's the state and that's the county the state is not going to fund us like they're going to fund rord County because of our fiscal capacity so we rely on the county to do that for us um and the county has worked with us I mean we've tried to and they said 6% raise for County Employees that's all County Employees um and we've always been able to do that if not if they get a raise their maintenance workers are going to get a 6% raise and ours don't get a 6% raise then we're out of balance again thank you and and I only wanted to bring that up and point that out because I I

088know since we've been looking at this budget since February you all have done an immense lift on making it very fiscally responsible making it the bare minimum that we could ask for but still outperform academically athletically and in the Arts all our neighboring districts like what we do in Williamson County compared to everyone else with the money that we have is amazing it's miraculous and so I would hate to say okay we need to go back and look at this budget that we've worked on and find something else to cut from a formula that's obviously already working very well or cut this pay raise that our teachers deserve 6% is what the county recommended and asked us to provide and I think it's only fair and I don't think we should have to choose between

089the bare minimum of what we've put in this budget or this raise for teachers so thank you for that um and to to give a little bit more information related to that I'm going to speak for Mr galbert a little bit um he I think he mentioned this last month the fiscal capacity indicator doesn't factor in federal funding uh and that's actually in a different line that we're talking our general purpose budget is I'm shortening it Rachel this it's it's 171 Federal funding is 172 uh and so we haven't seen the the 172 line uh for them typically about 2 to 3% of our total funding is federal and generally speaking that's lower than than than most but again we don't have those numbers to really compare uh truly uh apples apples with ruford by

090the way I also thought of the other comment I was going to make uh we actually reduced our our operating budget a million dollars uh from the current year uh in preparation of the budget that you all actually voted on less those items that we just talked about and by the way I I got to say this I have a lot of respect for Rutherford County uh um um they they've got a great superintendent one of my colleagues have a ton of respect for him and the work they do um some of our former uh principles are are in leadership positions uh in Rutherford County uh and we have a really good relationship and they do do a good job Mr Wimberly Jason what is the difference between the budget when you first saw it

091and what we finally approved wow okay so we had a lot of request that got turned down uh we knew early on that mayor Anderson was looking to give that to get that 6% raise and we as a team talked about that on the front end we knew immediately that we did not have sufficient funding to give that 6% raise unless we had additional help from County government but we did what we can to narrow it um we were in the first stage of our strategic plan and we hadn't done that work we just talked about and so we did not initiate any new strategic initiatives this year uh be for the for those two reasons one because of the money but but also because we needed to be thoughtful in our approach U strategically

092um I can't I y'all I don't even know the total dollar value of what was requested that that we turned down um um but but so St says a lot we I can tell you it was right at 57 million okay Rachel remembers 57 million additional and I we know that success is tenuous and I we do worry every year about where's that Tipping Point for us um but what we know is the core and the Heart of what we do as teachers and so we felt like it was worth at this time to try to do what um County Administration was trying to do thank you you're welcome Mr Brown asking a question that Jay asked but a little bit differently um is there a percent what is the percentage of the if you

093take out the raise the pay raise if you take out the health insurance contribution take out the textbooks and maybe take out the Chromebooks I'm just talking about Big Ticket things if you took away those things what would our percentage increase in the budget operationally be year-over-year roughly year over year it changes from year to year depending but you said well from last year to this year or the proposed the current year to the proposed budget I think it's a very small number I'm just trying to quantify that small but without the raises I mean without the raise and without Chromebooks and the textbooks um it would be a 1.1 percentage increase and if you take out the health insurance contribution also it's flat it' be flat I mean for the most part yes the

094only different I mean you have 930 ,000 of operational expenses and then the 1.2 for the additional staff um so we're talking we're talking 1% yeah maybe maybe now to back out of that a little bit it's probably also a fair to say that every year there's going to be a textbook expense almost every year right it varies a lot on the on the number uh and Dr Allen the textbook adoption cycle it will wax and Wayne Uh depending on whether it's a one of the four core content areas versus versus other it's a it's a is has the state stretch it now to a seven-year cycle they just updated the Cycles so I don't feel comfortable okay giving the exact dates on those but I will say that next year is a lighter cycle

095so it's not going to be 5 a half billion next year okay all right science social studies Ela and math and we just did math last year that's right yeah social studies will be next but it's not next year it's two years out correct science is the one that's in this year's or this budget for next year I guess the reason I asked that is because one of the things I know we're going to hear and have already heard is that the 28 million if you take take our 12 million out and say they want to take it down to the $28 million increase instead of a $40 million increase that the 28 million just in dollar dollars alone is enough to cover the 6% raise it's enough to cover the health insurance contribution and

096probably enough to cover the an experience role you would have to do an experience role so it would cover those three things but it probably then wouldn't cover the textbooks and anything else beyond that so I think we just should kind of I think for context I think know that one of the things we're going to hear from others is that they would absent the increase um there's still enough money to give the raise so we just I think we just need to know that that's part of the conversation can I say one thing to that um yeah we technically if you wiped out every penny of of fund balance maybe we could make it work maybe the issue is going to be then going forward things that we traditionally come back and ask for

097out of fund balance we won't have it and you're going to see some of those things tonight we do every year buses we've done for the last several years out of fund balance if y'all recall we did radios this year out of fund balance we had Capital things we had to do out of fund balance and then there's end of the year things that we always come back for fund balance there would be no fund balance and I think that's a really important point and one of the things I know that a few Commissioners have said is have not really maybe fully appreciated the the fact that the fund balance which is 50 plus million right now isn't it we're we're rolling that into next year's budget to make it all work correct and I

098don't think some of them have a a full grasp of that so I think that's an important very important Point thank you for that and right or wrong Rachel you may correct me I differentiate between designated fund balance and undesignated fund balance designated fund balance is what is left over because we didn't overspend um undesignated is what we're required to have to start the year and that's 3% on July 1 required in other words the state the state department of education has told us that is it it's doe it's not the correct the department and and they do have to approve our budget as well they require they require us to have a 3% undesignated fund balance to start the year there's also a few designations and for instance we will have and it's not

099included in this number but um I'm saying this and I'll get to my point 15.5 million we received this year is a grant for the Innovative School model Grant and so that money is designated when you look at an audited financial statement for us it may look like our fund balance is higher because it will include that number in it it does not take into account that is actually designated and we can't just spend it for operational budget items okay Miss Clemens thank you um Madam chair um I had a couple questions um as far as I know we have the new construction impact fee where does that play into this and how much do Revenue do we have there that that goes into Capital that the county has the capacity to pay for some

100Capital expenses out of that and they're decision makers on that it does not affect directly affect our operational budget they can't spend that on operations did I describe that appropriately Rachel that is correct we do they when they come back anytime we have funding that is a funding source for them if we came back and requested on construction for new capital okay and then also I know that we we have the budget for those for like as if we have full Staffing but I know we have gaps and vacancies what percentage of our um I guess instructional staff and maybe um those who work directly with students and what percentage do we have as far as vacancies and then how much money do we have there in those vacancies that changes every day um and

101so let me talk about that just a little bit in a couple of different ways we may have a vacancy and I think we've had this question I could have a vacancy today um and fill it tomorrow I could have had a vacancy for two days this year I could had a vacancy for 20 days 100 days and so when you're looking at a snapshot it's really hard to say what that Financial impact is going to be also when we have a vacancy if it's a teacher vacancy we're paying a sub we still have to require the services so we're paying a sub so you're it's a lower rate but you're still having a payment that's going out so it's not a total wash same thing with the bus drivers and we have those vacancies

102but our overtime for bus drivers is is eating up that extra money and so I can't tell you the number today of how many vacancies we are that came up um that was one of the questions for the Commissioners and Al I want to kind of share that with you guys too when we um have the Staffing standards in place you see them we know how many teachers we're supposed to have related to um Regular Ed and special ed so it applies to both also related to the Tas particularly with special ed we have a requirement the state comes in and they look at us and they audit us and they say your Staffing standard says you have this number of teachers and so we have to show we have those number of teacher spots

103available if we don't if we were to take those positions out and say hey they're unfilled so we're going to put them back in the budget then we don't have a position for sub to come into and we also are not meeting the Staffing standard and that gets into our funding with supplement and suppling um which is a whole different conversation and so we've talked a lot about could we put anything back in and bus drivers was really the only one that we thought well but then when we're looking at overtime we're eating up any money we would have to put back in for that so I didn't answer your question on how many we have um I'm I'm going to give a a a broad answer that's that's an estimate um teachers we we've

104been staffed at about 99% % this year General Ed teachers special education teachers we've been staffed somewhere between 94 and 95% uh special education teachers assistance we've been staffed at about 92% um those are the the big um big numbers um within within our budget and like Rachel said it might vary from day to day I'm just speaking in generalities thanks okay Mr Welch thank you um really appreciate all the great questions from everyone around the table tonight um good stuff I I I think what it shows is really what we know is that Jason you and your staff have have done an exemplary job putting together a very lean meaty budget uh people talk about cutting the fat and I just don't see any fat here it's anything we're taking off is meat and

105Bone um so I I I'm not inclined and I know you're not asking but I'm also not inclined to make a lot of cuts to it because I think any Cuts we're talking about are are going to be one of two things one is uh cutting programming for our students to your point and it's it's taken away from our students education which is you know what we're here for it's the forest for the trees or the second thing is is um not providing our our employees a a raise that's very mod modest and fair um Frank I think all our employees deserve a raise I know we talk about the teachers here with this and they deserve it but all of our employees do those that are uh keeping the hot water running in in

106the showers to making sure payroll goes through and and all the other jobs that sort of uh you know tooth to tail as we said in the Army um supporting those efforts um and when we're talking about the R I just want to sort of point out I just looked it up the Consumer Price Index as of um last month it was three and a half percent so uh from year over-year so right off the bat a in terms of purchasing power you know up to a 3 and a half% raise we're really just keeping where they're at so it's it's not even a raise in terms of actually being able to go out and and uh consume more or save more what have you it's keeping static so just at that point you're you're

107at the the starting point with it um last point and Josh I love that question that you asked about take those other things out I think it was a very Apples to Apples comparison between where the budget is and sort of shows the leanness not of it you know if they're essentially flat is is what we've done we take out things that we're mandated to provide and have to do it um last point I just want to sort of say and point out some good things but I think this is good context too was Jen's question about the um commissioner who said well you know I wish we'd budget more like Rutherford well it's a lot of ways I wish we did too because uh just looking at the state report card uh Rutherford gets

10810.2% of their budget from the federal government uh we get about 3.3 so they get Triple the amount from Uncle Sam that that we do and at the state level they're getting 47.9 versus 25.1% so they're getting twice as much as we are so yeah I would love to budget like they do too and and start you know uh it's like you know running a race and saying we're going to give that one guy a He he'll start at the 50 yard line instead of the starting line um but that's not the reality of the situation here so all of this to sort of say um again what what hasn't already but appreciate all the work that you and and everyone on the staff has done to really get us at a good point with

109this and I think at this point I hope everyone feels the same way I think it's incumbent upon uh the the 11 of us now to really sort of advocate defend and sort of speak up and say this this is a good budget that we have put together and and we think it should be funded uh as we've approved it uh in its current form thank you Mr Beasley yeah really quickly um I just had a couple of people reach out to me and their question question that I asked you I believe earlier Mr Golden today um so I just want you to speak on uh if the budget was able to uh give the teachers a 6% raise and left the administrative portion out um how would that you know um um impact our

110budget we we did a little math and Rachel you you may give me some detail we did a little math on um we we just drew the line at 120,000 which basically would cover the principles and other other administrators I think that's somewhere around $500,000 in the raise so so it wouldn't impact our budget much at all no five 500,000 and we're and we're right now we have a gap of 11 10. 10.7 so it wouldn't it it wouldn't solve it thank you and Mr Hall thank you madam chair um Mr Golden one of the comments you made I think it was in the last meeting was regarding the uh Governor's law that was passed last year to raise the starting teacher teacher pay in every County in Tennessee to $50,000 and our uh scale

111for teacher starting pay has us skyrocketing past that at $5,100 and your point about the fact that this is the most expensive cost of living County in Tennessee and we're going to be $100 higher than the state mandate so every County around us is going to be right where we're at essentially but with a cost of living that is anywhere from 14 to 19% lower essentially if you look at like cost of living of that I was looking at the MIT living wage calculator just to get some reality check on that and of you know it's a pretty significant Gap and if we're going to be even the the the challenge of competing with those around us is going to be even more pronounced at a time when every district is having challenges recruiting teachers

112for especially for specialty positions so I want to make sure that the County Commission is aware of that unique challenge that's only going to become more pronounced in future Years thank you for that and we've talked about that and I've told the some of the County Commissioners during those during those budget and education committee meetings about that this proposal would keep us one year ahead of that wave of that minimum salary now I I feel for the County Commission because the governor is requiring that but the state structure does put ultimately a little more burden on on County than than some of our some of our neighbors but that 50,100 proposed base amount was thoughtfully done based on us staying one year ahead um I will also say County government has been good to us

113these last few years uh um I know Rachel sent you all uh the starting pay over these over the last few years in uh 20120 we were at $4,150 starting pay uh so we're talking about in a five year window going up basically 25% in in 5 years uh when when and if we do this but we knew that that was coming from the from the state uh especially in these last few years and ra I'm trying to remember exactly when the governor announced or Vicki you may remember when the governor announced that goal so it's two years so this will be the third budget year uh to to reach that goal um and we were we were way off four or five years ago um and I know there's other districts that are that

114are still off but to your point this would keep us one year ahead of that minimum I do appreciate that you've you make note of the fine work that the County Commission has done in supporting us to getting to where we are it's just worth underscoring the fact that they that commitment needs to continue and we appreciate the efforts so far but they can't take the foot off the gas there that's right thanks Mr Wimberly so actually to kind of echo that or related to that so what's the strategy how are we in the County Commission going to make this work well uh I I I can speak procedurally and and and we can I can share a little bit substantively after that but procedurally just as a reminder the County Commission budget committee recommended

115this budget that is now before you the 255 million uh uh they have not indicated in fact they've indicated the opposite they they have indicated that they don't recommend a six cent property tax increase for next year to cover that knowing that we have a gap they will on June 20th ultimately have to make a decision on how they cover that Gap or if or whether they would reduce what they tell us they're going to fund right now the budget committee is recommending funding at that 255 million so we may have to wait till June 20th to find out what what what they're going to fund and how um I have had some County Commissioners talk about their fund balance talk about what they have available they've got to make those decisions uh themselves um

116with with that so I guess I'm a little bit confused about the process so as I look at the agenda um are we going to what are we going to be asked to vote on that relates to this difference we have here on Monday thank you we're going to ask you to vote on two things related to this budget and then then the other budgets on there are are are related to insurance and our self-contained budgets the uh the sack and Food Service we're going to ask you to honor the count County Commission budget committee's recommendation for the funding not how it's being funded but the number they recommended two weeks ago that $255 Million number that's in there that is a reduction from what you all approved two months ago we are recommending that

117you reduce our budget to that $255 million point which is a reduction of Rachel 11 million well including Insurance in the 2.5 it would be 11,900 375 is the total reduction so going from two mean from 566 to 555 so that reduction is represented by two items one County government going back to the drawing board on health insurance claims and then second them dropping us by 2.5 million the second piece we're asking you to vote on is cover that 2.5 million with capital which is something we discussed at some of those County Commission committee meetings uh then the question came up at one of those meetings do you have any leftover Capital that might cover a portion of this and so our proposal to you is meet the recommendation from from the budget committee with

118that 2.5 million reduced and fund that $2.5 million gap with contingent Capital which is left over Capital so sorry to be D on this so if we approve this $1 million reduction then how does that impact the teacher increases or staff increases and the 6% and how does it affect our operations what are we saying we can do without we it honors all the services that you all voted on two months ago the combination of those two votes honors everything that we asked of you two months ago then the responsibility is on the County Commission to decide given that the budget committee is recommending that without a recommendation to increase the sales tax rate I mean the property tax rate how do they fund it like we need to have another meeting so can I

119say one thing so basically you are the expenditure side this is what you're approving so that's what you're voting on these are the expenditures based off of the budget committee's recommendation they will vote in June on the funding side as to whether or not they fund it or not at this point what's going in the newspaper would show that they're not going to fund it there are other ways they could fund it um but at this point what would go into the newspaper is what was voted on and when you say the newspaper you mean on the not the news coverage but they you actually legally have to post in the newspaper your Consolidated budget for the entire County a month before the commission votes on it and so that will run in next week's

120newspaper and so that was what was voted on do we want to go ahead and say yes we are committing to a six Penny increase and they did not but they did not tell us at that time to also reduce our budget by another 10 million that was not what was said they voted to not post that in the newspaper the additional Revenue so what could happen in June is yes they could come back on the floor and they could say we you're going to fund this way or they could say we're not funding at all and then we would have to come back and make the decision at that point in time as to how we would meet our budget okay I think I have it now I think okay um next we have

121Mr gal thank you madam chair um so just just wondering Rachel I've got three questions but one do we how much after $2.5 million out of contingency um how much do we have left I was ready for you on that one we have um 200 2.9 Million 846 for a total of 3.8 between the two between the two um and then Jason the in addition to the federal funds which is a travesty um and it's awful that everybody's that we giving them their money and then they're getting the federal funds on top for the ability to pay um can you talk a little bit about the um the CDF and how um the cost differential fund that used to be in the be is got got unfunded over time is still in Tissa and is

122just not funded but it was designed to differentiate between a a a high ability to pay County like severe County that has a relatively low cost of living compared to Williamson County who's got a who's got a high ability to pay but a High Cost of Living and so uh but for some reason it's just it just got it just got removed well we know why it got removed but it got removed I think you've described that well so the old BP formula which was last year right it's not that long ago it it included that CDF cost differential factor or it didn't include it well it included it in the paperwork it was not funded that I I had a conversation with one of the executives at Tennessee Department of Education a week or

123so ago he confirmed that that that that factor is still is in Tisa but likewise it is notun Fed so that is potentially a mechanism where the legislature could fund that to address that cost of living that you described do you have any any idea in terms of because I I can remember when we were talking about the growth money um at some point we were a third of the growth of the of the entire State and that obviously that still might be the case I don't know how much growth we have in in in student population but we our growth is down but in terms of cost of living if there were if there were $100 million or $10 million any any idea of what percentage we would get if they if they use

124the same formula that they used to I don't have any idea um I'm I can give you this little bit based on secondhand knowledge I I haven't confirmed this but the way it is written the formula hasn't been structured within that CDF so it could be many different many different things to reference back our old CDF I don't have any specific memory Rachel of of of of of the detail of that enough to speak to that we can go back and look on it is so embedded in that formula okay that it is very very hard I tried to figure out and couldn't it is percentage of a percentage of a breakdown of this of this line and it it's really hard so I would not be able to tell you but relative relatively speaking

125I mean the the higher cost the the higher cost of living counties would would would get an adjustment and the lower cost would not get a negative adjustment they just wouldn't get any of the incremental money correct growth money used to and growth was a little bit but we i' gone back and looked at that too and we were getting some year I think the most we got was $3 million in one year and it was about a million doar I mean that's kind of where what it would have gotten us um through the formula with B if I remember on the growth what they used to do it was not part of the formula but they would just they just put an some amount each year they would fund it separately and that was

126easy obviously to to to detail right we would know exactly how much they were giving us for growth because it would come later because Charles would would make sure that we got $10 million put in the growth money and we'd get a piece of it right that's right um okay so that I mean ultimately the the the ability to pay formula was was adopted through um as a result of a legal case 20 plus years ago that's right small what we call the small schools lawsuit and so I mean I think it I mean I know a couple of people have have talked about this but I mean I don't know I don't know of any other way to to get this done other than other than through that and and obviously it's not the

127school board coming that's a that's a position that the county is going to have to take with along with with other like counties but I mean it seems it seems that it's a piece of the formula that's missing that's disproportionately impacting a a few of our counties which we just got to we got to see we got to really look into whether it makes sense to pursue that as a as a threat and then go through with that threat if they if they don't change it you've triggered a little bit of legislative history that's in my memory um and I may be a little bit off on the dates and Dana I don't know if you have any memory of this but uh the current formula is based on a combination of two formulas it's

128a 50/50 cber um uh CBE r inass or t a the seber formula does not expand that gap for us nearly as much as the Tasser formula um somewhere around 2007 there was a plan to transition when I think seber started in maybe 02 somewhere between 02 and 07 there was a plan to transition from all Tasser to a combination to all seber 20 16 if I remember right that law was changed and institutionalized that 5050 structure that was then adopted uh there was discussion while we were going through the process of adopting our new formula the Tisa formula about doing just seber it didn't make it into law so we're still at that 50/50 if it was just seber the Gap would not be as wide for us um thank you and one one

129last thing Jason I know um and this is around just the the the overall all budget I've I've heard some some mention about the central office staff being um being too big and you know and and I think you you mentioned a couple of couple of things um or you between you and Rachel mentioned the fact that you know HR and finance are are included and if they weren't included it would be it would be in the it would have to be in the county budget but I just wanted to to when out of those 5400 um positions on on the PCR do 10% fall in the roughly fall in the central office 10% roughly Falls in all the operations and central office so I did I did an approximation based on our PCR and

130you guys could do it as well pull the PCR up all our instructional uh instruction teachers School based teachers special ed assistants nurses principles uh that's about 90% % of our Total Staffing transportation's about 6% uh maintenance is 1.7 technology is .9% Finance point4 HR point4 Communications 0.1 facilities and construction 0.1 zoning which is actually included in my line 0.1 U central office uh the reception folks uh and me were about 0.1 you guys are about 02 in that PCR zero points right when I say point I'm talking about Z point so yeah about 90% of our staffing is directly related to students yeah I mean I'm looking at 99.3% with six with with Transportation being 6.1 of that I mean and and a lot of those um I mean there so there's there's another

1311% that's that's based in the central office that's actually out in the that's out in the schools between student support uh between the U student support yeah and uh and some coaches and that kind of thing that's right and and most most of our academic disciplines have a central office coordinator um in Dr Allen's Department um and and they do give direct supports to that instruction that's an example of what you're talking about the majority of those are special education supports yeah no I I just think that I mean we've we're we're a district we it's hard to it's hard to live without you can't you can't operate without a superintendent and and some leadership to to be over the buildings I mean I mean some things are going to be are necessarily going to

132be centralized so we don't have to have an extra an extra leader at every in all 51 schools yeah but um but I just think it's a if we if you looked around from a even a corporation perspective um those are all really good numbers um I mean not everybody's going to have to have transportation but maintenance Communications HR Finance um I mean all are are really I mean sub three % for for all those overhead support staff I mean I think it's a I think it's a pretty there's not a there's not a whole lot to go from there and and I would I would I would wonder what the what the County's um percentages look like of the of the same departments dealing with the with the same um same issues I think

133we're probably in the same I mean I we I think we're pretty pretty Dar efficient from that from that standpoint thank you for that I I will give you one more example that kind of P backs off what Rachel talked about um in answering the question about ruford County um County government does do our benefits uh so so they do provide that service to us miss clevand thank you madam chair I just want a clarification on the options the county has for funding and I know one was raiseed property taxes what pennies on the dollar well there other options that they had that they chose not to do well it's hard for me to speak uh for them but from a chose not to do question I think because of the nature of that vote

134it's not necessarily A chose not to because they had to produce their and and publish their Consolidated budget the County Administration included that 6 Cent increase because that was discussed at that meeting two weeks ago when they when they made the decision on what to fund so the question was what would this look like on the tax rate the County Administration said to cover that that'd be 6 cents so two days ago when they met they said let's not include that they have not made a decision about how to fund beyond that but there has been discussion at some of those meetings uh the the two elements that I remember Rachel would be potentially fund balance from County government uh there has also been discussion about how they budget the tax the property tax rate

135how much is in that fund balance um Rachel can you speak to that that was actually in their document published two days ago what was published in the document um that's again it's the what would go into the paper would have them ending this year June 30th with 86 million um and then with their budget for next year ending June 30th of 25 with 73 million and that 73 million they can use if that was an option they can use that to help fund that that would be their decision okay yeah I you you triggered a couple thoughts that I want to make sure we're clear on at that County Commission meeting two days ago the question was asked by one of the uh the uh the members of that committee could we go back

136on the floor and and approve a six cent the answer was yes so as I understand it they've still got all those options out there I can't speak for them I don't know ultimately what they will do but those options are still there at least based on what I heard uh uh at that meeting um another another uh piece I want to I want to mention to you is five years ago in 2019 uh the County Commission at that time approved a 7 Cent increase on the tax rate that happened to be the year before the last reappraisal in 2020 uh so they did it one year in it dropped at the reappraisal from $222 down to what it currently is which is $188 so they went up one year and it dropped back down

137um they're aware of that again I don't know ultimately what decisions they will make but one of the one of the arguments I made to them is the year before reappraisal is traditionally a difficult year because you've had increased expenses inflation cost of living n those largely represented by what we've already talked about today uh and the the change hasn't been made to address that with the increased Valu so you get I'm overstating it but you get the increase in inflation expenses but you haven't gotten the increase on the on the other side uh so re appraisals next year um I know that that's something that they're that they're considering uh as they ultimately have to make a decision okay thank you next we have Mr Cash and then we have Mr Brown Miss Aria

138and Miss Clemens Mr Cash thank you madam chair there isn't many more questions uh that can be asked on this uh Rick kind of asked a question I wanted to go over but the County Commission still has options for the complete for our budget and the the Rays included correct yes so we're just waiting uh on them for June that's right so the only thing we can do is go back to the drawing board and see what we can save money on which you've already done yeah and I don't know I kind of agree with some of the other folks I I think we need to stick to our guns and hope for the best thank you for that I think this recommendation that we have before you is is our is is good faith

139honoring what was recommended by the budget committee dropping it by and finding a way by that 2.5 million and then they've got the hard decision in a month right so that's what we're going to be voting on is the two or the 555 yes sir okay thank you Mr Brown Yeah it something Rick said a minute ago I think it's important to clarify this that we we are we would be both we would be voting Monday night on a budget that's $1 million less than what we voted on and approved last time yes originally but that still leaves us just so we're all clear it still leaves us with a 10 plus million dollar Gap so I think that's what you were getting at Rick is what we're voting on Monday night is $1 million

140less than what we approved before but it's still we're handing we're handing the County Commission essentially a budget that's got a $10 million gap in it between what we want and what they're what they've said they are willing to fund up to this point so I think that's so we know what we're doing that's what we're doing like we're basically handing them and if we did that we'd be handing them a budget that and say you got to figure out how to do the 10 million like we we're going to stick to Dan's use Dan's words stick to our guns and and I'm I for one I'm not inclined to reduce the budget any further than we already have I mean based on all the conversation we've had the multiple disc discussions I've had with

141Jason and Rachel after sitting in on these budget committee meetings I'm just not based on all that information I'm just not inclined to reduce it any further I'm sorry could you say those last words again when you said not inclined to I didn't have the right I'm not I'm not personally inclined to reduce the budget any further than we already have thank you Miss Pria so Josh brought up what I was going to stem off of what Rick had said to clarify because we're reducing the budget when we vote by 11 something million and that's 2.5 million for the fiscal capacity that the state isn't going to give us and now the county won't give us so that's 2.5 and then the other is 9.4 million because the county is saying we don't have to

142pay that much in insurance anymore so that's a good reduction because we're not going to have the expenditure and also now we don't have to include it in the budget so that's a good thing what's the $10 million gap now the the Gap that $10 million gap represents the difference between our projected revenue and the $555 million projected expense okay um which is largely ultimately represented by that pay increase okay so so our next step I think it feels like we all agree that we want to kind of stick to our guns with this budget we've cut what we can and now do we when I mean a lot of people in the community got riled up over this when they when they heard about it and they came to us because I I feel

143like the County Commissioners are kind of saying well we're going to give them all this money and it's more than we've ever given them and all this stuff they now need to decide what to do with it like well we want to do what we said we want to do with it which is what we approved in the budget um so how do we get the community to understand what they can do to talk talk to County Commissioners or talk to I mean us through the County Commission or what have you so that we can advocate for some kind of Common Sense compromise whether it be approving that so there's still the opportunity to improve a six cent pay uh property tax increase or they could look at their fund balance or something like that

144so we can talk to our constituents and and say talk to the your representative and ask them about that that kind of thing so I I think you're right about that I've I've had a few conversations with folks and it's interesting I mentioned to you earlier that we had a conversation with our booster group and questions came up related to Capital and Athletics facilities Etc I also talked about our operations budget and our booster group is a combination of people who've lived here for decades and PE folks who are relatively new to the community and and I had some conversations even outside that meeting after after the meeting so a lot of folks who've just moved in in the last call it 5 or 10 years have come from states where the structure is very

145different it in the question it came up why won't the board fund more well Rachel addressed this earlier in this conversation in Tennessee the board addresses the expense side of the budget and the County Commission is ultimately charged with addressing the revenue side of the budget now they they get some very out from the state to meet that so that's one piece making sure folks know that the board is a decision maker on the expense side and the County Commission in our system is a decision maker on the revenue side um I I want to make sure that I don't suggest to the County Commission how they fund it um and so I would not tell me as the chief executive I would not tell uh a resident of the county you need to tell

146them to fund it by doing blank uh but what I do know is in collaboration with County government Administration we decided as a team to to look for that 6% race again five and two for them but the net 6% uh and our County budget committee has recommended a $2.5 million reduction in our proposal that I'm recommending you meet them in good faith and and find a way to give to shrink it for whatever reason they had I want to honor that uh and then that burden is on them to decide how and yes there are some Alternatives and they and they're the elected officials and they've got to decide how fair Miss Clemens thank you madam chair um I just had first of all one simple question I noticed um a line item 73

147300 on the expense what is is 1.56 million on Community Services what what do we spend a million and a half on that is our entire Communications Department okay so miss Clemens on the on the PCR I'm trying to I think it's seven 7.5 positions maybe there's also um we have someone that over that manages for us the facilities use that position's also in there as well okay that was just a I didn't know what that was um and then looking at some of the state requirements first of all I have a question about the Chromebooks um is there a requirement to get those replaced this year there's a practical need to get them replaced this the state has not placed a requirement we actually um that question came up in our discussions I think

148I think actually you were at one of the U meetings as well um the the commission meetings related to that we actually checked with our neighbors U some of the Middle Tennessee districts and Brian if you would speak to to that uh just a little bit in a moment after I speak to this the state doesn't require the Chromebooks they do require grades 3 through eight to test on computers with the appropriate Security on there we initiated that one: one um four years ago sorry five years ago five years ago thank you um we we did some Replacements last year this is phase two of a three-phase replacement cycle we have we've taken we've taken the the the ones that didn't work and replace some last year this is year two of a three-year plan

149to replace some these will be Secondary High School and Middle School uh devices um these the Chromebooks are at a 5year Point yeah generally speaking they they they're designed to last about 3 years so Brian if you could speak to some detail both about um other districts and what they're doing knowing that we must test on them and then second what we're doing with replacement thank you Mr Gold yeah uh we check with about 10 districts um and every District that we check with is one to one middle through uh high school elementary school did vary uh there was everything from 1: one there was one: one and three through five and one Chromebook to two students for K1 and two there were a couple like that there were some that were one to one

150but they kept them in the school um so ele kind of varied but everybody was uh one to one middle through high with the testing you almost have to be it'd be impossible so Brian speak a little bit about the security processes because we we we had a discussion about could somebody use their own device for the testing correct yeah we have had some uh questions about bringing your own device if kids could do that you cannot test because there's actual software that has to be on them uh and for the life of met you remember what the name of that is secure yes that has to there's something that the state requires that's on the Chromebooks that we couldn't put on somebody's personal device uh to take the test um so yeah it has

151to be a a school device so the final piece related to that uh is our our proposed cycle for The Replacements we've actually had some elementary students using some of the older ones for some of those reasons we just discussed our our for next year's budget not this coming year that we're working on now but the next year will be the replacement cycle for elementary and we are evaluating especially those youngest grades um how many we might need for replacement and we haven't made that decision yet I know Dr orer and Dr Allen are doing doing a lot of work analyzing the content and how often the students are using those thank you um so what percentage are we replacing the Chromebooks this year um High School all high school yes ma'am okay um and

152um so a lot of some of this stuff is kind of state requirement dependent you know and so I would be interested to see how much we could come back to the state and say can we get some you know I know they would have to do that across the board but yeah I know they do have a lot of funding because the voucher system didn't work so maybe there could be something there um okay thank you uh to to that point I will tell you uh you're right there's there's money sitting in that budget um I uh I don't know about the mechanism with the legislature having having um having left you know not being in session anymore for this coming year that discussion has has has been mentioned at some of these County

153Commission committee meetings uh and to your to your question earlier Mr PRI about that $25 million that was that was some of what was driving it you all have dropped us by 2.5 $5 million in funding and now you're asking us to pick that up um I'm more optimistic about a longer term issue because I don't know enough about what happens when the legislature is left and that funding is there but not actually going to be spent one more I'm sorry I have one more question um so I know that we have to have the Chromebooks for the testing but I don't think they get tested all at the same time so can we have kind of like a stockpile for the testing but I know that I've heard from other citizens that their kids

154choose to use their own computers and could we do have like a testing center with Chromebooks there just on a daily basis right yeah um we've talked about that uh and and theoretically yes there might be some reduced number what we have what we have found is that the familiarization is important um uh and Brian can you speak to that I know there there are students do sometimes use use their own devices um but UL with with not for testing not for testing yeah but at home yeah sure they can use whatever and and actually Dave can probably address some of the instructional use um on the uh on the it side of it or the operational side if you just have Chromebooks sitting there that aren't used all year that aren't getting updated and

155then all of a sudden you open them up up just for testing that that is going to be a fail uh they need to be open used updated through the year and not just sitting somewhere and then brought out for one day of testing and for the most part and Lee might can address this they do most of the kids do test at the same time I mean it's not they're not really spread out very much it's they'll do a whole subject matter and and so most of them are being used simultaneously to test if I'm I believe I'm correct yeah and Dave can address there is they use them for a lot more than just testing and Dave can speak to that briefly well I'll I'll just speak specifically to the question about um

156is it possible to have kids rotate through a lab it is possible the state sets a window of time for us to complete the TCAP test we try to minimize that window as much as we can because we would rather be instructing than testing and so if we were to rotate through Labs it would really expand the number of days that we would would be required to disrupt our instructional days that's really the biggest key we can make it work it just uh it's a real interference with with the actual instructional time okay Mr Welch thank you um so one quick thing I that we've been talking about tonight is what the County Commission has funded and it's a little bit semantics but I think it's an important distinction as well correct me wrong the

157County Commission hasn't actually taken action yet they haven't funded anything the the budget Committee of the County Commission there it was split it was 32 and even if you look at the the education Committee of it was 5- Z in favor of doing it so um as we talk about this I I I think that's an important distinction that we all need to keep in mind that we're not talking about what the County Commission has done we're talking about what what three individuals really out out of the 24 have voted for at this point and there's others that may also feel with them or against them or what have you but but that's that's kind of what we're uh the actual action that has taken forth at this part thank you for that the County

158Commission budget committee MH has by a 50 vote and actually miss King I may ask you about the ter the appropriate terminology related to this by a 50 vote has recommended and I don't know if that's an appropriate term or not for this has recommended approving that $555 million budget that's on your document they've recommended approving that by a 3-2 vote that same committee did not recommend including that six cent property tax uh increase in the proposed publication in the local newspaper of What's called the Consolidated budget did I describe that approach that's my understanding okay okay and then the other thing I just wanted to say real quick um again in addition to acknowledging the work of unor staff I think just real quickly once we should acknowledge the the leadership of our County

159mayor as well I I know you've been talking about that to to us and been vocal about it but you know I think we should say it here as well that very appreciative that we have leadership like Rogers Anderson who's a strong Advocate and realizes the important of a a great public education system here in Williamton County the need to to fund it so thank you for that one one of the one of the key content areas that we talked about when we were on the front end of this budget was competing for staff inflation uh those things that you guys have talked about and and the need to to to to have this proposal for for a for a pay increase Mr Wimberly Jason do you think we could put some money in the

160budget to get uh hand towels and the men's R were out okay so if we as a board decide to stick to our guns as it was said what happens then well thank you for the thank you for the for the reference number one our recommendation is to is to to reduce to meet the recommendation of the of the budget committee what happens then the full commission is scheduled to vote on June 20th on our budget we likely will not know till then what they decide for that actual number that they approved to fund uh and then how they've got to decide how to fund it if if knowing that there's that Gap uh if it funds and you all approve what we're recommending Rachel correct correct me if I'm wrong we're done and we've

161got our bu buget with that funded when you say what we're recommending that includes what staff is recommending the 11 million cut that is correct that ruction what's on your document on our our our our proposal um for the work session if that's approved and County Commission approves and funds it on June 20th we're done if they vote to fund less than that we will have to have another meeting uh and disc us how we address that Gap it will have to happen sometime after June 20th uh but before July 1st not necessarily before July 1st because of the way the because of the way of our payroll the way our payroll is structured uh so we'll have to find a date that works for everybody uh I will tell you that most of my

162leadership team is scheduled the next week to to be off because we know that that June 20th day is a is a big day um uh and the next week is July 4th I will tell you um we have looked at a couple of dates already but it's going to take us checking with you all on your schedule uh if we have to make an adjustment if that happens Rachel correct me if I'm wrong right now if there is no increase in funding our budget assuming you approve that 2.5 is somewhere around $5 million in the black is that a good description yes we will be work have to work on what we recommend I I expect I will recommend some kind of pay increase with what we do have uh and that would be

163what we would bring to you probably after that June 20th thank you can I just say one thing that worst case scenario would be what Mr Goan was saying that um because teachers are paid out those additional pays their F their pay would not be affected they don't actually get their first check the new year until August 31st it would be all um 12-month employees and in that case if you didn't have a budget going in July 1st you would continue with the budget you currently have so pay would stay exactly as is and then if later something came back we would retro it back at retro pay like if we came back with something additional or changed what we were going to do and by the way we would have the responsibility to talk

164to our teachers through the Pekka process the professional Educators collaborative conferencing act because we have responsibility to talk to them about pay issues so we'd have to have that window we'd have to have that meeting built into that window after June 20th okay Mr galbreth um I think I've got my question answered and it was it was really regarding the fact that that there that the County Commission hasn't yet voted like we're just talking about the budget committee so I I really don't I really think acting appropriately um and in good faith by by reducing our budget to to the agreed upon number with one of the committees as far as the 2 and A5 million and the and obviously the the the reduction that they that everybody agrees to in the in the insurance

165and then we just wait and see right I mean there's no are you getting any pressure from anybody for us to to to reduce our our budget from um to agree with what the what the budget committee said no okay I I just want to make sure all right that's I think this is um this is great but um so okay that's fine thank you Mr cash but that still leaves us short for the raises correct if the County Commission doesn't fund that Gap we will be short for the raises yes and there's no way of of knowing what they're going to do so if we vote for the lesser amount we're actually voting the the Rays out you correct that just isn't right because I don't think this board feels that way yeah so

166going back to the 555 unless strategically you you absolutely think that's the way to go I mean I I just don't I don't know well I recommend the 555 because if the commission funds it we can do the raise so we can't so we're saying we we couldn't do it if they funds the the 555 that's it if they fund the 555 then the rais will happen the 555 includes 6% ra the 555 includes it oh but the funding side of that is Le is about 10 million less we don't have enough Revenue to cover that 555 yet okay all right all right gotcha thank you can I say one thing too about fund balance when we're when fund balance is everything that rolls up at the end of the year and comes back and

167so we're using that to balance our actual budget um and we will continue the number that's here right now is not going to be the exact number that's an estimate but we have been very aggressive in trying to get the fund balance number as ex as close as we think it's going to be when the year ends but there could I think there was hope maybe by the um Commissioners that there would be additional Revenue that comes in and we reduce that Gap it could happen I mean it could I don't know where it would come from but it could um we will get another Tissa letter actually in May and that could go up or it could also go down it totally depends on our student numbers at that point in time and so

168fund balance number is going to change but to be clear we are using $60 million of fund balance um not going back but to compare with Rutherford County they're not using fund balance they don't have to use fund balance they have enough Revenue to cover their expenses the only thing they're using fund balance for for this year that they're projecting is they have a new charter school that's going to open and they're taking part of fund balance for that charter school but as far as their operations go they're not having to operate using fund balance than we are but again when you're saying what could happen in June I could come back and tell you the gap's now $8 million um or I could tell you it's $12 million depending on what that fund balance

169ends these are estimates and we'll be right up until the end okay Mr Brown thank you I know I've already spoken like four times so I apologize but a couple thoughts have come into my mind one one is um and I've already said I don't I'm not inclined to go lower than what we've already approved but but I I think it is important to think about what we've heard the County Commission say publicly in those meetings um we'd be going in their mind and I think in the budget committee meeting the other night correct me if I'm wrong it was a combination of um voting against the property tax increase as a means to cover the Gap but it was also voting for The $545 Million budget number is that actually there was Rachel speak

170to that there was no mention of changing the budget number it was 555 is what they voted on two weeks ago that was what they recommended they did not specifically say anything related to that it was we're not going to include the the revenue in order to cover it so when you see if you if anyone actually looks at a newspaper when it goes out in the newspaper what it will look like is our Revenue expenses and it will show a fund balance of $6 million is where we end we are required to have a $16 million fund balance 3% of our expenses is what we have to require so our fund balance would be short um and so no they did not say you're also going to need to lower and here's your number

171to 545 um it was at 555 I can't speak to individual commission Commissioners and what they were thinking but and you you specifically mentioned at that public meeting um what was said there was a lot of talk about concern over raising the property tax number there was also a lot of concern about the state structure expressed uh and but ultimately they're from a commission standpoint they they've got to make that decision on that final number I think the okay so part of part of what I'm getting at here is I think we need to be mindful of the fact that the we're going from 517 to 555 or 545 if you follow the budget committee's logic even though they may you're saying they may not have come and cut us on the floor but based

172on the action on the property tax increase a flat a flat tax flat rate would mean 545 million effectively effectively that's right so that's a $28 million increase right so I think what we're going to hear back from them just so we all know this what we're going to hear back from them is that 28 million is enough 20 $28 million increase is enough to cover the raise it it is enough to cover the 6% raise and and also the health insurance contribution maybe not a lot more than that but if we I think that's what we need to be prepared to hear back from them is that a $545 Million number is enough to cover the raise okay so we just just to be clear I also want to because I think that's you

173know if we're going to get into a back and forth with the commission over this I think it's just important to have all those have all that context right the other thing I would say is I'm sympathetic to where the commission is on this because I mean one of the things they did Monday night at their County Commission meeting is they passed a resolution um expressing their displeasure with the state over their funding model um I think it might have passed unanimously I'm not sure but uh so you know they're they're acknowledging the fact that this is a an unfair formula I mean Paul Webb has pointed out that 71% we're responsible this county is responsible over 71% of Education funding based on that for that the fiscal capacity number and no one else is

174even close to that so I'm sympathetic to the predicament they find themselves in as having that share that burden you know that's disproportionate um and I so I think I think it's you know we're all we all realize kind of been rocking a hard place here because they've got a tough decision to make and tough circumstances that surround that decision and yet we're we're here believing that we put together a good budget that is doing what we need to do so I think you know stating the obvious but I just think the context matters because 30 days is going to transpire between now and when they vote on this and a lot of conversations are going to happen privately and publicly between now and then thank thank you for that um uh the the vote

175at the County Commission meeting on a resolution uh related to the fiscal capacity indicator is going to be unanimous one commissioner had actually hit no but let me know that it was an error and she's already let the let let the um County Administration know that she hit the wrong button so I do expect that that will be unanimous in their minutes uh and so to your point every commissioner recognizes that there ought to be a change in that structure and and they fully support us and I very much appreciate it it is Apparent from the meetings we've had that there that there is disagreement among them about whether and how both to fund our 200 our $555 million budget and so I can't predict their vote but for my conversations and from those public

176meetings uh I think there'll be a lot of debate and if it if it comes out something less than that 555 we will have to adjust to that point why do we help me understand why we have to come back and vote on a lower number would we not just be able to then um entrust you all to make a determination of how to spend the the lower lower dollar amount we won't have a I think we'll have a issue with particular line items in the budget that won't be approv office look at our budgets and make sure that your vote that we actually have an approved we do not get to make that decision cuz you is the voting body of the board so we could we would vote on it on the new

177number but we wouldn't we would not then have to send it back to them commission correct got it okay Miss Clemens thank you and again I I hate to keep speaking too but there's so much going on um I just wanted to kind of circle back to that 545 amount 54 because I'm we're hearing two different numbers and um did did the budget committee vote this past was it Tuesday M on not only no tax increase but also the 545 million was that their vote am I correct in that the answer Rachel I think the answer understanding from the county is no yeah we double check we double checked that with County government please do yeah I because I'm hearing we had double checked we did double check now it may have been that some

178of them you know because it was a split vote okay it may have been some of them were thinking that I am not approving that 555 but in the previous meeting they had uh so so to Mr Brown's point something may be different June 20th and some of them may have intended to say I I I I want to only approve something around 545 but but they had previously approved the 555 um so so strictly speaking on the vote they were at the 555 some of them may not have intended that I don't know yeah from what I'm understanding it was the amendment was to vote to change to 545 but they can intend up to 555 so I just um yeah we'll we'll do a triple check with with County government on that um

179just just to make again e extra sure thank you okay does everybody need a break we've been at it for two and a half hours yeah one quick comment to M farmer and Mr Golden the The credibility and effort and authoritative responses to all of our questions are so helpful in conversations with the County Commission I'm sure so that is really important and uh didn't want to let this go without acknowledging all the effort and the team that has provided those thank you thank you okay let's take a five minute break okay everybody to the bathroom do what you need to do e for e for e for e for e for e for e e we're going to go ahead and get back started okay let's resume Rachel yes ma'am here we go take

180the floor so um the other two budgeted items we're just going to go over briefly with Central cafeteria and extended school programs it's a result of the decrease in Insurance costs so originally you voted for 19.6 million and I'm sorry 19.9 million there's a $273,000 reduction in cafeteria so it' be 19.6 and then the same thing for extended school um a reduction of 89 ,000 so you're going from 7, 99,000 to 7,10 th000 those are those two funds and we've already talked about that last transfer um for the 2.5 which would be our way of covering the reduction in the budget so if we're good with the budget items we are going to move on to our Appropriations um the first one that we have to go over is related to the summer learning camps

181third year for these again it's funding that the state gives us and then um we will do our summer program our summer school um the first one is for $4,475 good no questions on that the second one is related to busing the buses um also for the summer learning camps and that Transportation Grant was $798 171 okay next is a donation from Gibson guitar this is the second year that they've given us a donation for orchestra instruments um and that amount is 48825 okay and Madam chair I just want to briefly just thank Gibbs and guar they they've been great to us uh they do a they do a program annually and uh it just seems to get better every year it's nice thank you we also the remainder of these are going to be

182our year in um kind of cleanup items where either we're we are taking money from fund balance or from additional moving between accounts here's a reminder um we will bring you one more transfer next month that is just truly transfers within same categories if it is a transfer between categories or from a person a payroll account to a non-payroll account we would bring those to you now um and anything when we've talked about fund balance some of these items are going to be pulled from fund balance and that has already been taken into account when we projected out what our fund balance number would be so the first one of these is a um reallocation where we had some school psychologist um positions that were not filled but needed to provide the services so we're

183moving the funds from the Personnel line over into other contracted Services that's 275,000 no question there um the next is related to Legal Services um again it's one that we estimate but don't ever know how many um actual cases we will have in a year and so we need to take 300,000 from fund balance to um get the appropriate funding in that line no questions on that one and we will move on to um our trustees commission trustee um commission is based off of property taxes sales tax and then a flat amount um each year again we estimate but then until we get actual collections we don't know what it'll be and so we need to move um 800,000 we get additional money in property tax Collections and so we're taking it from that line

184the additional Revenue we get as opposed to pulling from fund balance $800,000 next up is annual item again it's our Esco payment which was our energy conservation um program that we've been running and so our payment for this year is one ,1 141,142 also coming from fund balance next is um additional operation expenses operational expenses um we did have increased in different Insurance categories including liability um workers comp and building and content so that's $800,000 request also coming from fund balance Rachel real quick on that sure that increase in insurance is is that is that how do we know that that was going to happen we're just now just or is that a reflection of what next year's insurance is going to be no this would be for this year and it's just a result

185of the claims that have actually come through and those that they're projecting to have to pay out um before the end of the year so it doesn't it doesn't change it doesn't change what we increased our insurance line for this year knowing we did yes that we were going to have addition one so we we've gone ahead and increased for next year but this would be to cover this year's exp but as we look at the as we look at the increase that $40 million increas as we look at that really this year is more than what we yes so it it it's kind of it's It's kind of reducing that Gap if you will so we've already we've already increased our insurance cost we just haven't reflected it yet in our actual number that's

186right that's right the next um is a $200,000 request for janitorial services um it's in janitorial there's a few things that come out of there including some of the parking lot um when we ice trying to get ready to prepare for winter weather when we have those situations and so this line um needed a little bit of extra money so that's 200,000 for that one and then finally under this particular the last one is under um extended school care again when we're putting out budgets we estimate based on average cost and so when actual people get hired then we know what the salaries will be based off of their years of experience so we are going to need to move some money out of fund balance for them as well in order to cover their

187payroll items $263,200 I'm going to go through the color coding first just so you can see um why we have different colors you'll recall a couple months ago we started the process of updating the library materials uh policy those changes are in blue then with the amendment that um has passed our state legislature and then has been signed by Governor Lee goes into effect July 1 we have updated um this policy with the changes regarding that amendment that is what you are going to see in red and this policy was discussed for the first time the updated policy um at the policy committee meeting we took the uh suggestions and recommendations from the policy committee and those changes are in green um so our goal is to use all the colors in the Crayola box

188before we're done um Courtney King with Burger Mosley and Carson is here to answer questions but I will um I do want to point out a couple of things we are still using uh just like we discussed the first time that we talked about the library materials we are still going to be using the library materials decision tree um there has been one update on that sop to reflect um and specifically list the age appropriate materials act as one of the things that we would be um using Librarians classroom teachers or the board to make um decisions about removing a book um you're going going to see on the first two pages the definitions in red that we discussed uh couple months ago these are directly from the new Amendment to the age appropriateness materials

189act which is um part of the part of the decision tree that we would go through to determine whether or not a book should be removed then going down to the bottom of page two and the changes on page on page three deals with complaints the amendment also calls it feedback so we have that change in green and it does change the procedure um from what we have done in the past so when we have received feedback um we the principal is going to get that feedback um and then provide that to the superintendent of schools and um who's going to inform the board chair instead of a committee Review Committee like we have had in the past the school librarian will be removing will be reviewing the materials in question and in order to

190make a recommendation to the board the um other change and this is um it's going to be and see I'm sorry it's going to be page three line 22 beginning with number four we talked about the timing in the amendment there is now a 60-day requirement for the board to vote um and it's when they receive when the Board of Education receives the feedback So based upon some of the conversation that we had at the policy meeting you're going to see a difference in when that 60 days begins so the Board of Education receives the feedback at their next regularly scheduled meeting following the submission of the request for reconsideration form the board then has that 60 days that's and those are calendar days not working days after they receive the the form um then

191you go through your process like we have done in the past with the addition of using the library materials decision tree um you are charged board members the board of education is charged with receiving the feedback and making a decision within 60 days but you're going to notice on the bottom of page three lines 45 and 46 that if the board does not make that determination Within 60 days then there is an a there is an appeal process um and that appeal would go to the state textbook and instructional materials quality commission um the other pieces I want to point out on the bottom of page four is we do list uh beginning on in lines 25 how to appeal any determination made by the board and based upon feedback we received during the policy

192meeting we've added lines 30 through 33 decision of the board or um of the state textbook commission regarding a book that is challenged um at a within WCS that decision is going to be binding for a minimum of two years this mirrors the language that we already have in our um curriculum instructional materials policy that um once that final determination is made and just so we're all clear any book that's removed from a library a school library by the board or the state texbook commission um would also be removed from all other district schools so if it's removed from Franklin High and it is in three other high schools as well as two middle schools it would be removed from all of those um if that is the decision of this board or the state

193textbook commission I do want to point out those are those are kind of the highlight of some of the changes I do want to point out one other thing Mr MCN if we can go back to page two um about line 31 and 32 it's in blue yes so I've gotten some feedback from um one of our Librarians as and Mr Wimberly um and we're going to make this section in blue more clear um we're going to take it through the policy committee but in essence we want to make it very clear that the Librarians are the ones who are tasked with reviewing 15% of the books in their library and that our classroom teachers if they have a classroom Library they also are tasked with reviewing 15% of the books in their own classroom

194Library so um you will see those changes um we'll have those I'll have those ready for the policy Committee in June just to make that that piece Crystal Clear what what the expectations are Mr Brown thanks this is all pretty clear to me having sat through the policy discussion but a couple things Dana go back to page three um please line 22 and following um I understand the process but it that that last those last four words um before you get into the subp points at the regularly scheduled meeting is that referring back to the regularly scheduled meeting where we receive the Fe feedback or is that referring to another meeting it's referring to the meeting where you receive the feedback that's when your 60-day clock starts okay so the board shall take the following

195steps within 60 days after receiving the request for reconsideration form at the regularly scheduled meeting is that redundant I mean we we are it's already been established that we're going to receive it at that part at that previous meeting so do we need to say that again at within 60 days after receiving the request for consideration form then the following happens I I it's it's not a big deal I just it just seems cumbersome to me to say it again that way right would it would it suffice so I I agree that it does seem kind of redundant um what are your thoughts on after receiving the request for reconsideration form pursuant to this policy yeah that's fine just to make it clear that we're not talking about just receiving it generally we're talking about

196under the terms of this that's good okay and then if you go down to I think it's the end of page five believe I'm sorry page four there right there right there it's a little thing again but it you you referred to the state textbook commission as the state textbook and instructional materials quality Commission is that the official name of it it is should we call it that in all these different parts where we say State textbook commission should we actually say the full name of the commission just for to be to be technically correct and I think the only place that is not is in the green but we'll double check that it says it above that too in the red okay again not I don't want to nitpick about it but I just

197don't want I didn't know if it would be if there's two different commissions now or if it's one the same yeah they're one in the same they were called the state textbook commission for quite some time and then they changed their name a couple of years ago okay all right that's it for me thanks Mr Cash thank you madam chair I've got a I've got a question if you go back to page [Music] one um lines uh three and four in the original we had um the discretion of local school boards to remove books from the shelves of school libraries must be exercised in a manner consistent with the First Amendment principles and what I believe cuz I I suggested that we've got the First Amendment down there already in the principles that and state

198law in instead we've got a free expression of intellectual Freedom so the conversation um that occurred during the policy meeting was to remove that first with some of the redundancy with the first sentence and the second sentence now we do talk about state law and federal law in the next well in the section that starts with line seven um and then we definitely talk very specifically about state law beginning in number 16 line 16 um all of that is from the age appropriateness materials act um we have had had some board members Express concern that there's not as much mentioned about the First Amendment um and the principles of the First Amendment and I think we've we even had some discussion at the policy meeting about where um intellectual freedom and free expression where that

199came from um so that is some of the additional feedback I have received but we wanted we we do want to make it clear because it's also in the decision tree and we talked about this at policy is we are threading a needle between federal law and state law um in making sure that we follow both um which is why you see so much detail regarding state law and what those specific definitions are um that have been articulated by our legislators in order to um determine whether or not Library material is age appropriate okay so on on state law it's or states in uh one of our emails that state law is constitutional unless otherwise challenged correct that's correct and we talked about that at policy yes right uhhuh so what I'm saying is I

200mean I guess it's not a big deal but when we talked about it at the at the meeting it was to put state law in there so that people know we're we're trying to work with state law as much as possible and I guess when we get challenged we're going to you know have to change something or whatever the court says right and so and I understand what you're saying Mr Cash and let me kind of just point out where where there is a difference in this policy compared to our earlier ones so previously when we um when you look at lines one through 4 you're going you that you see what's written up there is is First Amendment we're not talking about state law in lines 1 through 4 and we've got the first

201footnote and that first footnote is federal law and it is the um Island Trees case but then we do begin in seven beginning in line seven talking about our state law and that particular footnote which is number two is just that TCA code which is the age appropriateness materials act so just to be really clear we do obviously have to follow both to your point um and so we are we have added a lot of detail regarding the amendments to the state law um and Dana if I could if I could tack on sure to that um Mr Cash I know that we in policy we did address we did specifically add the specific state law the age appropriate materials act to that question eight of the decision tree um which is what we were

202a lot of the discussion in the the policy committee surrounded um so that is that is certainly in there and you are correct that we are um required to presume that you know state law is is Constitution until said otherwise um and so that's why we've got this the specific definitions in the current state law reflected in this policy that being said we do what we're trying to do here with that first paragraph is emphasized that you know the first amendment is still applicable um and so that the the case law concerning the First Amendment um and the discretion and and how that needs to be applied is also a concern to be applied here does that make sense all yeah sure um do we have the the new uh cuz we did some changes

203on the tree itself do we have those we we do um maybe a separate attachment Tim is it at the end he's got it oh oh yeah that's it yes that's it so in that one Mr Cash we changed I know it's hard to see on the on the screen but it is question eight um and so is the material age appropriate for age and maturity levels of the students that may access the materials that's the question factors for consideration may include official rating system age age recommendations from retailers and publishers applicable legal Authority and then this is what we have added including the Tennessee age appropriate materials act and how the material Compares with material consumed by students outside of school previously we just had applicable legal Authority but based on our discussion um

204during the policy meeting we wanted to add that to be uh super specific that that is the law that we're referring to right and we also took out uh all challenged we did you correct we took out challenged throughout the document just checking that out Mr Hall thank you madam chair uh my question I think may have been addressed in some of this discussion already but the definitions and the content that's in red on page two does that have to be stated as it is our recommendation is that it is um in the policy and this is the language in the statute yeah in the decision tree we're able to summarize this a little bit and that is sufficient I just I I the irony of creating content like this that is not age appropriate

205for everybody that attends Williamson County Schools is not lost on me well and here and and I hear what you are saying um here's the reality though for board members as well as Librarians and classroom teachers these are the definitions when reviewing Library materials they are going to have to be used and so it makes sense that everyone knows here's our standards here's what we're using um if I am a librarian I don't have to pull out Tennessee code annotated right to look for the statute I've got them in board policy and I'm being charged in board policy to follow and and when I'm training Librarians I'm training them on this board policy as well as the library decision tree and and if I can add to that so part of the reason that it

206is in the policy um is because these definitions you know before there was some some discretion here these definitions as as the general assembly has has created them um that that they remove a lot of that discretion and so it's necessary to make it clear um that you know the general assembly has said that these are the specific things that are not age appropriate ever um and so and there are certain aspects there are certain things um certain definitions that do allow for some some bit of discretion um but things like nudity um or sexual excitement um seom masochistic abuse those definitions are are clear that if they appear in part or in whole in a material at all they're out entirely sure so it just highlights you know that that y'all do have discretion

207still in in certain aspects but there are certain things that the state has now said you can't have them in books at all books Madam chair do you mind if I add a this I'm going to follow that up with a question uh referencing the conversation Mr Wimberly and I had about this that the discussion we had was would there be any value in when the time comes for the board to have to evaluate this having some training that's very specific on the First Amendment uh and I and I thought about that conversation in the context of this because the first amendment is referenced as first amendment principles but then the state law has the specific language in there and I don't know if this is a statement or a question I don't know how

208it's going to come out but is is are you all in essence including the detail here because it's it's clear whereas the first amendment is a series of case law that you have to work through on a on a principle basis as opposed to just clear language right in in part yes and I will say um it is clear as of right now um I do anticipate that there will likely be some legal challenge to this state law um that being said as Mr Cash pointed out earlier you know we're we're required to presume that it's constitutional until until it's declared otherwise um but it is very important still you know what the state has essentially done with this law has It's Made made it a lot more difficult um to thread this needle um

209and to abide by those first amendment principles I do think training on First Amendment principles generally um would be helpful because overwhelmingly if there is any discretion provided not withstanding the the terms of the state law that discretion needs to be exercised in accordance with that those first amendment principles including um you know essentially not removing materials based upon a political Viewpoint or disagreement um with the content in that manner and to your point Mr goldm that is why the you don't see as much of the specifics regarding questions one through let's see I believe question six at the bottom of the library materials decision tree those are the First Amendment principles and they are more subjective the questions are more subjective um when you start um looking at the top of that tree that

210is um a lot of the state law that is quoted and there is is much more detail um in that law than in the principles of the First Amendment so another question I would have is you know what could that content or that you know those definitions be in training materials but essentially those are not for the Librarians those are for the board members right they need the board members need to apply those principles to the challenged materials well and or those definitions I should right they would apply to board member review um but they would also apply um in in review by The Librarians in that 15% review um so they would also be using those definitions or our classroom teachers as well if they have so so it's anyone through this policy that

211reviews the books CU I I I could see putting specific language examples like that in training materials and would not necessarily have to put that explicit language in policy and then putting it on our website and you know all that um because that's what we do with some things like we have procedures and we have policies and the policies can be more broad the procedures are more specific and could do the you know the the effect of recreating or uh restating state law but if this is for the board to apply why then I guess it is appropriate to put it in policy which is unfortunate okay Mr Welch thank you um I'm still trying to understand how we got to this point um and I know it's the law that's driving it but how

212did this do we have any background on how this passed or or came to be because normally something this big and impactful we we having conversations leading up to it and at least for me the the first notice I got on on this was you know Miss Carson emailing us that hey this is passed and these are the the implications of it so does anyone have a grasp on how we got to this point with with this legislation it it it just feels it was it was very snuck through Courtney do you want to take this or do you want me to yeah I can so um it was it does feel that way um so it's my understanding that the legislation was first filed early in 2023 um at that time they did propose

213an amendment um which you know made the bill and it passed the house quickly in 2023 with this language correct yes I did look back and it it it was with this specific language okay it was then sent to the Senate education committee where it kind of lingered for a while um and then all of a sudden it um I think I think the language that Lisa used in our meeting was aose like a phoenix From the Ashes in um early 2024 um interestingly I don't and I don't know how or why um the Senate did adopt an amendment which rewrote the bill but it rewrote the bill in the same way as the house Amendment the first house Amendment as it was passed in the house was reflected so I don't know why I

214haven't been able I didn't notice any appreciable difference in the language or anything um but they amended they the Senate amended it um and it eventually passed in the Senate um and then was referred back to the house where it was passed on the message calendar so there was no debate in the house in 2024 as to the content of the statute the the message calendar I'm sorry for the dumb question what the message calendar is the message calendar and and the way that it's it's defined um by the general assembly um the message calendar is a calendar that's used for bills that have passed both Chambers but remain unsettled because there's been no uniform agreement on the final language um so I'm not quite sure I I don't know if it's because the language

215when it passed the house was essentially the same as the language when it passed the Senate once they adopted the what appears to be an unnecessary Amendment um but it was it was passed in that kind of quick stealthy way through the message calendar in the house so kind of more like a consent agenda would f it okay yes because I asked because I talk a member of our delegation about and said how' this happen and and even they were surprised what's the bill number and it was oh I guess I voted for this I didn't realize and so neither here nor there but I think it's unfortunate um that not a lot of transparency on this um let me ask sort of a larger philosophical the this policy the library policy that we're looking

216at I'm Jason I'm going to direct this towards you Library materials policy what is the point of this policy and I and I'm what I'm asking I don't mean what is the point of these changes that we're making to it from from the the policy itself why do we why do we have a library materials policy what we're trying to Define here well there's proba to answer your question is probably a historical answer because it's changed over the years based on the change in the in the legislation give me a very high level the high level purpose of the library materials policy is to establish the basic standards for content in the library okay so thank you and and that's where I was with it as well so and and this first part this is

217more of a philosophical disagreement and you know a little more semantic heavy but I think with with the Board of Education words matter what what we say here what we pass on our policy it it it matters i' I've been watching that Franklin series on Apple TV and I was struck last night one of the series when he talks about what are you holding your hand with the printer press and it's letters and well you're holding words and power it matters so I I want to and I say that because I I I read can we go back up to the top of this policy here and I want to compare it to our our previous policy which the Board of Education supports principles of intellectual Freedom inherent in the First Amendment of the Constitution

218of the United States the Board of Education though it is ultimately responsible for all instructional material purchase recognizes the students right of free access to many different types of materials the board also recognizes the right of teachers and administrators to select instruction materials to make those materials available in school it is therefore the policy of the board to require instructional material selected foreign youths and schools to be in accord with the following and then it goes through a long thing I I won't go through all of them but you know in detail but you know chosen for values of Interest Enlightenment of all students in the community uh every effort will to provide materials to prevent many points of view censorship of instruction materials will be discouraged um you know it's ET Etc I I

219now go over to our new policy and it starts off with discretion to remove books from the shelves of school libraries that that's how we're we're opening this and and so that doesn't jive with kind of what you've told me about what the the point of this policy is and I understand a lot of that additional support is in here if if you read on but it just sort of really sticks in my craw that this is a policy about Library materials and as the board of of Education that is setting the policy we're going to start this off with here's how we remove books from the shelves of school libraries and and I I I can't I won't vote for anything that that has it that way so I I guess what I would

220ask is is um if we could send this back to committee I know this is just first reading but if we could send it back we could Wordsmith that a little bit more because I I just don't think we should be starting our library materials policy off with here's how we're going to censor thoughts and books from our libraries um shifting a little bit I want a little some more specifics about it um Courtney you're the Constitutional person in in and I'm putting this in suly very poorly but you you have constitutional expertise within Burger Mosley I do okay um I I understand what the state law says that we have to assume you know it is we're writing our policy but but I'm going to ask you in reality because you know the state

221might say well the sky is orange passing a a state law that says the sky is orange it doesn't mean that the sky is Orange it's still blue so in your opinion are these changes that are made are they in line with what the Supreme Court has passed the Miller test is will it will it meet with the First Amendment um I think you know what I'm trying to say here will will it is it constitutional that's that's what I'm asking and of course so of course I don't have a crystal ball I will say though um asking your opinion on it I do fully anticipate um like hopefully in another County um that these definitions under the state law will be challenged um for violation of those first amendment principles um sure that being

222said um as you indicated you know as a board you're under an obligation to presume that that law is constitutional until a court says otherwise um so that's kind of that's kind of where we're stuck and it is a very unfortunate position for us to be stuck in understand I understand and I'm sorry I'm going to cut you off on it though and I get all of that I understand it is I'm I'm going to ask you in reality though and and your opinion of it and you can couch this in in lawyer legalities a little bit more if you want not can be yes no but do you think this is constitutional the state law yes um I'm going to Echo what Bobby said a couple weeks ago and I'm going to say constitutionally

223suspect constitutionally okay I will take that so we're we're looking at somebody getting sued over this that's that's the reality of the situation I'm I'm going to sort of and there could very well be a facial challenge um to the statute um you know as opposed to a suit against a of educ talk to me about what a facial challenge is so the facial challenge would be to the language of the statute itself as opposed to an as applied constitutional challenge which would be you know as applied through the action pursuant to the state law if that makes sense okay could could the Williams County board of education do that that is a complicated question all right well let's take that offline then um let me uh get to to um some specifics with within

224the the policy then real quick um the decision tree that we're going off of is there a reason that's not in the policy it's referenced in the policy however it is a standard operating procedure that could be changed more quickly if needed than going through six meetings to update a policy so yes it there is a reason behind referencing it in the policy but leaving it as anop I ask because for me and if we could scroll down to the language please the um language in the bill that we've included in there the red part yes thank you uh maybe in legal ease it means something different but in just plain English I'm seeing two different things here you know state provides materials containing any of the following any materials contain any of the following

225must not be main you know must not be maintained in a school Library collection and then we start going through what they are and any of the following of any of these in any book not you know I think the decision tree is very well done and it uses some common sense and looks talks about putting stuff in context this is not it and and so I I appreciated the memo from Lisa explaining why and everything else but I'm still struggling because just in in plain English this says two different things and so that's kind of why I feel like we need that process in there to sort of say here's the decision here's the process that we go through and maybe it doesn't even have to be that chart or or what have you

226but have it flushed out a little bit more of this is the process as as part of the the policy that we need in there I think that's missing because what says in the policy it's just it's sorry it's not what it says in decision tree I'm also struck by casy's observation he's right that based upon uh these requirements if you read it in very strict interpretation um our policy itself cannot be in the uh probably can't be in a school library just because of the some of the language it's using um let me move on on that something else um 60 days in its entire entirety that we have that once we get the CL we have to read it correct is this practical because I look at the number of challenges that we

227can get I I look at uh Casey how many books did you read last [Music] time 37 some were short somewh short sure somewh some were Shor and a little bit easier but with the expansion of this look at some of these things everything from The Kite Runner to who knows what other challenge materials um I'm pretty fast reader but you know we get 20 all at once it's can't do it is that a right that's a legal requirement 60 days we must do it or it well so the statute states that um the board shall um make a determination within 60 days of um after receiving feedback and for us in our policy that feedback is the request for reconsideration form the receipt of the the receipt of that correct okay the same law

228also States if the board does not make a determination within 60 days from the date in which the request for reconsideration form was received then there is the opportunity to appeal we had a very specific conversation during the policy meeting about shall and May and is that really what is in the law and yes it it really is because of that it does give us some not as much pause as if it were just 60 days so I believe where we left it and Courtney you may want to add on but I do believe where Lisa left it when we talked about this during policy is if we were to get a challenge of a lot of books you would receive specific guidance on how to work through that compared to one book of of

229K rer I'm just sort of saying the the reality of it though is it's depending I so when I went to the the hearing in 22 I want to say it was there was a group grp they're saying we've got a list of 100 books we're ready to challenge right now well we get 100 books we can't read those in 60 days you can't even listen to an audio tape of them in 60 days it's it's not enough hours in the day to get that done and last thing um The Librarian reviewing 15% per year what does that mean they they review are they are they actually reading them or it specifically says review in in in our policy they the um Rec the requirement is that they use the library decision Library materials decision

230tree uh just like the board would do right when reviewing the books um we are working on and when I say we central office with the librarian leads as well as input from Librarians on internally what that will look like so that um there is a per there is a review of that amount um and each librarian will be using their professional judgment in making that review so and it's 15% of materials correct not just I said books but it's materials and microfish whatever else okay um Jason how many materials are in a high school library it would be in the multiple thousands and it's going to vary typically the high school has more um Dr web um it's 15 20 15 yeah yeah probably in the 15,000 range in talking with Librarians um recently

231depending upon the library um it could it's going to be between 6 to 10 years um to complete quote unquote a review yeah so so Mr Welch the reality is the chances of a particular librarian having read every single book especially in any materials in any particular Library the full amount is really low and so so it's it's review and so it may it may include reading uh what we do know is that that Librarians interact with you know users of the library regularly they may have some insight that that that will that will cause them to look at a particular piece of material you know more you know quick quicker than that no Jason I get that I get that I'm just I'm just saying it you were saying 10 to 20,000 I know

232it's estimate it's a guess what 15% of 10,000 1500 it's 3,000 at 20,000 talking about reviewing that in a year what what sort of review is that and here's the the policy that we're putting in place I I just we're it feels a bit like an impossible task that we're assigning them um especially if the what we're going to P them to is well did you read it we told you to review it how much did you go through it um did did you go all through 3,000 magazines this year um you know based upon a state law that was sort of rushed through that is constitutionally what was it uh constitutionally suspect that at some point someone's going to get sued and we hope it's not us this time uh um all right thank

233you okay Mr wimbley couple of comments and a question uh first of all on the reviews I know at least in the elementary level there are no books in the library that Librarians haven't reviewed right they don't get there that's right and Librarians certainly choose not to put a lot of books in the library the other thing on the training that I mentioned I'm not so sure that it would be practical to conduct any type of training of the school board once an appeal or a challenge has been made because you've only got 60 days and I think chances are real good that the challenges will come in batches where one person will challenge several books uh uh as we've seen in the past um and also I think that it's not only the First

234Amendment but it's also some training on age appropriateness I mean our Librarians are tasked with determining age appropriateness constantly even age appropriateness between first grade second grade and fifth grade and they act accordingly so I don't know that they could train that anybody could train Schoolboard members on how to do that in a short amount of time but it does make sense to me that there should be some type of training or orientation on a regular basis not when the appeals are filed and I would suggest that we we may want to put that in in policy and then my question is I and you mentioned men it and perhaps I just didn't get it I don't understand the significance of challenge versus feedback what is feedback feedback is what is in the language in

235the new Amendment to the state law so the I believe the suggestion at the policy committee meeting was since they call it feedback why don't we just add that so there's no confusion that when we say complaint which has been our language as long as there's been a policy we put slash feedback yeah I don't I don't know that that I don't know that that'll work I mean feedback could be somebody just saying you know I don't like to cover this book or something I mean it just seems like feedback is that there's a lot a lot of things that are feedback that are not challenges so I don't know how we Rectify that but it just seems like uh it lacks in Clarity and I hadn't really thought about this until Eric mentioned a

236little while ago it does seem a little a little non Williamson County Schools to not have at least a positive comment in the policy about Library materials so I'd ask the policy committee to take another look look at that I've got that in my notes from Eric's comments was a good idea thank you it was overlooked Mr gin I say I think that's a good idea too it was overlooked it was over well we Chang it oh yeah you know you talked about as a red team blue team of the policy yeah that's there were there were two references to First Amendment and we we removed one so fresh look at it I mean yeah Mr galber did you have a comment blue Tre team huh I think you just nope okay um Mr Brown

237thank you U I think one one thing to keep in mind here and correct me if I'm wrong Courtney and Dana but do we not have to have this policy in place but before July 1 because of the statute taking effect by then good question yeah so the the law does go into to effect on July 1 and the law does require um that the school board or the school system have a policy um that specifically outlines the procedure for challenging so yes okay so I just want to point out that the more the more changes we go back and try to make and and the longer that potentially delays approval of a policy puts us in potential conflict with that so I just want to flag that um the second thing is to the

238point that Eric was making and then Rick just made about the first part of that um I was one of the ones frankly in the meeting in the policy committee meeting who suggested tightening that up and removing some of those what I called I think I use the word editorial language um frankly because I'm not opposed to saying positive things about library books but the policy really is only there to help us execute what the state law requires us to do um it's not for us to opine on what we think about library books the policy has a per serves a purpose which is to say the law requires you to do something here's how you're going here's how we're going to do it so to me the sentence that's there at the beginning is

239is you know enough to reflect a position of we're going to be conscious of following constitutional principles and then let's move into the actual here's what we have to do tax ially versus just a bunch of editorial comments so I think that's one that's one of the reasons why I think that happened in that meeting and I certainly had spoke up in favor of that my so the last thing I'll mention is can we pull up the decision tree please thank you so one thing that struck me as I was looking at this earlier that I missed frankly in the policy meeting is question one so this is really a question I guess again to Courtney and Dana is it conceivable that if the answer to question one is yes that that rout you to

240an automatic no on the inclusion of the book because we got we were talking a minute ago about what the what the new law requires in terms of if it if a book has certain things it's automatically out is it possible that the answer that if it has some of those things does it contain mature content mature content is defined as these things among others is it possible that if you say yes to that that you're you don't even need go through the tree anymore or do you think it's vague enough to still send you through the tree and I would say Dana I don't know if you have thoughts on this I do um I would say um that the answer to that question is no and that is because um as we discussed

241a little bit earlier some of the definitions in the age appropriate materials act does still allow for some discretion um with respect to certain material definitions that they provide in the law so for example um I think sexual content in fact is one of them um excess violence is one of them correct um so sexual conduct um is is described as patently offensive representations um a and so patently offensive is it's defined in the obscenity law um and in the state law by implication as meaning that which goes substantially Beyond customary limits of cander um and so there is some some discretion there as well so just purely because it has sexual conduct or sexual content in it doesn't automatically remove it pursuant to the state law so to ask it maybe a slightly different

242way is it is there any value I don't want to blow this thing up at all because I think it's really well done and but is there any value in question one of itemizing the things that are in the categories that are in the law so to say if you if it has one of those things that is more specific and more um conclusive in terms of inclusion or not that if the answer to one of those things is yes then it it does route you I mean I don't I don't know I don't I just wonder if it's a particular book that has something that's called out specifically in the statute that automat atically removes it does it even need do we in that case do we even need to go through the tree

243if if the answer is already no yes um and I'm going to answer it two different ways we still need to go through and I think training will help um with this but we still need to go through the analysis under the First Amendment regardless of the analysis under state law both of them are very important when we are looking at removing a book from a public library so that's the purpose of where we start with does does it even have this content in there if it is an elementary book that doesn't have any mature content we may be skipping through this tree very quickly as opposed to a a book that might be in a secondary library that may have excessive violence and sexual content we may have to look at a book may

244have multiple and the example that comes to mine is a book that talks about rape rape may be depicted with excessive violence that we need to look at that analysis but first we've got to determine is there even mature content in that book so yes I do think and I I do hear what you're saying that if it's in there why don't we just go to the top of the tree um we still need to give the analysis under the First Amendment um it's I I appreciate yeah I appreciate that and I and I see I mean I I don't disagree with what you're saying at all I do think though if the question is does the material contain nudity then there's no per per what you had said before in per the statute there's

245no discussion of that Mr Brown I've had that same thought and uh um and i' I've talked a little bit to Miss Carson about us I don't want to speak for but I'm going to speak to my grasp of the best way I can articulate an answer to that question I had that same thought if it's nudity boom you're done by by following and analyzing both it's likely our best chance to pass muster if it gets challenged because we've analyzed both that's that's that for what it's worth that's that's how I've come to the conclusion on it no that's fair and I don't I don't certainly don't want to over complicate what's already complicated but that that is It just strikes me that we may be going through an exercise of of answering a bunch

246of questions that we already know the answer to yeah Miss Clemens thank you madam chair I had a couple of questions um so when we talk about the 15% that will be reviewed um are we talking uh will that be a transparent will the community know what 15% or is this just going to be a private behind the door kind of thing um how how is that going to be executed so the specifics of that we are working through um with Librarians I can give you more detail as we work through that that um but each I will say this each librarian will have a plan about how they're going to go through their um their particular library and it and it's I'm not trying to be um evasive but some of our Librarians are

247just now learning that this is being added to their plate so because it is now being added to an already full plate um so we're we're working through that so that yes we will be able to say this book has or has not been reviewed but I can't tell you right now what that's going to look like um we are also working just so you're aware with instructional technology because we're also trying to see what technology we already have that can be utilized but I don't have all all those answers yet well that kind of leads me to my next question and that kind of is a nice duil because it is a lot for our Librarians to be tasked with this and and this is um I know other districts have one person in

248a central office kind of over all this and they're kind of the responsibility person um because what's going to happen if um two different two different Librarians view a book differently and one says it doesn't pass and the other one says it does pass we probably I I would like to see because I think we're going to have 51 different links and I think it would make sense on on um just the organizational end and on the accountability end to have one person kind of as the point person to kind of negotiate that um that's just my two cents um and um I I did listen to some of the policy meeting and one quote I wrote down that I believe it was Miss Carson but it's audio so I don't have the I don't

249know who it was but one person said the only thing that is mandatory is what's listed in the statute in statute um to this new law so that's the only thing that is mandatory am I correct on that cuz I think that was what was conveyed in meeting well it's certainly I mean it's certainly still mandatory that um we abide by the Constitution um that being said in terms of the definitions um that are provided by the state law yes there are certain definitions of materials uh of things in materials whether in part or in whole that the state has affirmatively said you don't have any discretion to decide whether or not those can be in they're just out um and so those things are the nudity the satal masochistic abuse uh and the sexualite

250excitement as those terms are defined in the policy and in the state law okay and and with that in mind I know from and I can't I'm sorry y this makes me do y'all remember the books like choose your own ending when I see this this is not I know everybody's a fan of it but I'm like oh that makes me look I think of those books um pick your own ending and um you know yeah um so but I think from what I've understood we've front-loaded this with the First Amendment and then backloaded it with the with the state correct so the fir yeah the first portion of the tree is geared towards the First Amendment analysis oftentimes because that First Amendment analysis will inform whether something violates the state law particularly with respect

251to those definitions that do allow for some discretion well with that in mind I'm wondering if we should put the state law at the front because that's where our our number one commitment I mean not commitment but that's our we have to follow that first and we have to assume that it is constitutional until proven otherwise I I think I'll differ with that statement that we have to follow it first I um go ahead go ahead Dana no I yes we've got to follow both federal and state law um um Courtney if you want to add on yeah I mean I do still think that that undergoing that analysis under the Federal Constitution in the first amendment is still very important even if it eventually will come out um I do think that that is

252that is still a Paramount consideration to be had with respect to any decision to remove a library book book um I just I think that it's it still is a very important factor and I think it should stay at the front um that's just that's just my personal op it just was throwing that out there um it might not be the will of the board but that's just my thought um and then my final thing this is a little thing but it's question so at the very bottom of the page where it says the material may be removed from Williams County School's library why does the other one say must be removed why does that when the helping verb is May instead of must or are you talking out about the um just Cruise along

253the bottom of the number like number six that it goes to no and then it goes to the material may be removed you're saying it conflicts with the policy mhm right can you a little bit I so that should because question eight is the state law and says it must be but anything before that is kind of up to the professional Judgment of the Librarians who are revie it based on the First Amendment St and they may review it and it so I don't I don't know about that either they're not making the they're they're not making the the statement or the decision to moove remove a book solely on well they might they may if they're doing their 15% review and they get to the first six seven questions and it says no and

254they get to that then they can make the professional decision to remove it at that point but if they decide to keep it and go on to the state law question question 8 and then it violates something in the state law then they must remove it correct thank you Mr PR I know thank you but it's also coming flowing out of question eight and six it's not just flowing out of six and when it flows out of eight if it goes no the material is not age appropriate for any student who may access the materials it goes all the way down to the material may be removed versus must I think that's what you're getting at yeah and I I I guess on my end and this is just this is going to be probably

255more conservative than a lot of people feel but once someone once a child is exposed to something you cannot un expose them and so I think we need to be careful if we are leaning towards it may it might should be removed then maybe we should you know especially depending on the age but I I I think if we're I don't like that wording but that's just me I mean it's no and no so it's must I mean what's what's questionable about it no it doesn't have literary value and no it's not appropriate so it's must be removed I don't see what's questionable about that I do think it's worth us double-checking and having that conversation because I'm actually I well I do think and we can double check but I do think we I

256think this just reemphasizes the point we we got some we got some things to talk about before the board uses the library materials decision right I also don't know why we're fighting for age inappropriate stuff in the first place gosh if it's vulgar get it out I mean go okay never Wimber Mr Wimberly it's your turn a couple of things um I think the Librarians have been advocating for a central office person for years but I'd also say we've got 50 plus libraries and someone having to review 15% from 50 plus libraries particularly the I mean it's going to be tough for I you know maybe a good idea but but um I don't know and as far as the um the language at the beginning what about just a simple statement that says it

257is the policy of the Williamson County Board of Education that our libraries are vibrant parts of our schools or something like that we don't need a lot but it just seems to me that that and and you know these types of things exist throughout the policy all the all of our policies uh just a simple statement to that effect you don't have to editorialize you don't have to even Define what that means but just say an in VI a vibrant part or whatever word of our our educational offerings thank you Mr galbert thank you um I uh I could have bued in but I'm following the following the rules that we set I told Casey I could have hopefully shortened this conversation about like 30 minutes if I could just jumped in but just pointing

258out that answ I like I do I do but I like all the uh I like the like the new rules better but um just because we we end up revisiting a point that's already been made but um but just a just pointing it out so um the decision tree if you could pull it back up the the reason it has to be this way is to um to our attorneys Point uh we have to consider both okay um the the first amendment is largely um trying to trying to prove that it it sets the burden of proof on the individual and it sets a high bar to to remove a book through the first amendment lens um if we look at it second the the the new state law is largely trying to to

259trying to give you a view of of how to remove a book and so if we if we just looked at the state law and said let's remove we got to remove this book because the state law said it and we don't consider the First Amendment then some then then we're going to be challenged and and they're going to come back and say well you didn't even consider the First Amendment law um all the case law and and they're going to be right this way I mean you consider the first Amendment um it's it's a pretty it's a pretty quick it's it's it's different than the maturity because you've got to you've got to talk about um you know question two 4 six they they all they all relate to the to the mature content

260in relation to the rest of the content and then you have to get to the state law so as as much as I agree that that that it's probably that it's a a foregone conclusion you've got to go through the process and we've got to show that we've go through the process um because to not open oursel up to to more well we're going to get sued either way um but I just I'd really like to win if we're going to get sued so I want to go through the I want to make a process that that keeps us from from losing when and if we get sued and that's it thank you Mr Welch can we go back to the uh portion of the policy with the state law please thank you that's good

261yeah just right doing it there we need to have them both the first that talks about federal law and state law because if we just follow this we're going to be stripping out half of the books in our library if not more and let me start with let's kind of go through this here uh excess violence scroll up please no I'm sorry scroll down please nudity sastic abuse sexual conduct Etc all right let's start with the Book of Genesis and let's talk about lot and his daughters the offering them up to the sodomite mob or his daughters getting lot drunk so they can continue their line that's nudity that's sexual content you can p it other chapters that's satom masochistic abuse anyone here want to say let's take the Holy Bible out of our school

262libraries because it's not age appropriate I'm not voting for that if we rely just on this exactly how it's written we're not going to take that we're going to take out Hemingway we're going to take out Steinbeck take out Anne Rice we're going to take out a lot of books biggest movie this huge movie was geeking for it to come out for years was Dune if you've ever actually read Dune one of the things that the author does to tell you what a awful person the barren is is he talks about the young slave boy that they've got the other planet and make sure he's drugged before he gets in there because I don't want him fighting me you're telling you that the baron is a a pedophile rapist and it's not meant to sexually

263excite you and people that's pornography pornography is designed to sexually excite you if you are sexually excited by that seek therapy because there is something wrong with you it is there as a literary device so it can explain so just oh this is a really bad person no so you can really understand what a awful person this is that's another piece of literature we're going to have to pull out there's so much if we go exclusively on this because it's it's not a constitutional bill and I you I'm you know I'm not a lawyer and I'm not qualified to say that but we can listen to our attorneys and they're giving us the the answers to that and so to Jay's point you know yeah we're we're we need to be practical so we actually

264have something on our library shelves we need to be practical so we're we're sort of dancing between these two impossible tasks um that's why that's that's the simple answer is is because at the end of the day we we need to have books in there we don't need to put locks on the library doors and if we go just off this that's what we got to do okay oh Mr Cash thanks you know this this the way this is written and everything is it it's age appropriateness I think that's all the state wants is age appropriate material now when you see some of these things these issues topics right off the bat a lot of your U Librarians will will know this these books have all been vetted but you've got both ends of the

265spectrum you've got some State guidelines which we all ask for now you've got some State guidelines and working with with the program we've got we can we don't have to take out some of the books we don't have to take out the where the Bell show me where it says it's about age appropriate scroll to the top it does not Dan it's age it's age appropriate scroll up to the top show me the language the state law is the age appropriate law scroll up to the top and show me where it says that please I I would love to be wrong tell me where it says that there's the law right there in the red it's a little bit down it says if it contains these materials it's not age appropriate it doesn't say that

266it has to be age appropriate state and federal law is on line 12 it's up here in 27 that's the law state law provides that materials containing any of the following are not appropriate for the age of maturity maturity level it's not subjective it's not saying you decide what's appropriate for the maturity level which I agree with you we should do I agree with you on that one we're we're aligned that we can we can disagree over what is appropriate for the maturity level but that is literally not what that says it says if it contains any of those things it's not age appropriate I'm not I'm not a lawyer by any stretch but I understand what they're saying here we don't have to take out World War II stuff we don't have to take

267the Holocaust out I mean we we've got some discretion with the way this is laid out if we have to do it this way you're right we're going to be taking out half the books in the library and you wonder why it was written because why are those books why are some of these books that are so gross in the library so yeah I think I mean it's plain it's it's it goes into all kinds of different issues that that children especially in elementary school should never [Music] see and that's what this is all about and that's why you got to work the you know the sheet and everything think you got to work you got to work it together and I think most Librarians according to everyone I've talked to the Librarians really like

268this because it helps them out thank you Casey just a quick question have we gone through some of these is like case studies of some examples of like okay here's a book about the Holocaust does that pass muster with this have we done some of that already and what has been the impact we have yeah okay so um Librarians definitely have and we've identified some books like the elementary book no David it's called No and O David has a bare bottom and that would have to be removed based on the nudity definition that was one that may have to be removed mhm I think be very instructive for us to hear some of the ones that that staff with their professional judgment based on them being in violation of a law potentially are feeling like

269they need to air on the side of caution or what books what books would be removed as a result of this based on our initial evaluation okay yeah we'll we'll work on that that's reasonability test yeah it's a good idea just a quick comment I mean I think we're we're getting um we talked a lot about what is it is it federal and state is it just state is it and and I think the hard part about this is that it's federal and state but we don't have the luxury of not abiding by any of the state statute Provisions we don't have the luxury of we don't like that part so we're going to go air on we're going to go with federal law on that one and be more use use our subjectivity it's

270it is both but it it but if you don't follow every every letter of what's in the state law you're you're violating state law right I mean so that's where that's where this gets more more challenging because yeah you're using both rubrics and you should and the decision tree appropriately goes through the Constitutional part and the state part but ultimately I'm not going to say the state part governs but it if you if it doesn't pass that test right then it's that's a that's um what we have to follow right I mean it's am I right or wrong it yes so the unfortunate aspect of the state law is that it does remove the discretion that is required in some under the First Amendment um to do to do a full and Frank analysis under

271the First Amendment it does take some of that discretion away in certain instances for example the nudity example that that Dana just gave and I think that's where the some of the confusion and friction is coming in here is that we've got potentially aspects of the state law that we have to follow that might theoretically conflict with a constitutional interpretation okay we have one final agenda item Mr Gold thank you madam chair and thank you all for that discussion um I I think we needed to have that discussion I know there'll be more uh the last item on the agenda Madam chair is the uh approval of Pekka memorandum of understanding uh I'm actually going to recommending that we take this off the agenda and here's why the pay chart is part of theou we

272placed this on the agenda when we had a 50 vote on our on our on our budget and to your point Mr Brown right near the end of our discussion the I I've become convinced that the chances for lack of a better term of of our our budget fully passing is are less than they were uh before that 32 vote so I think it's premature for us to include the pay uh the pay charts so I I propose that we we um remove this and and address it at a more appropriate time when we know where our budget stands as an aside to that it actually is on the annual agenda for June uh but we had finished it up and brought it to you early okay good stuff thank you guys for all of

273your uh discussion tonight the meeting is adjourned