001And uh um Mr. Hansert is going to start us in prayer. But thank you with me please. Our dear most gracious heavenly father, we want to come to you today, dear Lord, thanking you for this opportunity to come out your to represent our county, dear Lord, our our students. And dear Lord, we want to thank you for uh the health that you've given us. Dear Lord, we pray today that you will just give us guidance. Dear Lord, give us patience. And dear Lord, give us our the ability to do what's right for our students and for our county. And dear Lord, we pray that you will go with us now and watch over us and guide us. And we be careful to give you all the praise in thy name. Amen. All right. And before
002we get going too, I I wanted to say one thing. Some things have popped up here that that uh you know and I think the rest of the board probably agrees that we have a lot of ancillary stuff we deal with, but our prime focus here is the education of the of the students. We want to give them that work with the teachers and and admin staff and give them the best possible opportunities whether they choose to go to college to trade school or directly into the workforce. We want to give them the tools and and whatever else they need to succeed in business and life. And I think most board is or I think all the board is probably in agreement with that. And and I know sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle,
003but I really wanted to make that statement. So everybody here knows and everybody out in YouTube land knows too. So all right. So, um, we're going to get going here. And, uh, the first item up is is, uh, when we got a pretty good agenda today, and I thank everybody for for showing up. Um, first item today is the budget, and we'll turn that over to uh, Miss Nelson. Good morning. So, Oh, okay. All right. Well, let's hold up for just a minute. So, [Music] All right. [Laughter] Good morning. How are you? Good morning. No, it wasn't a joke. sincerely Jennifer's got two [Laughter] will be fully caffein. [Music] All right, so we have opened the meeting. So I think we're live. Uh so we're going to give you a minute to settle in and
004then uh April is going to uh uh dive into the budget which is the first item on the agenda. We're going to talk about the general school budget and the the nutrition budget after that. So okay, is everyone ready? Yeah. So, I'll give a um just because we have so many new board members, I will give a general um explanation about each area of the budget and then if you have a questions, I'll pause and let us ask questions if y'all have them. Um be glad to answer any questions today that you have. So, I'll start with the revenue page. Um notice the column headings. Um, usually the budget report that goes to the county, it requires us to have the audited financials for the prior school year, our original budget for this school year,
005the amended budget, what I estimate we're going to finish the year school year with, and then our new revenue budget for the new school year. Um, revenues are broken out by local and state. And then we have some other things that come through. So, I'll begin. If y'all yall have any questions about the columns, how they're broken out at this point. Okay. Um the very first section of the budget is property taxes. Um right now I'm using for the FY26 budget. I'm using the number for that we've been given by the county for this current school year because I don't have the new numbers yet. um that will likely possibly increase just a little bit, I've been told, but I don't know what that is yet because I won't probably get those until May. So,
006right now, I'm just using the estimate um based on what we plan to receive for this school year. I'll take any questions at this point on that section if you have them. So, that's the revenue section. So, that's the first this very first call, very first section you see. It says property taxes and then it's 9.9 million, right? Yeah. So, you think there'll be less taxes next year? I think we'll I think we'll see an increase just a just a um Okay. It says the 26 budget. It's a little bit less than what 24 is or current. Um so 24 24 went we finished FY24 at at 9.8 8 million and then um the budget for this school year is 9.9. Okay. And then I estimate we're going to finish around 9.9. I haven't made
007mine yet. That's what's holding things up. Oh, I see where you're talking about. I was looking at the very first uh the very first line item where it says current property tax. You're adding all those others together. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. So, I'm talking about the section as a whole. Okay. I was just looking at the very first line item, current property tax, and and and it looks less than what and I thought that was kind of odd. It does because there's going to be less property tax next year. Um, it does because we I have to do a calculation for the county like that splits our revenue between us and the two city districts and we lost a little funding last year. So, you're going to see it in that major category just a
008little bit um more than the other categories because it's such a bigger number. And I did that calculation and we've lost just a little bit more but not enough for me to um for me to adjust this budget because I've been told by the count I've been to been talking to Mariana and I think our property tax is going to increase just a little bit but not a whole lot based on that calculation and based on new property tax calculations. So, I just don't have those firm numbers yet because um they wait on that calculation and I just got that calculation from the state last week and so I wasn't able to get that to her for her to get what she needed for me give to to give to me for this budget in
009time. So, but I do think I mean we may see a lower number in the property tax area, but we may it as a but as that section as a whole it it will increase. Basically, our contribution from the county is you know a little more property tax than than the sales tax. Yes. But split, you know. Okay. And then, you know, as we have more people move into the area and houses are being built, that number should continue to go up as a whole. But we may see it go down in a few areas in this section because of that calculation that I do for the county and the city schools. Okay. So, we're estimating about 9.9 on the property taxes and 6.8 8 on the or no uh yeah 9.9 and 7.2. Yeah,
010I was going to go there next. That's the estimated problem. Yes. So, are we ready to move on to the next section? Yeah. Um so the next section of the budget is mainly sales tax. Um so our sales tax has been trending very well. Um I'm showing that we're going to we're going to be come in around 7.2 two if everything trends like it's been trending. Our budget was 6.8, so we're be well over our budget. Um, I usually try to use the average of those two. So, I want to be more conservative. I don't want to put us at 7.2. So, I um built the budget around 7.1 million for sales tax. Um, could we hit more than 7.2 this school year? It's possible if we keep trending the way we're trending. So, for
011this total section and then we have liquor by the drink also in this section. Um so I've budgeted for the next school year round 7.1 for this section. Also remembering that um uh a local option tail tax that's what's divided with the three school systems in the county uh based on membership. That's that's a divided number and that's what we should get out of that divided number. That's right. So that those two lines are also shared with the count with the other two districts. But where we're seeing a a good increase is where we have point of sale. So like if you're at your house and you live in the county and you order on Amazon, the county the county school systems gets that full benefit instead of that going be split among other the
012other two districts. So okay, the next section is marriage license. [Laughter] That's just B. I usually just that's a flat number I use every year. Sometimes we go I mean you can see FY24 we are at 2,300 and then this year I'm estimating we'll be around 2,000. So usually use around that 2200 because it seems like a good place to be. Mixed drinks went up 11 almost 12% and marriages went down. We we tried to get them to put divorce license in there, but they won't do that. The next section is um receipts from individual schools. So, this is where the schools reimburse um the district for um field trips, extra labor. So like if you have athletic event and custodian comes in and cleans up, bus driver takes the um the bus driver takes
013the team to a another school to perform to um participate. The schools pay us back for um the bus driver the bus driver and the mileage or if a custodian has to clean up after athletic event the um we're reimbured by the athletic fund um to cover those fees. So that's what that is. Um the next section of the budget is um recurring items. Um there's not a whole lot here. We have sale it's sales of materials and supplies. So um this is like you know scrap metal or anything that we would take to CFC. Um anything little little items that we may just dispose of there we would get just a tiny bit of re revenue for. The next section um non-recurring items. Um the first line is for like if we have anything
014that's surplus. So like buses, iPads, Chromebooks, anything that we would sell on Dub Deals, this would where we would receive the revenue for those items. Um and then another large part of this category is the um after school program revenue um 93,215. I think that was what was in the budget that Miss Garner presented. So you can see that on the 44570 Excel line about midway down through that section. And then at the bottom of this section is um elementary basketball. And so this whole section is around budgeting around 147,000. Next section we go to our big part of our budget which is state funds. This is where you're seeing your TISA aotment come in the very top line. This is March's This is March's estimate. It did go down February did go down I
015mean did go down from February about I think around $6,000. Um the next um line is the next line you see is for we have a we receive a grant for prek. That is our prek grant that we get every year and that number usually stays the exact same. Um we receive some funding from the state for driver's education. Um and then another part of T says the salary equity part. um they split it out just between that top and that bottom number and then um career ladder. So that section um last year we received 33.7 um I'm anticipating 34.6 this year and um because the difference and then I'm budgeting 34.1 and the difference between those two is the ISM you see on the last line. We won't budget revenues for those. will have
016some carryover, but that will come into the budget as we have that carryover and bring that in as a budget amendment. So, that's the main difference between those two lines. I have a question um on that uh 659,000 for early childhood education. Is that state funded or federal funded? It's state. It's state. Okay. So, that's that will probably stay then. It should say we Yeah, they originally when Tissa came along, they said they were going to roll it in and they didn't roll it in and they they separated it out. So I think it will stay. And then the early childhood education with special ed, is that federal? So that's a state grant. Um that number doesn't it fluctuates. So I don't budget it in here because we don't we don't know what we're going
017to get. We don't that comes through usually in July or August. And so what I'll what'll happen is you'll see a budget amendment for that when we when we received because I think if you look at number FY24 we received 28,000 and then this year we received 63. Um, so that's they're saying we're going to get it again, but it's not guarant I don't think it's guaranteed and the amount's not guaranteed. So, I didn't put it in the budget. Um, the next section is other state revenues. A large amount of this section is the um TVA sharing, state revenue sharing that we get. Um, this is the portion of their profits that we receive because they're federal and they don't pay taxes. So, we get a portion of the TVA profits. That's 671,240 that comes
018from the count that comes into the county and then it comes to us. And then the next section is federal revenue. Um this is our um federal the federal government the air force reimbures us for 50% of our two ROC instructors. And then the next section is um just some insurance recovery money. So we always have some bus accidents and maybe some damages to the buildings lot and strikes. So we always usually budget some fun some revenue there. So, um, this year we're expecting to get around 52,000 because we've had several incidents. So, we always usually try to keep that a flat amount in the budget, but it fluctuates. You can see FY24 we had 43,000. So, um, just kind of never know what's going to happen. So, you use that flat amount for um
019the budget. And then operating transfers is any kind of indirect cost we might get from federal grants. I budget very little there because there probably will be just a couple grants that we will um be able to do that this year with federal grants. Total revenue um budget for budget is 52.2 million. Um looks like I'm estimating 52.8. The main difference there is the ISM revenue that we received this year. Um I'll take any general questions you guys have on this section. Now tell me if I'm going too fast, too slow. Tell me you're doing a good job. This is hard. You're doing a good job. Thank you. Yeah. I I think I'm the only one who has questions, but it's okay. It's interesting. The paid parental leave is that that's not funded from the
020state. That has come out of our own general purpose. I mean, that comes from us. That's funded from the state. Oh, it is. Okay. So, I also didn't include didn't include that in the budget because I don't know how many people are going to um go on that leave. So, it's a new leave that started the end of last school year into FY24 and I have to um provide all of the their certificate their um birth certificate for their child. So, this is the new child while we're um um mother or father can take up to six weeks off of work and get paid for it. So, we continue to pay them through payroll and then we submit all of that information. So, they pay their payroll and um all of their benefits and we
021get reimbursed for all of that. And so, I don't know who will that who that will be this year if we'll have any. So, I don't budget that, but this year we're um we're going to receive see last year we received 130,000 because we had a ton of people that were using that benefit. M so that's a special quarterly report I have to do and I don't I can't I don't know who's going to be on that for this next full year. So April I'm supposing that if the state is paying for those six weeks that that's not hitting microphone if the state is paying for those six weeks and that's not hitting our salaries budget during that time. It does. And so this basically makes up so it brings in the revenue to cover
022that expenditure. So your expenditures stay the same because we have to prove that we're still paying them. So we run we have to run them through payroll like normal, but then the revenue that we receive from the state offsets those expenditures. So they all they are in our budget, but we offset that expenditures offset by this amount of revenue that we bring in for them. Okay. So it's like is it basically like getting them paid not out of our salary during that time but from the state when it's all said and done? Yes. So yes, we're still paying them. They're still in our budget, but we get that revenue to cover their salaries from the state. And we don't have u we're not projecting KISSA outcomes based funding. No, because we don't know what that
023will be. Um, you can see that it was, let me look back at what it was the last two years. I didn't put I didn't break it out, but this year I think FY24 it was around 350 and then this year it's been it was 292. Okay. So, yeah, that wouldn't be something because we could get zero and that would be something that we would not want to put in our budget and count on. I will while we're on that topic I will go ahead and talk about it that 292 we have spent just a little bit of that this year um the district office got um supervisors got together and developed a really good plan and worked with building admin and um you guys will see that as a budget amendment. The state is
024going to allow me to restrict that money be brought back into next school year. So, you guys will see a budget amendment early in the school year to start working on um some things that we've gotten together that we think will really help us achieve our goals as far as test scores and to meet our um goals that we've sent to them to to be able to earn this outcomes bonus, right? Because for the first year, it was kind of like reform. You could spend it on whatever, but now they're kind of restricting how you spend the outcomes based funding, right? So, we've we've worked I've not I've just sat through and listened, but I think the district supervisors and the principles have worked really hard on that plan. And they're I think there's some
025really good stuff they're going to present. We're going to present to you guys. That'll be that'll be sometime early next school year, I think, when we get that um get that to you. Look forward to seeing that. Okay. Other questions on the revenues? dive into the hard part. Let's see. Um I think it starts on page five of your book and I explain the top columns to you guys. Um so pretty similar FY24 audited actuals of your FY25 original budget and amended budget what I've estimated we're going to end at FY25 with. And then there are four options. Actually, your agenda says three options, but there are four because the um salary compensation committee had asked me to put together a 2%. So, there's a column for a 2% budget incre um payroll pay increase,
026a 3%, a 4%, and then the flat amount that gets us all the way to the 50,000 for the certified and a 3% classified. So, those are the columns that you're looking at whenever you whenever we start going through these um sections. Okay. So that last column again is Melissa. Do you have his book? You have another book for him. You can have your book. I can know after that's fine. Okay. So within this section, this is your the very first section. This is your regular instruction um teachers. So within there's 278 certified positions in this budget and then also we have around 39 athletic stopins we also pay. So all of our athletic stopins are also paid out of the very first line of this budget. Um no matter where that person works we
027pay their athletic stop out of this section. Um we have 27 teachers assistants in this um section of the budget. They're just our regular instruction teacher assistants. We have a virtual we take care of most of our virtual school um expenditures out of this area. Um you see benefits. We have benefits for all of those employees which makes up a majority of these lines. we get down toward the bottom. Um, we take care of the instructional supplies. So, we give each teacher gets $275 for to use for every for instructional supplies for their classroom and then we um give like if the middle school and the high middle school, high school and Raider Academy, we give departmental money um so that departmental money can come together and buy like English can buy new books for
028their department. Um so that's part of this this budget. We also buy textbooks out of this area of the budget. Um so anything really that we would that would directly affect the regular instruction classroom would be in this section of the budget. Um we have new positions in this budget in this part of the budget. We have one math, one English at the high school. We have three art positions for the elementary within this budget. And then um I think I think that's I think that's it. I think is the SLP that's not in this section. It's not in the section. So three new art teachers and then two positions for the high school and then the Hickerson librarian not in this position. medical. I'll go through the um benefit section just a little bit,
029give you a little bit of note overall and then I maybe not have to talk about it later on down. Um basically a 5% increase. I'm budgeting a 5% increase. I won't know what the increases are until um around August or September. We'll get actually the increases from the state at that time. We generally use 5% for that. Um this year we saw a three to 9% based on what plan they uh the employee had. Um so we usually try to use just kind of the medium part of that and I used 5%. We will have to bid out our dental and vision insurance this year. Um so I did I did um put a 5% increase in there for um those two plans. Um, don't think we'll have a 5% increase in those two
030plans, but I did put that in there just to prepare in case we do. Um, I'll open it up for general questions on this section if you guys have them. Miss April, the what you just described is including that's that's all in the 3% and the 4%. So, that's right. Correct. Things is just the percentages. Good point. So, if you go down to the bottom of that section, um your 2% cost of this section of the budget is going to be um 22.3 million. Uh 3% is 22.5 million. The um 4% is 22.7 and then the flat and the 3% is going to be 22.7. I just I just went to page 28 and look at this hard number. You went all the way to the back. Your head. That's the number I'm looking at.
031The bottom line. If you go to the back. If you go to the back, it'll tell you. That makes it easier to understand. Yeah. If you go to the back, it'll tell you on page is it 28? Yeah. 28 potential fund balance hits. Potential fund balance hits. Like Mr. uh Shores pointed out the other day even you know I've in the in the last three four years well four years I've seen these kind of numbers to fund balance but we've actually never hit fund balance I will say that a lot better to where we've never had to hit them projecting we don't hit fund balance this year either so yeah but some of that was due to er funds too so that's well that was kind of that was just about just a little bit
032before okay we kind of started I mean yes we've had the extra funds for the three years kind of ending there but you know even this year we're still looking at a increased fund balance uh I'm projecting that's very that's based on you know revenues like that sales tax number really trending really well and then us not having a huge you know expenditure that housing could go down depends on what happens on the other end of the building rocks at us. We'll talk back up a little bit to revenue. Um that 530,000 we get from TISA for the uh for the certified is that in just lumped in with the the TISA it's lumped in that big 33 I think 4 million number that you see on the Tissa line. Okay. So that's all. Yeah.
033So they they restrict it but it's as a whole. So like you they send it to us as a total number but that amount is restricted. Okay. That part of it restricted. Okay. Got it. I have a question. Um this is the probably the meat of the whole budget. And so we're you the only new positions that are in this budget is the three art teachers and the two at the high school. That's the only two in this section. We have a few other within the rest of the budget, but that's the two. Okay. So, these are new five new positions. There'll be five new positions in this area. And what was at the high school? Um, an ELA teacher and that's because we have um well, I don't want to go too much detail
034because I don't know if that's been discussed yet. Um, but we'll have a we'll have a position open at um in ELA and then we'll have a position open in math. So, we need another math out of high school. Okay. Um, are there so this is not the section is this the section where the where the stipens or supplements are added in? So there's no new supplements in our budget or anything like that from last year. There wouldn't be. So generally if it's a supplement if it it would be it would follow the employee and their line, right? Um, so but I mean I'm just saying there's not any new ones. No, there's not any new not any new ones. the only thing that would be in here and you might see those and I've
035budgeted those increases so like you know a coach that gets a pay increase there also their like athletic supplement would go up so but that's nothing there's nothing new okay that just because I think in the past you know there's some things that have been we didn't understand that that was in the budget that was new positions and all that this is very good none of the none of the new positions that are being proposed will have any supplements with Right. And then there's not any anyone else getting a supplement added to their salary that we don't know about. That's correct. Right. No. And if there those would have went to the salary compensation committee and we didn't have anything like that this year. Right. Any other question about the section? There's there's a couple
036of more positions in here, Miss Jones, but they're in a different category. We'll have to expose those out when we get that far along. Okay. You're heading to the last column now, right? No, I'm going to go through all of this. Well, I thought I thought to go to the last I thought you was going three, four, and into this flat amount and 3% and explain that. Um the next section is um just where we pay for we have children who are um sent to alternative instruction school and so we pay for their fees out of this line and that fluctuates every year. You can see last school year we only paid 28,000. This year I budgeted um 70 because the the school year before that we we had we hit 70 and so this
037year we're going to like we're hit 32. So it just fluctuates. So I just try to estimate the general number they put in that area. Um next section is sped section. So this is where your sped your sped teachers um with there's 36 sped teachers I have in the budget 36 aids. Um there's um one new there's one new speech pathologist that we added to this area. Um your OT therapy person is in this area of the budget. And then um go on down into benefits. They get the get down to the supplies area get the same kind of um supply money as the regular instruction teachers. Um and then we give them general and where the hot like where we give departmental money in the regular instruction area. We give sped the kind of
038the same idea of they get extra money to be um spent in on supplies but that comes through um the central office and through Charlie um so we can monitor that just a little bit more because of the needs of those um that the situation those students um I'll take so basically it's around 5.1 to 5.2 two of this of your re of your expenditure budget. April, how many how many students I didn't realize we had homebound teachers. So, how many students did we have that have homebound teachers? That would have to be [Music] um about home and sometimes we have kids that are on special education services and then that homebound. So, they come out from two different Okay. It was just I didn't realize that we had that. Yeah, we just kind of
039put, you know, a general I probably put the flat amount in there because, you know, you never know what the need's going to be for the school year. So, we generally just use a, you know, generic amount that we carry forward. We'll move on to 71300 which is your CTE area of um expenditures and this is 27 teachers um their benefits and we kind of do the same thing with them. We give them um teacher supply money um no new positions in this area. Um it's around $2.4 million of expenditure. You can come to look at it. You can ask me questions if y'all have them. We do all that CTE stuff for for roughly 2.4 million. And then he gets a little bit of federal money. It's not much. It's around I think around
040130,000. And he uses that he uses that first and then um when we pick up the rest of it in general budget. Okay. I just find that pretty amazing. Talk about just a little over 1% of our budget. Yeah. We get a lot of bang for our buck on that. We really are. That's money well spent. Yes. Very well spent. Wow. Um, moving on. So, the next section of the budget 71400, we pay for um any bus trips within the county um or extra labor. So, any extra labor comes out of that very top line that we would pay for, you know, field trips at the elementary school, um athletic events, bus trips, anything that we would pay for and just an extracurricular activity. And then the next salary line is our elementary basketball where
041we pay our stopins um to our coaches. And then um or any kind of or any kind of um custodian that was needed for, you know, to clean up after after the games. Um and then the benefits that are attached to those people. And then you get down to the bottom line and that's our referees and our uniforms and our end of the season trophies for elementary basketball. around 141 to 142,000 of our budget. Okay. Um the next section is our attendance section. So this is um one director and one um admin. Dr. Cornelius's program. This is Dr. Millius and Miss Miss P section of the budget outside the salaries and the benefits we pay a large amount to our um software for that area. So you'll see that in contracted services and then so
042just some general PD and um supply money that's around 29 298 to 300 302 depending on which option you're looking at. going to the next section. Um, self services. So, we pay for our director and then nurses at the nurses at our schools out of this section. Um also the subs for those if we have to have a sub for those nurses are paid out of this area of the budget. Um and their benefits have 12 nurses and then um any supplies they need for their clinics and then any kind of PD um for our director and those employees. So, I'm noticing on here, April, we don't have medical personnel during the summer school program or else they're just budgeted for now as zero. Good question. We do. Um, we will receive that's a separate
043state grant. So, it's not part of our normal budget. We will receive that grant probably I I hope it comes soon. Hopefully, it comes this month. Sometimes it comes in May. So, you guys will see that in a budget amendment. Um probably hopefully in the next board meeting in the May in the May board meeting not in April. That's around a million dollars of our budget. [Music] Going on to the next section, other student support. This is our guidance counselor sections. We have 14 counselors. We have one district-wide social worker and then we have three employees um three employees at the high school um in the secretary line. And then that's this is their benefits. Um out of this section we also pay for um ACT retakes. I think the first one is paid for
044and then this we pay for any two were paid for and then we pay for the district will pay for additional if we need that if we need those to take need to pay for those and then um some professional development translation services down in the bottom. So some very little minute things but this budget's around 1.5 million. your psychological personnel is that test is 322 and then the uh translator is 399 on your line items there second page of that and that that's on the line 124 the psychological personnel that's uh that's the one social work uh wait a minute um 124 that used to be a position up here and that position has been um is no longer. You'll see the school psychologist later down. Okay. That person left us and we didn't
045fill that position. It was a portion of that person's salary that used to be in that line. I I didn't know if y'all was still trying to have one on hand or if you contracted that out. Yeah, that's later on down. But yes, I think we still have one on staff. I think um Charlie's looking to try to hire another and then we may still have to use some virtual psychologists. Do the virtual psychologists get really expensive or and you'll see that on down when we get down into the um it's in the next part of special aid budget that we'll talk about. On line 161 where it says secretaries, are those in the school or here at the central office? No, those are at the school. So, they help in the guidance office and
046they help some in the front office. So, they're kind of split. Okay. What school are they at? Which one? High school. They're all at the high school. Are they full? Yes, ma'am. And that line also includes like, you know, I think they split their time between some split their time between the front office and the guidance office. So if they were out, we would like get a sub for them for part of the day or whatever. So that line is not like their total salary, but include a sub for them if they needed it. That was my next question. Is it is is that all that they do? So you're saying that that's not all that they do. Those secretaries, they're doing they're helping mainly the guidance office. Guidance office, main office, going back and
047forth. How many how many secretaries do we have over at high school? Um, hold on. I can look. It might take me a minute to get because they're in they're in a couple different areas of the budget. So, give me just a second. Yeah, that's what I've seen. I've seen them in some other ones and I was just trying to figure out. There's three. Well, they're those three are split based on the what the need is mainly help with guidance, but let me look. I think there is You got one main person, Mr. Hendrick, that's the uh basically the physical agent there. Yeah. And she's in a totally she's in the book one. Yeah. She wouldn't be there. And then we've got two two other. So we would have five. And those two mainly work
048the I guess checking kids in and out and doing staff attendance. Good. Thank you. Welcome. No, that's just at the high school. At Raider, they there's two at Raider. And I said mainly one does staff, I think, and other one does student attendance. Okay. move on to regular instruction program support. So this is in this area there is um four supervisors from the central office and then um currently nine librarians. We have added one librarian into Hickerson with that's a new position for this year. Um there are two central office secretaries in this section. um two library aids and then two academic coaches and the coordinator for the virtual school is their benefits and travel. Um we also provide funding for the libraries. That's a number that we base on students. So each year I
049get the enrollment for the previous year and I break out um what each school gets for purchase new um materials for the libraries. And then um majority of our software that we use for the district is in in this line instrual software some ESL software and then some professional development. This is around 2 million to 2.1 million of the budget. Okay, move on to the ready next section, special ed program support. So, this is one director, ed director, and then um one psychologist. But currently we're looking to hire another one. We we used to have I think four on staff. So we're looking to hire one more back um if he can you know find that position. And then we have a secretary that is split her salary split between um the general budget and
050the federal budget. And then we have one sped assessment facilitate facilitator in this area. Um, we get down to another large part of this budget and it's the contracted services line. That's where we pay for our OT and PT and then virtual psychologist. So, you look at if you look at this column for this year, it looks like I'm estimating us to be around 487,000. Um, we've we've spoken with Charlie and we think adding that if we can add another psychologist back and there's some things we can do to reduce that number this year. Um, so that's why the budget looks a little bit lower than what I'm estimating. However, if we don't add that position back, this number, we could transfer funds from the top from the top down into this line. Um, you
051may see that come this year. I'm not sure. We'll just have to kind of keep you posted on that situation. But this budget is around 668 to 690 of the expenditure budget. Next section, CTE education support. So there's one director in here. His salary is split between general funds and federal. Um I think federal picks up around 3% of his salary. Um and then just his travel and benefits around $100,000 of the budget. Next section technology. This is um technology director and three techs that service the whole district um their benefits. And then um you can see this is a pretty large budget because we have you know ENA services where he um for our internet and then we have a lot of um software Windows cyber security software. So, this is a big chunk
052of our district software that hits his budget and then um any kind of replacement. We always budget a flat amount for replacement and hardware. Um just don't know what the need's going to be. Um as far as like if we needed to a whole classroom or replacement parts or buy new Chromebooks. So, we just kind of budget the flat amount there each year. Um, in the past years we've not had to use that budget because we've had ESRE and ESSER's taken care of a lot of that. Um, you will see that we are probably going to use most of our budget this year. Um, so that budget is around 870,000 of expenditures. The supervisor of that section, that's the that's the guy that makes sure all these mics are working and all that. Comes to
053all these meetings. Yes, sir. and these continuous meetings we have and does all of that smiling back there. Randy will take all the questions now. The travel on that one $12,500. Where you going? all my texts and everybody's centered here and as soon as we get a ticket we head out to Deerfield or we head out to Hillsboro and you have three guys and we don't station anybody at one school because it's not very effective because if they were out at Deerfield they might have one thing to fix and they'd be sitting there all day. So it doesn't make economic sense to do that. So, but we try to fix tickets as quickly as we possibly can. Some districts wait till school gets five or six. That could be two or three days and then
054go out and fix it all. But then you got a problem some teachers dealing with for, you know, a day or two days. So, as soon as we get a ticket, they take off. Yes, sir. I will also mention that um Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. that in his salary line there there are um hours built in for a stop that you guys had directed me to take care of. So I will that just keep in mind that that is not his normal salary. There there are other um there are stopins in that line for him to take care of meetings. That's what I was. So So there is stoppings that we're going to be adding to this. Well, it's in there. It's already in there. So, I just estimated a number of hours based
055on what we've done this year and um put that in his line already. So, you will see a budget amendment for that for this year because I don't currently have that in there. So, that will come this year for this year. That's not a percent, Mr. Hand. That's an hourly rate that pay agreed upon. Well, we already vary depending on several meetings. I remember voting on I didn't know if we said the amount or anything. I think it was $30 per hour per hour. Okay. Right. That's good. He deserves it. That's right. Already worked the whole day. Yeah. Yeah. And then have to listen. So the more meeting more the more meetings y'all have, the more you'll have to pay him. Punishment. And the longer your meetings are, the longer you'll have to pay him.
056I would opt for a 15inut meeting. That's what I would prefer. 15 bucks. Thank you, Randy. I mean, I vote on that one, too. Heaven locks up the building and everything. The ideal meeting. Yeah. Any other questions before we move on? The next section is your after school program. This is the um option that was voted on by the board voted and passed by the board. So this is the section of the budget that we'll record the um after school program in the question I have Mr. Chairman do you want to continue to call that excellence after school or just after school program? I don't know what the I know you had a a a grant I think for the excellent school program as such. This is similar to it, but if you want to
057continue that, that's fine. It's just a grammatical situation more than anything else. I'm Yeah, I'm fine either way. I mean, it's it's fine. Of course, we still have the the teachers in there that are there an hour a day. And I mean, we can decide to change the name if we want, I guess. But I mean, I I don't know what everybody else feels. It doesn't seem like it's that big of an issue, too. Might be maybe confusing to parents thinking it's the very same program, you know, which it's not. Yeah. Just sometimes if you say after school program, then it applies babysitting services. So, we're kind of straddling in between it seems like. And this salary is for six site directors on line 105. And then 116 is your teachers that will be involved
058in that program. You think we should change it? Oh, no. I'm just Okay. I just I don't know. I really don't like the fact that we don't have a program that we can try to push and push and push and push students to that we can cover because, you know, we're going through some changes this next year that a lot of a lot of people might not realize. We're fixing to lose an extra is it 30 minutes a day to all of our elementary students to extra recess the state is sending down I believe yeah 40 minutes extra a day of recess if we don't have classroom time during the day. So you're losing 40 minutes there. You're losing an afternoon tool to try to hopefully push and usher some students to for extra help
059and some tutoring to work on a proficiency. And then we're talking about art, which I'm not saying is a bad thing, but we're it's going to take time out of the day. So here we've been ushering around and concerned and worrying about proficiency so level, but we've just took an hour, hour and a half, and then afternoon school program out. Somebody's going to have to work really hard when we're trying to get on top of that ladder. But I I guess you keep the name the same. with the goal that we're going to work to try to find some additional funding to try to up that program back to where it was. And you know, I mean, we're going to talk about grants at the end of the the end of our agenda here, but
060uh um you know, maybe we just keep it the same and you know, but our goal is to try to improve that program, not just make it a babysitting program. So, we got one one more year and we can try again for the grant. Yeah. So, but I think we need to look at other grants, too. And I know you're working on that. So, we'll we'll talk about that [Laughter] later. All right. Okay. Moving on to the board of education section of the budget. So, in this section, we pay for the fees for their meeting for um this is mainly y'all's section and anything that we would pay for the district. Um so, we pay the retirees a portion of the retirees dental, vision, and medical out of this area of the budget. Um, we
061pay for audit services at school level. Um, our audit services for the district are covered by the county. So, we only pay for what the school um what we have to pay for the schools. Any dues membership, so this would be like TSBA dues. Um, legal fees, any kind of legal fees that we would contact our legal office for. um fingerprints, five-year fingerprints. So, we required everybody's fingerprints for every five years um employed with us. And so, and then also we pay for our physical trainer out of here that attends our athletic events, our cyber security insurance, property insurance, the commission we pay to the trustes office, um work comp insurance, and then any kind of conferences you guys go to. Um we pay for all of our we pay for um our postage machine
062and like top 10% banquet SR SRO conferences. Um we pay for rec center membership so we can um our employees can get a discount when they go um get a membership there. They get the our discount and discounted rate. Um and then we this is where we pay for our extra extra athletic money that we send to the schools and this budgets around 1.4 four of the signature [Music] 72310 board of education should be on page the uh line 599 the extra athletics what what is that so that's the used to be the what we called system pass money, but it's just the extra athletic money that the district sends to the schools and then that's um supposed to be used for divvied up between the minor sports to help with their because they don't
063they don't get gate a lot of those sports don't get gate fees because they don't like cross country or golf they don't have gate fees so we the district's always provided funds for um to the schools for that we used to call it in the past, but now it's called extra athletics. That was put in the budget back several several years ago, I think, Mr. Hands, when we began to let teachers get in on their passes and so forth. So, that made up for that. And I don't know how the number was derived, to be honest with you, because it's been several years ago, but that's what that money was for. uh at some point in time, whomever was here involved with it uh put a a a physical allocation to it, a money allocation,
064and that's just to make up for what could have been revenue from teachers and and the passes that that we have for for them. And and that is that's what that is. That is the only direct funding to athletics as far as here's money to spend. Everything else is with the exception of sting mark. Yeah. Is that correct? Yes. $67,000 there going. So out of those two, I guess, what's the difference in the 215 and the 217? Uh 215 is that's middle school. Okay. And then 217's high school. And then we do put a little bit in there for CCDA because we have to pay their TSA fee so their students can compete. Yeah. Thank you. I know there was a bill in the house that state legislature where trying to pass that school boards
065couldn't I that school systems couldn't pay for TSBA membership. Did that ever get that is still that is still in the argument stages. uh that was tied if you recall early on the legislature tried to I don't want to use interfere but Tusa has a transfer rule with their student athletes and things that if you if you are uh one school say you were at C County High School you were playing football you registered as a student for that school year. If you transferred say to Tal, you had you had to set out a whole year before you could actually be a part of their athletic program. Follow me. So if we if you played football in at Tal, I mean at Manchester Coffee County, you could transfer to Tal, you could practice with the
066basketball team or the baseball team, but you couldn't actually play until one year uh that you left the other school system. the that's the TS delay regulation as it was. The state legislature has come in and tried to say that we're going to let them have one free pass. In other words, if I was at Coffee County uh playing football, I could transfer to play basketball without any penalty without having to set that year out. Now, if you move, you're eligible. But if you just if you stay where you were and just want to move to play athletics, uh then you'd have to set the year out under the present rule. Now they're trying the legislature got into it and and trying to make the law where you can transfer that one time without any
067any penalty u in involved in that and that didn't go over real real well with the with the TWSA and and other sources. So now they've added the thing into it uh that there's a possibility if the law were to pass that the school systems could not pay for any dues for any organization for school boards such as your TSBA new uh dues those type things that hasn't passed yet it's still in the back and forth between the committees I think but yes that's that's a possibility but I don't know how close it is to being reality for this school year but that's that's how it all developed free. It's very similar to what they did with the Freedom of Education Act. If the school board will approve this resolution that they're in support, then
068we're going to give you two $2,000 per teacher. That's kind of what they had done. Blackmail. This is almost like the same thing. If if TWSSAA or or the school system does not agree to do this, then we're going to punish for your TWSAA dues out of the school systems funds. And also, they've kicked in TSBA dues. I mean, they didn't specify TSBA, but they said, you know, if if this law doesn't pass, u if it does pass, then you have to pay your TWA dues out of something besides school money. And same thing with with boards of education. They can't pay any of their dues out of anything uh that relates to their school business such as a TSBA uh dues and so forth. So that's in the making. I don't know how far
069along it is right now. We'll have to keep we're keeping a close eye on it. Robert, you know any update on it? No. Uh, I don't necessarily agree with the tactic against TWSSAA to do this at this point, but there definitely needs to be some kind of action against TWSSAA because they are a major group that is out of control private group. Well, they're they're an independent group. The I'm going to say that and I wanted to say that in a public format much like they're a self organization. Uh, they govern themselves. are not under any any they're no different than the Coffee County Quarterback Club of 501c3. They're no different. I know they I'm supposed to be the legislative leaison which I'm not doing too good a job I don't think but anyway I
070did get information about that TSBA membership and the reasoning behind it is because some of the legislators felt like the TSBA was taking the a different stance than what they so it's it's more political than it is anything in my opinion on the TSBA and uh so it's just probably two or three people started it and got it going and then it f and it carries over to that you know all memberships. So anyway, be quiet. All right, we move on. Okay, the next section is office of director. Um so this is the superintendent's salary, the new salary that was set um I think by the board maybe a couple meetings ago. And then um This is two employees at central office secretary and the admin clerical. And then in other salary and wages that
071is the additional um 10k for the bonus potential bonus the 10k to move and then rent or mileage if we have to pay that to the new director. That's in the budget. We may or may not use all of that but those are two separate lines and both of those affect the director. And then um this their benefits for those three people. Um we cover the central office phones in the section. Any kind of supplies that we purchase for um central office is covered in this section and then conferences and travel. And then we have our copy or lease that we cover in the section. Well, Melissa's salary comes out of the office of the director and not the school board. So we don't correct share those funds at all. So she's paid completely out
072of here. Yeah. And Dr. Pal and I talked about that when we were going through the budget and I think I think other districts have that split. We could potentially do that. That's not a problem. I would just have to do a budget. I could change it in the budget if we wanted to do that. You know, I don't know if it makes any difference, you know. So I mean as long as she's getting paid. Yeah. So she's just paid out of the out of the office of the director. That's how you budget it because she's doing double duty. to the director secretary and also the secretary to the board. So you're correct. Some systems do break it out differently. They'll have a a salary in there for the secretary to the director. Then they'll
073also have a budget item for the secretary to the board. I think in the past coffees at some point in time decided to combine those into one salary. I just want to make sure she's not missing out on anything because Melissa does so so much work for us and we really appreciate her. So I I don't Yes. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. I uh want to make sure she's not missing out anything. So, all right. So, this is around 414 to 415 16,000 of the budget. Moving on to the next section. This is the office of the principal section. So, we have 10 principles that are paid out of this section. your secondary bookkeepers. You have 13 assistant principles and then one um scheduler testing coordinator at the high school. Um elementary book uh
074six elementary bookkeepers um two C Sue CCMS staff and then um two uh high school staff and then any kind of subs we would need. So, elementary when they don't have when they're not there, we have to provide a sub for that offer office because they do their dual positions. They do the bookkeeping and they do the um the student check in, check out, answer phones. Um this is the benefits for that section of the budget, the section of the budget. Um, we pay for this all the school's phones out of this budget area and then any kind of um principles get $300 a year to for their travel back and forth to the bank or to central office. And they also get some supply money for their um front office and then some professional
075development if we choose to send them anywhere. It's about $4 million of the budget. Next section is fiscal services. So this is one um finance director and then five bookkeepers. Um we have some um stopping funds in here on 189 for um Brenda and Kim to come do some ESS reporting. um for us next year because that will continue to um go on for several years I think. So they're come we will see. Yes. So we've planned for them to hopefully bring them back and let us help it let help us with that. And then um another large item in this area of the budget is our financial software we pay for and our benefits and sub and um reg on um onboarding and offboarding software. And then I also pay for the school's bookkeeper
076software out of this line and then any kind of tax forms that we need for the end of the school year. And then I attend two to three conferences a year and then um any kind of equipment we need for our offices. And this is around um 500 anywhere from 587 to 595 of the budget. Um 399 is for my software. We use all our software. Next section is um operation of the plant. We have 33 custodians that are paid out this line. um all of their benefits and then um take care of their uniforms, take care of electricity, natural gas, water for the schools, um any kind of cleaning supplies that they need. Um this is around $3 million of the budget. How many custodians are that? Um right now I have total of
07733 and they all we have some extra days built in. um for summer if we need to bring in some for cleaning floors and all of that. But we have um not all 33 are full-time. We have some part-time and some full-time at each one of the locations. I didn't realize we provided them uniforms. I guess I'm out of that. Um that's to pay for their lawn. I'm sorry. Not I'm sorry. It's not their uniforms. It's like um mats and I'm getting confused with down on in the budget cuz it's like mats and it's like anything like because we used to use a service for that front door mats. Um Oh, okay. Okay. Got up town. We do we do uniforms down on down. I'm sorry. I talked to several of those guys and they
078didn't have any uniforms. So, that makes sense. My notes wrong right here. Sorry. the uniforms, like she says, a little further down and it's dealing with your maintenance and your transportation mechanics. Uh they're getting the uniforms and taken care of. They um we used to use a service for that and they were um not doing so well for us. So, we decided to go ahead and purchase all of that, all of the mats and the mop heads and all of that in house. And it saved us quite a bit of money to do that. you know, uniforms wouldn't be that. It kind of be a safety issue because if they've got on a uniform, you of course as a janitor or whatever. But I just thought we'd really gotten good here. Sorry. I know it
079was wrong. Um the next section is maintenance of the plant. This is one um supervisor and then we have nine employees, nine maintenance employees and those are split between maintenance and HVAC. So they're not all maintenance. Some handle HVAC parts, some handled just regular maintenance at the schools. Um this takes care of any kind of repairs to the buildings, any kind of repairs to the equipments. Um, we pay for our every year we have to train comes in and gives us a um, and I don't know a lot of you probably weren't here and I wasn't here for the all the the equipment that was installed on our um, HBA HVAC units. And so every year they come in and they present our savings to us. And so um, we have to give a portion
080of those savings back to them. So that out of the line 399 that's what a majority of that amount is in that line. Um and then al obviously any services that we would pay for like crane services or that we would need paper products, field maintenance, professional development, any kind of equipment we need to purchase like lawn if you have a lawnmower truck or that we need to replace. Um, and then we pay for the lease that paints the fields out of this line, that new, um, piece of equipment we purchased last year that paints all of our athletic fields. And the supervisor will even just even if you're just bored one day and need to talk, he'll just talk to you. He likes to talk. This is around $1 million of the budget. transportation.
081Um there's one director, we have three mechanics, and then two of those mechanics. All of those mechanics help drive the buses, but we have some overtime built in um for a few of them if we need them to come back and do their normal um duties after they get off the bus. And then we have um 49 bus drivers, 23 sped bus drivers. Um a lot of those are some of those are subs. So we do keep some subs on staff in case we can't um our normal bus drivers are out or only we have one office staff. We pay for some extra labor for another employee or extra time for another employee to help with paperwork. um their benefits. Um April, do you know what the average amount of hours a bus driver does
082a day? I know they've got the morning shift. Okay. Four hours. Okay. If there's sped, they might do a little bit more, but if they're sped is a whole quite a bit more, but but normal is four. Four. Okay. That's pretty well what we kind of go the the figure we go with usually is four. That's kind of confusing because we don't have 73 bus drivers total substitutes. We cover the mechanics uniforms um pay for diesel and fuel out of these line for the buses and for our maintenance truck um for our um transportation vehicles and then um pay for cameras for the bus, any replacement cameras we might need. um professional development. We pay for MVRs for our drivers, any kind of tow bills we would need and then um looking to purchase a
083new piece of equipment for called AC recovery um machine for this next school year. The buses, we currently don't bust, we don't budget, we are all are going to ask the county commission for three buses. Um those normally aren't included buses and the county commission usually takes care of the buses for us. That's why you don't see any buses in here. This is around $2.9 to $3 million of the budget with a $22 million fund balance. What's to stop the county from saying you buy your own buses? Nothing. actually covered. So that'll be part of my presentation when I go to present this to budget finance. We'll have to ask for what we need at that time. The next section we really don't I just I will just mention um the reason it's on here
084is because we gave some extra pay last year and FI24, but we currently don't cover any um any of food service other than helping with some cafeteria monitors part-time and all that. But that is generally covered and elsewhere in the budget. So, we don't really need to talk about this next section, community services. Um, this is extra labor. So, like if we if we um provide buses for the city, this is where we pay for our city bus trips out of. So, if they need a bus for a field trip, we will provide that and they will reimburse us back for that. Um, this is Carrie, our F FRC director. And then we also pay for crossing guard out of that top line top third fourth line. We pay for two crossing guards. One at
085the middle school and one extra labor for crossing guards middle school and then Raider Academy. It's not the middle school is I think is it middle school? Yes, he gets extra labor. That's right. My my my mistake. You're right. And then we also have one that helps at the high school. Middle school. And later on down in the budget, we also have a city um police officer that helps with that area. We in the city the Manchester city invoices for that. So we have total of four crossing guards that help at the middle school, high school and Raider Academy. And then um just some comp just some travel for the direct FRC director. Um, so this is around 127 to 128 of the budget. Um, next section is our early childhood section. This is seven
086teachers. This is our prek area of the budget. We have seven teachers, eight aids. We um and then part of the part of the elementary education supervisor is paid out of this area. Um we take care of any curriculum that we need, any instructional supplies. Those teachers get instructional money as well and they also get departmental money. Um and then any kind of you know supplies or travel or staff development we need for that area. This is one about $1 million of the budget. Next section is capital outlay. So generally we put just flat amounts in this area and then projects come up as we need to talk about them and those go through the capital projects committee. Um this year I decided to split it a little differently. Usually we do 400 in furniture
087and 200 in capital. Um I felt the need that for to put more in capital this year because we are seeing a lot of increased cost and cap and just increased projects. There's things that are going on that we're talking like talking about now maybe for next school year. So um I decided just to split that a little bit differently, but generally we usually put around $600,000 in this budget. And there's no list that you know supports this. This is just usually flat numbers that are put in there. Um, so we can continue to replace furniture and and do some capital projects as they come up. The next section is um debt services. So this is the um what we have to pay the county back for the train um implementation that happened. I don't
088know what year it was prior me. So I think we have to pay them this is for the bond. We have to pay them back until I think it's 2031. So you'll continue to see this in the budget for the next several years. So this is the amount we'll have to pay for the county. And then um transfers out. There's nothing in that section. So total expenditures you can see. Um question on the the transfers out. We don't see the 142 budget, right? So that's just a direct funding Christmas programs here. But well, I think she will present it to you once we get final final allocations for the next school year. you'll have to approve it. But we had talked about since there's cut in federal funds is that we had talked about a
089potential for maybe supplementing from the 141 budget and that would fall within this line if we had to do that. I know we there just was some preliminary talk because we haven't seen that in those maybe so like this well this area of the budget would be like if so you think about the S3 years when we had um so federal funds are reimbursement based so like you spend the money and then you have to ask for it you have to go submit a re reimbursement for it so during the Esther times that was really difficult because we would have a large project and we would have to basically pay for that project and then we would have to go ask for the funds back. Well, then you're also trying to run payroll out of
090that out of that same, you know, same amount of money. So, this section really is if like if federal got in a really hot cash position, we could transfer some cash from general to federal. Okay? But if we were to supplement, we would just you would see it in the salary line. So, we would pick up a portion of someone's salary. So you would see it like in the regular instruction section of the budget, but we would still have to do a transfer from which isn't just a budget amendment, but you're transferring from 141 to 142 fund. Right. Right. So you would see a transfer you would see a budget amendment from me that says, okay, we need to add this much money because we're losing federal funds. I would give you a budget amendment
091that said that. And then also we would have an in-house transfer form that we would use for payroll. Okay? And that would be how we would transfer that employee. But there's nothing really special about transferring from one fund to another that you know beyond what our normal budget a little bit of a process but it's not it's not okay. Would you be transferring or just taking it out of regular budget like federal paying 50 and general for example 5050. No that's what she was saying. Yeah. So what we would do so you don't really give it to right her no fund you just take it out of general school. Yes ma'am. So like say we had to split one two of our employees 50%. That's done a lot anyway. It is. We have several employees
092that are split, right? So just be supplementing what she needed. Yeah. But I mean that that's still coming, right? So we're going to have to look at that one and see what Okay. So to see what we might need to do. Okay. So I was just curious on that process. So, I'm looking at this uh increase decrease of fund balance here on this bottom line. So, that pretty much shows us depending on what we decide to do as far as uh extending a raise this year, just how much it's going to hit the fund balance. So, if you look at if you look at um I'm estimating if you look at the column for this year, I'm estimating we're going to add to fund balance. Um my estimate right now is a million dollars. It
093that could go down, could go up based on, you know, revenues and all that expenditures if we have anything large items that come in that or something that happens we don't plan for. Um and then I'm showing the 2% will hit fund balance for $446,8418. the 3% 810,327 um 4% around 1.1 and then the flat and the 3% around 1.2. These are like very worst case scenarios like you know I mentioned in the budget where I have just fixed amounts of like you know equipment in case we need it. So, you know, we potentially wouldn't spend all of those funds. Those are just built in in in the situation that, you know, we have to replace like, you know, a whole classroom's equipment or something like that. So, I don't this is worst case. You
094might remember I didn't budget anything extra for revenue for property tax, but I know that will go up some a little bit. So, this is just worst case scenario. If the worst happens, we will hit fund balance for these amounts. I know I know a lot last year when we done the 7%. I do remember all of the numbers when the numbers started coming through and the numbers came in. That's what allowed us to do that seven and really ease up on this year and next year's intention. How do you feel? Because I think I asked you the same question last year and the year before and the year. No, maybe not the year before that, but uh uh is this a leap year as we call it? And and and what we've done in
095the past and the way we have went in the past, is this a 3% year or a four now and then ease up even more next year on the last year? I know I know we've done that every year. We've just wondered if this is a good year or intention or not. So my general thought is that you know we said we 7% we thought 7% was going to push us and we were actually going to hit fund balance like that that was the first year I think we communicated said we probably will hit fund balance this year and I'm not right now I think I think the push was a five started a three then eased up to a five but yeah so if you if you add to fund balance and I really
096like my personal opinion and that's just my personal opinion Dr. Kyle can make his recommendation on what he wants to do. But I think we keep pushing to the plan that we've put in place to, you know, keep the teachers progressing. My concern is we don't do as much this year, then next year the funding we have to pick up, you know, other things in the budget. We may not be able to do the 4% if we do 2%. or maybe maybe we have to pick that up this year and it really stretches to 3%. But you know, we've built we've worked on pay scales and we to try to get there and I think you know if we're going to add to fund balance this year and this is the worst case scenario then
097you know I think we stay with the plan of what we've worked on for the last three years and try to keep going with the 3% to get us there by the next school year. So you think just roll with the three and a three and not try to do a four and a two possibly? I mean that's up to that's that's where Well, but what what I'm saying is this the same question I've asked every year. Does this feel like because everything you've talked about this whole time going through this entire budget, we're expecting more. We're expecting more. We're expecting more. We're expecting more just off of the appearances in the books. And yet I'm just asking the same thing I've asked every year. Do you think this is another leap year to possibly
098chisel another percent out or and really just get this project took care of quicker? Obviously, yes. That would get us a lot closer, you know, to getting to that 50,000 um because I have faith in what you say because we've not hit fund balance yet doing this. So, um I think I did the I looked at the salary schedule. I looked at the people that Let me find that. I looked at the people that were currently under 50. And I'd try to look at and see how many if we did between the two and the three and the four, how many people that would affect y'all? Just give me a minute. I'm going to look at the pay scale. So, if we just do a 2% only year three goes above. So, like if you
099look at the salary schedule, year three um goes above the 50,000. Um, if you look at the 3%, you go to two, two and three go above 50. And then if you look at the 4%, it's still two and three. So you still would have those, you know, new teachers and the newer teachers that you would worry about. So I don't think between the three and the four it really cuts your list down any of those people that are below 50, but definitely between the two and the three. Like if you went two, you would have more people to figure out next year. Yeah. And then, you know, if you chose the three, you would have less, but then the four doesn't really change a whole lot for that. So, my biggest concern is not
100necessarily how many and when we get them to that point. I signed on to this many years ago and understood it throughout it. My issue is next year being our final year, we've got programs. We're level to have to pick up a lot more extra pay and a lot of things for next year, possibly next year. We don't know that. So if this year is an opportunity to jump ahead again and leap, then next year we're not hit so hard to look at something of this nature when we're having to actually fully employ some people that's never been employed here or you know what I paid for my and so like you know next year there's other options. You know, you can it'd be less to give a flat, right? Like you could give a
101flat. You could take care of those two if you gave a 4% this year or 3%. You it'd be, you know, if we got strapped next year and we couldn't do the 3%, we could look at, you know, a flat raise for the certified and that would be potentially a little more um little cost a little less money. Yeah. You know, if we had to get there, we would just give a flat across the board. And that's kind of why I tried to show um the flat this year. So that flat I showed this year we get everybody there. And that wasn't for me pushing a budget on y'all. I just thought there was enough interest for to see what it would cost us to get there. So if we went a flat this year
102and gave a 3% to our classified um it would cost around. But um yeah. So like obviously if you did the three next year you could do the flat, but if you did the four it would be less than a flat. You just have to figure out less money for next year. But then also because I'm I am super worried and I think some others are too and they've voiced it before about a lot of title funding and a lot of positions. I think the last time we talked about there's possibly 24 to 30 somewhere around in there employees that kind of at risk. Yes. That are at risk. You do. And then has 20 and then title two has three and three three and a half. So if this So if this goes south
103with this federal funding next year, we've got to have an escape plan for that or otherwise we start handing out slips and that's the only way you can look. Yeah, that's all we want to do. Yeah, but whatever raise we give this year is then cooked in. So you're going to add on to that next year anyway. So, it's, you know, it it depends on how much you throw on it this year versus next year. But the three the if we did 3% this year, that would be cooked in and you're going to add on top of that 3% I guess. Or two or two. Yeah. Or two or whatever it takes to get us there. Yeah. Or a flat next year that's just a minor flat to a few people to meet the guidelines.
104Right. Yeah. On our last year, if it even comes to that. Yeah. Right. And free us up from a worry of a hit next year because of the extra people we pos, right? Hopefully it's a perfect world and and they still get their funding and Right. Yeah. Hey, we just jumped up quicker. Just your salary baseline is going to be higher because you've already given them the raise this year. So you're stayed ahead of Mr. Pal and the city. Yeah. There's 40 I think 43 employees that are on the below 50. Thank you. Free to her. She's smiling. And if you gave a three a 3% that would that would leave around 13 this year. That would leave around 13. You're going to add to that because you're going to have new new people coming
105out of college. You're going to start on year zero. Yeah, probably. So, I mean, you're going to add that some to that number. But are those are those 13 that would be left next year if you didn't add any new really really really close. Yeah, those are people that are on year three that would be on year three. What kind of turnover do we normally get every year? Year two and three. Um we typically have we really won't know that. Um, but we see, you know, we see a we see a lot that comes not we lose experienced people and we're bringing in inexperienced people at the lower end of the pay scale. You know, I mean, I think we'll see we'll start to see a lot of a lot of that with our older,
106you know, experienced teachers that have their years in that are ready to retire. I think we have a lot in that c a lot on that in that category that could potentially do it in the in the next few years. So you will see an increase in those number of people for that reason. So the whole budget thing is just a shot in the dark anyway. An educated guess I guess swag. We typically don't, you know, we we know some positions, but we typically don't find that out until usually around Mayish. May, you know, they'll turn in their sheets if they're typically try to talk to their principal. We don't always know everyone that's leaving though. I've noticed we get those reports from Miss Melissa of people in people out that's stays busy. Mr. Bard
107and one other caveat to that is a lot of times when we hire a new employee to fill a teaching position especially special education a lot of times they're not at the bottom. Yeah. 10 12 13 years. So you don't always know. Yeah. So, so it really is a swag. Okay, I got it. April, you may have already told us this, but what is the amount of federal funds that'll be in our total in our budget this year? Oh, well, that's hard to say because we don't get our um allocations and we don't have any idea when we um will get them this year. So your title budget is usually about how much? 80 and then we have Charlie that's Yeah. And then around00. So around three million in total for federal funds. Yeah, I'd
108say that's probably accurate. Pretty close. I would say about 500,000. Okay. That does include school lunches, which is all USDA. Yeah. Yeah. What about I've had after last week's meeting, I've had this is and I've got to throw this out there because I've had several people to What about since we've got uh we seem to be a year ahead, what about if we just stay where we're at for this year with the all the unknowns that we've got coming from feds if they do away with all the unknowns that we've got with the money coming in. it if we just stayed where we were at and didn't do anything and I know we'd lose the TISA money but we would also gain half a million dollars in the money that we would come out of
109our balance fund right so when you say stay where we're at you're talking about just keep what we've got stay on this year's budget just stay on this year's budget okay so a little a few things just to mention about that is no one would get their step raise so like anybody that was moving to another of the no one would get that and then there's a bunch of fixed costs that would have to be amended. So I would have to do um a lot a budget amendment. So like you know there's a lot of things in the budget that have changed this year that would have to be amended for next year. Um because if we did that it would just be the it would just be the July one budget and so we
110would have to do a ton of amendments. So that budget but keep in mind no one would get their step. So like if teachers were going for that 24th year to the 25th year, they would say at year 24. The other thing that that we do run into on a regular basis is it is education, but we are competing for the the workers that we have in the the teachers, the custodians, the whatever you want to say from all the the area districts that's around us. And we have to be competitive with those groups and and it shows up because because Coffee County got behind uh quite a bit uh several years ago and and that does create the the transfer on a regular basis and and then our our principles are trying to find
111somebody to come in, not able to find somebody uh whatever position. And it's not just teachers, it's all positions and and every position we have, of course, in the school system is is definitely needed. Otherwise, it's we don't need to have it. Uh but we got to keep in mind Manchester City is going to be looking at trying to give a raise to to make it so that they can pull our teachers. Our we're our goal is to keep our our employees. Uh would love to take our teachers and our employees. So, anything that we could do, our people are working really hard and and and it's not just teachers, it's everybody is is working hard and any way we can and and Mr. Cordell said it many times, uh, put put the money into
112our people and Yes. and it's going to make us successful and and I think if we can continue to do so and keep us competitive with our our local other ones that's touching us in the counties and so forth, uh it's it's only going to be a plus to Cuff County schools. Miss Hanner, are you speaking of just freezing salaries or freezing the whole budget to go back this past year's budget for next year or just a salary schedule? Well, it's up for discussion. I mean we can they you know since we got such a got a 7% raise last year and this is a consensus from a lot of people that I got phone calls from is you know if we didn't do anything with the uncertainty of them doing away with the the
113federal education program uh and even you know as Cole was said you know we don't know what we're going to be getting so this might be a good year just to cool and uh not do anything as far as uh maybe it's up for discussion. See what everybody else think. We could leave the budget where it's at, freeze the salaries, you know, it's up for discussion. It's just an idea. That's what we're doing here, you know, and that was that was a question. Are you are you looking at are you making a suggestion to be considered just freezing salaries for this next year or going back to the 2425 budget the whole budget for next year? We could we could consider freezing the salaries. Okay. So you're looking at salaries only. Yeah, we could just
114freeze the budget. You're gonna Mr. Chair whatever the motion is made. Mr. Sure. I got the the thing is our federal programs and and and I I I direct the question to to Miss Cole. I remember ever since my first year being a principal in 2003, anybody that went into federal programs with Title One, whenever they took that job, I remember telling every one of them, "Do you understand this is could be just for one year? Th this this could be for just one year. Is that right, Miss Cole? And and it's to me it there might be a little bit more chance this year, but to me there's no different. It's never been a certainty on our federal funds. Every year is always I just don't know what's going to come in. And and
115and Miss Cole is is very much on her budget, but that's something that we have always had problems with. Um, so I don't see it being different this year either. It it's still could go away, but for the past 22 years, I've had that same thing. Is that right? So, I'm always cautious. This year just feels a little different. This upcoming year just feels different. We're in a different climate, different place. And you either you either get the funding or next year if you don't you fire 27 people. We've never disbanded a or 35 or 40 people. Yeah. I guess what the feeling from everybody is that we've never disbanded the federal school system. That's true. That this is a first. You are exactly right. We have You can say what you want to say,
116but we have never never disbanded a federal school system before. And this we are we are in uncharted waters guys. And we've he same one that we got. basically had a word in there that said look at personnel how they're funded because but everything I got the same one and and I thought it said for next year pretty much plan on having the same monies that you had this year no change yeah they want us to look or not or basic they said when you're the one I read when you're budgeting they're going to give us that number to give us something to work with but that doesn't mean I got No, anytime you do away with a department, it shows it's not a priority anymore. So, that's what we got to really realize. Uh
117it's not a education is not a priority. Public education is not going to be a public priority. Uh if they're doing it, you know, it's just sad. And uh hopefully hopefully that won't happen. Absolutely. Absolutely. But we have to be we have to be cautious in what we're doing because we don't want to get you know and and this just seems like it might be a good year just to coast and see what what happens and you know nobody's going to lose nothing but I just want to make a reminder here too that it is April 10th. We have a board meeting coming up on the 15th where we need to approve a budget and it needs to go to the county. Um it can be, you know, uh the county budget and finance meeting
118is April 24th. So we've kind of committed to get them getting him a budget at that point. There's a little bit of time to I mean they really need it by May 1st, but April 24th is when the uh budget and finance committee meets. So we are running out of time to do endless budget revisions. And you know that's that's really something to take into account because it is a lot of work to put this together and we you know to go back and do yet another budget revision you already got four options on the table here and to do yet another one I would say you're running out of time to do that stuff. Mr. Chair make a comment. We have a very good fund balance right now and like the federal budget, we
119don't know what's going to happen, but with our with our fund balance right now, leaving not using it for anything could could possibly lead to county saying, "Well, you've got this much money. You need to take care of these things instead of asking us to take care of them." Example, school buses. Uh buildings do what? Buildings. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you're throwing things out, that's something to think about. Uh I'm not disagreeing with what Mr. Hendrick's saying. I'm just saying we have to look at some other things also. Um because we we probably no problem to it. I think we have a larger fund balance, Gary. And you can correct me. We've always had a larger fund balance than the county has. Yeah. as far as a school system versus the Coffee County budget.
120Is that correct? Well, on his point of reference, I think the state requires what a 3% fund balance and That's correct. 3% of expenditures expend substantially. So, we're we're way above that. Thank you. And I'm not saying we need to spend the money because you can't you can't spend your you can't spend your savings account from now on out because if you don't, you're going to lose it. But on the other hand, since we're asking other entities for money, then that's something we need to think about, I think. Good, bad, or indifferent. As I as I said the other night in the in the uh salary and compensation meeting, we're in the education industry. We're not in a money-making industry. We're not in a money saving industry. unless at all possible. There is no reason
121we should be setting on a fund balance of this size. That that's what the money is sent to us for and give to us for is to continuously and constantly try to improve the quality of education for our students and the conditions for our staff. That that that's what the money's for. And and like I said in the meeting the other night, for 10 years before that I know of having been in dealings with the the board, the school board here in C County, uh they succeeded and done just fine for 10 to 15 years. I haven't found a budget much over 5.5 million and one lower than about three and a half million for 10 to 15 years before a fund balance gross fund balance restricted and unrestricted. I think I think Mr. pal
122definitely on a point right there of uh having this kind of fund balance setting here that is not going anywhere because we should be spending it on education further comments here we probably need to move on because we've been spending spent two hours already on this one but uh we are going to have to vote next Tuesday on one of these four budget options and we can make a recommendation here on which one we're going to do or I guess April you can give us four options to vote on and we can make a motion at the meeting. I you know we can go two ways on That's normally how I think usually this budget carries on into the meeting and then someone will make a motion, right, to go with one of these to
123go with one of these. And so this usually the director would give Yeah, this is to explain this meeting is to explain and clarify any questions you might have on these different options and we will vote on one of these four. Um, I I personally, you know, and this group can can certainly make other recommendations, but I just don't think we have time to prepare yet another budget option. I I just that's, you know, so I would say we really need to look at one of these four and and vote on on and approve that. Um, as Mr. Gilly said we decided on a plan two or three years ago that where we'd step things up by year and I think we're on track to do that and you know so that this kind of
124one of these budgets will get us there and then we'll have to you know look at what you know whether it's a two or 3% next year we can do that. So um any further comments and or we can move on to the food budget. Mr. Chairman, one other thing. I think I I made a point before. Um, you have three four options here, I guess. Three, two, three, four, and a flat rate. Under my circumstances, I will not make a recommendation for a percentage increase. That will have to come from the board. Even though it may theoretically come from the director, under my circumstances, I would not like to have that responsibility. I'd be glad to if you want me to. We haven't talked about an increase in Manchester City, so I don't know
125what that amounts to. It may be two, it may be five, it may be seven. I have no earthly idea right now. But my only my recommendation will be on the salary end of the budget that whatever we pay one group, we need to pay all the groups the same thing. Whatever that percent may be or whatever that flat rate may be, not not pull them out at this point in time. if that's something that the board feels like needs to be done, I think you've got another year to work on that. But you've got four options here about what you want to do for an increase and and I respect that. Mr. Chair, I appreciate Dr. pal what he just said because that shows you also how big this is between the school systems
126and how much it can make a difference in what's going on between Manchester and Coffee County schools is it can it can make a difference in what happens with our employees and and what happens in that that line. So and I appreciate that. there. Well, we got a lot of stuff to consider between now and I guess I would We've been at this for two hours, so I'd like to take Well, can I say something first? Sure. I just wanted to thank Miss Millson. You do a fabulous job. This is amazing. You work so hard. We appreciate you and you put up with a lot. Please don't leave us. We love you. Absolutely. I wanted to say that this is this is incredible. the work that went into this where she spent the majority of
127time she and I spent that's amazing at least two or three different meetings going over item by item line by item of this budget and and uh you know I feel good about it the pay increases I hadn't seen the 2% because that was put in after we looked over it but it's in here now but that's that's something to consider but uh you know all in all I think it's a good budget for for this school system now if Dr. bond comes up and wants to give a 7% I'll probably vote for it. If he says 3% I'll probably vote for it. If he says a 2% I'll probably vote for it. I just want to I just want to be transparent with you folks as I can. Dr. Pal, I just want to
128thank you and Miss Nelson for this. All the time that I've been on the school board, I've never seen such a a good presentation and a con of of the budget. It really it really is helpful. Yeah. Thank y'all so much. This is I've never seen this before and thank you. She spent a lot of time on initiating that Dr. because it's it gives us a better understanding of everything. What time we supposed to eat, Melissa? After we get Yeah, let's I'm ready for a short break. We just couple options. We can take a quick break now and then maybe eat at noon and or or after we get through the the um the items two and three on the agenda, we can eat after that. But we can I'm ready for a break, too.
129So yeah, five minute break and then back and we'll look at the nutrition budget. All right, we're back after a much needed break. So, uh I think Holly will be back in just a minute, but uh we can get going with the uh nutrition budget with the 143 fund. Yes. And that would be me. All right. Carllin Cotton. I'm the over in school nutrition. Um, I have my own budget. So, I do mine completely separate from April's. So, I have revenue and expenses and a fund balance that are separate. So, I am a self sustaining budget, which means that I should have enough revenues to cover my expenses. And if I have, of course, more revenues, I add to fund balance and less I take from fund balance. Um, I used April's template so that
130would be consistent. Uh, so you could understand it just like the other. My revenues, we can start with that. I believe that's the first page. I'm not sure. I haven't looked at it in here. Yes, it is revenues. My revenues consist of the first educational charges are um paying students and the amount that I also get from reduced meals. So these are lunch broken down to lunch, adult and breakfast payments I receive as well as all the cart sales. So anything we sell like ice cream and other items, those come in. It has been going down the last few years. Um I I'm not sure what the reason is. not as many kids are eating or we have a lot of free and reduced kids as well. So, you know, reduced only pays 40 cents
131in uh for lunch and 30 cents for breakfast. So, I went ahead and was we got probably this year went down. I just went ahead and budgeted it for what it's been for the last for this year for next year. um investment income that is I have an account at Coffee County Bank that um the all the managers any money they get in they deposit it into that and then I get interest off of that account. Now what I do every so often I guess April does it she writes a check out we transfer that money from that account over to the trustee so we have it in there. Um, so that's my and I also have a CD which is I think 200,000 and that CD gets interest as well. Um, I get a
132every year I get a state matching grant and it's usually around 22,000. Um, this year I got it for 22,253. It's based on how many lunches I served last year. that is used to pay for um things like travel for training and um anything involving training as well as it goes to pay for your director's fees like my my salary. Um federal revenue that is the money I get in from the USDA. So that is a federal amount. So, every month I take the amount of free and reduced and paid meals and I submit that to the state and they send me money back through the trustee department based on their federal rates. So, that usually goes up every year. The federal rates go up a little bit. So, that's why it increases every year.
133Um, so that's my revenue. Um, I also under other I I usually get a fresh fruit and vegetable grant, but I never know that till June. This year I got it. It was 88,000 and paid for the schools to all have fresh fruit and vegetables during the day as a snack, which is really great. It's just elementary schools that do it. Um, so if I get that again this year, I'll add that on, but I never know until June whether I get that or not. I've applied and I usually get it. Uh, as a matter of fact, I've gotten every school for the last couple years. So, I don't know. It's up in the air, but hopefully. So, that's my revenue. Uh, my expenses is they are mainly the wages and food cost. All of
134my wages and all the associated cost I get from April because April, they do my payroll. So, she just supplies me the numbers so they are consistent with what she has with everybody else. and I just plug them in. So, she gives me my medical insurance, dental insurance, everything other than when we get down to food and food preparation supplies. Now, my food has gone up consistently because I don't know if you've been to the grocery store, but you know, it it's going up. So, my food costs have gone up every year. So, that's just a quick question that I can't really do anything about. How much how much of our food do we buy locally from local farmers and beef producers and we do get some local food but not much. Okay. Some of
135it comes from Shelbyville. Okay. And they it's a we have to go through uh we contract with the buyer and they they provide some. Have we looked at I know a number of local schools in the in the area have. I tried to go through a couple years ago to buy some lettuce, but they really couldn't even they could not even feed one school. They just the the amount's just crazy. Then I tried to get strawberries and they had told me they would do them, but when it came down to it, they could not do. So, I did not get them. Okay. So, I have tried and I actually went to farm to school meeting the other day and met some uh different farmers and producers in the in the local area and we could
136try. It's just we need so much. It's it's hard. But I am looking at that. I would like to do that more. I agree. Yeah. And you know, Hickerson, we use some of the food that's grown at Hickerson, you know, in their little garden. We actually use some of that food. It's just that's a small school and you can do that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Um, so I have all of my my expenses. It basically mine is very short and sweet. It's two pages. And unfortunately, every year I have been able to in the past 10 years go ahead and cover except for last year I was 2,000. I used 2,000 out of fund balance. But this year we're going to be over about 245,000. And the main reason for that is we've
137continually increased our wages, which is great. We went from 858 to 1308 is our lowest, which is wonderful. We needed that. But I have to cover my cost somehow. So, um, what I'm going to have to do is increase student meal prices to cover that, which is needed. It has not been done the 10 years I've been here. And I was okay with losing some fund balance because I have a large fund balance right now. And I would rather have used some of that to help out our people this year and cover not increase the prices for as long as I could rather than have done it in advance. But now the time's come and we are going to have to do that. But along with last year I got um I guess it was
138a co grant was supply issue grant. I didn't have to apply for it. They just gave it to me. It was 107,000. So that just showed up you know. So last year I thought maybe it'll just show up again. It has not shown up and at last we're not getting it. That was wishful thinking. So I've lost that. I have lost um you know the the fact that we've gone up on wages and my food prices have just soared. But also, every time we miss a day for school, out school for snow or inclement weather, that cost me about $8,000 because we pay out for salaries, but I don't have any revenue coming in. So, we missed what 10 days. So, that's about 80,000 that I was out for this year because we missed a
139lot of days this year. And I mean that's okay, but just keep in mind that I have to pay regardless of whether we're here or not, but I don't feed kids those days. There's no money coming in to cover that. So that explains why. So that is why on the number the next item on the agenda is to increase our um you know school prices for kids. Should we go ahead and she's already knock it off the I I would say don't have any problem talking about the I mean because about my budget do you have any questions about it? Um it's very straightforward. There's nothing. It's just really salaries and food is the main expenses and then revenue is just what I get in from kids eating whether it's free, reduced or paid. I
140have looked at uh doing the free C program. Um I am I have asked for an extension. That deadline for that is June 1st. And I want to have a director who wants to do that and supports it because it makes all the difference in the world because they push meals being sold in the schools and I need a director that backs me on that. So um and I'm very tight on that. I had a state person look at my numbers and he said I was right on the line from being successful or not. So I really would want a a director to but I did not put that in here and it will not matter really for the budget. So this is the budget that we have. Mr. Chairman, could I ask Miss Carl
141just to briefly tell you how our our foods are purchased and how we get them as far as the bid process and all that? Oh yes. I'm a member of a co-op. Well, they don't know that's what I am. Yes. All my food is um that I get well a lot of our products that we do we have contracts through VCO which is a volunteer co-op program. We have we started when I started we had like 23 districts now we have 43 and what that does is they do all of our bidding for big items especially our food. And it allows us to get the lowest price possible because when you take 43 districts and are looking at buying, then you're talking about a much lower cost and then we all go through the same
142company for our our commodities and we get a we get a lower cost on that as well. So we are really doing well. We're we're doing better than most districts that are not in it. Manchester City's part of it, too, and To's part of it. So, we all do that. So, we get really good prices, and we all get the same prices because we're all buying from the same vendors. So, it's pretty uniform. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, the other day when we was talking, Amber made reference to u your help. Uh, you they work two hours, four hours, and six hours a day. No, not two. I have four, four and a half. Most of mine are either four and a half. I have some five and I have some six and then my
143managers are eight. Could you make that mandatory? And what I mean that's got to be hectic on you. No, it really works the best. I have employees that do that just do this like they're retired and they just want to come in and work four hours a day, you know, and that really helps us because we just put them during our most hectic hours like when we're fixing the food, you know, or we put them at lunchtime so they're serving the food. So each manager decides that, but really it would be hard. I I don't have it in my budget to increase everybody to six hours, nor do I have employees that want to work six hours. you know, they want they don't need the insurance. They just want to come work four hours and
144just do it as an extra on top of retirement. Or maybe they have kids at home and they just want an extra job. So, yeah. I was just thinking would it make it easier on our financing to, you know, wherever and and commend you to for giving a raise going from eight hours from $8 an hour to 13. Uh that's fantastic. You know, it's not really needed for me though to have those. I don't need all full-time. And I need them there at different times versus everybody there for that six hours. So, it's not a big deal to keep it the way that it is then. No. Okay. I like it the way it is. And I would say my managers would agree. Okay. Good. Good. And like I said, that some people come in
145here, they just want part-time work, and that's fine. That's a great spot for them, honestly. Sure. Yeah. Thank you very much. Appreciate everything you do. So, Carlin, does does Tele do they do all their students get lunch free? Yeah, that's that program. Manchester City, does Manchester City students? No, they do not. They do not. I remember Carl. I remember when Chanel was up here, she had it all ready to go and it was was not um probably shouldn't say that in public, but it was not uh allowed to continue. And uh I'm hoping that that can happen now because that would help everybody, right? It would. It helped teachers with kids. It would help anybody that had a child that could eat free. And I really would want to do the whole district, right? versus
146individual schools. And that's what I'm looking at. Like I said, what you've done is a lot of work because it's not just something just, okay, I want to do this. You've got to show all the information that we're that we are uh eligible and get all that. So, so I commend you for that. Well, I would just need to have high participation. Um, they would have to eat breakfast. I mean, I would have to get as many eating breakfast. We do not have great breakfast participation. So, it would be a step for the principles to and I know they're busy and we'd have to figure out a way to make sure every student got an opportunity. Well, and that's the thing is is the principles buying in, isn't it? Yes. And that's why I need
147director to help me. And I our principles are fantastic and I know they want to do everything, but sometimes food service is not high priority as much as you know, they've got so much on their plate. So much. But if he ever got it going and got it Yes. If we could and I had a director that every child have breakfast and and lunch and and I think I think they would eat then they're not going to have to worry about agree. You just go through the line and get your food. So we'd have to come up with about $400,000. Is that about what it would based on your revenues from children lunch payments and breakfast income? Would that be roughly about $400,000 to go free on everything for next year? last year. This year
148I have 245,000 out of fund balance this year. And so I have I mean we have um I put on here what my fund balance is right now. It's um like 2.1 2 million. Yeah. So I have to have about 980,000 in there to cover three months operating expenses. So I have I have money. It's just okay. I don't want to use it every year. That's why I think we need to increase the prices, but that'll be a mute point if some reason we do C, right? But that's something they have to the the state would have to agree to let me go past the deadline. If not, we can look at it for the next year. Okay. Is the um I used to work u not work but go to church at a church
149that uh we did the backpack program. Is that still essential? Essential to you or is that still Oh, yeah. They still do it. It's not done through me though. It's through FRC, right? They do that, right? But yes. Yes, that is essential. I know a lot of kids didn't get to eat summertime, you know, during the summer time. Well, and every a lot. What I'm going to try to do this year for summer is we feed not we feed the uh summer school kids of course. Yes, ma'am. For free. Yes, ma'am. And I am going to try to send home uh meals for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And we are going to probably open up to where we'll do seven-day packs for anybody that wants to drive through. That's what I'm working on. Yeah. I
150I didn't I didn't realize that till, you know, we we were doing those. We doing those backpack programs and really want to get that started this year. So, I'm in the process of doing the waiver and getting that approved. I feel like I will. So, appreciate you doing working with us on that as well. So, tell home all schools. It's high school. It's forever. They just this year. Just started this year. That just this year. Now I I think that's not going to cost the county any more money, is it? No. I still have to be self- sustaining to do that. If you were going to replace the revenue from breakfast and lunch payments, it would be about $400,000, right? And that is considered, you know, that they actually have a tool that helps you
151come up with that now. Okay. and I have filled in the tool and I had the state person come and look at it with me and you do have to put that in there. That's a consideration that that money is Yes, it would be have to be replaced but it it would not Yeah, it would be the lunch breakfast the adults is not cons you know in that. Right. Yeah. Right. So So somehow you got to make up that $400,000 you wouldn't get from revenue. So Right. Got That's where you have to serve a lot more meals because it it's a complicated formula. But I would go over all that with you if we decided to and it would probably pay for it almost pay for itself with the number of meals that you'll be
152serving it now. I don't think a lot of kids eat because just too much of a hassle. I agree. Well, there's lunch bowls and you know the easy things. So, but all right, let's talk about the um one thing. So, we've been working with the trustes office. So, we've asked for a couple years to do electronic payments to our vendors. Some of some of our vendors, a big one, Gordon Food Service offers a discount. Um, and we purchase a whole lot from them probably. Yes. Um, so we are going to be able to start taking that discount this next school year. So, that's like 1% of whatever she buys from them. So, we are trying to look in those manners to try to help her budget. Um, but the trustee has graciously let us to
153start letting us do that and we're going to do that across the board with any vendors that offer us a discount. Yeah. And several of mine do. Now, that would mean that we would have to pay weekly. So, whatever our food comes in, we would pay for it immediately. But if you have it directly withdrawn and not writing a check, that's very possible. Like we just submit a payment every week and then yes, I will get a discount. I did not put that in here because we weren't for sure, but it is going to happen. Is it Thank Mr. Marcos for that. He's he's let his uh folks work with us on that. So, that's going to be a new program for all of us and will save us some money, I think. Uh also,
154there's a bill before the House and the Senate. I wouldn't count on it happening, but there's a bill before the House and Senate that uh the state will pick up all lunch programs, breakfast and lunch, but that's going to be a big cost for them. And I don't know how far that is. And I'm sure it's gone through some committees, but uh it's there, but I wouldn't count on it to be honest with you. Uh there's another bill for them to pick up the reduced cost. Yes. So they they will not pay everybody's free, but they will pay for free and reduced. So they'll pick up the extra reduced. I could see that passing before I could see everybody, which would be helpful. I mean that although it's not a lot, yes, I want to
155say something. I do understand us needing to raise the prices. I get it. Food's expensive. If there is any way that we could find a way to cover this, increase prices. I have three kids in school. I know. I feel like I give them lunch money every single day. Like, I don't know what they're eating, but oh my goodness, it is adding up. And that's at the prices now. So, even though it doesn't seem like a lot, this will affect a lot of people. It will. And I hate that. so much and we've got all this money just sitting there our unassigned fund balance. It would be nice if we could I don't know how that works exactly. If we could throw it over this way that would be awesome. I mean general fund can
156help me but that's not generally how you operate. Yes. I I'm very aware that I don't understand this. I can't keep spending mine you know. Yeah. I because if I have a year where equipment goes out, I mean a piece of equipment for food service is you like 50,000 plus. So I really need to keep fund balance for situations. I understand. So Jennifer, are you talking about the price increase? So yes, we could just cover it. That would be great because I'm telling you it is adding that discussion too. I was so kind of just officially my bad. Sorry, I thought we had moved on to is increasing 50 cents. 50 cents for breakfast and 50 cents for lunch. Let's like I said, there has not been an increase in 10 years or more. When
157I came, these are the same prices I had when Chanel came. And that's crazy when you think about we've gone up on wages from 858, the the lowest to 1308. And food prices have doubled. I mean, that's just I mean, it's it's time. And you've done an amazing job at all this and keeping it the way that it is for so long. I just feel like I wanted to wait till we actually lost money to to justify it, but we the time has come. Oh, it's justified. I understand that. We can do it free next year for everybody because that that would be perfect. Yes. Like I said, if they'll allow me, they want to have directors on board with this and I understand that. Right. So, if they'll give me an extension So, is
158the price increase built into your revenue budget? No, because I didn't know we were going to get it. Okay. Not. I should be I mean it should help significantly. Would the um would the lunch price increase be something the board would have to vote on and officially approve? Yes. Okay. So, we would need a resolution of the next meeting in order to do that or at least discuss it. So, and you know, this may not cover it. It may be the next year if we don't get to feed for free that I may have to go up a little more. I'm just being very generous, you know. I mean, not not generous, but I'm being careful here. Trying to keep his I don't want I don't want people to feel like, oh, we went up
159a dollar. I think what we're considering I think what we're considering is one of her budget choices that she's provided in this document here with either an inclusion or not an inclusion. Yeah. No, I did not put that in there. It's I just kept it because I don't know whether we'll have meetings or not, right? I think that's the way I'm taking it. A three, what? Three, four, two, three, four, and 3% flat rate. Yeah. In here. That's what you know, that's what I was saying. If we I think what where we're headed to here is meeting considered one of those four with an inclusion or not an inclusion of a 50 cent price increase. Yeah. Because Well, if I don't have I'm still going to lose money if I don't have this. So, thank
160you for making the budget without padding it and telling us later that it's in there that we don't have to worry about it. The the only thing I being honest. Yeah, I I do not have it in there. The only thing I ask is if this uh if if an inclusion for the 50 cent would be carried with a motion to approve one of those budgets, what would the impact of that? How much? I I believe it'll cover it. That's a my my based on my projections that is a projection fund balance. That's what you're talking right projection. That's a projection with me saying this many people are going to eat but you know they may or may not eat. So I know a lot of families that didn't get the free and reduced this
161year that pack their lunches now and the kids don't want to. They want to eat the cafeteria food but it's just this doesn't make sense for their family's budget. So, I really believe that every child in these schools deserves to eat for free. We got to figure it out. I agree. That money that we're saving by uh Mr. Marone letting us do that was what? 2%. 1% 1% over how much money that we're spending. That's going to be over. It's going to be quite a bit of money. So we I mean it it will definitely help because my expenses for food are um let's see a,350,000 for next year. So we're 1% of that is yeah it's going to help. That could almost pay for our lunches. True. A concern we also have, it's been
162here for years and years and years, even probably when most you folks in school, the higher the grade level, the less applicants you're going to have for free use lunches. It's just the young young ones don't think that much about it, but when you get the middle school, especially the high school, uh, that number drops drastically. I think it used to. I'm sure it still does. Uh because those kids are just, you know, they they have a stigma about being on pre-duced lunches. But when they go through the line, there's nothing there. You used to have to have ticket used to have a ticket one time. Well, everybody saw the ticket handed out and then now I think they have a number that they're given and they punch that number in themselves. Uh and and
163of course after about the first three weeks of school, most of the uh food service cashiers know the students anyway and right and what have you. But that that's been a big problem. The older they get, they from a long time ago. Yeah. Well, we put the reg on the regist online registration. We put the free and reduced application on there. So when the parents go on to register, that's one of their steps is they fill that out. So that's helped tremendously because they don't have the option of really avoiding it. It's hard to avoid it. Let's put it that way. So when they register their children for the school year, they fill out the free reduced application. Used to you had to fill out a different card and hand that in. Yes. And they
164still can do that. People that's helped a lot. We may look at that. You know, that's close to $100,000, right? That we're saving about 1%. [Music] Let's see. I mean, that's money that we didn't have. We can we can not increase. I I'm recommending that we do just based on I I mean because my expenses are going to go up as well. My food costs are going up as well. So, and then if you give a raise that goes up as well. So, and if we miss any school days, that's money amount. So, I'm still looking at there's still going to be expenses that are going to increase. So, I think all not all of that 1.3 is Gordon, right? It's not. And right now, we only have that set with Gordon and we've had
165that for a couple years. we've just not been able to take. Right. So, I have milk discount. I have milk that comes out that's probably 100,000 of it. Um, but we can negotiate maybe negotiate with some other vendors so that to see if they would if we pay them early. I just I don't I see expenses to continue to go up for food. I don't So, it doesn't matter if I get that discount. It does help, but it may just help to keep it what it was this year. Right. You know, this is just a thought, but you know, you're saying say we're out 10 days. What if the school system reimbursed you for the amount that you lost in that program and that be a way of helping your program out from general school?
166I I mean, that's just something to think about because I know that is a factor that you miss out on that revenue and uh there's 10 days that you've missed. I mean, I'm just trying to think of ways that we can Well, I've been able to cover it in the past. It's just this year was a tough year, but it it does make a difference. I'm just trying to think of ways to justify the the general school helping out so that hopefully in the future you Well, and I have some I have fun balance so it's not not killing me right the moment, but um I I just can't always spend it. We don't want it to either. We don't want it to kill you either. Randy, I wasn't even thinking about it. Randy just
167came to me. It's like 1% of a million is is 10,000. Yeah. 10. It's not It's not 100,000. That's gonna make a big difference there. Yeah. You're not going to have enough money there to do what you're talking. Yeah. Big difference. I was thinking a hundred. I didn't think I was going to save $100,000. I was like% we did that. And while we're on this TR subject, just to help you kind of put the pieces together, the number of students that apply for free and reduced lunch affects our rate money. So we're looking at just for internet connectivity 400 grand a year roughly. I mean take her plus we're going to go to a new provider. We talked about that last month at the meeting. So the difference between an 80% discount which means the
168feds pay 80% of that 400 if we don't have enough apply for that free and reduce and it can drop to 70 60 or even 50. So just the number of free and reduce actually impacts our budget as well, but for a different way. I just wanted to put that since it's all kind of talking about the same thing. It impacts Christa too. Really? That's what I was going to say. Yes, it does all counts. And I think that's what happened back back when you were talking about Chanel had put it in that they were afraid that people weren't going to be applying for and then you lose the money through your funding there as well. You still get the funding. I believe it's how it works. It's just it's so differently dist And for
169the purpose of clarity, if we voted for a 3% raise, for instance, on the 141 budget, we would probably want to do the same on the 143 budget. Correct. We typically have in the past always followed what general school did. And I wouldn't want my to get any less, honestly. I mean, we we could do it different, but it probably would create dissension in the ranks, I guess. But yeah, and we could try to not increase prices, you know, we could see, but I I Do you have to? I have to. It's a really hard and that that's why I've waited 10 years. I just don't do that lightly. I don't know how you waited 10 years. So that's I mean we just co years were very good to us. Yeah. So for the for
170the April 15th board meeting, we would need to vote on a budget, one of these line item or one of these increases on the budget and um whether to increase the uh would those be two separate amendments or two separate resolutions to increase the fee? You'd have two different motions. Yeah, I don't think you could roll them in together. It's two different uh action items and of and of the increase. You could amend that motion if you decided you wanted to try to figure out how to just pay it and not raise. Yeah, from general from school side. That'd be better. I'd have to ask some questions about how to do that yet. And if they even let you do that, I'm not sure that's something we will even be able to do. I would
171have to check that. There's got there's got to be a way. These other schools that are paying for all their students, there's got to be a way that they can. Well, they're they're have that program. They're being funded through the state C. It it's a it's based on free or reduced. It's really based on direct, which is the and Medicaid students. So really it's based on just free eating students is what they base that on. And our free eating students has gone down just a little bit. U I is it based on their eligibility or the ones that's actually Yes. And it's not applications. It's the ones that the state tells me are free. You know, if a state says they're free through food stamps or um Medicaid, then they are the they're free. That's
172where the numbers come from. Yes. I can't do applications for that. Like applications that they don't know that those are accurate. So, they will not let you use those. So that number decreases significantly when you just look at the ones the state tells you are free versus who plus the applications. So what what would the steps be necessary if we were going to look at paying for lunches period I think that's what right well I mean if all right we wanted to something we could do right away. Yeah, we I mean C would be the route to go if you want to do free breakfast and lunch. Okay, that would be the route to go. Okay. Can we look into that? I have looked into it. And like I said, if I had a director
173that comes in here and says that's what I want to do, I'm on go. I've got all the all the paperwork ready. But I want to make sure that's what somebody's going to support. Did the last director not support this? Is this why we have We didn't have the numbers most of the time. Okay. I I really didn't take it to him because I I had the state come and look at it and we were not really. But this year we had some better numbers and last year I had pretty good numbers. Um but I was uncertain of of what was going to happen. You know, I need to have somebody here that's going to promote that. We were part of that for several years. No, we've never been. We've never been where? No, we've
174never been a question. That was Dar. Okay. Well, co was because it but we weren't C. I thought it was just it was just through them that they did it. So, it was most of his tenure most of Dr. Lawson's tenure. We that it was paid for. Yeah. I think two years of it. Gotcha. So, they put it under summer school program then. So, they said it was a summer school program except they did it all year round and so it was free breakfast. I was thinking we it was paid for but it's just different program. Yes. And that C could affect the E rate which as I just mentioned about because it lowers the number doesn't change. So you could be gaining something somewhere and then losing something. We would still try I would
175still try to get a way to around that. I think they got some builtin leg. They didn't used to before. They do not I think so. Mr. Pal, you technically are the director right now and we're at budget time that we've got to do a budget. She and I had a conversation about this. So, I'm not real sure we need to. She and I hasn't. We haven't talked about it. So, I don't It would have You're going to dodge that one, huh? You're just putting it. You're just being mean. I'll be happy to talk with her about it. I don't mind a bit. No, please do. All right. But basically what would be the difference is that every elementary school would have to have breakfast and that's and then what you're saying is that's they
176all have breakfast but we just have to make sure we push for kids to eat right everybody's got to be behind it to make it yes I mean so if a late bus comes in make sure that kid gets in there to eat breakfast and that should happen anyway it should be happen it may be they may have that built in my breakfast numbers are extremely low I think most principles are are aware a situation when a late bus comes in, right? They let those students go by and pick up their breakfast, but it would also have to be we'd have to push it a little bit like we'd have to push breakfast get higher than what our and that makes the makes it easier for them to learn too if they've had breakfast because
177you'll be surprised if the kids that that do not eat. I mean, not that they didn't have it at home. They just up and go to school and haven't eaten anything. Oh, I agree. It sounds easy, but I know the principles have a lot on their plate as far as academic expectations and I get it. They're being pulled 50 directions on everything. You know, like you said, you add art in, you add the, you know, there's only so much time in their day. It would probably be something where we would have to either say breakfast in the classroom or most students would come to the cafeteria and that is going to take some time. So I don't you know how does tell home do they do it in their classroom? They have a combination. Okay.
178But their princ their their director was behind it as far as pushing that they had to do breakfast. So how they did it I'm not positive. Some of them have push something to have every child eat for free. I think we would all everybody in this room would be willing to contribute something to push for that and help. Yes. I mean that would help everybody. Right. It would. I agree 100%. And it would actually even help food service because you're not having to deal with all those different payments and all this. Oh, it'd be great for me in a way except that my budget would I would have to be very tight on it. We probably have to change our menus. We'll see what the director. Yeah, director come up with us to consultant to
179see if we have options. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we can add it to the agenda. I guess we got time to add it to the agenda. And if we We may not have a decision by the board meeting this month, but we might in May. I got faith in you. Come on, you can do that. We'll put it on the agenda. And if theoretically theoretically, I'm let the kids eat breakfast because I think it's a very important part of their day. And I'm not I'm saying most kids do probably try. It's just a very low percentage. I just would need to we just have to push it just a little bit. be a memo from your office urging everyone to push breakfast. Well, I know when when I was at East Coffee back several
180years ago, Scott, thank you, brother. We had just started the breakfast program and it was I mean, it was like you'd turn the sunshine on every day when those kids get to come in and have breakfast. I ate breakfast every day. That was something that uh I don't think we hardly had anybody that didn't eat breakfast. Everybody came through the line or went to the classroom, whatever the case may be. Some schools have it set up, I think, in the past where they've had a a cart sitting out as the kids come in that has uh maybe a fruit or whatever it may be, and they pick that up as they as they come in off the bus and carry it to the classroom. Of course, sometimes that creates a problem with the classrooms because
181you got a mess and now you've got to clean up. So, that's been a problem in the past. That's probably a concern there that you have. But, uh uh I don't have any problem with with us trying to to help finance everybody having breakfast. Well, as a former teacher, I had rather have them spend a little bit of time eating breakfast as me trying to shove something in their head. Yes. Because if they eat breakfast, they're going to learn more. That's going to help maturely. It's going to increase their I think that's a known fact. That's that's a scientific fact. I think that we see kids that are performing better if they've had breakfast and and if they haven't had because said a lot of them get up unfortunately some of them probably don't even
182see their parents before they go to school. They get up put their own clothes on go out and catch the bus and that's about the extent of the morning for them. Uh but uh I I' I've always contended that breakfast is a vital part of a school day from the very get-go. Yeah. Being involved in that backpack program, you don't realize how many kids come to school that are hungry and go home and they're hungry. Oh, yeah. And it's a So, thank you, Carlin. I mean, that's it's a great big I don't really do that, but I I do I Well, I hope to feed them this summer for majority of the summer because they're allowing us to send home meals for seven days a week from, you know, send it home one day. I
183mean, that's that's a great tremendous. Yes. Great big and I think I have the staff this year to do it. We don't we we we come from most of us are we we eat a lot and Roberts is that how you grew so much cuz you got to eat breakfast at school. Yeah. Well, that's what I just told him. I said after I always ate I went to sleep. My kids came home yesterday to tell me. Any other questions? I have I think that's it. Um hold on, Tom. One more question. My kids came home yesterday and told me how excited they were that next week breakfast is free at school for TECAP. Now, they do not pay for their own breakfast. I do not know why they care, why they're excited, but they were
184pumped about it. So, it makes me feel like a lot of these kids are probably like, "Yeah, free breakfast." So, they might be really excited and they might really want to eat. And numbers improve improved when they were free. It did. I have pulled the numbers from when we fed when it was free. We were when it was not. The only difference is some of the time kids were out with um co you know there was a lot of absenteeism but we really increased numbers even with that so it would we pulled that and looked at that as a factor. Well it sparks an interest when it's free somehow again back to the backpack thing. It it's free and and you do not realize until you've been involved in if people has been involved in
185the backpack program. There's a lot of kids that parents that can't afford it. Well, a lot of parents will be like, "It's free. You might as well get it." Like, "Go ahead and do it." Well, we're excited. We always feed free for a decap. Yeah. And we feed the high school. Well, it was a huge excitement. So, that shows improves academic performance. I know it. I know. So, I'm I'm excited. We always do that. So, I'm glad to hear that. Well, apparently Pop-Tarts at school taste better than the ones at my house. I know. So, Mr. Chairman, since we've been talking about food, it's about ready to eat lunch. I I think so. So, um, thank you very much. You and April for Thank you so much. Great budgets. We can take a break for
186lunch, I think, and then we can come back. Is going to be served down in the second conference room, which is down the hallway. There's tables and things down there. So, we'll eat lunch down there and not have to bring anything in here and disturb all this. And one minor uh adjustment to the agenda. I'd like to move the five-year plan to the end, you know, because I think there's going to be, you know, some we're going to need to form a committee to look at that. But but other than that, we can talk about digital records right after lunch and and get into the curriculum then. Yeah, I'm all about streamlining streamline. I don't know what happened. They'll they'll trickle in. So, should be good. All right, we're going to get back going after
187a little nourishment and uh we did a little shuffle on the agenda. What we're going to do is we're going to move the five-year plan to the end. Um we're also because uh Miss Matthews may need to leave, we're going to move the furniture bid up to between the curriculum update and the school improvement plan um and try to discuss it there. So between what's six and seven on the agenda and that should be the adjustment. So, Mr. West Morland, you are on. We we um voted well, we looked at this in the spring or or last fall, I think, and we decided to revisit it when we had a clearer picture of where we were on the budget, if we had any money to at least get going on this. So, um if you
188want to grab a microphone or Well, I will. [Music] I think I think budgetarily as far as our budget's concerned that this has not been the the b the digital records have not has not been added into the budget for this upcoming year. Yes. Yes. Um, so you know, we have priorities in the district when it comes to, you know, the spending of the money and and where we need to put the money and, you know, we're looking at personnel, looking at questions with federal funding and things like that, you know. So, if the budget if the budget was able to support this, we can move this direction. But based on where we are right now, I'm not sure this year the budget can support this. Um, so I've I've spoke with my administrative assistant
189and we we've got a plan moving forward. Okay. We may be able to look at it in the coming years. Okay. Um, but uh we are I think eventually going to need to go this direction with our sped records. But, you know, as far as the uncertainties with the budget, I think at this time it'd be a good time just to kind of go slow with this. Okay. And of course, you know, if you guys have any questions, I'll be glad to to answer any of them, but Okay. just wanting to be a wise steward, you know, and and my philosophy is we've done it this long this way. We can get another few years out of it if we need to. Okay. So, maybe look at it again next uh you know, next uh
190next fall and see where we are with the budget. And and you know, it's one of those things to where you know, I would I would like for general schools to pick up the initial cost and then maybe down the road special education could pay the annual fee, okay, each year. But that initial cost for special ed records right now is about 1516,000 right to get it to get that ball rolling. Um so as we move forward, you know, that may be something that I will present to the board is a potential where general schools will pick up that lump sum and then maybe special ed can provide the yearly the annual um gigabyte update on that. Okay. And April, we don't have money in the budget that we can allocate to that this year.
191No. Oh, borrow microphone. I mean, so I am showing that, you know, we're going to add to fund balance. So, yes, if if we wanted to do it this year, I could do a budget amendment to make that happen. Um, but I guess after speaking with Charlie, it wasn't I didn't want it to be a priority with everything else going on in our in our district as far as the new director. You know, a new director may come in and and and have experience with this and say, "No, that's a bad idea." He or she. That's actually a very good point. So maybe leave that to the new director and okay, we may we may have a new director comes in that has experience with this very company that may have great things to say
192or it may be the other side of that coin and I just don't want to make a decision and you know it's it's kind of you know once we make the decision it's hard to go back on that decision. So I just want to be a good steward with with the money that you know that that I'm essentially responsible for. Okay. Because I will be asking the board to to pay for some of that out of general schools. So, you know, and it and it's it's going to be an investment once we move forward with it. Okay. Any comments from anybody on this? Everybody okay with kicking it kicking the can down the road, I guess? Thank you, Charlie. Well, thank you, Charlie. Appreciate it, Charlie. Thank you. All right. That's what we like. Quick
193agenda items. Um, all right. Next up, we have the curriculum update. And it's probably going to take a little more time, but Miss Seismore, Miss Cole, and Mr. Blessing are going to uh talk to us. So, who wants to go first or Well, okay. Okay. I was going to say if you arm wrestled for it and you lost, I'd wonder, but [Laughter] especially okay. Uh I this information I think was requested from the board um talking about curriculum and textbooks and maybe how it gets from one to the other and down to the students. So there's a link here that I've put in this presentation that I will share with you. You can click that and that's going to take you to uh information about the standards upon which the curriculum is built. So uh
194so we'll look at the different steps in this curricular cycle and we'll just take a few minutes to look at each step. The cycle is it starts at the state level then it goes to the district level and then on to the school level. So three con parts you think each one of us could have taken. Well that's okay. uh with the state level first they develop the standards and this is not just something they do at the drop of a hat. They take a couple of years and they get the standards developed and then they put it out for review. They put it out for review with the with community just in general getting feedback from anyone who wishes to share that feedback. But then they go through and uh and again it takes
195a couple of rounds about two years. So they don't just jump into it. There are there is some thought behind it. And then they share these new standards then with the publishers who then will either develop new materials or will try to retool what they've already got to see if it fits the standards that they're uh that are new. uh and it has to have 100% alignment with the standards in order for a publishers's materials to be acceptable. And again, I'm talking about the core content areas. They say with CTE, it only has to be 80% alignment. I'm not sure why they differentiate between the two, but they do. Uh the review board used to be called the textbook commission but now they've changed their name to textbook and instructional materials quality commission. They got
196to come up with with some change after a while I suppose. So this commission will get the um materials submitted from the publishers who want to be considered. A publisher is not just going to say, "Oh, here's this." If they know it's going to be rejected, if they know they haven't done any work with it, sometimes they just choose not to participate in that particular content areas adoption cycle. So, the publishers get these, they review them, and if there is a problem, if they make the 100% alignment, boom, they're ready to go. But if not, they get another shot at it. The commission tells them you are not at 100%. This is what you're missing. And then they can resubmit if they so choose. So once they resubmit, the commission goes through it again. And
197if they say you still miss the mark, they don't make the list. the if they do make that 100% alignment in the core content areas and that's when the commission has their official list of state approved instructional materials and this again is all going on at the state level and then this is shared with Tennessee Book Company that's the official depository for instructional materials for the state and then they share that down to school systems. So, at the district level, by the way, before if we before we leave state, if you've got questions about something I've said or clicked or went over, this is a good time concerning the state level. Dr. Blessing, who is on this state textbook, excuse me, commission or the instruction material quality and that also educators. It's not just lay
198people as opposed to educators. Is that correct or not? For the review of the standards, it can be anybody. They will solicit feedback from the community. They post the standards and then they will ask people to look at this standard and give their opinion based upon what they've read. So on that level is lay people. The textbook commission, I'm not sure. It's not elected. It's appointed, but I'm not sure who appoints them. I know Pat Barton in the past has served on the textbook commission. The point I'm trying to get is I think that the actual commission members that make these decisions, some of those are educators. Yes. And they could be educators from K12. They may be some from uh postsecary, but whoever's doing this review has some experience with it. It's not just
199um this is so and so. They are from this county and they have no experience with school but we want them on the textbook commission. No, I think they try to refine it a little more. Other questions and we can always come back if you do have more questions. When we get to the district level, this is where we go through our textbook adoption process and we appoint a committee which has to be approved by the board. Any year that there is a textbook adoption cycle then we participate uh we present it you vote on it and then we take it from there. These are teachers or they could be they could be uh coaches academic coaches they could be principles but they're looking for people who have experience in the subject area. And it
200says we could even reach out and try to pull in specialists from universities or something like that. We never have. We've always depend upon our own faculty members to be on this committee. Once that committee is formed, then there is a stepbystep process that the state has in place. We submit these committee members. We ask for samples. The committee members along with their colleagues in their buildings review these samples whether they're digital or whether they're uh in your hand copies and they are looking for they don't have to check for alignment of standards. If it's something from the state it aligns. They're looking for quality and what suits their purposes. And they also see for instance what packages are available. Is it uh just a paper copy? If it is, they'd say no, we want
201digital as well. Or if it's just digital, they say no, we would also like some paper. Whatever their criteria, they make decisions. Then as a building the representative is their voice and then they share their feedback and they say this is what we like. We liked this publisher A's materials or publisher B's materials or they will give us um a order first choice second choice third choice. So, as they're they're uh gone through they're completing this usually there through Tennessee Book Company there's what's called a caravan and that allows a district to invite selected publishers to come and present material information to the committee members. And that can help because sometimes they may have questions about a particular feature or something that they think I couldn't find this and the textbook rep or the textbook
202consultant or whoever's making up their team for the publishers comes here. Uh we often share with Manchester City. We invite them to come and meet with those people the same time we do. We usually have three. We split the boardroom in two. You often see these two things and wonder if we use them at least once a year to split the two and two and we'll have one publisher here, a publisher here, and a publisher down in the coffee corner. And we do a rotation so that the group will hear from all the publishers that are for that grade band. So at that point they sort of solidify their choices and they come up and say okay and this has flip-flopped sometimes they'll say this was our first choice before the caravan but after meeting
203with the publishers and after talking with other people on their committee they may say no we've decided that we like this is our first choice and that will become the recommendation that's presented to the school board. So we get that consensus because it would be a rare situation for everyone to agree what is their first choice. Um usually the consensus is reached quite easily. There may be five schools picked this one as their first and the other picked it as their second. So, I mean, it's it's not all over the place, but when whichever it may be, we reach consensus and then we give you the thing to hopefully approve those recommendations. The textbook publisher representatives are then notified. I let them know. I let them know that you were the choice. And those who
204weren't picked, I let them know. I just notify all the people who are involved in the from the publishers, the representatives what we picked and then I also talked to him and said, "Okay, we have approved your materials, but you have several options, several different bundles available. I need to know what all specifically is in this and what all is available for us to order." And then again, we uh purchase those in the summer. Typically, we purchase that on starting July 1st because that's a new budget year. That's when I have the money. If I have money beforehand, I can start purchasing earlier. When these books get here, we they're inventoried, they're stamped, and they are distributed to the schools. We try to keep a few copies on the shelf in the textbook room because,
205you know, people are going to move in and they'll say, "Oh, I need some more copies of this or I need a lot of copies of that." And then we try to fill those. If I have them on the shelf, I send them out right away. If they ask for something I don't have, I ask the other schools, "Do you have any extra?" And if they don't, then I may have to order some more. Oh, and by the way, if uh going back to the state, if a publisher has their materials on the state approved list, they are they have to be bonded, which means they've got I forget how much the bond is that guarantees they will have the materials available for the life of the adoption. Presently, the life of the adoption is
206eight years. It has been six. It has been five, but now it's up to eight. So, they're saying they will have it available. Um, do any of y'all have students who have either taken AP or maybe in AP or one day want to take AP classes at the high school? If you do, they're not part of this. The state says AP materials, if it's an AP book, it's going to meet the standards, but they also don't have to put a bond up to say the materials will be available for all eight years. AP advanced placement. What does that mean? Advanced placement means that a student has taken a a class that is geared toward taking and passing hopefully the AP test so that they could possibly earn college credit. So it's very possible that some
207publisher may I'll pick on some subject AP calculus everyone's favorite and since they don't go through this process they could change additions after three years we don't have to change additions but you know if if for some reason the AP board changed the standards that's why they change additions and we would probably have to purchase those books. books just outside of the of the regular cycle because it's really not part of the cycle and they're expensive for some reason. I don't know. Price of books just keeps on going up. Just happens that way. Before we go to the school level, any questions more questions about district level? So, you can select a book that's not on the state approved list, but you have to go through a waiver process. Oh, yeah. And I never want
208to do that. Okay. The reason why I never want to do that, it's not a easy peasy process. It has to be reviewed and we have to go through a list of asurances that we've done this and we've done that and we've done the other. And if the if there is a textbook on the state list, then I'd much rather go with that. Now, um there have been times maybe it's a specialized subject. For instance, we're doing we're just now finishing up science. If there was something in science like botany and this no one submitted materials to be approved for botany. Well, then you're if you're going to teach botney, you're gonna have to find that somewhere else and that might require a waiver. Fortunately, all the science books or courses we have, they were
209submitted for approval, so didn't have to worry about that. But yeah, a waiver is possible. I don't like them, but they're possible. Other questions? I don't know why I'm looking at that clock. The door blocks it. So, Okay. Now, after we've done gone through that and we've got the books and we've distributed them, what do they do with them at the schools? Well, we distribute them to the individual teachers based and I order based upon the projected population. And that's all I can do. we go through and say we think we're going to have 280 fourth graders, then I might order 290 so that I could have 10 extra on the shelf for the next eight years. You know, of course, they might fly through them, may not. It all depends on on the population.
210They get to the individual teachers. Typically professional development about this from the publisher is provided and it may be how would you describe John a brief maybe half a day sometimes a full day depending upon the publisher and the materials and usually it's free of charge. That was not true when we did I already math we found out but we were able to pay for the professional development and the requirements associated with I already math but we have that we also have unit preparation and lesson preparation do all the teachers go through the professional development for only the ones for that subject right right yeah and again it all depends on what you for for instance I ready math was for K8 eight. So we had K8 teachers go through that envision from SAOS is
211what was used for 9 well up to algebra 2 and they got that particular professional development. Yeah, we try to match it up to whoever's going to be using those materials. Uh unit preparation and lesson preparation. That's a lot of times you think about to before school starts. Not only are you trying to get ready with your room and getting ready with the stuff on the walls and the chairs on the floors, but you got teachers got to be ready to teach. And so unit preparation, the materials divided up into units and then a unit is divided up into lessons and they have to get ready for that. And they don't do the whole year before that. They may get an overview, but they won't start with unit one. and then the first and then
212they're working weekly daily if needed. And we've also had uh with our literacy coaches and our math coaches an opportunity for them to bring teachers together to help with unit planning and lesson planning which I think has been a a positive endeavor. So because especially if you've got maybe new teachers, they might need some assistance or if you have new materials, everybody needs assistance. And when you put new teachers with new materials, that's a double whammy. So that gets again support for those teachers with these new instructional materials. And after that, the teachers teach. They're ready to go at that point. So starting with the standards back a few years before down to when these new standards are implemented in the classroom and there is a a cycle that the state has developed and they
213tell us when these subjects are going to be up for consideration. Again we're just finishing up science. Next year is PE and wellness but they also have some of the CTE programs are in there. So when they it's not all the CTE programs. I think it's three of them and because they're on a cycle as well. Perhaps you have some questions about any of it whether it's school level or up to district or state. Does the does the state textbook list the approved list align the instructional materials there align with what they're going to be tested on TCAT? So yeah, how does that align? Well, you have to remember that the standards drive not only the instruction but the assessment. Every time that standards are updated and there's an assessment associated with it, the state
214develops what's called a blueprint. And the blueprint says I'll pick on math again surprise. And in the there may be four general categories of standards in math. uh numerical quantities, uh equations and inequalities, geometry and data, um statistics and probabil some all those categories and the state in development with the the particular testing companies in this case it's Pearson they say okay for the grade three test for this category we want anywhere from 10 to 15% of the questions to come from this category. We want 20 to 25% to come from this category. And they have that general framework in place in order to decide what's going to be on the test. And that could be anywhere once it's all said and done, 37 to 42 questions that count for a student's grade. There will
215be some extra questions on there, not for bonuses. They're called field test questions. They're used to see is this a good question? Is it a bad question for future test? If it's a bad question, they won't use it. So, they're developing a future pool. So, you may talk about kids, there were 50 questions on this test. Well, Dr. Blessing said there's only supposed to be 42. Well, no. Well, it could be 50 some odd, but some of them don't count. But you can't tell which ones do or which ones don't. Don't count against you. That's right. Field test items do not count against you. It's just for gathering data for future test development. But as I tell the students when I work with them, you can't go through and say, "I think this one's a
216field test question." Uh-uh. You can't tell by looking. So, you want to do your best on all of them. Other questions? I have a question. Yes. Do they want you to pass or fail the field test question? Well, it's not it's not based on whether it's pass or fail. It's much like this. A field test question is asked and let's say that most everyone in the state did well on it. They throw it out. They say it's too easy. Then they have another one and most everyone in the state did not do well. They throw it out. They say it's too hard. So they're trying to get something where it's not answered correctly by everybody, but it's not missed by everybody either. Okay. Thank you. People got an eightyear textbook adoption for sciences next year.
217Uh the next eight years won't see the same test eight years in a row multitude of questions that go with all those. So they will pick out certain questions that that concept, right? Like you got one test the first year and you got that same test eight years from now. Right now that for some reason they don't consider that very secure. But what they will do, they may carry over some of those questions from the previous test but put some others then with it and they got those questions from the earlier field testing. Oh yes sir. Yes. And a lot of those one part of the process that hasn't come up yet is that Tennessee teachers are involved with this test making. They're called in in the summer usually and they will review like a
218proposed test and they're looking for content, but they're also looking for bias to see that a question would not uh either favor or disfavor any particular population and but that that's part of the test building process. Any other questions? I'm surprised that they're letting that stay in there. Letting what stay in there? Bias. Bias. No, they they try to take bias out. Oh, that's what I'm saying. I'm surprised they're taking bias out. Well, no. They're I'm I'm thinking about whenever I was in school years years ago in elementary school, the books were all little white kids that lived in town and sidewalk. And of course, I loved it because that was an imaginary world for me. And and and you know, there was no kids that lived in in on a farm. There were no
219kids that lived in the ghetto. Yeah. And uh and I often think back at the standardized tests we took at that time were geared toward that population that was in those books that we were reading about. And I'm so glad that it's not that way anymore because it makes a difference. I might know what a heer was, but that would not that would it being from a farm, but that would not be on a test. You see what where I'm coming from? That wouldn't be on the standardized test I was taking. There might be something about a trolley car or a subway that I had no idea what that was in my in my environment. So, I'm glad that they they have it this way. So, it's geared to every child. And they do try
220when they're going through they try to consider different types of bias like stereotypes. Uh I know I've served on these committees before and for instance if they said the word waitress they take waitress out put in server because it's stereotypical that a woman is going to be working in that occupation. So they put server instead of firemen. They may use something because that the word man. I mean they get down to details like that. Farmer, huh? Farmerette. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. But um yeah, they might say firefighter instead of fireman. But they will go through and look for not they'll also do like a male female balance of names. It's not all males like George did this or that. It might have George and some of the names and they try to have a cultural
221diversity. So instead of George they may have Horge instead of that they may have Fumiko. I mean they just try to to have different students represented namewise in the question. They also try to reach out sometimes to different cultures. Um, but they also try to, for instance, if if you're reading this this, and this happened once, I think they've gone away from this. They're saying, "We can't have questions with cats because in East Tennessee, they think cats are satanic." And they had a child one year refused to answer the question because it had a cat in it. I'm think and they were trying to please everybody but uh I think they went a little overboard because people know about cats regardless of whether what they think about them. So uh but they again they do
222their best to try to eliminate conscious or even they talk about unconscious bias but they try to to get it to where it's representative and that students can relate and do the best they can in answering the questions. Anything else? So, no more Dick and Sally and Spot, right? Am I dating myself? Well, well, they it it it may be more like uh Ricardo Salucia and spot remover. I don't know what they would do, but yeah. No. Okay. Again, if you have any other questions that you that come to mind, you feel free to send them my way. Okay, thank you. So, Beth, did that clarify some things on the textbook? Yeah. How the text Okay. Yeah. Plus, I've had a chance to go online and try to find some of them. Yeah. Although they
223make that difficult. You ready? Sure. Okay. So I'm Christa Cole and I'm going to talk to you a few minutes about the annual district planning and it's called informed TN. That's what the state calls it. That's the platform we use um in e- plan. So e-plan is an online piece. It's a portal which houses different programs, different data sets, different information at the state department. And one of those pieces it it houses all district plans. And so that's where districts are required to go in and enter information based on all the meetings and feedback and those kinds of things. So I was asked to talk to you a few minutes about the process and timelines and those kinds of things. And I'm probably going to throw in a few extra pieces of information too, but
224I'm I'm going to try to not uh take too much of your time. I wanted to start out by talking to you about some changes that are probably going to come down the pike with district planning. So, according to the state department, it is likely that district planning may move to a three-year cycle starting in the 26 27 school year. We don't know that for sure, but that may be a change that's coming down and will make this process look a little different. What they're considering doing is merging the TISA and informed TN because we have the TISA plan and we have the informed TN plan and then we have lots of plans and data sets to work from. Krista mayor just me this is not the what we call a typical five-year plan for
225the school system. So those two are two different entities all together. We'll talk about those later on. This is something a little bit different. This is the district this is the district plan. Yes, one of the changes that may be coming along with this is establishing three-year goals, but we will revisit those annually to adjust the annual targets and make updates. So, it would be a a long-term plan with short-term goals um as well. We don't know what it's going to look like. We're not even sure it's going to happen, but this when last time I talked to the state, they said this is likely. So, these changes may occur. One thing they anticipate if we do this, what will remain is the third grade ELA goal with the target metrics that are also required
226in T the Tissa plan. Right now, they're saying that one may stay. Um, and then the other couple goals will be up to the districts based based on need. So, here's our time. So the the tissa is not, you know, not the funding necessarily, but it's the accountability goals that Dr. Cornelius is going to update with us on Tuesday about, but but so the informed Tennessee and the TISA accountability goals are what's merging and but that's what we're that's what we think will happen. Yes. Okay. Got it. Okay. Yes. Because I've asked the state I said so shouldn't our inform goals, district goals be the same as TISA goals? and I was told no, not necessarily. And so that that just kind of makes it complicated and cumbersome. And so I think it's wise to
227merge these two so instead of having all these different plans and it at least we'll be streamlined a little bit more and it may make more sense. Can you tell me what's in how Dr. Corn is quite a bit microphone? No, I I can't even hear you. Um, Dr. Cornelius has explained quite a bit of the TISA, but can you explain what's in form Tennessee, what exactly that is, what's involved in it? Yes, I I will get to that probably the next slide. Um, with the with the dates I want to share with this before I get into answering this best question. It opens every year around the 1 or 2nd of January and the plans are due like for this for instance this year the 1 of March. Well, I wanted you to see
228we're doing a plan for next year and we don't have results for this year yet. So, it's it's a little tricky uh because it's prior to state testing. But anyway, we we carry on. This is the this has been the timeline for many years and it I have questioned it but it may remain. I I don't think they're going to change it based on what my recommendations are. But the TDOE's deadline to approve all of the district plans in the state it's next week. I believe that's next week, April 15th. And so I checked as of this morning the state department has approved about 26 27 plans as of this morning and they haven't approved ours. So, ours isn't public yet. It's still in that that pending stage. And they've um so they're going through
229those and what they do is they will give us feedback. Um and it's usually very specific because there's certain measures that we we must meet. So, this will kind of get to answering your question, Miss Beth, but I want you to know that everything in in form TN. This is the process we follow, but it is aligned with state board policy 2.101. And so, it's built based on this policy. So, what this policy says, if we don't hit it in this plan, they return the plan to us and tell us to either improve it or make sure you include it. Um, and they give us very, that is one thing. They give us very specific feedback most of the time. But with the prepare to plan, that's where we start. And this cycle, it doesn't
230matter if it's the district plan or it's the school level plans. It's the same. So they you planning process is the same as the district. It's the same template. It's the same platform. It's just at the school level instead of the district level. But with the prepare to plan, that's when we get our stakeholders to the table. And the state board policy 2.101 tells us exactly who we need to have. And the state will not approve the plan if you don't have your teachers and your administrators and your leaders and your parents. And if you don't have that group, they'll send it back and and they'll let us know. You you've got to have these people as a part of your plan. And if you look at our plan, I don't list everybody. It looks
231like I list everybody, but I reach out to probably every person in this office at some point. I reach out to multiple people and I don't list them all, but I do get the minimum requirements in there as far as who I need to list and which stakeholders, but um and it's not always on paper or it's not always a sit down meeting. Many times we'll go in the coffee corner where we just ate and we will have a meeting, but we've had several snow days and some people can't always make it and teachers can't make it because teachers are in the classroom and parents are working and it it's so difficult. So I I make phone calls. I'm sending emails. We're having meetings. Um any capacity we can get in order to get the
232feedback. So, it's not always a sit down formal, you know, 15 of us around the table. It's any way we can get that information. And I have asked the state, I said, I want to do better getting feedback. Like, I get a lot, but I'd like for us to do better. And the state said, you know, when it comes to getting parent feedback, and it doesn't have to be formal. So some of those surveys that we may send out during parent teacher conference, we can embed a questionnaire about improving reading instruction or math instruction. And she said it could be as simple as that. Don't feel like you have to have people around the table um in that formal setting. It can be more informal. And I thought that was a a good idea. Can
233you do online meetings, too? Did do you do that? We could. And actually at our um first meeting that was scheduled in January, we were supposed I invited a state department person to be a part of the meeting because we have a couple contacts who were solid at the state. I mean I know there there are more than two people that that are good. But there are a couple that have been vested invested in this district and we really trust and I'll just say one of them is Janice Fox um and one of them is Elliot Kendzer and we rely on them and um they don't hop around. they're they're really invested and we were going to do a video uh meeting a Google meet with him but then school was canceled and he couldn't
234make it the next day but that is a possibility if needed. So that that's the prepare to plan stage that's that's the first stage. Um and then we move to explore data. So when we're exploring data in the platform, they give us a bank. It's basically a bank of data for Coffee County schools. And when the schools do their plans for next year, the data is not there. The data is kind of old. When we get to do our data, they've already got it updated from last year. So it's actually very helpful. It can be overwhelming as data can be because, you know, there's so much out there. Depending on what data source you look at, you can look at Coffee County Schools data and there's some data out there that's strong and it's powerful
235powerful and it shows the good things we're doing. And then there's some other data sources you can pull that you can say, "Wow, this is where we need to we need to focus." So the first few years we were pulling data comparing ourselves to the previous year to South Central to the State Department and it was terribly overwhelming. But that just shows you the amount of data that is housed in this informed TN plan. So we take that data and we look at it and then we start analyzing our needs based on the data. Um so we'll kind of we'll put pull our ELA data, put it in one bucket, we'll pull our math data, put in another bucket, and then our ready grad data. And then we just go through and we look at
236trends. um see what some areas of weakness are, areas of strength, but that's based on the data which is in informed TN. Um then we move to reflect to plan and that involves it feels like everybody in this office because I'm always going to certain people and saying I and that it's still we're still following policy 2.101 because I have to have information from Mr. Damewood on technology and where our challenges are and some of our solutions. I have to have we need e data. Uh we need college and career data. We need there's discipline. There's lots of different areas. So it takes a village of us to come up because I I'm not going to do this by myself because I'm not capable and I shouldn't. It should be a team of us. And
237so that's where we get together um and pull the information for that. but human capital, lots of different areas that we hit in reflective plan. And then we get to develop plan. And so according to policy 2.101, you need your goals. You need your strategies. You need your action steps. And your goals must be smart. And if they're not, the state's going to turn the plan back to return it to you and say, "Fix it." And so that's where we sit down. And we typically have an ELA goal, right? because we are literacy is a challenge. No matter where you are, it's a challenge and we've never arrived. We're never where we want to be. So, we're usually going to have an ELA goal. We're usually going to have a math goal. And then we
238have a a ready grad goal based on the data. But that's where we hit the it's the heart of the plan. It's not just our goals, it's our strategies and action steps. And that's under develop plan. and then we get to review and submit. And that's basically all that is. We're reviewing our data and we submit it and we send it to the state. So that's where we are right now in the cycle of development. We have reviewed and submitted and we're waiting on them and they should hit that deadline which is next week to give us feedback. Um any questions on that? So, does um the board have access to the e- plan data when when you log in? Actually, you're the chair of the board. You probably do. Yeah, I do. But how
239about the rest of the board, though? The only access they would have is public access. And when you pull up the public access for 2526 for Coffee County, you're not going to see anything because it's not approved. But for public access, if you go back previous years, you can see. But what you only see is you see the goals, the strategies, and the action steps. Now, that plan's a mile long, but that's what public access gives you. It's the goals, the strategies, and the action steps. Anything else on on that? That was a lot. I know. But that's that's the process. I know this is fuzzy. Um, when we're capturing data, they look like little sticky notes in the platform. Not that that matters to you, but we we put information on these notes. We
240look at the data and then we prioritize them. So, we have our ELA bucket, we have our map bucket, and we have our ready grad bucket. Um, and if it's a need, then it needs to be a goal, right? So if the data shows you have a need in math, then we should have a goal in math. Same thing for ELA. So that's that just kind of summarizes part of of what I just said. So this is what you didn't ask for, but I want to go ahead and share this with you. And it looks like a lot, but I'm going to try to explain it where it's not so overwhelming. Um, we have three goals in the district plan for the 2526 school year. We have an ELA goal or literacy goal. That's goal
241one. And this is all you see. You just see goal one. Looks like it's We have about 10 goals here, but it's just really our goal one. So, we have an ELA goal, we have a math goal, and we have a ready grad goal. Now, this goal didn't look like this the first time it was submitted to the state. It was simplified because I like simplified goals. It just makes sense. you don't get lost in all the data and it's easy to track. But we had a a conversation with one of our State Department representatives and she came in and she said, "You need to make this goal." Um, she didn't use the word meteor, but that's the word that's coming to me. Like, you need to rigor this goal up and make it mean
242something. And so, this looks a little different as of a few weeks ago. So, we're talking about maintaining our TAZ to a level five. So that means we were a level five last year. We want to be a level five this upcoming year. This is what she told us to add. She said, "But if each school, if they don't get at least a three, you can't do that at the district level. So you need to plug that in there." So that's exactly what we did. So we've got growth in this goal and then we have achievement in this goal that each grade band will improve by five percentage points. And then this is part so we've got this one main goal and then we have sub goals and the sub goals refers back to this
243grade band improvement and this is where it's really specific. So we said in 35 for example we're going to meet it exceed or it was 39%. We want this to be 44% this year and then five more points 49 percentage points or 49% in 2526. So we broke it down by gradeb band and she said if you will do it that way then you'll be able to track it and see if you net it more than just one global universal goal. So this is one goal with several goals built in. That was not my preference because it it just looks loaded. But it kind of gets down to the specifics of what you need here to meet it up here. If that makes sense. Does that make a little bit of sense? All right. So,
244that was ELA. Then we have math. The same sort of thing except we were a three and we want to move to a four. And we also want to increase the five percentage points in each grade band. And we've defined that grade band 35 68 and 912. So we're so specific at least now at least we know what we're talking about when we look at this in a few months and say the data came out did we hit it? Well this is very specific where we'll know immediately if we hit it or not. And then the last goal is a ready grad goal. And when it comes to the state department for ready grad, ready grad simply means in in a general sense that high school students are ready for college, career or the military.
245In a in a general sense, that's what what it means. And the state of course has specific criteria on how to become a ready grad, but this is our ready grad goal, which is identical to our ready grad goal in TISA. So those two we were actually able to make them align specifically. So those are um our goals and then in the plan when it's approved and you see it you will see all the strategies and the action steps which accompany each goal. So when you talk about the if you go back to goal number two if we're talking about proficiencies is that measured by TCAP scores? Yes. Yes. Yes. Good question. Yes. Oh, great. And these are passed on down to individual schools. So they go district. Yes. And our our goals actually transfer
246to the school level, but I tell them you can't keep the district goals. You just know they need to align and try to meet, but you have to have specific school goals in your in your plan. Um, and so the schools when they submit their plans, we go through, we divvy them up and we look at them and re we review um, and we give them feedback because I have a rubric and I share it with the schools and I'm like, "This is what we must meet." Um, and this is what we have to do and we send because we've done this, we know when to send a plan back. And so I I know when I get a plan sent back to me, it's kind of deflating after you've done all that work and
247a plan gets sent back, but it's usually good feedback. So we try to do the same to the school levels, too. Give them feedback where they know what needs to be changed and improved. And so this goes back to where where can you find this plan? You can actually go to the district website and there's a section. It's called community and you can find it there or sometimes I just Google informed TN and it's usually like the first link and up here in the corner you can't see this but if you get to that site it will say search plans you don't have to have a login or special user ID or password you can just type um Coffee County and it will give you a a dropdown where you can choose the year and
248it goes back several years and So, like I said, if you choose 2526, if you had a laptop and you did that right now, you would probably see about 26 to 30 school systems. It we wouldn't be one of them because we're still waiting. So, that's the process. I think I hit process, the timeline, and feedback. Was there anything else? I think that was because you kind of covered our district improvement plan. Oh, no. This is does that overlap with the our other agenda item here on district improvement plan. Is that this is this is that's what I thought. So yes, this is the district. I thought we covered that. So we got Yes. I think that's all I had. Two agenda items run one presentation. Good job. Yeah. Anything else? All right. Yes. Let
249me ask you. All right. for our plan last year. How close did we come to meeting that this year? So, we we hit our uh TV goal in ELA because we were a five and we wanted to be a five. I believe you all correct me if I'm wrong. With math, I think we wanted to be higher than we actually ended up with math. I believe we wanted to be a four and we ended up a three. um the achievement gradeband goals, those were just those were different. But we hit the ELA growth goal, but we didn't hit the math. We missed it by uh one level of performance, I guess you would say. That's the growth. And then there was the ready grad, which we actually did hit the ready grad goal. Um and
250so that was that was good. That's the best I can remember right now. Yeah. Other questions for Christian? It just seems like the math has been a a be in the bonnet for several years, you know, and when you look and you all correct me if I'm wrong. When I look across the state, math maths is challenging for sure. Math is challenging. I don't think math scores ever recovered from the COVID shutdown like ELA did. ELA kind of bounced back, but math scores seem to stay low after the COVID shutdowns. And I don't know why that would be. You'd think you'd see some recovery, but right. And so we did have that textbook adoption where we have the new math materials. And I know last year was a learning curve on how to use those
251and the resources and just navigating. So I'm hoping we'll get some momentum going with that for sure. And I know Hillsboro they it I keep thinking of Hillsboro when we're looking at trends when Dr. blessing was showing us last year. They always do much better math than anybody else. So, they're doing something right out there because they and and stability is, you know, strong teaching with stability when they do their school improvement plans each elementary school, they can look to see what Hillsboro's doing maybe to do some of those methods themselves, right? And and I know something's making them do better. We look at root causes like what what is the root cause of the growth or the root cause of the lack of growth. Um and so there are it's it's hard to pinpoint
252one thing but we have noticed you know teacher mobility and teacher resignations and teacher leave of absences like um we've had a lot of sickness and and we've had um teachers use the materials a little different. even though they've got the same textbook, they implement it a little differently. Um, and sometimes the cohort, I've talked to a a group last year and they said, "Wow, this this is a struggling group." And then the next year I talked to another group and they're the principal said, "Wow, this is a strong cohort." So, there's so many variables. It is so difficult to just put your finger on one of them. You just have to look at the whole picture. But that that brings up a good point. And I mean because Freda's made that point a number
253of times is are we looking to see what schools are doing good where and adopting those across our system. So and I don't know if we ever you know get a satisfactory answer on that or or you know a good explanation on whether we're looking at that or not because right somebody's doing really well and they got a good system you know we should adopt it systemwide. So, she's making a great point there, right? And and I think just with with me knowing what I know with that fifth grade, you've got consistency and stability and like longevity with people in in that that subject and that school and that matters. Um, not not to mention all the strong instructional practices on top of that. And so they're not having to worry about training a new
254math teacher every other year because we have this we had somebody leave like they've they've got a strong package. You're exactly right. Anything else? Thank you. All right. It really helps a lot whenever they break it down. And while they're moving around your access plan, you're going to see a lot more things. Right. Yeah, they go to the public show. There's a whole lot of meat in there that you see. I'll just call you for that information. Yeah, that was like, you know, I got told this year I had to go in and approve it and it was like, okay, I need to spend a few hours on this. Okay. Okay. But, you know, how do we let the the rest of, you know, how do we let the rest of the board see that
255because it might be relevant? Anybody that wants to see anything that has to do with annual performance ratings and things that I'm responsible for, just just give me All right. Yeah, great. Yeah, because there's a lot of data in there. I I I know I meant I went in there, holy cow, you know. Yeah. It would be easier for me to sit down and explain individually or, you know, whatever. It would be it would take me a whole day up here. Okay. Okay. Maybe we need to look at that for for a future presentation, too, because that's great data. You know, it really is. So, all right. So, who's next? Well, it all depends. Did you say you wanted to move furniture? Yeah. Yeah. Let's uh let's uh let's talk about uh yeah, Miss Matthews
256wanted to talk about first because she may have to leave before we're done. So, and she had an interest in that one. So, okay. Fire away. Well, um and Mr. Shores, you're in on this one, too. So, I'm aware of this one. We're doing So, I I don't know who uh Mr. Parsley sent the email out to. I think it was all board members and I don't know if anybody else was included on that on the furniture and I know that this has come up twice before and it just died due to like either a motion or second of a motion. I can't really remember but anyway um I talked to Mr. Parsley about it and I just wanted to get it back on an agenda possibly but we can discuss it u you know
257together and and see what everybody else thinks. But when he sent the email out of the decrepit furniture at the high school, it made me feel bad, not going to lie. And um I just thought it might be worth bringing up uh to see if we could reconsider getting it back on the agenda um to replace if not all of the furniture on the bid, but you know, a a big portion of it at least at the high school, if not all of it. I don't know. Um that I'll let everybody else chip in what you think because the furniture it is pretty embarrassing up there. Um I hadn't looked around. I don't know if the I think the original quote may have had some central office furniture on there and I don't know if
258that's still on here or what and I don't know if we want to look at that. But um also I just want to thank Mr. Parsley for including those pictures. A lot of times we just don't have enough information to really make a good decision and um that was very helpful. It was very eye opening and um I think anytime a request comes in and you can provide a little more detail so that we can see it with our own eyes, it will make a difference for sure. So, anybody that wants to chip in? Well, I think it was it was on the agenda twice and it didn't get a it didn't even get a motion, but I think from talking with other board members, you know, as as Miss Matthews pointed out is that
259they feel like they felt like they didn't have enough information up front to to even make a motion. So, that is why it it we didn't get a motion and it it failed both times. So, so I I think that's, you know, probably what, you know, why it failed. So, and I think at that time too, we weren't for sure about funding and that sort of thing and what we're going to be needing it for. Bleachers, I don't think was resolved and there were just a lot of things on the table and we just kind of froze up because we just didn't we weren't aware of just how bad the furniture is up there. I think they are they're in a phase in approach, right, where they're buying furniture, but and this is what the
260last phase of that. No. No. Okay. Correct me where I'm wrong then. Sorry. But no. Okay. Um, so I don't know how much more is to come. I was thinking that's what Mr. Parsley said in his email was that it would be like the last one-third of the furniture to buy. We're we're finishing up and and then ultimately we'd be going through the rest of the building seeing if there was anything that was missed on it. But we also have the entire library that needs to be right. I knew that was and I don't know if that was on the original bid. It it's not it's not on this year's. It was going to be on next year's. We also have the band and course uh rooms. We have not touched those with furniture. Uh
261they're needing more of the shelving to to handle the the equipment, the band equipment and so forth. Uh it's in very poor shape. I I can take If y'all need pictures, I I take pictures. So, it's that's simple. I like pictures. Pictures are always good to have. Just a point for the band room. It's the same stuff I had when I was there 20 years ago and it was kind of rough. I still remember you screaming in there. So, I have no problem. Wonder why that hasn't been brought up since then. I still remember him screaming. That needs to be taken care of. Uh we we've not done the library. We've not done banning chorus. We've not done uh very much with the CTE area. As far as the the shop area, the classrooms are
262still in that area. Uh they've not been touched. Um so there are still some some areas that need to be tak taken care of. Uh but we've been going through a phase on doing because that high school is just so enormous. We've taken care of all of our elementary, middle school, of course, is all new. Uh, Raider Academy got it uh several years ago. We're at the high school, and if you think about our high school, it basically is the size of all of our elementaryaries put together. So, it's just it's just enormous. And it's a process. Uh, if I tried to do every bit of it at once, not only would it be very cumbersome to do that, the the price tag would be out the roof. and and so that that's the reason
263why it was where we were. Um it did also include costs uh that there's the the furniture over there and I'm not talking about all the costs, just a counselor's room and it's it's just the the furniture is really bad shape. It did also include two offices here, Miss Greer's and uh Miss Jones's and then this room here. And if you will just look at the tables, you you can see this one's warped. It's the they put retrofitted uh casters on these. I've told you all this before, so I'm sorry if I'm boring you by telling you again, but if you're sitting here, even a tall person feels short. So, if you're short, you really feel short. Um but but the the chairs it's rarely that we're carrying one out because it's broken or they
264they just look nasty because they're stained. Uh this is also a hub of where we have a lot of district meetings. We have school systems coming in here on a regular basis. Tanya has uh school health coming in, coordinate school health. Uh Charlie's got SPE coming in here. We have textbook stuff taking place in here. It's just this is one of the places that but we didn't just pick it. We worked and and we've done offices throughout because we didn't do everything here because we got to take care of our schools, but we did one or two here until we're finally we're down to the last two offices, I think, and in this room. So, we're we're almost done. It's just it's never going to end. I mean, I've been on here for five years
265and every single year you've got a furniture bid. So, it started before I was here. Yeah. Up here. It's It's just one of those. It's just gonna happen somewhere, but I think it is going to end. It's just it is process. It's a slow process. It'll be temporary even if it does and we're working our way through the entire system and and and if you we have a big system, y'all. It's just it's a big place. Um, and that's that. So, that's where we are. Uh, I did check with Lisa Kirkus on uh prices uh since the last time that they did come out. Prices have gone up some and we do have tariffs that we have to pay on now. Search charge tariffs that we didn't have before. And everybody here knows where from.
266Do what? If you don't want to pay the tariff, buy American. And and the thing is these these items are built in America. They have to get supplies. So, It should be well that's either way I know we can look at different things like that. Yeah, I'm just telling you where it what we looked at has a tariff but it's not as much as I thought it was going to be. So that's a good thing. Right now we have requested that that be put back on the agenda for next Tuesday's board meeting. And I you know assume everybody's okay with that. But but this is the the chance to ask any questions or get clarification on things so that uh when it comes to the board meeting we can you know vote on it and
267and uh and decide there. So one more comment uh correct me if I'm wrong Mr. Shores from what I understand the furniture in the library at the high school maybe not all of it but a good bit of it actually came over from the old old high school. I I don't know that. But I just know it's been there since I think it's the building 76. And that library over there serves as kind of a a meeting place for faculty or uh things you know um well I know they had the uh memorial service for or celebration of life for Mr. fist there and you know it just serves as kind of I think a meeting place for people to come together and it would be good if it looked it's another gathering large gathering
268gathering place right where where it would be nice if it were upgraded especially if it came from way back in the what would that have been 50s60s oh now 76 75 okay 76 76 the building opened 76 but if it came from the old high school I I I would have no idea. I've been from 75. I'm not I'm not going to say Dr. Pal. Dr. Pal, do you know? Yeah. Prader. I'm I'm going to say Prader was here. Do you know say it predated him, then we're worried. I just know that was a little deep. Say this. If there if there are any wooden desk on there, then more than likely that's where they came from because I don't believe we had anything except wooden desk at the time. Solid. No solid wood. They
269were heavy. Rocks, right? Yeah. So, I think since this was on the agenda before, we looked at it as, you know, on the budget. So, the budget should be fine on on this April or um I think we're looking at American add that to Oh, yeah. I think so. It will. Oh, I'm I'm tired of hearing that word tariff. Yeah, we should have enough funding and so we've moved some of the furniture money to pay for other capital things like the um the doors and the lighting, the bleachers. The bleachers. Thank you. Um but we still should have enough in the line to pay for part or all of what you guys want to do with furniture. So, we should still be good as far as the budget. South. Yeah. All right. I guess what
270I'm hearing is we want to keep it on the agenda and look at it then. And and Mr. Shores, I think we've learned that if you want to get to our hearts, you bring the ugly pictures and put them up on the screen because that really does something to me. It helps me want to spend money. So, visual learner. All right. Very much so. So, now we go back to our um um Dr. Blessed You should have in the materials four place mats. We were said if laminate them, you could have a set of place mats, but um post them on your wall. This information was requested. Um it's not just one year data, it's three years of data. It's not just us. It's basically 20 systems total because I was asked to give for
271three years for Coffee County and then for the systems that are in South Central and for the counties that touch Coffee County and that came to 20. All of this data is public. None of this is embargoed. This is all available to the public. And when you look at, and again, the small sheet is is letter grades, but I'm talking about the big place mats. And you've got one for every skill system, and you've got a placemat for every subject of the core content academic areas. So to try to get all of this together, I pulled the information and I put it in this Excel spreadsheet and it's um lengthy. So to try to uh make the lengthy data more digestible, I used a feature called a pivot table. And from that I made a
272pivot chart. So to to show you I was able just to pull out net and exceeded percentage for the three years even though I've got it for below I've got it for approaching I've got it for all the individual categories and this is what's on your place map is the meet and exceeding not the it's meet and or exceed so it's meet or exceeded on for both of those of our student population how many what percentage does this represent on meeting and exceeding around 20 25 to 28%. Well, again that's the good thing on having it in this way dynamic. We'll see if he'll do it with my finger. Yeah, my paper. You can't touch it. No, I can't. But I can. That's what I'm saying. You can go to the table. No, I don't
273need that. you um you can go to the the um table that's up here, but if I get this and I'm able to hover over it, it pops up. So, yeah, do let's see if I make it bigger. No, I have to make it bigger down here. So 34% of our students on the third third grade ELA are overall. That's overall. Yeah. This is not just third grade. This is all overall. This is all the ELA test. 34% of our students are meeting and or exceeding or exceeding. Yes. But are below and are approaching is the rest to right. And here's the thing about that. um with having it electronically. I can go up here and and instead of seeing Medricse seated, I could tell it I want to see below. There you go. Thank
274you. Or approaching or pro whichever you want to see. Or I could put both of them in there together. And now it's updated. So again, I've still got I think I got one up there that's still uh still hit. I got below. I got below. I got below. Okay, that's the three. So, and and I didn't mean to change up your whole Oh, no. I'm I back. I just, you know, I've been on here. This is my fifth going on my fifth year and and love the fact that we move the needle on our met or exceeding and and we we talk about that, we harp about that, we discuss that, we show that, but we never get into the picture of our below expectation and approach, right? And that's the majority of our students
275and that's where I just feel like that's where we ought to be focused. But that's just me. It's not just you. These graphs have look I look at things differently from a lot of people. Uh when I look at these graphs, this is what if I'm doing an improvement plan or what and what I'm going to do about math, I'm going to see what Manchester City is doing and what Rutherford County is doing. Instead of looking at the percentages, you can see how they are far ahead of all the other other school systems as far as uh this past year 23 24. And since we always seem to fall short in math, that's just another avenue of of looking at what's going on differently in those systems than what's going on in ours. Because if
276you look at the graph, you can see that Manchester City and Rustford County really improved in their math. And then when you look at ELA, uh we are, you know, we are uh about the same as as Manchester City there. So, but that's the way I look at it. Yeah. And u you know, even look at Moore County, what they're doing in science and Rutherford County again. Mhm. And uh to me that this this is very useful information to see this because not that we're trying to compare districts, but what I'm thinking is that's when we should be looking at okay these systems are doing really well in math. Maybe we need to find out what they're doing differently than than we are. Well, but if you look, Miss Freda, at at the Manchester and
277Coffee County and the overall math, the percentage of growth in our 23 24 year was almost virtually the same, right? But they were already there, you know, I'm looking Yeah, they were already at that level three three years ago when they got up here asked. And then there's other areas where we're Yeah, we're both agreeing. Well, there's something else you have to consider when you're comparing Manchester City to County is they only go up to grade eight and this information is including up to grade 12. Right. Now, Ruford County would be similar and Ruford is really high in that. Now, I know that Mr. Ballard mentioned a reason for sharing this data with everyone was to look for trends. Now for ELA where we just were you can see like for instance Bedford County is
278on a positive trend because this is their ME and exceeded for that. Uh Canon County unfortunately is going the wrong way. Some of a lot of them are had lower here went up dropped down. We see that pattern, but we're seeing some that are going up, some that are go like Lincoln County. They're they are outperforming us, but they're still going down. That I'm sure that's not the way they want to go. And you can see all of that different pictures. When you go to math, take time to look at it. There is no negative trend for math. There's nowhere it's constantly going down from one year to the next. It's either going up or it's had like a B here then rebounded. It's so low it's no way to go but up. Yeah. So,
279well, it's interesting because there are I mean everybody's been there some going down. I look at Fateville City and they were higher here in in their second year but they dropped here. But most people are going up. Lewis County is not Yeah. Lewis County. And again, you have to remember that a lot of these counties like Moore County and Lewis County, smaller counties, that one student makes a bigger impact than like Rutherford County, right? Because it's so huge. Well, that may be some of that postcoid rebound too that you're seeing there too. I mean, so and who can tell? But yet we didn't see this pattern with the LA. Yeah. But we did see it with math. Now, one thing Jonah pointed out to me the other day was, well, this was the first year
280of implementation of our new math materials. So maybe the state actually knew what they were talking about with having these highquality instructional materials for math may make a positive impact. But again, just preaching to the choir, an effective teacher is your greatest impact. So, but giving them effective tools certainly helps. So, um that's where so all the the place mat that you have is you know it's set in stone. You can't move that around and I'll be glad to share this with you so you can go through and manipulate it and see. But I do want to show you this while we're here on Can you send us the pivot table version because that that's very helpful. you just share this. Under district, I can just select a few districts. I don't have to have
281all of them, but there is a filter here that says top 10. And I want to see the top 10 by, in this case, the last year of testing. And here are the top 10 systems for math in this case for this last year of testing. Uh Bedford, Coffee, Giles, Grundy, Lawrence, Lincoln, Manchester City, Marshall County, Moore County, Rutherford County, and the following will be open two hours late. Uh no. Um but you can do this again. I'll be glad to share it with all of you if you'd like. My fees are very reasonable. So, but this just having the data in front of you on this is one level, but you can investigate and search to your heart's content with this. Again, I'm just you probably say where do we stand with ELA? No,
282I thank you because the trends are what what we're really looking at here. I mean, buried in numbers, but looking at trends is is really what's instructive. Mhm. And again, we did, you can look at science, you can look at social studies. There will, if you do look at that, you'll notice there's a couple of counties that don't have any data because of their performance. It was suppressed that this the state did not share it called their business rules. And you say, why did they not pay enough for their fees? No. It has to do like if they had too many in a certain category or too few in a certain category, it suppresses all the categories. So if there's any other questions, anything you want to see, let me know. If not, I'm gonna
283close this out. Questions for Dr. Blessing. So do you want to say these changes? No. Whatever. Oh, you're welcome. You have the Miss Seismore, were you Did you Did you have a presentation? Oh, okay. Okay. Yours was kind of rolled into everybody. Okay. Just here for the part. You logged out. You drew the no straw. All right. [Laughter] Where are you going next? Because going with letter grade letter grades. What's that? I just wonder where he was going next. Letter He's gonna Oh, did you want to talk about the letter grades or we just got that? Oh, I can talk to you about the letter grades. That's all we have on the letter grades. So, that that's just two years of data because that's all we had. That's all the data we have. So, and
284I I took it that you only wanted letter grades for our schools because otherwise you'd have stack of paper that thick. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So, yeah, this this is helpful. So, it kind of sees, you know, the trends we got. So, it's kind of disappointing. Last year we we went down in four schools. Yeah. And up in one. No, one, two, three, four, five schools. Yeah. You actually So, this year will be better, I'm sure. Had um And some were border like Hillsboro in the first year was one/tenth of a point away from an A and then this year they moved up that tenth of a point so they got the A. So again and you may remember I've presented to you how they calculated all these letter grades. But um again this letter grade
285accountability is state is state level. The other accountability that we talked about is federal. So, and this is this was the 23 24 school year, not this year. So, I just want to make sure we don't have any data from this year yet. And it takes them a while to get the letter grades to us for some reason. Really, the state is looks like they want to go to using the letter grades for school accountability. Is that really kind of the trend we're seeing? you know, since they're two different accountability systems, I'm not sure that that's a trend because um you can't really correlate and say, oh, an A is a reward school, right? Because we have some B's that aren't reward school, right? So, um I'm not sure where they're going with it. Yeah,
286that's because it seems a little bit muddled, you know, so I don't they're ever going to try to reconcile them or replace one with the other or eliminate them both. But academy middle school that came out of one section is still on here still the same but they did come up a level. Yeah. In fact they came off the list all together and so because that was the federal accountability system but for the letter grade system they had the same grade. Right. So, how do we reconcile those metrics back into, you know, what, you know, Dr. Canas is keeping track of and and Miss Cole is keeping track of, you know, how do we Well, the letter grade that grade is grow. Well, TCAP counts in there, too, right? focuses on growing under the federal
287metrics and then the schools on the federal side they can be designated as school or ATSI CS. I know you're thinking of CSIO, right? But if we're if we're developing programs to improve our scores in these areas and you got conflicting metrics or standards of measurement, He correct me. But if you focus if you will focus on the um the grow the growth the growth and the achievement especially proficient area then you're going to hit you're going to hit both both buckets if you would you hit both like Mr. Gilly was saying earlier and and Dr. Blessings put it in a very good way too those scales for like approaching and met and exceeded an exceeding scale score is small. It's it's narrow. The met the met is a little bigger. But that approaching the
288approaching one is high. And so teachers have got to know and they've got to be equipped. Teachers have got to know with every single student basically where and he's explained it very well. Where on that scale does the a score of 250 might be approaching, but a score of 320 might also be approaching, but where on that scale is that student located? Because that 250, you might still have them approaching, but you grow them and you're going to hit a lot with growth, but they might still not hit achievement. But that one that's a 320 and those teachers need to see that then they will that can that can push up to that next level. So I think a lot of it is just making is enabling the team the classroom teacher to see every
289single student how they are. Yeah. Yeah. And it's you know and and it's you know and I agree with Mr. Gilly 100% is we want to lift up those those people that are down at the bottom but are they in the smaller half of that or the upper half? Yeah, exactly. But and how do you measure that because we got competing metric systems and and that's that's the struggle and and I know you all are facing that and and we appreciate that as a board that you're wrestling with that because you're dealing with two different masters here. You got the state, you got the feds, and and you know, we're trying to look at how students really accomplish things, you know, and go out into life and and those metrics may not measure that either.
290So, you know, that's almost like a third set of metrics, but but how do you you know, how do we reconcile that? And I guess that's, you know, it's probably more a rhetorical question at this point, but something else you have to remember is that the federal accountability is only looking at ELA and math. Correct. In terms of the academic subjects, but the state accountability system with the letter grade is looking at all tested content areas. Right. And also that these letter grades take in achievement and growth. That's right. But they also um so it's it's kind of a composite of the whole uh what if we score a D is that a targeted school? No ma'am. It's a what is that called? A targeted F is your federal accountability. Okay. And that means that
291you have uh lower performance. I'd have to remember in the bottom five% the bottom five% of the of across the state in that particular because I know we were at one time and one of our and it could be for just a particular subcategory for instance for the middle school this last time it was for students with disabilities but in the years past it was with economically disadvantaged. So it it shifted a little and sometimes it could be for for an ethnicity race it's white or it's BHN or it's Asian and you can have very few in that in that race that did you know maybe it's just a very small population but they didn't do well at least 30 for accountability area but again as you say I mean you have 30 versus 500
292you know it Mhm. But again, if you have enough people, then you're accountable for that subgroup. But I understand that that as far as the letter grades go, that the state is requiring a some kind of remediation plan if you're a D or an F there. Had that passed, Dr. Palth? Uh, no, sir. uh if a school is a D or an F that they're supposed I even thought they had to go before the state and present if they are D or F for three consecutive years I believe they have to go before the state board of education okay for I know state was talking about DNF and and they kind of suspended the deeds that's not people think that's new that is not a new statute that has been codified in the law for
293several several years about the marks of the letter three years because right it's just because we've started actually enforcing and using the letter that was codified many years ago. So that's not anything that is that three consecutive years, right? That's right. So three years is an F and you have to go before the state. Absolutely. Now I don't know if you went from an F to a D, would that be considered improvement? It may be just depends on but again if it's three years of a I you know the state will answer that. I guess that third year your B your B C and D are wider. Those are your They're the same, but they're wider gaps than the A. You can't get the A unless you have you can't have lower than a four
294inch achievement, especially you can't have lower than four in any of those. So, okay. It's really tight. Okay. So, so that's nothing new then. So, Okay. Got it. So because we got some information that said that that they were looking at they had so many F schools that they were not looking at the D's this year and and so there's a lot of information out there that all right although we did have you know our three schools have that are DNF come in and talk about a plan to improve. So because we definitely won't don't want to they are working. Yeah. Yeah. So and we need to kind of go back and re probably revisit that at some point too and make sure they're hitting those goals. All right. Well, very good. I think that
295that's helpful data. Um I think you know we we got a few things left. Uh we got to talk about cell phone policy paving grants and the five-year plan, but I'd like to take a quick break. Chris jumped the gun on me. legacy. Jennifer, Dr. Powell, Gary. All right. So, the next item on our agenda or the revised agenda anyway is the cell phone policy review. And Mr. Hansert, you're kind of the lead on that. So tell us what you got. Next. Okay. Well, you tell me next. I know. I moved the agenda around, so it's confusing. Got stuff. Um, is y'all can tell by the uh the those are the pouches that I picture the pouches. the uh general assembly passed a did pass a state law uh back on February the 15th uh
296to pass this law and and uh the bill the house bill was the 932 if all of y'all have got a copy of the bill or not. Um should be in the packet. Should be in the packet. bill says u Tennessee code of ethics on and it's on the title 49 chapter 6 part three amended by the the following new additions um calling for number one the more of the u cell phones tablets computers laptop computers and gaming devices uh those are all what the state is calling for that will have to be that that we are supposed to come up with a policy to take all of those out of the uh the classrooms. Says each board of education and each public charter school uh governing shall adopt and implement a wireless communication device
297policy. That's what your other one here has a copy of Warren counties that they are going by. Um other counties that are going to probably sim go by this probably the uh the same policy that they're going by is that I've talked to it's Harden County. Um Putham County Wilson County is talking about going to this. Uh Warren County is obviously is already doing this and Clarksville. some of the thanks to Crein and some of his contacts that I've made over the years with them uh trying to kind of talk to those and Williamson County has already uh implemented that as well. Uh some of the things uh that you might want to look out uh look at as a permits for a student to use wireless communication device in an event of emergency or
298to manage a student's health would be some uh situations that you would be able to use cell phone according to the state law. uh permits a student to use wireless communication devices during uh initial time of a student use of wireless communication devices. Uh include in include in the students uh for individual education programs under the individual with disabilities education. Uh that's in act 20 uh point USC that be in the four uh 4. A on the in the uh the bill. Also, if you go down under 5C, establishing the process in which parents or guardian students will be contacted in the event of emergency or possible emergency occurring at the school in which the parent student is enrolled to ensure that the absence of a or restricted access to wireless communication device during the
299school day during not permitted not prevent students from receiving notice or emergency. mergency or possible emergencies. That make sense? And then in the C there, it says each LEA and public charter school shall publish the wireless communication device policy established uh on the website. And then in section two, it says Tennessee code of uh section 49 C 496.44002 4002 uh is amended to delete the uh substituting of thus that part if we come up with our own policy. It says in u so if we come up with our own policy uh as we implement the one that Warren County's got uh if we like that one we can go by it and implement it. We just have to do something by if you'll see down in section three, this act takes place July the 1st,
3002025. Uh the public is aware of qualifi qualifying it and apply to the 202526 school year and each year therefore and you can see a copy of the pictures. I know that everybody since everybody's talking about pictures, we uh gave everybody the uh yonder pouches. Uh what one county has got uh the student gets there when he gets to school, he puts them uh in that pouch. He does keep the pouch with him during the day. And uh at the end of the day when he goes to walk out or in case of emergency, he can walk over to uh a magnet that disconnects that. That's what they they're using in Warren County right now. And u of course in an emergency. So, are these personal pouches or is it like you walk in the
301door and you grab a pouch? No, ma'am. They are your personal pouch. So, if you don't bring the pouch, then what? You if you don't, you have to go get it. And if you lose it, you're responsible for it. You have to pay for it. Those pouches are about $25 a piece. I think they I think they surrender their phone that day. If they if they don't show up with it, they surrender it at the door when they come in that way. Yeah, you're you're you're right, Robert. Yeah. Yeah. And I and the only question I had about those because I I do, you know, we're going to have to do a policy. Yeah, it's it's set in stone. I think that uh I think, you know, I would like to see to take this
302Warren County policy and reach out to TSBA for a model if they've got a model developed yet. They don't have one yet. They're they're going to use probably Warren County, right? as of yet the I think I think we'll uh I think we should take that probably and cuz we I think we got two weeks to the next pol or three to the next policy committee or we haven't but we won't have enough time to get three readings before July 1st but as long as we have a policy established and it is rolling we can do it in two you could do a one and only yeah we can do a one and only Okay so if we get Warren counties into that committee the very next committee meeting. Yeah. I mean you can see
303on the back on the if you turn over on the back side um the first offense, second offense, third offense and fourth offense. Yeah. If you want to look at that. Um first offense the device u is collected and the uh f on the first offense uh the parent is notified must pick up the device from the office. uh warning student uh advice collected offense, you know, first on the offense, parents is notified, you know, and so on so forth across there. If you'll see on the first offense, second offense, collected again, parents is notified, pick up the device at on the second one, if you'll see that the sto the student is assigned to either two days of ASD or one week of lunch detention. you know, it's and it just continuously I mean
304it's it's I think this is serious enough that it's you know across uh yes sir with with this um definitely has to be done. Um I I think the Warren County has a good good policy and so forth. I really truly think that especially our secondary principles needs to be in part on uh uh pulling this together, reading through it, making adjustments and being part of the process completely on this making this policy because there's they're the ones that's going to be enforcing and they're the ones that deal with the students on a regular basis. Uh but I I think they really need to be part of the the process of making the policy. What about this is we get Oh, we have those except for some of the elementary most of the elementary principles
305and I think greater academy is not on the policy. Well, you you have one elementary and then two secondary, but but and truly secondary needs to be part of it, but I would entertain your number one pro I want to say the problem areas you're going to have the problem problematic areas is your secondary, which is all of them. and and from what I'm uh middle school has a a setup that they are doing that works pretty good for middle school. Um and and they've been doing it for I think two or three years now. Uh Raider Academy has one as well. Uh high school needs to work on theirs I think some with with some things with it. But but they could bring in some people and and really give some information that is
306pertinent on a policy for Coff County schools. Well, why why don't we do this? Why don't we distribute um this information that that Scott has provided us here out to all the principles and we invite them to come to not just the representatives but um as Mr. Gilly suggests invite them to come to the policy committee. We put this on the policy committee meeting for the next every one of them there. Yeah. Every one of them there. They can provide and we can hash this out there because it needs to be done and there's not a real long time frame here. Yeah. two comments. I think uh Mr. Chairman, Mr. Parsley and one or two of his uh assistant principles I think went to Warren County uh three or four weeks ago and spent the
307day up there. So, he's fairly familiar with this with what they've got. Um question I have on uh the second offense when it says uh ASD. Now, that would be after school detention, which means you're going to have to pay somebody to stay after school uh if that be the case. And I'm not sure what EL6 means. Do you know Scott Ralph Han? I'm not I'm not familiar with that. We'll have to blend this and that's what the policy committee I'm sure will get into. Yeah, of course our terms and our right I think Dr. F's correct it that's actually terms for for Warren County, right? We need to get our people in involved, our principles, our secondary and and in the elementary as well and and change it to be Coffee County to fit
308ours, right? And what we have I know we've got in school we've got we've got a in school detention. I know that. Yeah. But I'm not sure about the I don't think we don't have any after school detention at this point in time. I don't believe so. And this is just from sixth grade up to K. This is not they don't have it in any of the elementary schools up there. This is just from six from six uh no elementary schools are involved in this. But what I'm saying is we don't have any afterchool detention program at the high school right now or the middle school. Right. You'd have to askware the policy committee meeting and uh I think that's probably you know I I think probably you know and see if you agree and
309you know if everybody else agrees is to bounce this over to policy committee hash this out get it on policy and then get it to the board. We can suspend policy and do it in one reading. Yeah. I mean every everybody normally it's two readings. Yeah. I've talked to, let's see, six different schools here and everybody's going to they're going to tweak it however they they want to do it. Of course, we're going to have to tweak it the way that Yeah. Uh there's some things in here about disability. I've had some calls um on some disability issues that, you know, and that's stuff that we'll have to work out. And the the pouches with the magnets, that's the only thing I didn't say a while ago was finding out if those, you know, obviously
310you put them at the door and that was the goal. And the way he explained it is when you come through the door, you seal them up. You go out the door, you can unlock them. and they'll be powered up. But having the magnets throughout the school system so that or school building so that in the event you do have an emergency, they can energize them to actually work. And any where any one of these are, you can unlock them. That's correct. Emergency. Just making sure that it's a possibility. Who would pay for these? We have to Yeah, that's where the Warren County guy when he come in here, he said they paid for theirs and it cost their their middle schools and high school cost like $125. aboutund about $100,000 is what and see
311right now right now the middle school is doing it without the pouches and it's working well. So you you might not be having to buy pouches for middle, you know, middle school. We're just looking at 9 through 12. And you might be working okay with your ninth grade because they have lockers set up after 9th grade. The problem you run into at the high school is we removed the lockers to put in the classrooms. And so you don't have enough lockers in the old part of the building. Now, if if this board chose to put in lockers, then you could do that, but that creates another set of problems you could have. But uh so that's the reason why you need those principles. They can actually end up saving the system a whole lot of
312money from not buying pouches. You just need it for the high school. Maybe he also Scott, I may have missed his qu answer. I'm sorry, Jennifer. Go ahead. You're fine. I was just going to say he did say that production was slow on those. Do we know how long it would take to get them? With all of the stuff that's going on now, I I asked that question this past week and and I don't right now they it seems like they they just got theirs and they but now they seem like if they were to order them now that the production is gotten fixed on them so they would be quicker. for us to say let's do this and let's go for it. Oh, you can't have them for a year. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And
313two about what Kevin said there a lot of the problems that they had up there. If you if you leave it in the control of the students doing it, then they're not, you know, it's not it hadn't worked out too well unless they have something to put them in. So that Scott, I I may have missed this. Where do they where do the students put the pouches when they get They keep it with them. They carry it with them. Okay. But it's locked. Yes, sir. So, they have the pouches with them. Yes, sir. But it's locked. So, they're not able to Okay. Now, how do they get them unlocked? They have to take it to that magnet. They'll hold it on that magnet. Is if you look on the back there on that second page,
314they'll hold it up to that magnet and it'll disconnect it. And is it located in various parts of the building? Yes, sir. It can be wherever we where like Robert pointed out, it could be put out pretty much anywhere that we want. Okay. But most of the time it's put at the entryways of the schools. I'm sorry I missed that. No, it's okay. You know, one one of the things that just brought up to me was that that we understand we might be able to figure out a way that we don't have to have a pouch for every student. It might be and and and our principles might come up with this type of thing. Just if if you get caught with it one time, then we start the pouch with you. You have to
315have the pouch. And it might be that they start realizing, I don't want to be that kid that ends up having to carry a pouch around and you'd rather not get caught whatsoever. Then you're down from buying, you know, 1,300 pouches down to buying the second offense. She second offense and you're you're you're way low on it because is not a good assistant. Once you get messed up, you you're you're carrying this pouch and nobody wants to be carrying a pouch around. put a what's going to be in a on the pouch. But what I'm getting at that's just another way and that's just one of many ways that could possibly come into that we don't have to buy a pouch for everybody and get it down to just a few and and take every
316that direction. That is a very good point because this would have really slowed my my coolness down carrying a pouch. Well, one of the things I remember, you know, if every if everybody's doing it, then then it's one thing, you know, if you have only some doing it, then then it is really the scarlet letter, but punishment, you know, that but the difference then how much money there? Yeah, that's a lot. Are we are we going to try to put a a magnet outside the building? Because what's going to happen at least initially, you're going to have kids going to go home with their phones in their pouches and can't get them out till they get back to school. Oh, they'll learn fast. Maybe their parents broke it. Be a quiet night. Be a quiet
317night at home. Yeah. Dr. Pal. There was a bunch of things I did growing up that Think about it. My lesson the next day. If you have kids, think about them with their cell phone. Will they leave that school with it still being in a pouch? No. I've got two kids and they would not be leaving that school with it still being in a pouch. But you you're making a good point cuz I said the same thing. Odds are that they probably wouldn't, but I'd say initially some of them are going to walk out with those phones in the pouches, forget about the They could they could without long to remember two or three days staying late because they're going to turn around, come right back. They won't know. Everything that phone they'll they'll guard
318that phone more than anything. Exactly. Everything that we're talking about, they've already encountered up there. Yeah. Everything that we've talked about here in the last two minutes, they've already encountered up there and they, you know, it's it's brighten, it's gotten back. Kids are talking again. Uh, home rooms are where kids are are they're having conversations again. They're not looking in their phones. Um, it has made a dramat, you know, dramatic change in Warren County schools over the past this past school year. No doubt about that. Scott, the policy committee. No, you're not. I can't do now. I guess Oh, I I talked to a teacher that's in another school system and and uh they didn't go this route. They have like what it's kind of elementary, but it's like shoe a shoe pouch and the
319kids put the that they're labeled and and a number or whatever and they come in, they put it in the pouch and when they leave they get it out. Yeah. One of the things and I talked to Jimmy Anderson and uh this was where he started the the program and the the setup that they did. And I thought they could just leave it on them and and as long as they don't get it out, you're okay. Can't really do that. There's also a problem there because they say leave it on them. They put it when they walk in the classroom. I understand. But but they have it on them before they go into the classroom is what? So between class changes whenever they go to the restroom and next thing you know they're going to
320the restroom all the time. Uh trying to figure out a way to get that so they could check it. Our kids are addicted to the phone. They are addicted to the phone. And and I don't know. So are we. Without a doubt we are. So, ultimately, it's getting the phone completely out of the the the thought process of being able to even check the phone and and I don't have the answers, but like I said, our principles are dealing with some of it. Scott's also found some things through Warren County and their policies, but but Jimmy, they got a pretty good setup now. It goes in the locker. They can't get to it whatsoever. It doesn't come out. They just need to be included. I think you're going to get some good information there as
321well. Yeah, I think we did. You're you are right. The shoe pouch or the old calculator pouch is what it was. And they would come in the room, put it in. It's just really comes down to then how much is it monitored, you know? Well, they said they were going to try this and see and if it didn't if they were having a lot of issues with it, it wouldn't work and they going to step up and they had told the parents and the kids that that and they might very well do it then. What system was that? What school system was that? Rutherford. Rutherford. I I' like I say, I'd like for all of them to be there at that policy meeting. I don't know that anybody's got No, I'm just picking on it.
322Come on. I think I think originally I mean I think parents are like us. They'd like for the kid not to even have the phone. But it's almost unrealistic because there's so many times, particularly in high school, that kids have to take, especially if they're not driving. uh you know there there are several kids that that do not drive and they're in programs after school and all that sort of thing of course and it's during the day that they don't have access to you know to tell a parent I've got to stay late or I got to do this and I know it doesn't sound uh that sounds kind of minor but it's really not to parents because their their schedule is all messed up and they don't know what to do it's like they're
323and and of course years ago we didn't have phones and still worked it And Miss Jones, you're right and I understand what you're saying, but you have to be careful making excuses. Yeah. And what I mean, and I'm not I hope you don't take the wrong way. I don't mean the wrong way. We got to be careful not to make an excuse in a way to give it to them and and it's so easy to do. And like you you also mentioned, 20 years ago, nobody had a cell phone in in school and and somehow they survived. Yeah. And 20 years ago, we weren't having there was differences. I'm I'm with you. I'm with you. And I think that's what I think that's the only thing that parents are going to be concerned about is
324the safety issue that if something happened, they could not get in contact with their child. I'm being the devil's advocate because I've talked to a lot of parents and uh and they're they've heard this and and they they're concerned and I and but they don't understand what the teachers and principles and everybody's going through either when you get every child that's got a phone. That was one thing when they came from Warren County and talked to us about it. They said that that they have found safety wise that if the kids have the cell phones and there's an emergency, they're trying to get on their cell phone. They're not paying attention to what they need to do to go for safety. So that's another area we could give excuse. But we also need to tell
325the parents this is not the safest thing for your child is that they are trying to get to a cell phone when they need to be listening to their teacher and what they need to do to get to safety. So that was one of the things I thought was a valid point that he brought up. And if we make it too easy with where we put those magnet releases, they're gonna be getting out of class to try to get to one of those magnet releases. And I mean, I taught middle school. I know how how wy these kids are. You know, one of the things that one of the parents up in War County was telling me about too that the parents the kids have actually enjoyed it because the parents is like, you know,
326I can go to school and not get away from my parents. You know, they've got a I was the other way around. I've called the high school. Mine's going to text me one more time. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh some of the parents quite a few of the parents have really enjoyed the peace and quiet from their parents, you know, from you know, the kids have enjoyed it. So, It it it works both ways. We're going to have some push back. Uh no doubt, you know, but from everybody that you talk to up in Warren County, it it it is, you know, really really changed that district up there and for the better. It's taken away, like I said, it's land a lot of the animosity and and uh going to the bathrooms and fights, the
327bullying. The bullying is the biggest thing that has really changed that district up there. It's taking a lot of that away. Freda would, as I recall, the way they used to handle it, the way when we were growing up, they handled it was they would call the main office and the office had a group of students that they could send down to a classroom here. Your mom sent this note to you. She'll meet you out front at so and so. It would make it busier for our office people, but it's the way we always used to do it. We also had those pay phones in the cafeteria. I don't know if those are still there, but those helped a lot. Used to smoke right outside the cafeteria. All right. So, why don't we pass this
328along to the uh policy committee? We'll get you know all the principal. I would say we send out the information to them ahead of time and so that they got it and they can come and make constructive comments because that may be the only thing on the policy committee. Mr. Balor, we we we at this time do not have a meeting for a policy committee. You want to try to set one of those today when everyone's here? We don't have a policy meeting set up right now. It's up to whatever we have open around the uh let's see here around the first second week of May is when it needs to be anyways around the first second week of May in it be Mondayhere else what have you got Melissa May May 5th is fine
329with me. That's on a Monday. I'm not on policy. You're not policy. That looks fine. All right. So, we'll set it for May 5th at Yes, that's normally when we go. Hey, Mr. West Morning. What? Didn't you was when you was in Grundy County, did you not sit up? Yeah, I supported I was part of a policy cell policy there and we we essentially did what you read in the war county policy. Yes, sir. just did it without the pouches and we instituted after school teaching program to where that was the consequence first, second chance, third and it made a difference. Now a couple things that happen is kids have dummy phones. They will get caught get the dummy phone but their actual phone will still be on their period. Wow. Wow. But you got
330to remember you got two different animals here. You got an elementary and you've got secondary. You got to kind of handle both of those a little bit different when it comes to cell phones. You know, with the high school with with kids driving and things like that, it makes a difference with their consequence versus a consequence of a third grader or a second grader. Essentially, the students came in, cell phones were outside. First offense, you know, they come to the office, the phone would be confiscated, they pick it up the end of the day. Second offense, they would be confiscated come pick the phone up and then they would get one hour And then third offense after school, but you didn't take them up in the morning. They weren't taken up. They still had them
331with them. And then of course you got to have hallway monitors. You got to have bathroom monitors. You got, you know, cafeteria. The rules are the same on the phone. I I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I I had forgot about that that you was on that Scott. Sir. Yes, sir. That information you got from Warren County? Yes, sir. Where you had the poll showing those statistics, whatever. We have Did you send I've got them. Yes, sir. I think I can send Could we get that, too? I'll send I can send them to you. You should have it in your email. Yeah, I've got it. But could you send that out to our principles and whatever? Yes, sir. So they could be reviewing that before the meeting. That whole presentation to them,
332did we not? Yeah, they've already they got it. Okay. Well, we send it again. Whatever we need to do, we'll do it. Yeah. Cuz those statistics were concerning. Yes, sir. And eye opening. Uh Dr. Wes Morland. Mr. West Morland. Oh, I work for a living. Ouch. Yes, ma'am. Um, now one thing about the policy, the the thing that came down from the state was that if a child had an IEP that included a phone in it, how many students do we have with an IEP? Zero. Okay, that helps. Now, I have a couple that, right, that would be the help that would be included in a 504. Okay. It would be a team decision. 99.99% of the time in our school district, there's an adult within immediate proximity of a student who may have those
333needs. Okay. But in that case, that would be one of those cases. But as far as I students in our district that have that in Okay. All right. Yes, sir. So before a lot of you were members, we had something. It was not to be seen, used or that was the rule. So what you and we fought it hard and the fought it every day because it was this first offense, second offense, whatever. We fought parents because you can't take my kids phone call. I'm coming up there with I mean, so there's evidence. We already have evidence of what it looks like to put this in place. And I can tell you conversations that we've had with our teachers right now. Our teachers have the power. We give that to them. We have some teachers
334that say when you come in the the hanging they hang their phones in the board. That's that's the teachers policy. Hey, when you come in, I don't want to see you playing with your phone. Put your phone in the pouch. There's some teachers that say, I don't want their responsibility. What if the phone gets broken? You know, I mean, who's paying for the phone? The whole nine yards like that. But for the most part, when we meet with our advisory group from the teachers, they just need a strong policy. If there's a strong policy put in place, then the teachers are free of it. Does that make sense? And so, absolutely. That's what I'm saying. Like this this is not new, you know? I mean, this is um but but you what you run into
335is we know when when you put when you put this in govern the first year and I we've talked to Warren County. We know the first year is when you're going to have to pay all the prices. Your admin team is going to be inundated with issues to just put this in place. But we've also had conversations of man the middle school's already created this behavior. What if it just naturally follows 9th 10th 11th 12th? It's not that difficult, you know. I mean, we we've got a cycle of kids. We got to get out of the old pattern and then it's just created the expectations of our system. So, so much conversation has been having this with our teachers. And so, there is a ton of feedback that's available for you guys of the things
336that we've already tried to do. And and any policy is only going to be as strong as our ability to enforce that policy. you know, with cell phone, one thing I learned with a cell phone policy, you can't really have that favoritism, the athletes, the the gifted students, whoever they, you know, it's it's got to be a rock driven policy that every administrator in our district is following so that that cohort as they get to you is already expectations been trained to do. But the dummy phones, all those teachers that have do the pouch thing, kids put dummy phones in there every day. That was the biggest problem was the dummy phones. I just can't believe it. I had probably $10,000 worth of phones in my desk and they were just iPhones you can imagine.
337And you catch them. You'd search them. That'd be the phone you'd get. There you are. And they'd never come back and get them. A thousand dollar iPhone they'd never come and get. They'd lay in my desk and about every two or three weeks an alert would come through. And if I forgot to turn them off, that desk would just jump across the room. Phone. Oh, another thing Randy wanted me to mention is this includes any smart watches and any electronic devices they can get text or messages through. So that's that has to go in the pouch or whatever we decide to all of that has to go in. So I remember getting paddling in sixth grade for having one of those watches that come out that was cool that was a calculator, you know. But
338I think during my attitude the watches need the phone and the pouches are RFID pouches, sir. Are they RFID pouches? So they don't it's in it's in the state and that's another thing now the teachers in Warren County now they've got backing. That was their biggest problem. You know Richard, you know, was saying what he said, but now that they've got now they have backing and it's a state law now. It's not a talk about it's not a well we should have done this we should have done that now it's a state law and we have to implement it and we have to follow the state law now what did the teachers do with theirs we still is there a policy for teachers if we want to make one but right now they can keep
339them in we pres we presently have a policy on it it's not as thorough as this of course but it's uh 6.312 called use of personal communication devices and electronic devices. So, at least have to be revised this policy what it's going to boil down to. And like like I said, that's that's what they're learning in in Warren County is and and in Williamson County now, they've got some backing from the state. You know, if you take if they take your phone away, they can't hold the picture responsible or any of that anymore. So, that's you know, is that that what you kind y'all didn't have to deal with in Granny County though, did you? But would that have help? But yeah, you know, we again assistant principles are people that's in charge of the
340discipline for the schooling. They're really busy. You know, the big things are vapes and cell phones. But it does it does cut down as as the cohorts move through. You start seeing a change as that senior group goes out next group. And then if you're seeing this trickle from all the way through the district, you'll finally see that cohort to where it'll be, you know, your discipline will be cut way in half based on just the students being kind of their mind frame for the way cell phon. All right. So that'll be on the policy committee meeting agenda for May 5th. Right, Melissa? May 5th. All right. At four o'clock. Four o'clock. All right. All right. Let's move on. We have weather moving in. So, we're going to try to We do get through this
341here. Um, Mr. Shores, you are up next with the paving bid. All right. Want to bring up uh the paving again and u talk a little bit about it. Uh, first of all, I want to explain a few things that went on with the bid and how it came about. Y'all, first of all, I will tell you I am not a paver. I do not pay to pave parking lots, roads, or anything. But I have a general idea. So, if I don't know something, I do what I feel like I should. I call experts to come in. And I called Kenny Sadler and Steve Moran. Steve Moran is with the um Rogers group. He's the one that's over there paving area and got their their input. Uh we met at uh Deerfield and started looking
342at it. First question that they both asked me was how much money do you want to spend? I mean that that was their first question and they got the same answer that I tell on every job that we do and that is we do not have an unlimited fund to be able to pay on this but I want the job done right. I want it to last. I want it to be around for years to come and and I have to because that's truly where we are as a school system. We do not have the unlimited funds like people think we do. So that's the direction I went with it. At that point, we started out with getting a geo a a quote to get geo testing at Deerfield. That cost is going to be
343$8,500. That's not touching the high school just to get a geo test at the at at Deerfield, they said. And after you get that, what you're going to find out is because we are from this area, we know that it's a swamp out there and you're going to find swamp dirt underneath this drive and that's going to give you your problem. My first thought is why do we need to get a geo test to tell us that if we know it pretty straightforward. He said I asked myself so what can we do to to be able to afford to do this? He said truly what kind of money are you talking about? I said I I really don't know. I said what what are we what are we talking about? That's the reason why we
344jumped back at Deerfield and went with spots to be fixed. They said they had to have binder in it to be able to bridge across the the really bad areas. I said, my thing was, but we're not fixing the whole problem. He said, no, you're not. But ultimately, we're fixing the parts that is messed up, then when the other parts get messed up, we would go back and we will have to fix it. But the parts that we worked on is done correctly. They are fixed. binder is is the the the system that needs to be under. We went over to the high school and we met at the high school, asked the same thing. How much money you want to spend? Well, we know they know what we have over there. They both said
345with what you have here, let's go this direction. Now, Scott said the other day that it needs binder. Hey, I I don't disagree. We would love to have a binder in the whole thing to be able to do the binder. First of all, we've got a problem out there and that is drainage. And anybody that's been out there at the shop area, which they call, what do they call it? Uh swamp. The swamp. The area. Okay. That's the name of the area is the swamp. And anytime it rains, they're worried about what, Richard? Water getting into the shop. Right. So if we go out there with what we have and we throw binder which is 2 in then we throw on top of that binder a surface. We're going to put water right into the
346shop and we've got a big problem. But before we even do that once again how much money do you want to spend? They both said we have compacted crushed gravel that is approximately 6 in deep out here. you will be fine if you put binder in. We're gonna have to dig every bit of that out. We've got to put put a bunch of yellow equipment back here and carry it out. Get it down deep enough. And then we turn around. Once we get deep enough, put in our our drainage. Then we've got to do what? Bring it back in. So, not only are we hauling it all out, we've turned around. Now, we have to haul it back in. Then we put the binder down. And then we put the the top coating on it
347and we have it fixed really good. Now, if we wanted to, we can make the place like it's an interstate and we can make it so we can land a jet airplane back there, but it's going to cost us. We can do it, but it's going to cost us. So through that discussion, Kenny Sadler, which is a engineer with a stamped ability that has been through college that knows what he's talking about, did drawings. I'm going to pass out the drawings to you because they could have been picked up by anybody. I want to let you know this was not half hazard done. This is the the project that we were looking at. If you'll open it up and look at it, it's it's it's got the full drawing. There's two pages. The first page
348shows you where everything is and what is expected to be done. The second page actually shows the full drainage for the entire thing because we have to get the water out of there. Otherwise, what's going to happen is going to go into these shocks. And it does show wherever you put the drainage in, what do you replace it with? Crush gravel as Scott said. And it does say it on the plan. There are other problems with the uh what is out there already. It's been called contaminated. It is understood it will have to be clipped. To be clipped means you have to go in you have to take off the top layer which takes away the contaminated area. Then they will go in put in the drainage and it's taken care of. Instead of what
349is a custom is putting in 1 and 1/2 in of surface top we put down that we wanted 2 in because we're not putting a binder down. What we have already is a drive that buses are running on, garbage trucks are running on, and that was brought up the other night. It's not failing. It's holding up. And when we throw more asphalt on top of it, all it's going to do is what? Make it stronger. It's not failing now. Why would it fail then? On top of that, it was brought up that we need a pad for our dumpsters. That's not part of the project. If we want to add that as a project, we can throw in concrete somewhere to put the dumpsters on. That's not part of this project. Are there any questions?
350Where are you going to put the dumpsters? I really don't care about the dumpsters still, Scott. Just like I told you the other night, I did go out there the other day and right beside the um the new CT building, there's a place we could put the dumpsters. I am perfectly fine with the dumpster staying where they are. It's been working where they are. It's holding up for them. So, I it it really doesn't matter. That's not part of this project. Can I talk now? Yes, sir. You could talk. Not with attitude. I'm not going to talk with attitude. I'm explaining. Me, too. Go for it. You've got to know where you're going to put a dumpster pad at, Kevin, because when By the way, Mr. Mr. answered. My name is Kelvin Shores. K L
351V I N. And I would appreciate it if you address me either Mr. Shores or Kelvin. Let me tell you what I've done. I built an exit ramp. Proud over 2000. Excuse me. Proud for you. I'm done. We are over here at the high school dealing with over here at the high school. I have an engineer with step drawings that states what we are to do and what needs to be done. I Hey, I I know what I'm doing, too. I'm proud for you. All right. If you don't know where you're going to put a dumpster pad, you can you can put as much asphalt as you want to on top of it. Calvin, Mr. Chores, or whatever you want. It's not Calvin. It's Kelvin. Mr. Shores, Dr. Shores, whatever you want. It's not Doctor,
352it's Mr. Shores. Okay. Whenever you drive an 80,000 lb trash truck back there and he lifts that dumpster up, all that pressure goes down on the front tires. It'll last about two years. That's the reason why they put dumpster pads anywhere. Okay. If you don't put a dumpster pad back there somewhere, all that pretty asphalt is going to go away in about two years. Okay. Okay. Yes. You don't. That was the biggest problem that the people that bid on the job that came to me and and told me. Okay. The ones I think that came to you, I apologize for interrupting you. The ones that came to you I do believe was the ones that had the high bid that was not going to get the job. He ain't bid on it yet when he
353come to me. I'm just telling you. I'm just telling you. Were they not the ones that came to you? That's none of your business. Before this gets out of control. Before this gets out of control, can we not make a dumpster pad a discussion for capital projects because we're talking about a 10 by 10 or a 10 x 20 area that we can chop out and pour concrete in for a dumpster pad when we can agree but make that something that's totally different than this parking lot project. Anyways, easy for me. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Can we do that, Mr. Scott? Are you good with that? Making it make it a definite Yeah. But that, you know, the other part it was that there's there's a water line that was cut down through there that's
354settling. Correct. There is a water line. Yes. Well, there was nothing in there's nothing in these plans that says how you going to, you know, fix. I'll compact it. It's it's 50 foot long. I've listened to this since this past fall. We've got to do something with the parking lot in the back. I'll go out there and compact it myself because I'm actually a T dot pre-qualified contractor to build roads and bridges and ramps and everything in the whole entire state of Tennessee, not just Coffee County. I was too. So, I'm just Hey, this my opinion. Last time this game came before the board, we I believe it failed on a four to four and well I think there was an abstension actually. So correct me if I'm wrong, but but it failed by like
355one vote I think or something. We didn't have a quorum. So because I think people were unsure, they didn't feel like they had enough information to they were made unsure by somebody. Yes, I agree with that. Yeah. So I think that's that's what happened last time. So if this is and I believe is this on the agenda for Yes. Okay. We were going to put that on the agenda for for the 15th as as we explained it here. And so we know what Mr. Hansard says and Mr. Gilly says. Does anybody else have any questions of Mr. Shores? Um she can put my name. Miss Miss Melissa can put my name on it at the request because it only takes one board member to request something for the executive committee to consider to be on
356and and please board members please do ask if you have a question. There is this was not done haphazard. It was researched out. It has been looked at. Experts have been brought in. Discussions have been there. Yes, there are better ways doing it as far as and I did I I called and talked to the one that would have had the winning bid and I asked do you have any concerns with any of this that was in the drawings? He said no. He said there's not there's there's no worries. Uh he he's willing to for me to call him right now. You can ask him questions. Um, can he guarantee that? It is not. Okay. If anybody has ever done road work and really understands road work with asphalt, you cannot guarantee the possibility of
357a breakage of road. You just can't do it. You just can't do it. Wrong answer. No right answer. No right answer. Drive down I 24. They pave every year right now. You can ask. Drive down I24 to Nashville right now. You can ask for a guarantee. You can ask for them to warrant it. No, you can't. Golly. Golly. No, you can't. Hold up. What What would it take to uh get a get a bid on a on a dumpster pad? Do what? What would it take to get a bid on a dumpster pad? Okay. Dump dumpster pad would be very simple. I'd give credit to to Mr. Hanser. We have to know where to put it. And then we ultimately need to to uh spec out what we need and then then we would just
358bid it out and take care of it from there. And there's a good chance it wouldn't even need to be bidded. It'd be quoted because it'd be less than 25,000. Okay. I mean, really, it's it'd be that simple. So, Mil Mr. Gilly compacts the uh the drainage line at his expense and bid out a we There's no expense. Oh, well, I'm assuming there's some expense, but what whatever. Um, but well, no, not really. Not whatever. But I'm I apologize and I do want to apologize that I inserted myself into this ridiculous mess that started a while ago and I apologize to everybody for getting in the middle of it. Well, I'm sure you got some expense to do it, but what you know, but Mr. Gilly has volunteered to to compact that line. So, and
359and uh I think that's you know a good solution for that. But but you know what else do we need to resolve then? I I once again if if anybody's got a question please ask if I did come across harsh my apology. Trust me as uh Robert has said this is this has been coming up and coming up and coming up. Yeah. and and wherever it comes across that things are being done haphazard that goes against my character of the way I handle things and I want to make sure that everybody here knows in hearing this that's not the way I work I make sure that the job is being done correctly yes I would like to I'd like to go further with it I mean but I I I asked a guesstimate of what
360it would cost to go through the entire process of doing all those other things we could do the entire parking lot back there over twice for the for doing all that. They said that the price would be around 7 to $800,000. Now, it gets to the point where it doesn't make sense to even do the job. It just doesn't make sense to do the job. But but I will apologize if I come across too harsh. that that was not but but there's a lot of knowledge and a lot of things that people are saying that that's that's not correct and and it gets old and and I just want to make sure everybody understands and please ask if you do have a question and I will try to answer and if I don't know it
361I'll try to find an expert that does know and I let you know well and I think you know the reason some of some of the people voted against it last time is they didn't feel like they had enough information and granted you know you hear a couple different things on on compacting asphalt and stuff. It's, you know, unless you've done that, it's, you know, it's hard to hard to understand. I don't think people felt like they had the information. So, hopefully this is the opportunity to, you know, get that information out that they need to make a, you know, educated vote. Okay. when they I called and talk to uh the one that would have had the win and bid which is uh Tinsley's. Jacob Lond is the one that's over that that project.
362He would still be planning on because there's a date on it for it to be done through the summer. So they would be working on it during the summertime and finishing during the summer. I asked him if he would hold the the bid that he had given. He said that he would honor the bid that was given to us for the last board meeting. So he that would be the same bid. Now that would be both schools. Deerfield has already been passed. Oh, it has. So it's already done. This is just talking about the high school, but Deerfield would get done by this summer because I was out there. Deerfield is supposed to be done by the summertime. I think it was June the 30th or something that they had through. Uh the date was
363actually put on the the specs. That is a gorgeous school. I went through it the other day. Absolutely beautiful. I mean, that's probably our gym in our county and then I had to go through all these potholes to get out to it. So I thought, oh, that'll be getting fixed in before by the end of summer. All right. So, any other questions for Mr. shores on on this and you know because we're we're going to put it on the agenda and I Dr. Pow was fine with that. Sir, we'll have an executive committee meeting right here. I'm getting them down. Okay. Are you going to call the capital project? Why? That's what I that's all I mentioned a while ago was capital projects to break that out if everybody was okay with that on the
364We can if you want to but but what for the dumpster pins insert myself back in not at this time. So we're gonna we can't do all this. Okay. I'm going to say this too. I've done this too for 40 years. I've got a little bit of expertise a little bit about this myself. would you say? Please, let's not fight anymore. So there's not You can go to any apartment complex around here or any place and they've got a dumpster pad built for a reason. Why would you not have one at a school? Well, you need to have a dumpster pad. We decide where to put a dumpster pad. We can do it for under the 25,000 probably. I'm not going to say that for sure, but I would think so. Yes. Well, we can
365look at that. Yes, we can look at We can look at that, Mr. Chairman. Yes. So, that's all I was asking is where would you want to put it? We can put a dumpster pad there. We can look at that. Are you asking? I'm sorry. No, no, I'm not asking. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, we could put it. Where could we put it at? just so we can make sure that we put it at a place that like I say, capital projects would be the place that you can go and scout you a spot you want to put it. You can scout you a spot you want to put it. I still don't know because it'd be under $25,000 what the board or committee would even have to do with it anyways. That could come
366down to a discretion of the deputy director, the director or maintenance of deputy director and and not even and the board not even be involved in that. or committee, you just need to tie it into the other. You if you're going to have one, you need to tie the asphalt into it. So, so that the the asphalt will last long time, you know, that's the reason why you need to know how how would you tie that asphalt to the concrete? You you go right up to the edge of the concrete where Yeah. So, you couldn't saw cut the asphalt and pour the concrete right to it. Yeah. If you know felt with felt paper between it like you do for the shrink swell of concrete versus the asphalt. Oh, I forgot. All right. I think
367we've uh beat this conversation enough. So, let us move on if everybody's agreeable to that. Um, all right. Let's get into a more pleasant topic of grants. Or maybe it isn't so pleasant. I don't know. But, um, and we want to talk a little bit about I think uh, and Mr. Skipper, I know you are pretty much an expert in grants and and and well, you seem to do well and Miss Garner does um so we're we're looking for I guess really what we're looking for is, you know, some some of your thoughts on the grant process, you know, how we go and how we look for grants and uh and then how we write our grants and and are we looking everywhere we should? Are we going to the private sector? Do we have
368are we covering all our opportunities and those types of things? Kind of came up with the excellence program grant. So that's really Did you ever figure out who summoned you here? I was just happy to be here. My thank you for being here. It's it's always a pleasure seeing you. No, I appreciate it. No, I think and I can only speak on behalf of CTE. Um, you know, CT grants, they they they come in a lot of different forms. There's there's, you know, state grants. Um, like with our ISM that we completed probably five or six year years ago. There was another 200 what was it? 500 million that we had to write a grant for to get pieces of it from the state department. Uh, and then there's federals federal grants. And like I
369I promise you I hate writing grants because it's a bunch of flowery words. But once you figure out how you've got to just tell them what they're looking for you to say. Um because I'm a bullet point guy. These are this is the reason that I want to do it. Um but grants um I will say this. I think that I think this is just Skip's opinion, but I think the state that we're in right now as far as statewise grants, I think they're going to be fewer and fewer. Um, I mean, just to be quite honest with you, Tissa is at a deficit right now and so there are a lot of things CTE wise that are getting pulled sideways from us just because they they know they can't fund them. Um, and so
370I think in reality, you know, that's that's all I can speak on a CT. Uh, but yeah, everything that's uh available CT wise I apply for. I don't get all of them. I get I I get quite a few of them, but it's also because I have pretty good relationships with different organizations that are Don't you do some stuff with the private sector though? Do you do private sector? Um that that that too is all about relationships. That I mean that's really what that is. I mean that's why I'm on the chamber. That's why I'm with the industrial board as far as being educational on is we have conversations about what they need. You know, today we had over 30 business and industry folks at the high school meeting with all juniors and seniors talking
371about potential o job opportunities after they graduate. So that's just it's it's about massaging our community and and and understanding that, you know, right? I come from a a manufacturing background and so I look at it like we have a product. Our product is our students that we're turning out at the end of the year and you know each year it's 13 years worth of how how how successful can we make them for the next you know right so as the state and federal grants shrink though we may have to look more towards the private sector to replace some of those you know opportunities I guess to be honest with you we tax the private sectors to death I'm talking about far as the school system because you got so many different organizations with athletics
372with with PTE, you know, and that's why I I require all of our programs to have an advisory committee. Like I want them to have those two or three companies or industries that they're they're kind of communicating with all the time because then it's not so much a grant. It's so much a hey, you're part of our program, right? You know, and so there's a lot of times a lot of times it's through donation of materials from jobs that were already, you know, they finished up and they had left over. And um there's just a lot of different ways to to try to make help help your community be part of solutions and not just trying to fix problems, you know. So, right. Well, not always just asking for money. What is the partnership that
373that you're looking for and what do they get out of it too? Right. Obviously, so a lot of a lot of my other grants though are with postsecondary institutions like you know our TCAT um and we started working on that years ago. We've I think we're in year 10 with industrial maintenance as a program of study at TCAT that we started seven years ago. We started in our high school the cosmetology because there wasn't one in this area and now they've got two shifts worth of or two morning and evening sessions of cosmetology kids that are able to use their Tennessee promise because we were willing willing to work with them and start help them start their program knowing that it was going to benefit our kids later on down the road. So, it's kind
374of where we're at now, paying dividends. How will the TCAT the new TCAT uh college out there if will you be would that be helpful to you your program or you going to be working together with them? Oh, yes, ma'am. I mean, and that's that's the thing a lot of people don't realize is the reason that we've got that TCAP program is because we've already been putting the things in place. We've had industrial maintenance for I'm pretty sure it's 10 years, cosmetology for seven. um CNA. Yeah, CNA. CNA. So, we we had we put the programs in place and we've had them in different places to prove to the state we can we can f fulfill them. We can sustain those. So, that's really why we have the facility going up is because we've already
375proved that we have a need. And plus, it didn't it didn't hurt whenever the new mega site come in and the governor thought he could put his name on on that. I mean, I'm just being honest. That's that really helped. Um but there are also other um for for whatever reason the governor approved basically what happens is there's a top 10 every year of of TCAP programs that they get approved financially and so if you make it in the top seven you're usually going to get funded but we had made it to number six and then he funded the whole thing. He funded every one of them. So so we were just a it was a bene just benefactor of that. Thank you. Yeah, but we will what that one's going to do is that's
376going to offer us additional dual enrollment opportunities that we may not have had because there may be a program or something that they bring in that because of proximity now I can let these four kids go over there during sixth and seventh period instead of having to house it on my having to have a teacher on my our our building. So that's where it's going to really pay dividends. questions. I I know Mr. Cordell, I believe it was Mr. Cordell, talked one time about a grant writer and would something like that and I don't know if we could do a full-time one, but you know, would something like that and I this is for for all of you I guess is or a stipen. What's that? Or a stipen. Now, it is my it's my
377understanding that our county has a part-time grant writer. Um I don't know if it's our county or our region, David. Yeah, we do have one time. And so it's probably that's probably something that we could I don't know what the process is. Well, I actually uh worked with him a couple weeks ago on writing one. Um his future didn't seem very clear to him, so I don't know how that is right now. Um but yes, we have had a part-time one for a couple years now. Um and I'll speak on grants. Um I'm coordinated school health. So under that comes safety, um mental health services, um physical education, community, and really it's the partnerships like you said. Um we host the um Coffee County Health Council here every month. And with that comes all kinds
378of partners. So um we are a 501c3. So there are several times that we will write or apply for grants and then utilize some of those funding to put in the schools as far as like just supplemental stuff. Um, we also have newsletters. Everybody up here, whatever department you are in, you get newsletters from the state and those always have all of the available grants that are available or coming up. And also in e-plan that Christa had talked about um before grants become available in there as well. There are some grants that are easier to get than others. the competitive grants. Um, I've seen because I started in Grundy County and out there it's like I could write out five sentences and I could get, you know, a million dollars because of our data and
379stuff out there. In Coffee County, it was a little more difficult. Um, so definitely the worse are you are socio like with your socioeconomics, it's a lot easier to get funding and I do find it a lot harder these days to get funding. And um like I do not apply for every grant that comes out. I mean that would be a full-time job if I applied for everything. So you have to consider what's the likelihood that I'm going to actually get this grant. You know, if it's a nationwide grant and they're giving, you know, 50 out and it's going to take me two days to write, I'm not going to go after that grant. But some things where, you know, maybe I know someone that's over that funding opportunity, something like that, I'm going to
380go after. So, we do have to pick and choose or I have to pick and choose um of what I'm going to write for because it's not just writing the grant. It's whenever it comes in, it's the management. I mean, we've all seen that with the ESSER funding and with everything. And it's the management of those funds that's even that much more difficult, too. So, um, but that's how I go about getting grants. I don't feel like I'm very good at it now. I mean, I didn't get the excellence, um, redone and I just got denied another one the other day, but I'm going to keep trying, but it's not as easy as it used to be, I don't think. I will say that I just wanted to There's every one of us, right? Spin
381say I write grants. She writes grants writes grants. We all write grants. We just didn't have enough microphones to go around. Yeah. But I want to say, you know, it's just a constant process of us writing grants and deciding which ones are right and which ones aren't. And it's just and then connections, you know, I I just know through people I know. I know sportsman gives a lot of money to FRC. They also give to the teachers. It's a lot of local people that dust rotary partner. with them now for one. So, we're very fortunate in our community that we have a lot of support. When you start looking at the state and the the federal grants though, there's always a measurement of what you bring to the table because there's always you've got to
382show that you're covering part of whatever expense of your master project is. And so that's where that's where you got to really really get creative, you know, and things that you're already paying for, making sure you're you're drawing attention to that, you know, that we're already we already budgeting our teachers, but I'm going to call them out in this whether it's STEM or whatever whether it's, you know, especially with STEM with with them the way they do things. But I also think it's fair that all this all these groups that write grants end up in her lap. Yeah. Everybody needs to know that it it all ends up in her lap. And so she gets she's awesome. She really is. I mean, yes. been it's been my experience as to writing grants when I was
383in the school system that it depends on your uh your category for instance you you know what you're talking about and you can get a grant but it's going to be difficult just to say okay I'm going to appoint you as a grant writer that's hard to do if you're not in that in that category in that line and uh it's just hard to do and I know there's grants that we don't even know about that all these people in here have written uh you know and get and it's never even talked about and uh and like you said though some of them are very difficult to get if they're nationwide. But to me the the most important thing when you write a grant is let someone else look at it and see if you
384like you said see if you met all those bullet points because if you leave one thing out you don't get it. I I uh I was a a grant I was on the committee to uh make the grant in other words and they gave us this to go by and and give us a a rubric to go by and if you didn't have everything just exactly right to begin with. It's kind of like a bid. It's thrown out and you could have the best program in the world that you're asking for but you just did one little detail and it wasn't correct. So there's an art to it, but there's also you got to have some background in that area that you're writing a grant for to ever get it to work. That's my thoughts.
385I agree. But uh but it takes a lot of time and then and then like you have to you have to administer the grant, you know, and you're responsible for it even though it goes to finance. It's just and a lot of times you think, gosh, you don't have time to do it. But I I commend all of you that do that because yeah, it's kind of how more can the board help you in in that regard. And that's why I was asking about grant writing help or whatever tools and resources you need to, you know, turn these things up and, you know, find new grants or or whatever, you know, whatever, you know, um whatever tools you might need. you know, we're because I I agree with Mr. Skipper and it's the money is
386going to get tighter from, you know, who knows what's going to happen to the feds and the state is, you know, could take on some of that or not, you know, so there's a lot of uncertainty out there and, you know, and I know we, you know, grants aren't a huge part of our budget, but they make a difference, you know. Well, while I have your attention, I do have one request because I have an opportunity to get $9,000. And one of the um one of the 12 steps is that um our board of education um does like a health u competition or you know a health um program. My blood pressure right now. So, I'm going to need your cooperation and I'm going to make it very easy. already come up with something, but
387I thought we might do two minutes of mindfulness before you start your board meetings and that would count. So, I just want you to start looking. We'll we'll discuss it. We'll get ready. But that is one of the uh 12 things that I'm going to need you all to do. Yes, I'll bring y'all some. See, I think that would be good. Think we would put it on YouTube videos so everybody could watch us do it. Everybody can do it. But that is one uh way that y'all can help so we can get that 9,000 blood pressure checks. Well, we'll do it before the board meeting, not after. I was speaking to. So, one thing that um I think we could do that for you that we've talked about here today is uh whenever you go
388for a grant, you writing the grant in my opinion is it's difficult, but the big thing is when you get the money, you have to implement the the uh program or whatever it is that you have, you know, applied for. So, um, for instance, I, uh, a grant came across my computer the other day, and it's a, I try to apply a lot of STEM grants and, um, so it's something that is not really my cup of tea, but I really would love for it to be at Hickerson. And, um, so I've been trying to kind of look around to some different teachers. Would you be interested in this? Would you be interested in this? And uh so something that if you guys wanted to help with that is we really need a STEM coordinator
389for elementary education. We need somebody that can uh jump in there and take on some of these roles that's not teaching in a classroom. And what would what would that require for the board? Well, um I I guess you would uh support I guess it would probably have to come from the director first in creating the position and then the school board would vote for it. I think there's situations that I've heard in the past where you could have a grant writer and they would be paid so much of the grant, whatever that might be. Uh might be 5%, 10%, I don't know what the going rate would be. I don't I'm not that familiar with writing grants, but I know that you have to be very specific in what you say. You have to
390use the right words. Uh Bonnie Gamble, uh that used to be the recreation director was very good at writing grants. Uh first of all, it's like Skip said, she knew folks that she was trying to get information from and trying to get it from, so that helps. But you've got to be very specific and and use the right language. Uh, and it may just be a matter of one word that you put in there that might throw you completely off. But, uh, I know there's situations where you can probably hire people that that can write grants and they would take a a percentage out of that grant if they would would work like that that they would that would be their pay, so to speak. May not be full-time. I don't know would it be
391conducive to write a to have a full-time grant writer or not. It just depends, I guess. U I think we have an amazing secondary CTE program and so one of my goals was to help uh lay the foundation for that through STEM and um um I think we could it would be great if we could do more. I wonder if we could combine that because it seems like to me both of those positions to start off with could be part-time grant writer and a STEM someone to oversee the STEM. So I wonder if we could bring someone in to do both oversee STEM in the elementarymentaries and be in charge of looking for grants and writing grants. Can I add something for just for food for thought? So three years ago, Christa, three years ago,
392the state made a major move as far as STEM. There's another one coming this this next year. Um, but they basically incorporated STEM objectives in every grade level of of SPIs or standards or whatever you want to call them. And so they they felt like so maybe some of y'all remember. So we had to address that from a district standpoint, right? And so I got Christa and uh elementary supervisor and I don't remember who else. And so I was like, this is this is kind of in my world, but I don't want it to be in my world. like, you know, this is elementary, but nonetheless, we had to have elementary, we had to have middle school and high school representations, right? And so, we actually appointed some folks, okay, you're going to be the
393elementary representative because you had to go to this training. It's just state stuff. Not that not that the STEM implementation is is bad. It's not it's not that it's bad. It just can come across as more, right? And so we wanted to make sure that the way we were approaching the STEM aspect because it's in every grade level and it's in every contact is that we really want to just focus on the computational thinking aspect like nobody can argue that we want our kids thinking more. Just stop giving them all the answers. Let's make them strug keep them struggling a little bit right because that's something that we kind of got away with. So that's really the from a district standpoint that's how we really wanted to address that. And so in saying that now
394where STEM and CTE used to be its own focus area, it's gone away. There is no more STEM focus area because it's been moved into every everything program, right? And so now all the other standards have been modified highlighting the STEM uh computational thinking aspects. Uh problem based learning is the new big thing that they're throwing around. There's nothing wrong. I mean they're they're great initiatives. They're great um great thought processes, but like what she says is that it's a it's they're the STEM school because they've gone through all the paperwork and they it's a re it's a it's a it's a big deal getting qualified to be considered a STEM school. It's a lot of work Mr. Mr. Anderson went in originally to do and that they do is it every how many years?
395Every five years they have to renew it, right? And so I've been out there I've worked with some of the kids in their STEM stuff. So, it is something that systemwide elementary could definitely be expanded into all of our elementary schools. I'm not saying I'm not the one to say that's what needs to happen. I'm just saying that it's it's supported by the state and it's it's like it's a major initiative um for our LEA and the whole N yard. So to say that could there be a person that's yeah there could be a person that's needs to be responsible for because it's they've rewritten standards and calling out here's the STEM aspects in third grade reading you know I mean so it's like it's that that detailed now um just from the education side
396do you track um the students that come through the CTE program see what they're doing later in life yeah I do a follow-up every year it's a huge chore. I I bet. Yeah. Um yeah, I usually have that. So I usually wait until February of the the following year to see did they ended up going to college or where are they working? And so I have to do a huge federal report or state report. I have to upload one at a time where the kid, you know, and if I can't find them, that's part of that's part of a a grading rubric that we have, right? Our system has. So yeah, I have to track those kids down. And those numbers should should obviously speak for themselves and you know when you're talking about grants
397and things like that too. That's this is our CI so those build our what's called CIPs. They're indicated performance indicators and yes that's total percentages. Anytime you're writing a grant when you can pull specific system or county or whatever data and use percentages that's that's make or breaks is what those are really. Interesting. So, how many of the CTE kids go on to trade school or college? Well, I'd have to pull I'd have to pull it up and look at it, but we have a MLO's our biggest I mean, by far we have so many kids that going to be psychology majors, you know, they come out of the CTE program, be psychology major, but we also have a ton that enter straight into the workforce. Okay. How many how many go straight into the
398workforce? Just out of curiosity. Uh, I would say at least 20 25%. Okay. Wow. And then we have Well, you have we have the same percentage that sit in other places, the same percentage that they had decided what they're going to do. They're still sitting on the couch. Yeah. Well, there's always going to be some of those, but Yeah. Yeah. You know, sometimes just takes a while. Takes them a while to get their, you know, figure out what they want to do in life. So, Yes, sir. But, uh, no, that that would I think those those numbers would be awesome when you're looking for a grant and things like that to be able to point to those numbers. So, all right. Any questions for uh for the folks on and you know, I know we
399can't fit everybody up there, but on on grants and and funding these things. No. All right. I think we're Thank you very much for the information. That was great. We're winding down here. So, the last thing on the agenda is the u our 2020 2023 28 5-year plan and we have to look at this. What's that, Mr. Chair? I think that we wait till we bring on the director and then we sit down and we work this out. Yeah, we may want to make changes at his recommendation right off the bat. We don't. I think it's or her. Or her. Sorry. It's been a long day. Or her. Okay. Just as long as it's not they or them. Yeah. Or whatever. Say that. May I say this, Mr. Ballard, if you don't mind. On the
400five-year plan. This was something that the state initiated several years ago before we started having the TISA plan and the state plan and so forth. This plan is, if you look at it close enough, there's only a couple of goals, so to speak, in there. Uh the rest of it is that we pledge to do this, we're going to do this, do this, do this. It's just a matter of the state still requires this, but uh Mr. Shores and I were talking about this afternoon. It's it's it's not useless, but it kind of keeps you on track of where you need to be as far as what you need to be doing in the system, but there's no there's very few specific things in here uh in terms of goals and and and those type
401things like the state plan is located is doing now. But it's something to have, but it's not as I hate to use the word not as important because it is important too, but it doesn't serve its purpose like the other plans that we have with the data and all that. This doesn't have any data much with it. It can be more practical. It's more of a practical document than all that other, you know, you know, it's just things like we sure that we'll have this, we sure we'll have this, we assure you we'll have this. A lot of it's based on the biggest thing I found in here, I guess, looking at it was there was a a statement in there about uh your stockholders coming in and helping you plan in the system. I
402don't know that we have or have had may have before I came in, but uh different stockholders come in from the community that set up and helped set some of these plans. Pretty much it's just the directors, the supervisors, the board of education set it up. And I think the stockholders basically meant that you'd have business people, industry people coming in and helping you. And I know that's been done in the past when this probably was originally set up. Mr. Skipper could probably address that. uh as to you know some things we might need to be looking at but you know just look over it and and it's something needs to be in there but there's nothing really specific about it as far as any data has to be contributed I was you know and
403I had talked with a few board members during the meeting here is that um it's something that we might want to put together a committee and and start converting some of these to you know smart goals like we have in the district improvement plan and and really making it more of a useful document And that would be done in conjunction with with the new director. You know, we should be starting uh June 1. So yeah, I mean here for instance, here's here's when it says, you know, we shall focus a majority of our uh on our reading literacy. Well, that's what we're having to get from the state now is on literacy. Uh so things that that we're doing we were doing from this originally is is now clicked over to something else. It's more
404just more of a direct probably you know like the performance goals that we're going to be requiring of that would this is where that would go not into the big so this is just going to be a more of a simplified uh outlook for our school system and way I look at it would also include facilities what our goals are. Yeah, for our athletic programs and and I I don't know where this, you know, this would keep the board, I think, in focus to what some of their responsibilities are as far as outside of the whole school system is concerned. Yes. Yeah. As reminders. So, I'm I'm thinking kick the can down the road, get our new director on, get I agree to that. What's that? my second. Not that we're in a hurry to
405push you out, Dr. I mean, I'll be glad to help you. We'll work with you on it, but it's, you know, it's something I think you've got, this is what up to 28. So, you it's it's not that this one's not that old. It may be some things you want to look at when someone else comes in that may have a different to look at it every two years. I think that's what Yeah, it started in 23. I think it goes from 23 to 28. So this is probably the second year I think that so we we got to kind of look at it this year and you know the state says we have to have it but yeah I think you have to adopt it every year and then check off in the box
406that you've checked it to that you've done that with the state department send part of your rules and regulations and things I think but I think we you know I think everybody agrees it could be a much more useful document than it is. just you know it's yeah just a lot of words that really doesn't do much for you. So all right if everybody's in agreement with that I think we've accomplished our agenda. Weather is moving in here. It's already here to move that I'd like to thank each I'd like to thank Melissa. She was in charge of getting our lunch together. She had a lot of help. Yes, thank you. Most of the uh support staff up here and the Thank you. classified staff and certified staff help her get things together. So, I
407think she did a very good job. Y and I, you know, I want to thank everybody that presented even you know that that today and April and Dr. Powell for doing all that hard work on the budget and Melissa for getting, you know, I mean, I sound like an Academy Award show, but uh Oh, that's beautiful. But but it it was a great job and and I think everybody appreciated it. So, with that, we can be a jured. All right. I will say I don't know if it's still the same or not, but