Coffee County School Board Work Session

001work session for the Coffee County Board of Education we have a pretty long agenda tonight so we'll probably going to talk about the school letter grades and then we're going to take a quick break to grab something to eat and then we'll dive into the rest of our agenda so um without further Ado we can dive in and and what we're going to do is we're going to talk about letter grades here and Dr blessing is going to do a presentation for us on the on the overall and we decided Well Dr Crabtree offered to come in and talk about uh hickerson's letter scores so we decided maybe to get another couple of the other schools in to talk and and just so you know it's not the Spanish Inquisition here so we're we're trying

002to get an understanding of how the letter scores come come about at the different schools and how the board can help so we're we're looking for suggestions on how we can work better with you to you know get these scores up I mean the the state is starting to put some pressure on on on these letter grades and there's actually a bill in the um legislature right now that will actually provide more funding for schools for um uh districts that have letter uh uh schools that have 50% of schools with a or above there will actually be additional funding and there's also some you know carrot and stick uh there's also the stick side of things that's coming from the state too so so we're trying to get an understanding and and so we appreciate

003you coming and and educating us on on that too so uh with that Dr blessing uh you're you're up first actually I think M Cole is up first oh M okay well it's under presentation yeah all right good afternoon I'm Christa Cole director of federal programs and I want to talk to you a few minutes about Title One and the program in coffee County Schools so some of you were here several months ago when I talked about preliminary allocations and I told you all I'll give you an update when I get an update and the interesting thing is I just received some numbers a few weeks ago so I haven't given you an update because I haven't had any information to share um until now but what I'm going to do is I'm going to

004talk about what title one is just for those of you who may not be sure about what title one is then I'll talk about where we are right now and then where we're going or where we're headed to the best of my ability first of all Title One is federal funding and it provides funding to schools with high percentages of lowincome students so it it's it's that simple but the purpose is to supplement so it go above and beyond and give additional opportunities to provide students with quality education and help close the gap so that's that's Title One in a nutshell when it comes to funding schools are eligible to be Title One schoolwide schools if they have 40% or higher of low-income students and we typically Define that free and reduced students that's based

005on our census but that's how you qualify for Title One funding so truth be known every school in our district could qualify for Title One funding right we're we're all above 40% but if we served every school we would run out of funding we would run out of money and not be able to make a difference maybe at any of our schools because the funding would be so little so schools are ranked by poverty level to determine the fund distribution so it would be so much easier if all the schools were title one and we could give them exactly what we need what we needed or what they needed to have maybe two teachers at each school that's not the way it works so we have to rank order them there are some examples of

006allowable uses that I I um included a highlighted instructional support because that's what we do in Coffee County and that's probably what many school districts do is they use their funding for personnel because I will put people over products and things and supplies and Technology any day so that's what we do we have our money in intervention teachers now we also have some money and professional development family engagement is a requirement um and then there's supplemental instructional materials software and technology so that's That's the basis of some allowable excuses there uses there are more but that's what we we focus on but the majority of the funding goes to goes towards our teachers and all of our elementary schools are Title One schools like I said the rest could be eligible but we run out

007of bunny any questions so far all right so this gives you some Trend data from 22 23 and so you may notice we've gone down just a little bit the past few years it's been all over the place but I just shared this with you now the information I got a few weeks ago in the first of February it was only 24 and 25 we do not have allocations for 2526 and I'm speculating that it will not come until maybe April that's it just gets later all the time um so that's where we are but I want you to see the the trend so far is this Direct Federal Federal funding so this comes directly from the feds to the state to the district yes okay so it goes to the states and the states

008and then yes it does not come directly to the districts okay good question so I wanted to show you this chart what I don't have on here because it it started to look complicated when I added all the numbers I don't have all the budgets the allocations about each one but I could share those with you but if you remember um the last time I spoke about title one I was concerned about the final allocations because there have been times when they'll give us a budget and we'll drop tens of thousands of dollars and that's a scary place to be um so the final came in about three weeks ago and we I consider ourselves very fortunate because we didn't lose like other districts lost so this just lets you know I I have the

009federal program listed in the the left column with the purpose in the middle this is very gen generic in general but it gives you an idea but for instance we only lost $40 in title one from the number they gave us last spring to three weeks ago so I consider ourselves very fortunate we had districts that I know of that lost anywhere from about $25 to $43,000 and those are just the ones I know of I don't know of but a handful so we are very fortunate teacher quality that's title 2 a we actually receive $1500 more um title three $300 more title four is um surprising it it stayed the same and then you see idea students with disability ities we lost 4,000 there and lost roughly a 100 or less in prek students

010with disabilities so overall not a terrible picture compared to how it's been with other systems and how it's been in the past any questions on that one so just to give you an idea title one's roughly a 1.1 million B dollar budget title two a is roughly a $200,000 budget title 3 is roughly an $18,000 budget title four is a roughly a $70,000 budget um Ida I believe that's one of our largest ones now and that's about 1.1 million and then pre Ida prek is about a $35,000 budget so it's it's all over the place well just as far as budgets go and and maybe Miss mson can answer this one too but we have a separate budget for one expenditures that's 402 101 one 10 that's so 142 all of these grants lie within

011142 and then they all have separate sub funds so like okay it' be 142 d101 okay 142 d201 so all of these fall within the federal not within the 141 budget but within the 142 okay and that's not on any of the reports that you guys see right right so I share this with you just to let you know we um we came came out better than what was anticipated and expected okay so this is kind of where we're headed and this is a scenario this is um this is not these are not firm numbers because we don't even have an allocation for next year yet and we won't have one for a little bit but um we'll talk about that in a second Miss melson has been um amazing to work with she and

012I work together and we talk about how different things we can do and um how we can make this work for for next year and so she she pulled some figures and some numbers based on current Personnel based on um salary steps for next year to let me know this is about what we're going to need in personnel and parent involvement parent involvement is required we're required to spend at least 1% of the budget on parent involvement so that's roughly $10,000 so this is what we're going to need now you you notice I highlighted hypothetical I do not know our allocation but you remember that Trends chart that I showed you where we decreased to 156,000 I just took the number we had and I decreased it by about $15,000 just in case that number

013uh stayed with the trend so the difference based on what we'll have compared to what we need is about $123,000 based on my hypothetical allocation just remember it's it's fictitious at this point now if there happens to be a 3% raise for instance I just threw that in there too I don't know and and you all haven't decided either but that would be about a $151,000 uh deficit for title one so that's kind of where we are with with Title One any questions on that does that make sense I tried to put that in a way where it would be simple to to understand if if I if I did that correctly 275,000 no no 123 we're not we're not adding those together we'll just it'll be 151 based on a 3% raise the but

014you know what this is based on the same Personnel because people range in the in experiences and degrees and so all that it's based on a hypothetical allocation we're not sure what's going to happen with benefits and medical so there's a lot of wha ifs but I think this is a pretty good indication it gives you a picture of what we're we're looking at that would that would mean that be Personnel Cuts wouldn't it that well maybe maybe not so what I've done on this next page is talk about so what can we do and miss melson and I I have talked about this and we've looked at possible solutions so the good news is and the way we survived as and did as well as we did this year is last year you may

015remember that I talked about transferring money out of title four there just another title it is allowable for us to transfer funds and we don't have people in that uh that fund because I've been told in the past with that's such a small budget and you shouldn't rely on people for your title four budget because it's all over the place so what I've done is I've transferred and I'm going to keep doing that I'm going to keep transferring that title four funding into title one now title four remember that's about a s 70ish thousand budget we're not sure what's going to happen next year I like to keep a little bit back for some professional development needs for some substitute needs for some summer school stop for the high school keep just enough to get

016that done and I'm going to put the rest of it in Title One to see how long we can keep stretching this out and then if there's any carryover in title 4 for this year that'll go into two so last year I ended up transferring about $106,000 at of title four it was a great support for title one and so since I was able to transfer that much money in title one for this year I'm going to have some title one carryover which is great so I will use remaining carryover in Title One because we had that nice transfer in title four but just to keep this in your back pocket that amount of carryover will not maintain right because in the past we weren't transferring in title four I mean title one now since

017we're transferring it's getting spent it's getting spent on Personnel so we've got a couple good options here with title for original budget going in Title One title for carryover using any carryover in Title One so those are some some ways that's going to help ba help balance the budget I'm not saying it's going to completely balance but it will help another solution is the support of General schools budget to address any funding gaps and then the last option on there is the loss of personnel um so that's kind of where we are go what is T 4 for what is it that is the well-rounded education it's pretty flexible if you remember uh we had title five years and years ago it's flexible it reminds me of the flexibility of Title 5 where Title One

018there's so many strings attached but title 4 can be well-rounded safe and healthy so Safety and Security and it can go for some technology as well and so transferring into title one would fall under that well-rounded and and absolutely is is covered with um by law so what we're talking about now is next year because we don't what's beyond that yeah we're good this year we're good this year but when we start running out of rabbits in the Hat then we start looking at and we've been us from the from the 141 to the 142 how does that process work we wouldn't particularly do that we what we would do we would um General school would pick up a percentage of their salaries whatever we could do to help meet that Gap so like for

019example we could pay them 90% Federal 10% General we have some employees that we currently do that with not very many but we do um but then also but keep in mind that once we do that it has to remain that way forever because once you what is what is the word meth it's not methodology it's um planning that's correct but so we have a new consultant now and we've been talking to the consultant and the consultant mentioned that we were exempt from methodology and so we need to get some more information on that but we have options we have options and so I wanted to to leave you with this the federal Funding Solutions that we have in place will that be enough this is to sustain title one for one more year and

020this is the answer you probably don't want to hear is maybe but it depends um and it depends on a lot of things and it's those things that I mention it depends on what's our Title One allocation for next year if it goes up $50,000 we're in a good place if it decreases $50,000 we're not in a good place because remember that hypothetical I gave you it was just a 16,000 increase a decrease it's going to depend on title four allocations because that will determine how much I can actually transfer over into Title One and I'm hoping it's healthy um other things other factors you know if there's any kind of salary or benefit increases and I wanted to throw this one in potential Federal sequest frustration I don't know if you all remember this

021was years ago when out of nowhere uh budgets were cut across different departments and education was one of them and we we lost um we lost significantly in a lot of districts did but just in in in listening to podcast and those things I heard that that word mentioned one time and I just want to throw that out there that that could happen it could happen any year uh we're just in unprecedented times right now so that's Title One in a nutshell that's I think we spend money efficiently and effectively and we're not wasteful um we're very cautious on how we we spend money but we believe putting it in people is the best investment for our students so if your projections are correct or somewhere in the ballpark we should probably be okay for

022this year but that's the but beyond that like the probably is about the strongest word I can use for this because and and miss melson and I will continue to talk to see um when the numbers come down what else we can do but I am trying not to ask General school's budget for anything I don't I don't want to to need to do that I want to try to figure it out another way so chrisan what what did we do with the title four before we started pulling out of it so title four helped with um e early postsecondary opportunities at the high school so any time any Ty of type of a prep advanced placement prep ACT prep um any kind of act programs to help them it also has gone for um

023summer school paying teachers to to support summer school of 9 through 12 it's gone for after school tutoring and Ela and math and so um it's gone to help support safety health and safety with conferences um with Miss Tanya Garner with she with the counselors and so just a variety because it's so flexible um we can do those things and so we will not be able to do that's what I that's what I was saying is trying to get kind of a over over Overlook of what we would be losing if we took it out of the title forward I will say Miss melson and I have had these conversations and she has been great to work with to say maybe we can do this or we can do this and so we've we've been

024having lots of discussions because we don't want our kids to lose out sure and and neither do we that's the reason why I'm asking so yeah if we do that then we're going to be losing from someplace else if we're paying Peter to pay Paul then we're gonna I I think we can make it work I I think we can make it work with some tssa outcome bonus funding um to pick up to help pay for some stopping for tutoring and and summer school I I think that that's going to help with that yes ma'am and we'll just have to scale back maybe on some professional development I know we did that this year we used to send count and PE teachers and to different places for professional development not much but we did but

025we've scaled back we'll send just Representatives now yes ma'am so thank you good question if there's less money coming in something's got to give and that's the reason I wanted for everybody to kind of hear what we're going to be losing if we take if we take from title four if we have to then this is what we're going to be losing and something else I'm glad you mentioned that something else that we're not doing this year that we did last year is this year we've had a focus on math tutoring after school for 9 through 12 ma' in the years's past we've had math Ela and science so we've we were able to expand it but we're condensing because like you said something has to yes ma' give thank you just out of curiosity

026I know at one time Title One paid for the instructional coordinators or uh assistant principles at the elementary school do they is that still coming out Tom is it General schools that's General schools and it's been out of General schools for many years so General School picked up all yes ma'am so we're title one pays for intervention teachers now at the school sites any other questions oh and I was understanding that y'all couldn't go out state for professional development that I think that's been an in-house inous hopefully that will go away because you can't just concentrate on what's in Tennessee because we the funding you know there was exra funding I not tile one required that but the previous administration right I know with title one uh when we started losing funding we needed to

027put a cap on that too because once again something had to had to give um but but yes you're right we've been very limited on that other questions and I apologize because you weren't on the agenda I was anticipating you were going to be on the agenda for the March board meeting so but thanks for coming in and doing this because we definitely wanted to the update I wish I could give you firm numbers I just I'm I'm giving you all I have it's not a lot of yes ma'am you mentioned summer school is the uh the elementary school summer school it's just the high school so their state there's other funding for elementary through middle school and not for high school and so we do for high school only good question we get a

028state Grant usually around May to cover um summer school for elementary okay anybody else thank you very much thank you so much that was good job Chris than good job a lot more now than I did start of the meeting all right now we have Dr blessing is's going to talk about the letter grades and yes I'm just trying to get the technology handed off that school letter designations this is the second year that the state has issued letter grades for schools even though the law requiring that said start in 2016 but there was covid there was this there was that till finally they got it in place there are two models for school letter grades there's schools are called K8 and then there's high school and each one has a different distribution achievement counts

02950% in both of them growth is 40% in K8 it's still 40% here but it's split and then growth for the lowest 25 we see it's 10% here it's 10% but there's a category here for high school called College and Career ready so two different pools in order to figure out what pool you're in there's a guideline if you have fewer than 30 students in the most recent graduating cohort you're in the K8 pool even if you don't have K8 students our Raider Academy is in the K8 pool because they don't have graduating students at all and they don't give act they didn't mention that so again we see again that that 30 for whatever that was the cuto off that they had uh this is a little different and I'm want to make sure

030this is clear the state of Tennessee has its own accountability system and that's called the school letter grad federally there's a different accountability system and federally they only count English and math but for achievement with the school letter grades they count everything so you'll see English math science and social studies there's a term up here some of you may have heard in the past called msaa m is um multi-ub assessment they've changed away from that but the state still uses that title now it's called dlm I don't know why they use that and they have um they're still using TCAP all that's still a term they're using but msaa are for those significantly cognitively uh delayed students and it's only English and math so if you're looking at this and they're using all this well

031first of all we do not do integrated math we do Algebra 1 geometry Algebra 2 they cover the same standards just they split them up different so but we use the traditional one there's heavier weights for ELA and math than for science and social studies and we'll see those weights here in a minute and there are different calculations for the different grade bands there's a 35 band there's a 68 band there's a 912 band and I could say a rock and roll band but that wouldn't fit would it so when you look at these subject weights you'll see for 35 a success rate you have 40% Ela 40% math 20% science for 68 you'll notice social studies doesn't live over here because they're not given a social studies test for grades 35 it's been on

032cause for several years now and I don't see it uh being revived unless the state changes its mind but we do have social studies for 68 so you'll see they took 5% from each of these and five here and they made their social studies so 35 35 15 and 15 and for 912 it's a different sort of creature all the students in grades 35 take these three tests all the students in grade 68 take these four test but for 912 only if you're enrolled in Algebra 1 do you take the algebra 1 Test only if you're enrolled in biology do you take the biology test so it's not every student in the building um there's some things here some terms are using like 9912 success without substitution and with substitution those terms are used for

033people for instance instead of taking biology they took AP biology instead of taking um US History they're taking State deal credit US History we have never had enough students in the substitution category to make a difference so ours are always to this point without substitution but the state is sort of kind we don't hear that term applied to the state very often but they calculate it both ways and they give us the better of the two it's the same way with um with grade three when they talk about retention they do a uh a couple of different calculations and they'll say which one benefits the system more and that's the one they'll use that they'll apply this chart I pull this out from a state presentation these red circles are not meaning anything for us

034it was part of an example but what I want to show to you is this this you earn points 1 2 3 4 five this tells you if your success rate for grade three was within this band then you would earn a one if it was here you would earn a four and you'll notice the bands are different for the different categories so that's why the state provided this table to let people know okay we're not just pulling this out of the air you got a three because this you got a one because that you got a five because so they have these available also and there's another category for growth and this is from teos and it's all the subjects combined they call it composite because again you may remember and going through we've

035talked about literacy there's numeracy there's literacy and numeracy there's science there social studies they're saying everything that you took that counted combines to a single composite and that's growth growth 25 we saw that a few minutes ago that means your lowest 25% in a subject category and they're saying okay how did your students grow overall as a composite and how did your bottom 25% grow as a composite and it lists again for your benefit these subjects that um are used there are some some exceptions for whatever reason well I know the reason grade three and grade four science tests don't count the state says those tests aren't long enough to generate growth data and that we don't want to make them longer do we no so uh and you don't do any growth for substitutional

036courses or tests and you also don't do it for teap all assessments there's no growth associated with the alternate assessments and there's there 50% rule these are for students who transfer in transfer out if a student transfers in to us and we have them for 50% or more they count for us if it's less than 50% they count for where they came from if it was a Tennessee school if it's exactly 50% it counts for both of them so this is that CCR College and Career ready indicator talked about these again are determined by certain values for instance how they doing the ACT if they scored a certain score is at 21 I think or higher that counts for us or if they have taken the ASVAB test and they made a certain score on

037a certain subpar then that counts for us if they are in a industry certification program and they've taken an uh these classes and they've taken the test and they've passed the test they get a certificate that counts for us all of those options are used and they come up with a success rate basically they call it a cut score but I'll call it a success rate and if we had for instance 36% who fell into that we would earn a two in the category so so again all of these tables are available but you know there's a lot of numbers there's a lot of values and sometimes it's it's challenging to keep them all straight I do want to point out 2122 they had to start somewhere and the somewhere to keep Baseline data was

038the 2122 school year so they're comparing until the state changes that which again I don't know after maybe a certain band they'll change the Baseline I don't know if that means they're going to change our cut scores but right now they're doing the 2122 data as a base this is all we we've seen this before what I want to point out to you here is at the very bottom we've been seeing cut scores changing to a scale of 1 2 3 4 5 what they then do is do some averaging based on the weights and they've come up with a scale again from 1 to five here but this tells you if you have a score of a that means you had to have an average of 4.5 to five if it was a b

039of 3.5 to 4.4 it's all the way down to the F which is a 1.0 to a 1.4 these scales are not equally distributed there's only 410 of a point here for f there's only 510 of a point here for a but the rest of them seems to be like one so again that's just the the way it's distributed now I want to take and by the way please feel free to ask questions along the way it's never a problem I can ignore them no I won't I would not do that but this is the state report card now I want to show you this I am going to share my presentation with you so that you can take time you know it's your leisure to investigate and I've put a link in there to

040this and let's see where we live no that's T say t no if that was T then this must be this there we go see and the thing is this is for all the district in Tennessee you can go anywhere this is not just us you can go and be nosy and look at any place so when you do this we have information about our district but these School letter grades are only applied to schools there is no District letter grade remember way back we did a presentation I said that we were advancing that's a district designation for whatever reason that letters for schools other classifications for district so if we were to go here and we were to pick a school for instance the high school popped up first the school letter grades live

041under the 2024 performance metric it's the very first option and this is important because it shows you all the calculations so it gives for achievement we were a level four at the high school for growth we were a level three for growth for highest need students that's at 25% level three and College and Career ready we were level four and this gives you a breakdown this is that measure the you know all the tables we looked at said you got a one or a two or a five or whatever that's for these numbers and they also break it down if you want to look at subjects if you want to look at student groups or ethnicity so it's it's a plethora of information and you say I don't really care about that I just want

042to know what how in the world did this big old letter pop up well and it shows you for achievement we had a four and they take 50% we got two growth was a three 30% we got 0.9 Etc and then they add these decimals and their final score was a 3.6 and a 3 point six according to the scale lies in B Ranch so and this accountability system has nothing to do with reward skills or targeted support and intervention or additional Target supported information or or comprehensive has no those are two separate systems so it's possible that a school can have a b and be a board school or it's possible that they could have a a c or something it may be Target it all depends based on the different accountability system so

043again we the high school is the only one that had if I go to an elementary school then they all pop up up again got to live here you know if I was really in my teaching mode I would bring someone from here up and let you be touching the screen okay but again it shows you all the information you notice it says not a high school so that that's out and you can go through and see all the same sort of information for some sometimes they say there's not enough students to register for instance here it said English Learners insufficient encount you had to have enough students in the category to register a value okay and again you see over here we get scores we get a letter and it's the same scale regardless

044of K8 or 912 so at as I say at your convenience could you stay on that a second I'd be glad to what would you like to see I would like to see what's causing the sea which area okay let's go back I mean this is important information for school to study I would I would say looking at this it's growth because there was they were a level four in achievement they were level two in growth and a level one in the bottom 25% growth I'd say that's what depressed it so it shows at the 25% is where we need to not necessarily 25% a level two on a scale of five is low as well yeah so I'd say overall growth and growth of the 25% contributed to that depressed down to a c

045cuz last year they were a b or or an A they were an a last year so some yeah yeah but again you have to remember too this is measuring a different cohort of students so when you look at achievement previously you know you had your third graders fourth graders fifth graders but then the next year you've got another group of third graders coming in and a fifth grade group leaving right but you see schools doing the same thing every year with the different K there are some who are consistent that's right they don't always always yo-yo in fact with our own schools the high school had a b and last year they had a b and they had exactly the same score that mapped on to the B yeah we had a few North

046coffee I think was the same Not only was it a b but it was the same score so we had some that are consistent and we have some that change so if we have our our achievement and and if you're level four or even level five that it becomes a little harder to squeeze out the road not necessar okay so can you comment on that sure the reason ex growth is based upon a a testing history the testing background and when you look at growth as a group then there is an expected uh performance if the students make that performance or they're within a comfortable interval around that performance then be like a level three if they didn't perform quite as expected that would be more a level two and if they really didn't perform

047as expected doesn't mean they didn't grow but they may didn't grow as much as expected based on their past testing history but again you could have a group and they did better than expected that might be a four and really better would be a five so it it doesn't matter if you're low achievement high achievement they're separate bits of data and they pair up you could basic have four outcomes high achievement high growth high achievement low growth low achievement high growth low achievement low growth I mean it's possible for any of those four can you go back to that scale of where it falls on that yes the score range 2.9 the letter grade score range yes and then the 2.9 Falls here so that's yeah so that's that's something to look at too you

048know how yes to say if it's borderline or if it's in the middle sure M and and unfortunately that's what the public looks at that letter great they they're not going to go in and analyze all this you know no I wouldn't think so no I don't think though so that's something we have to realize you know we can explain everything away or try to but well but the thing is the data what it's telling us it's not our place to try to rationalize performance the purpose of data is to inform us and when we look at that data and say okay this is what I see why exactly is it this and then we can start digging and again the Public's not going to start doing the digging but the school leadership can the

049teachers can up here at the central office we can and then we can start seeing some things over here in these levels and then from here okay can I dig a little bit deeper well I'm not seeing much under here for this 25 but I'm seeing some things here for achievement and for growth for instance if you looking at this and you were telling me which was the weakest area of growth gr I see a literacy of three I see a numeracy a one a science of five well that would tell me numeracy okay and then you could dig more well why would it be that and then you could start looking at root causes if you want to get fancy with the stakes vocabulary what's the reason why and then you could see things

050in your own building and say okay did I have change of Faculty for instance did a school have a teacher who left in semester one and replaced with someone else in semester two that could be a problem or it could be a good thing you have to look in dig and look at at at uh group data individual student data and you can see the impact of change okay are we digging yes yes we are but and it's different from different buildings some buildings may have had the same teachers for who knows how long and again if they have this I don't care if it's an A or or an F you would want to take the data see what it's telling you and make decisions you know they even say datadriven decision making yeah

051nice phrase what does it mean means you take your information here and you make decisions based on it what if I have a teacher who's doing really well for the past three years in grade three do I want to move them to grade four do I want to move them to kindergarten well if they're doing really good in grade three I might want to keep them in grade three or they may it could be that you're seeing that that they may be able to do effectively in grade four what they were doing in grade three again those are all instructional leader decisions in the buildings other question the state is seems to be placing more emphasis on the letter grades now than some of these other I think probably because it's simple to look and

052see ABCD and instead of understanding some of the other things but is that your your understanding too I never try to understand the state well that's I just try to take what they say make sense of that and run with it but um they're making decisions and and you know that affect our budget and stuff and and it seems like the letter grades are going to be the basis of a lot of these things going forward as far as our budgets go and and some of the things or bonuses you get yeah things like that it could have a monetary or financial implication there's a lot of impact and again I'm not quite sure where that is in the in the going from Bill to law phase I don't know if it's actually in place

053yet or not it still could be no there's still some things kicking around you know but and that's a lot with the legislators that's that's just Norm right right other things though feel free to ask I'm going to leave this up in case you want to see more with this but I'm going to go back to here now this is the roster of letter grades for all our schools here in Coffee County and this has been released I think since December and again you say well why didn't you present this earlier I think your agendas have been rather crowded and so this is a time that we actually had an opportunity to look at it so you can see we had a school an a school we had one two three b's had one two

054three C's we had a couple of D's and we have a n and again that changes from one year to the next it's not set and by the way I am going to share this with you so you know if you're taking notes that's fine but also you'll have this this to refer back to anything else questions for Dr blessing question yes sir not having to do with lat grades for the schools but in the spring 24 testing data uhhuh that you gave it that was July the 8th 2024 help me to understand this I can try okay thank you I could asked about a 100 questions I've gone through this and spent time and time and time and still anyway for example grade five math Hill Hillsboro in 2122 in Matt had 81.1% score

055right proficient that is they scored at either met expectations or exceeded expectations yes sir and then in 22 23 71.8 and 23 24 73.8 MH now how I'm I'm trying to make some sense with this Deerfield for example 35% 32% 30% M why how could why why the differences when I go through and well again you're you're going into what what we call root cause analysis why is this that way why is this this way you got two different schools with two different student populations you have different teachers MH you even though we're using the same material I you can have I think we all can acknowledge you can have a really effective teacher and they have a major impact and you can have a teacher who is doing well and they have their impact

056and you can have a te maybe a new teacher who's struggling with classroom discipline or you have a higher population of U English language Learners or students with disabilities and they count in their if they're taking the regular teap tests so all those question you ask of why would you have to dig down to find what's different and again that's that's about the the only thing I can tell you without trying to go too specifics to say well go into this classroom you know it would be wonderful if we can have a Highly Effective Teacher and clone them and distribute them across the county recently in case you you know we have trouble finding teachers so it used to be a few years ago we might have a math position and there may be several

057applicants and the principal can pick whoever they think is the best fit and going to be the most effective now we post a math position we have applicants from the Philippines and we have the app uh from let's say where I come from Ghana and we have but we don't have a lot coming here and we we have tried to use some of the state Solutions like clinical practice permits that would be a student teacher who is instead of actually doing student teaching we're able to hire them as an employee and their a year of teaching count as that student teaching they have a mentor they have but they're still again you have to Adit they're young they're still trying to get their feet on the ground and you may have their waivers and permits

058where someone who doesn't have a teaching license like again a permit but they have a background in the subject or you have a waiver someone certified to teach um history but we really need them to teach English well we apply for a a waiver means they're certified but they're not certified in the area we have a combination of those things in our district currently so all of those various and sunry factors have to be considered and again we have like in in years's past you have a teacher you want who needs to improve and you say I want you to go watch this teacher over here if they're not willing to learn it's a wonderful idea but they may not take away as much from it as a teacher who comes to the principal and

059says I recognize I need some help in this area and the principal arrang is for them to visit someone who does really well in that area that teacher is going to take a lot more out of it than someone who is put there it seems to me like the interventionist teachers would be I mean how are we utilizing them like for instance Hillsboro has a great math I mean we can all agree on that every year their math scores are high and that helps to get them that a if youe the scores five but overall overall yeah that's right that helps get that a well why would we it's simple instead of going to all this other rigma rope it's simple look what what are they doing in math there that's working so well maybe

060we need to to look at that and do that at other schools thank you great I appreciate you asking that because that's part of my reason for asking that can we learn and observe and investigate what is going on in because it's a dream and you can and you know it's it's an interesting phenomenon that sometimes you'll have a highly effective teacher and you point like what are you doing to be so successful and they say I'm just doing my job it's hard for them to figure out what they're doing but it again it wouldn't be hard for an instructional supervisor to sit there and see what they're doing to look and see that's true that's you know but so it's thank you for it's not just a a straightforward matter of sending this teacher

061there and they come out and they're going to be just is affected there there's a grow I mean there's a talent I mean and they and they can take that's like you hear the phrase trying to drink from a fire hydrant you know they could go in there and it is just so instructionally dense they can't pick up everything but if they can latch hold of this and take it and work with it and use it in their classroom and then their their data their formative assessments their bench marking shows that they're being effective that really you know nothing succeeds like success and they can go in and once they it's almost like when you're working with a student and you're trying to get them to learn to get that and once they achieve what

062they think is Success they do so much better because they realize I can do this same thing with teachers I can do this I can be effective but it's not overnight and even again instructional leader going in and watching that teacher can take away strategies and share those strategies but then it's going to be up to the individual teacher to take it and run with it really is other things so are we doing that we have different things going on in different buildings and part of the things you're going to see tonight I think from Dr Crabtree and Dr Anderson and Mr Johnson are some things some things they've got going in their buildings and you're going to go through again what you're going to see from the are going to be different things different

063strategies to try to help them improve but yes in terms of of like sending teachers to see more affected teachers yes in terms of our our uh academic coaches our academic coaches are working with maybe some teachers who need some Shoring up whether it's in Reading Ela or whether it's in math we have that we have that at all the elementary schools and we have a academic coach at the middle school we don't have one at the at the high school rer academy yet for some reason it's something about money know it's hard to get that but for the elementary school we've had these teachers in place as literacy coaches and numeracy coaches and at the middle schools academic coach and they are reaching out to their teachers and they are working with them good

064thank you and we have you mentioned intervention teachers I think Miss J talk about intervention we have intervention I was really referring to academic coaches because interventionist I think work with the kids don't that's right but again that's important too that's just get another aspect so we have these different levels working with the teachers working with the students trying to get effective strategies in place because the overall I don't I don't say I don't care about the letter grades sure I'd like to see all A's and B's that would be wonderful last year we had 80% of our schools were as and B's but what we want our ultimately is for our students to be successful whatever they want to do whether it's going on to college and you say but they're third graders I'm

065sure that y'all have blinked and people gone from third graders to high schoolers it just seems to fly by doesn't seem to fly by for the student but it does for us and we want them to be successful in their chosen path whatever it may be anything else right thank you Dr blessing sure not blessing I've got some other questions to ask you next week when I visit with you okay got a lot of questions all right so next up we have a Dr crab tree thanks for coming and joining us and can you get it to work the microphone I think I think I'm just gonna have to hold it hey Kathy would be easier for use one of these you're welcome to um Dr Gonzalez is um passing out a folder inside the

066folder um there is a pink piece of paper and that is the root cause analysis that we had to um submit with the state department the state department come out and met with us and um they typed all of that in so there's some shorthand kind of things in there that you may or may not understand but I'm going to try to hit some high points of that and then you'll also in there see um hickerson's Improvement plan that we created to um address these test scores so if we look at the root cause analysis that's the pink paper um so Dr Gonzales and I sat and dug into our test scores analyzed our test scores we were prepared when the state department come out to do this root cause analysis because we had already

067identified our issues um it was fairly easy for her to plug it into the the spreadsheet because we were ready to to tell her everything she needed to know um so so um we ultimately identified that we had a time management issue in our building throughout the building like we had um a lot of time that was not necessarily being wasted but that we could take advantage of we could could streamline that time and use that more efficiently and so we wanted to address that student engagement was also um something that we wanted to address um we felt like our teachers were doing the heavy lifting and not so much that heavy lifting was falling on our students um our teachers were going home exhausted our students maybe not so much so um we have

068been addressing this through um ipg walkthrough so instructional practice guides we um I'll talk more about that in just a second but um we're doing these ipg walkthroughs and analyzing the student engagement the time management when we do the walkthroughs we timestamp um when teachers are transitioning from one thing to another so that we can keep tabs on that um we have been doing lots of planning um we have um hired Subs to come in and be with our students while we plan with the teachers and um we are planning on we had talked with Mr Clark Dr Clark about um sending some teachers to North coffee to observe to see what they're doing that are is continuously getting them the growth and the achievement that they need um and then we decided we would

069focus on our bubble children so in third grade math um our proficiency level was at 177% we had six or seven kids without looking at the having the numbers right here I don't quite remember but we had six or seven kids that were one or two questions away from being proficient if those children had gained that one or two question on the test we would been at 34% for that grade level and so that shows you just how tight that is um and so that basically is the the root cause analysis summed up um if we move over to the Improvement plan um just some highlights you know there's several Pages there that you can mull over later you know you need some nighttime reading um but we have put in our calendar regularly scheduled

070ipg walkthroughs and like I said that's the instructional practice guide it is um a walkthrough form that focuses on student engagement and um when we started the ipgs in the fall our teachers no zero% of our teachers were scoring um basically passing cor this U ipg has different core actions so none of them were passing core action one um after implementing the plan um I've got it on the very back page 64% weeks ago yes we're we're passing core action one um so that is showing more efficiency um we're doing Fidelity checks every other month on all of our intervention classrooms um we are also implemented growth monitoring the last Monday of the month and that is um done through um I ready and um and then we have I ready diagnostic assessments I ready

071lesson checks and unit checks and then the rest of the plan goes into the goals and data collection on all those things um so we basically received the TSI designation for lack of progress with our economically disadvantaged students um and as Dr blessing showed you that's a combination of their achievement and their growth and then um at Hickerson yall know that we're very small and so that testing data is very fickle at a school our size depending on what year it is it's six or it's five teachers this year it's five teachers last year it was six teachers um but last year it was 94 students that tested this year even though we have less teachers it's 91 students that will test so um you know um looking at that data and digging in we

072realized that there was an issue about Midway through the school year last year and so um at the end of the school year we made some staffing changes we also scraped together every um penny that we had basically and we purchased I ready reading for our students so that they also not only did they have a math pathway that they would use they have a reading pathway um we purchased a Accelerated Reader AR um and I will say it will be nice this year to have Tisa funding to purchase these programs so that we're not using our fundraiser money that we do have to um purchase those um and then some things I wanted to you know bring attention to with the board was you know we have had very limited out ofd District training

073for our teachers since Co and so that would be something that I feel like our teachers would benefit from is going to these trainings that have been very limited um just so that they can grow in a professional capacity um and then also student behaviors at the elementary level are not we don't have the means to address them as swiftly as they have at the secondary level um we we have behavior modification classes but it's a lengthy process to get children there so if children are severely disrupting these classrooms we cannot address that and protect the instructional time to those students that are in there um and then also I just want to say keep raising the pay so that we can entice the best and we don't have to rely on permits and uncertified

074teachers to teach these classes um and that's later on the agenda and so I I think that's all I have that I was ready for so do you have questions so you you know you mentioned discipline again and I've you know at least for me I've heard that from a number of teachers throughout the system and stuff as displine being you know a challenge because you get a disruptive kid in the classroom and it disrupts the earning or or learning for everybody so how are how are we dealing with that you know it's I know it's a challenge so it is a challenge and um and we have a process in place um in order to get them to a behavior modification pass but like I said that's a lengthy process you're talking about um

075probably six to 12 weeks something like that and so that's a lot of instructional time lost with those those children um that whole class of children and it may not just be that class because if they're in the hallway screaming their head off they're disrupting everybody in that hallway and then it's keeping us from our jobs that also keeps us for being able to be in his classroom because sometimes that behavior you're with that child most of day I know what West me but I do feel like that is something that needs to be addressed um is is protecting the the instructional time for these children who deserve to to be taught and have the best so have several of those we have so and that's going back to what Christan was saying while ago

076and that's the reason I was asking her that's that title four stuff that she was talking about just a minute ago going to using your teachers to go to extra so if we take that money away from that then that takes away from you being able to go to extra training so yes Hickerson is fortunate enough that in the past we have received stem money so my teachers do get to attend stem not all of them but a handful of them get to attend the stem conference every year I try to send that some um to that and then um Tec they until this year they had been going to that which is a technology conference and then PE and um um school counselors have been attending some conferences but for your everyday classroom teacher

077they haven't besides what's held in District um they hav hav't been receiving any type of outside training so that's what I say we're we've got to be careful pulling from title four and and putting it into title one because of those reasons if we take that then they we're taking away y'all's training so it's a it's a double edged sword it's a double-edged sword and we just making sure that we know that we we hear you we hear Kristen we hear you and something I will say um when Dr blesson was talking so um those OS that are the targets that the children have to grow yes ma'am change every year depending on how much growth they did or didn't make so if they didn't make a lot of growth this past year then they

078lowered the Amo to make it more attainable so you're more likely to show growth the following year if that makes any sense at all so so it it just it's a sliding scale if you're if you're you know if you shoot from a level one to a level five then they're going to shoot that Amo up the next year which means it's even more difficult to obtain that level five so so this pink sheet is out of your school Improvement plan that is so yes it's out of our e plan um and the state department um sent someone to fill that out we didn't actually fill that we sat with them while she filled it out I know that Crystal works on that yes so but uh this sheet then is that going to be

079used to modify the School Improvement plan next year well this is what we are working on this is just a working document for us to know um what we needed to to address and how we were planning to do that okay so elements of that will work its way into the school Improvement plan that we file he plan right met our teers January anded out the Cornelius came and gave us support and was there just to to be there with we did that um we've also had members at the central office that have come out to do data chats we met with every third through fifth student in data chat with just to go over we made folders for every child um we did that and we're also miss tarner um Dr ke Cornelius Dr

080Kree myself oh don't make me do that but we are are we're also at least once or twice a week we're staying after school during the Excellence program and volunteering so with the bubble kids that she had mentioned we're working with those students with math just trying to fill in deficits and trying to get to to get students caught up we're also working with K through too because we have identified that that's part of our root cause analysis that we've got to get students fluent faster so that way the compr renson piece can be there when it needs to be for third grade so those are things that it's it's one of those that we're putting we're putting pieces in we're trying to really monitor and watch some of it takes time and just trying

081to be consistent with it so so how are we tracking these you know that your working document but are you tracking progress in these SST so we have been as far as making sure that we're hitting the things on that we're keeping up with the dates I have a spreadsheet every time that we meet with for tutoring also when we've had the data chats we've recorded that as well um we're fortunate with I so I does the data tracking for us as web we've got Data Tracking through that we just completed the mock assessment for ELA so we've already been going through and pouring over that data as well just trying to see where the still is with the standards how does that compare we have um historical data that we have completed of certain

082standards certain U certain standards are heavier on TCAP than others so we've been tracking that trying to see to make sure that we hit those as well um but just that just trying to keep up with the programs that we have to to try to make sure that we're on target okay and any questions for for Dr Crabtree you oh the the child is disruptive you said it can take what six to eight weeks to get them there there's no definite there's no definite timeline it's just all depending on the circumstances the child and the data that the team can use to make that decision it just just depend it could take up to a year be up to a school get data and documentation because when we're talking about a change of placement whether

083it's a SP K or a kid we have to follow state federal guidelines to do that we can't just go in and remove a kid and put them at the cost center or you know we have to follow these guidelines and there's case law after case law after case law where that hadn't been done and it's a problem we're Bound by that so Charlie a so a student then could be whatever grade and being disruptive and it may take weeks weeks to get that person the attention the well now the attention is going to come immediately it could take up to weeks months to put together enough data to justify that change of placement and so the kid could day after day then yes be disruptive yes and taken away from yes stress that's putting

084on our teachers and or whatever and yes yeah there are a lot of things we can do on in on campus to help support that student with with issues um but when when we're talking about the the legal side of changing the placement of a student and if we remove a student from any school in this District to another alternative setting that's constitutes a change of placement and we have just guidelines that we have to follow um and I'd be happy if somebody wants to you know if you want to come by and visit we have an actual behavioral handbook that breaks it down I created it last year and it breaks down the entire process and every step we take as a district to do that I'll come see you yeah questions for Dr

085cry what what can the board do to help well and that's why I mentioned those last few things you know just funding wise you know um making sure that you know that just keep raising that pay so that you know we can attract the best of the best and um and looking at student Behavior if there's ways that we can um address that and then um out of District trainings um helping our teachers grow to the best of their ability so that our kids are getting the best so the stress and the pressure on her and her system while the teachers thank you add I want to add one thing about the behavior in our district we we have a lot of problems we we're we're every District in the in the state and the

086country has problems with behavior but I think our district is going in the right direction um we're handling issues as fast and as promptly as we possibly can we're making decisions and I've had meetings with every principal in here and we've talked about the kids that are being affected by the behavior they're as important as when we make those decisions as a student who's actually exhibiting the behavior are there more tools that you could use in your toolbox as far as as behavior that law that law allows see how I put that probably controversial there there there there are a lot of options that that that people would recommend but for someone to assume theab the liability for that decision that that's that's so impactful for an individual teacher myself any principal to to make

087the decision especially when we're talking talking about you know the the the corporal punishment things like that um those are things that there's I would dare say there's not a teacher in this District an administrator in this District that would be willing to take that liability well but does does that come from does a lot of that come from support from Administration all the way to the top yeah it goes all the way it it goes all the way to the top and and here and here's the thing about the legality of corporal punishment if if that happens yes there's ins insurance that that covers teachers and part of certain associations and everything but those things can actually be taken out of the school's hands and taken into civil court as well so once things

088roll into civil court it's out of our you have law you have state law that recommends it yeah to this day yeah you have policy that still exist yeah okay in it not to say there's probably not means or measures that need to be taken in different stdes to actually ensure you keep control of it yeah but that that's cuz I got a feeling that's going to be an interesting conversation among many soon in something else to consider with that too with Mr West morland's part it's with with special education and he's been good to work with us bless his heart there's been times especially when we have been frustrated you've had to hear a lot of venting from us when it's when it's come down to it sometimes because you do feel like your

089hands are tied behind your back and he has what he has to do plus there's only so many Behavior mod position or spots and you've got six elementary schools that are feeding into two BS and before we only had one Behavior mod now we thankfully have two um but we also have students that are nons sped students that cause disruptions as well and you have to wait much longer to get them into beod because they're not sped and so you have to go through so that that's another piece of that puzzle is that you've got these kids that are nons sped that we don't have costs we don't have an alternative school program we get 10 days that we can send them home um but that's you know that's just something else to to think

090about and that's where that's where I'm getting I want to make it clear that I'm not talking about I'm talking about every single student we have there are guidelines for different things stuff of that nature about across the board yes and one point one point we have to make though when it comes to that change of placement that I've used that doesn't just apply to a sped student that also applies to a gen ed student and you know there are there are anomalies in the district where you know with zero tolerance and some things that happen we we have to kind of step over a rule ever so often for the safety of the other students and the and everything but as a general rule if we're going to change a placement for a student

091gened or sped we're required to follow these guidelines and these guidelines consist of several steps to collect collect data put interventions in place in the classroom to try to support that student in the classroom and let this data and we have to show our due diligence that we're doing everything we can do to to work through the behavior and teach the student strategies once we've done all those steps and we have the FBA in place the BP and we've done everything we need to do then we go back and review it and if it's not working then the next step would be the change of placement um but even then with the change of placement the whole goal has to be for that student to come back to their home school as soon as possible

092once we we we make adjustments i' I'd love for y'all to have all the tools in the tool box this necessary do what you need to do to see that day again I'll be the poker of the bear here I guess I think we're missing something here though these kids are our customers and we need to find if there's a child screaming in the H in the hallway in my classroom I need to try to find the root cause of that first before I start jerking out a paddle and um and I'm talking about non-speed kids there's it it could be something in their home life that's causing them to be that way and and it's and of course that's what the public does not understand what teachers are up against behav we're not psychologists

093you know they're but you've got to do that because you can't just think well that's a bad kid he's screaming every day we're GNA get just move him out you know outside out what so what we have done at Hickerson and it's I think several of the schools have adop adopted it we've gone through the trauma informed training which talks about the Aces and talks about cuz we do and once you once you diagnose that child then what do you do so we have some calm down Corners that are in each of the classrooms we try to do the morning meetings to try to talk with kids uh we have Miss Amy ay our school counselor and she is really good to reach out to the parents to reach out to the kids um we

094we have had lunch groups where we meet with these kids miss ay is really good to meet and have lunch lunch groups with them I've had kids in my office where I've got like a little calm down area um there's been plenty of times that we've had them in there doing homework with them trying to walk with them you just try to figure out what best works with that child some some kids have to have a minute just to to go get a drink of water and come back before they're ready to talk it takes a little bit of time to get to to know that child to see what triggers what doesn't trigger uh we had some that the triggers were right in that once they got to the ELA part of the day

095and they were having to write that was the part that was causing that so we would put things in place we would take a highlighter and highlight if they got through so much of their their assignment then they would come with a the teacher would give them a Post-It note and they would bring it and one if it was a certain color we knew that was a good day and that child would put it on my um door my office door so we would know that so there was at one point that you would have seen lots and lots of Post-it notes at different doors for different kids we've got a parking lot of with the zones of proximal Behavior like if they're in green that means they're having a good day if they're in

096red it's not such a good day for them so we've we've got a a little parking lot we've had kids that will put tractors or cars in that little parking lot and and will it in to let us know so we we are trying the the best we can with that because we know we know that home affects those things and we know that we have to try to work with and relationship building trying our best to to build relationships with the kids it just gets to the point at with and it's not when we're talking about this it's maybe one or two kids we're not talking about a handful of kid how many kids that they're like yes ma' and I'm sure it varies I'm sure it varies depending on the school but I

097know it Hickerson it's just been a small few and you try to to navigate that you try to get them um back regulated but it gets to a point on the the worst days or the the bad days that they have to go home at some point and so we try we try our best not to have to do that but sometimes you have to um but those are the things that we've been doing Miss Freda trying to and you're and you're exact exactly right and and what everybody has to remember and we talk about it a lot at the district at the the campus level is behavior is communication they're they're acting out they're something you know so we have to really find out and dig in that's why the data is so important

098we we do interviews we you know we do observations and and we really dig into the root cause of the behavior and we find out what the triggers are and then we start putting things in place to stand in front of those things our Greenhouse we use our Greenhouse a lot we have kids that like the worm farm so that is used as a reward we have kids that you know the studies show that heavy lifting so being able to to take buckets of dirt or rings of paper we have kids that we had little backpacks and they would take the rings of paper down you know to another CL hey can you help us take take Miss Bonnie Miss Bonnie needs lots of paper so they would do that um again you just find

099out what works and you try and it might work for two or three weeks and then something happens and you start over and that's the process that Mr West Moran's talking about because like you said there's something there and and sometimes you can't figure it out but the goal is to intervene figure out what the problem is and and the whole time the school is trying to do this they're having that child yell or scream or or hit or or do whatever they're doing but it's still there's a process that's set up to try to figure out what the problem is what those triggers are to get those taken care of and if you soon later you can't figure anything out you move to the next step which is Bod uh so that that that

100what they've been telling you about is the process and it's it's not an easy process it's a it's very difficult it's hard on the students it's hard on the teachers it's hard on staff um that that's the process as as just to to clear up instead of just talking about whooping the paddle out and not worrying about an underlying fact I want to be clear that I'm there 90% of the time there's probably going to be an underlying issue causing that which you must address before you do that but what percentage of our issues doesn't have an underlying fact do we have an idea yes yes I can't give you a percent but I will say that there are some students with medical diagnosis that that's an underlying fact I'm not you got guidelines and

101you got different yeah I get that I understand that a whole hearted well but but you've got you've got students who will just act out because they're refusing or they're they don't really have any reason they just don't want to do what you're asking them to do and and I had a I had a conversation with a parent just today in a meeting about how everything we're doing here in the district District needs to carry over in the home and if we need to come in and support the parent in the home with with structures and things in her home you know I'd be more than you know it's an open door for us yeah we all would and and that's the most important fact that that a lot of times we miss is those

102underlying issues are things that are so far out of our control yeah that we we don't have an answer for them because we can do everything in the Under the Sun in this District to support a kid but once they get on that bus and arrive at that home home and it's all undone we basically start back over the next day so I'm I'm a big Advocate on parent involvement in these meetings and being involved in all this stuff um knocking on parents doors and doing home visits on their front porch to make sure they're aware of you know hey your students really having a problem on the bus so let's have a conversation about you providing transportation for a little while you know let and making them have to take some ownership in it

103yes are those home visits still occurring are we still doing them they anytime I get a phone call I'll knock on somebody's door yes and they and they happen and and I know I've got some case managers in the district who will call having issues and the first thing will come out of my mouth let's do a home visit do you see and let's go visit them like like after those occur like can you see progress sometimes I I don't think you know most of the time yes most of the time when you show up on the front door yeah uh sometimes they don't come to the door but when they do come to the door they're they're ready to listen and sign paper for work schedule meetings they don't return phone calls but when

104you knock on the door and you walk up with a shirt and tie with a with a thing they think oh my oh my goodness and and it makes a difference sometimes and if it has to happen you know that's I spoke to them about home buiness definitely with us or he carries us yes so and and all the the things they're doing in their uh school for the behavioral uh interventions and strategies that's happening in every every school in our district there's you know there's there's a lot of similarities but there's you know each kid requires different different things we appreciate what you're doing because I mean you you've tackled the problem and you're working it out and that's that's all anybody can ask and you don't have the privilege to just pick your

105kids like Charter Schools do private schools we we serve everybody and that's what the public doesn't understand what teachers and Educators face every day uh in the public schools and I think I think overall we do a really good job in educating the public school child and I I had a talk with a parent the other day and she was worried her child was behind and I told her I said he is behind but the fact is you don't need to worry about him that child has a work ethic and a grit like no other he will be successful he will make sure that he is successful and that is our goal at Hickerson is to raise successful productive citizens and so no matter what the test scores show we are confident that we are

106raising successful children Dr CRA Tre thank you for the greenhouse program you're welcome thank you thank you that's Dr Anderson started that so thank you thank you thank you and uh the uh when you go out on a home visit you may have referred this a while ago do you have someone going with you absolutely good nobody goes by themselves there's been several times where they would go a teacher a principal would go with an SRO would always go and they there's been times where I would go with the principal or a teacher no one goes no one goes our practices too most of the time when we go out it's usually for attendance or if it's for signed paperwork we always alert I'm always calling Dr Cornelius or calling Mr West Morland to let

107someone at the co know that what we're doing and we always take an SRO officer with us good thank you thank you and there's been a time when our SRO is off and we've called to get one from another school usually Jason dendy comes over from cost to assist us or something like that and there's been there's been several times I've went and gotten the SRO from the campuses and they went with me I won't go by myself I take it's always two people all right thank you Dr Crabtree appreciate all right Mr Johnson thank you for coming I have a power oh I need that microphone I guess um while we're on the topic of behavior and discipline of course I work at the cost center we have a plethora of that when you're

108talking about tools Robert there is a tool that we have exercised this year that is a legal option that a lot of people didn't know but it's the state of Tennessee Legal option we can sometimes and you don't aspire to do this but we can sometimes have students so volatile so disruptive that they're robbing the education of another 20 25 students so what do you do with those students now we don't have a lot of options as Mr Wes Morland was alluded to we have a process we have protocols but there is a legal option through alternative school to where if a student is deemed so disruptive that they are detrimental to the success of other students you can remove them and put them in a remote learning situation we don't really expel in the

109state of Tennessee anymore but this is the closest thing to it while you're keeping them enrolled in school without the expulsion and you're still providing an education through packet work and I've got two students in particular of course I'm not going to name names here uh but I've got two students in particular that they come from the same household they're Brothers uh they just do not fit in inperson learning we have had to place them on remote learning and ironically and miraculously they are actually producing more work and passing now where they were not in inperson school because all they wanted to do was take time to start drama and fight with other students and actually this is a testament to this I had one student come in take the ACT uh he spent and

110I was so surprised and proud of him spent an hour and a half taking that act where this particular student probably if he'd been in person would have Christmas tree it we've heard of that terminology spent 5 minutes on it and went right back to class so it could get back to the drama so that's one legal option that we've had to start exercising and we have that through alternative school now of course that's not going to help Elementary's problems and things like that but of course your students or my future issues when it comes to things like that so that's an option that is legal that we have had to start utilizing in in Virtual no no no no no cost Center cost center call center but or alternative setting alternative setting what about

111high school or middle school high school middle school yes do the same if they come to Alternative School I can do the same now let me say this it's not something we aspire to do it's not something that we uh use very readily we have to kind of be conses not to say well we're just putting them all out there I mean out of my total population right now I've got two students on it the two family members and the reality is the home life is not enough support for them to function in person school and I'd hate and I had rather them not take 20 other students with them rob you I've been asking the middle school students at the middle school or at the high school their next step is the cost center

112so so it would happen from the cost center but not from well but we were we were talking about the virtual part of it and this and that and I didn't know if it was offered me through through alternative I was wondering if the high school could recommend that in skip cost see that that but he's saying it's through there and that's that's that's what I'm saying my big watch and in alternative school and in law I can't recite the code annotated off the top of my head but I I study law quite a bit because I'm a nerd like that and I just like to know my stuff but there is a code annotated to where it is the legal option through alternative school it does not say it's a legal option through Traditional

113School beyond that that's that's and it doesn't say you can't do that either but that would be walking out on a branch well like I said you're the next step yes in the discipline then that would be the next step after that right which is a great option you just don't want too many going to high school and middle school going well if I just I don't want to be here today so if I just keep on I'll eventually just get on Virtual UL well in Virtual let me clarify this because I'm the principal of Virtual Academy and the cost center and it happens to be in the same building it's two totally separate schools totally disconnected it we're housed in the same building totally two different schools uh virtual school is not about that

114and I'm going to get to that the presentation but uh so uh now let's talk about virtual okay since we got these scores what we have have done is evaluated our instruction platform we use uity we have looked at amentum at this point in time we're not so sure that it would be prudent to us to change our platform because consistency can be the key we definitely have to look at Improvement we have collaborated with another Virtual Academy that is using the entum program uh they've been very gracious with us to work with us uh what we have gathered from that I'm not so sure their change to the edmentum program has produced the results as much as the approach and that's what we're going to start implementing is more so the approach they're using

115which gets us to the second bullet point we have began incorporating live teaching sessions in Algebra 2 via Dr blessing I don't know where he's at but thankfully to him he has volunteered to do that and English one and two with Betsy Smith our ccva uh coordinator so those are tested subjects the reason we chose Algebra 2 we have the biggest number of students in that tested subject so we're trying to place our efforts where we're going to get the most bang for our buck that's just logical English one and two tested subjects at the EOC end of the year testing uh Betsy Smith has picked up doing live sessions with that Weekly now let me say this about the live sessions it's not the end all be all it's a supplement to our uity

116learning platform now our uity learning platform is an asynchronous program and let me clarify if you hear the word asynchronous or synchronous asynchronous means not in real time it's recorded lessons where they work on their own at their own time synchronous means in real time in person in person can be in a brick and mortar building in a classroom it can be online through Zoom lessons via uh the internet or not the internet but the computer okay so we are doing synchronous real time we've started incorporating it I think it was January 24th we started this with Dr bless and Algebra 2 Betsy Smith English one English 2 we are hoping um and I have no doubt it's going to increase our academic growth how much much is yet to be determined but that is

117one of our biggest points of emphasis I think to increase our academic growth uh third bullet point our staff and our counselor has and we've been doing this before but we've concentrated and added something a little different we have what's called Workshop Wednesdays for our students well we've been teaching act skills uh subject tested subject related skills things of that nature we are incorporating and we're concentrating on this hot and heavy test taking strategies because here's the reality of test taking it's not only important for students to know information and knowledge it's important for them to know how to take a test and utilize strategies such as process of elimination because on a lot of these tests they're going to be given four options two of those options if you know how to use process

118of elimination you can automatically fairly quickly delete and at least get it down to a 5050 where it allows you to analyze the difference in one or two options so we're concentrating on test taking strategies which hopefully is another um emphasis that we improve our scores so that's what we're currently doing we have started this this year since we've gotten our scores um which of course we're not proud of there is no one in this room more so than I and my staff which they're not in this room uh that once these scores improved and we've had discussions about this long before we got here um so if we go to the next slide future Improvement we are also looking at incorporating live synchronous instruction sessions for grade 6 through eight Math and Science Elizabeth

119peekin Paul our coordinator in ccba not the coordinator she's the facilitator that's her title is going to start teaching live sessions 6 through eight Math and Science again tested subjects so we're wanting to incorporate some more of that this is kind of a stepbystep building block process um now the next bullet point I have possible addition of live synchronous instruction sessions for Algebra 1 and geometry in addition to Algebra 2 keep in mind we've already got Dr blessing doing Algebra 2 now this is where I have run out of Staff members I've tapped out all my staff members I have two staff members in ccva Betsy Smith teaching English one and English two Dr blessing through the good graces of his heart teaching Algebra 2 from that point forward with Elizabeth Incorporated six through eight

120Math and Science I have tapped out and exhausted my entire staff so to incorporate additional classes we're going to have to possibly if that's so chosen to concentrate on possibly look at stoens for additional teachers that I don't know exactly right at this time where we would get them from now let me say this we have advisors every student has an advisor a teacher a record they a assigned to for their particular subject these advisors come from the various schools uh Raider Academy middle school high school for their subject they're certified in they work as tutors when our students need help they reach out to these tutors and they help them one onone the advisors are required to reach out to the students if they do not hear from the students two times monthly uh

121but these advisors do not have the time because they're teaching classes daily to be a live session teacher um to add to the incorporation of these live sessions um also third bullet point students are going to start being brought in in person for summative Assessments in all Mastery skill units and tested subjects we're going to start bringing in our uh students as opposed to testing out on their own we're going to start bringing them in for a two-fold approach for one it limits their ability to look up answers online because we know how easy that can be this time this or this day in time the second approach is it puts them in a testing environment before they get to the end of course test so it's exposing them to a testing environment and it

122probably prevents them from I guess for lack of a better term misper forming on a test test on their own where they probably could be looking up answers so we're going to incorporate that as well so so far we're looking at we've Incorporated Algebra 2 English one English two as far as live sessions we were not doing that prior to the score we're helping we're hoping it helps that score improve um we're going to be adding 6 through eight Math and Science again hoping we can improve those scores and I think I think it naturally will I I almost guarantee you it will um how much is yet to be determined so that's what we're looking at right now for improvement strategies that we're already implementing future Improvement strategies that we will start implementing this

123year carry on into next year um now needs moving forward cuz I know you the board are probably thinking how can you help us um I have philosophy and understanding and um and it's been a good discussion here so far because I know it's hard or it can be confusing getting C confused with ccva two completely different schools housed in the same building but two completely different schools ccva is a school that is held accountable and tested just like any other school whether it be the high school the Middle School the rotor Academy hence why we're here today talking about scores um we need to be very careful and realize that it is a school that's held accountable for scores so we need to be conscientious about shifting issues somewhere else so and we've been

124kind of building this boat as we've went downstream we have been learning tweaking improving as you would any program this is our fourth year we've come a long way but we're wanting to go much further than what we are um and when I say we have to be careful about shifting issues here's what ccva can't and should not be we cannot be a school that is a shifting of an issue of an atrisk attendance problem we can't be a shifting of an issue school placement for an atrisk disciplinary problem we can't be and shouldn't be um a school where we place atrisk health issues now with that being said it doesn't mean we can't take some of those students we have but this gets into our enrollment enrollment application we have a screening process for

125enrollment that incorporates grades attendance uh student discipline teacher recommendation which is very very large part of that and we have parent and student survey interviews and we even have inperson interviews if we deem we have some question about the student when you condense all that down what you're looking at there's two factors that determine success in C CVA student motivation and the student being self-driven to work on their own at points in time because largely a large percent percentage of the time they're going to be working on their own so if we deem a student does not have those two qualities of being self-driven and self motivation most likely they're not going to be conducive to being successful in ccva so that's what we have to concentrate on so when we go through our screening

126process with applications um if we deem those two qualities aren't there or Andor the par parental support it's very important to have parental support if those qualities aren't there we have a hard time recommending them for ccva U so we have to understand the philosophy of ccva and our mission is to make students successful that's it in the nutshell that's what we want to do with any school so we have to be sure that we're placing students in Coffee County Virtual Academy that have the self-drive and the self motivation and the parental support to be successful because otherwise if we place an atrisk attendance issue in there an atrisk health issue in there and an atrisk disciplinary issue in there and they don't have parental support they're not self-driven and they're not self-motivated we can

127expect it's probably not going to go well um so we got identify and understand what Coffee County Virtual Academy is and is not a place for it um next bullet point and I put potential funding for stopping of additional life teachers I am not one to ask for money I mean if anything I'm I'm so Frugal to the point sometimes I think money is not the answer for everything and it's not but the reason I put this in here because I've already alluded to this once I tap out my staff with Elizabeth teaching 628 Math and Science Betsy teaching English one and two with the live supplemental sessions and Dr blessing and I only have him through the good graces of his heart uh once I tap all that out I can't add any more

128unless there are possible stoping to get people encouraged to do it um so that is something to look at and I know we're in a time of tight money trust me believe you me and I don't have any problem being told no sometimes but at the same time it never hurt to ask it and it doesn't hurt to put it on the radar because if we want to improve uh I don't see any other way around it with that issue um and the last thing we need of course is grace allow us time to see if the implementation strategies improve success rates now what we're doing right now is going to be tested in the month of April with our teap and our end of course we will not get those results back until like

129what is it Chris Fe November something the results end of course testing when we do it in April yes a late well we're dealing with the state so who knows it could be 2026 but anyway um normally it's November December when we get those scores back so um with all that being said do y'all have any questions or oh go ahead Mr Mr Johnson how many students I know it fluctuates but how many students you have now in ccva yes we have 54 okay and what grades they range from six to six 6 through 12 now I can't tell you the numbers in each and every specific grade we have we've always had fewer middle school students then we've had 9 through 12 our senior class this year year is the biggest class we've had

130yet we have 24 students in our senior class that's going to be graduating uh of course in may this may uh so our senior class is the biggest we've had uh ninth grade is the second biggest class and then I think we have juniors are the third biggest sophomores and then we have a total of about five to seven middle school students that's where I think we're at but it's 54 students to okay and the number of subjects being taught is that basically just the algebra and English and no how many subjects there there's a lot of subjects that are not tested okay you know for example um you're going to have you know some chemistry classes you're going to have some science classes uh 9 through 12 that aren't tested U biology is in

131the uh 9 through area um but no that's and that's the reason we're concentrating on what we're concentrating they're tested subjects so with that grade and that score that we get at the end of the year all that data comes from tested subjects so you're only smart to concentrate your efforts on the tested subjects now that's not to say the other subjects aren't important they're just as important sometimes maybe more but when the public perception is they're saying grades for this this and this you have to concentrate on the tested subjects for your emphasis and concentration while maintaining adequate academic instruction in the non-tested subjects Mr Johnson do your students that take in the course do they come and do that in person they come and do that in person every student we have has

132to come in person to take that test U it's not even allowable not to right and I'm thinking process you're using now to get them in to learn test taking skills should improve that process absolutely because we're going to expose them to a testing environment before they get in there um and like I said we've sort of been building this boat as we go Downstream uh that is something we probably should have been doing a little bit better job of before but that is something we're definitely concentrating on now U because when we start bringing them in for the summi of Assessments like I said it's going to expose them to the testing environment and it cuts down on the misper performance during the test that they could be looking up answers so I have

133that question what is the main reason that these students are choosing to be at the Virtual Academy instead of iners it runs the gamut um runs the gamut it ranges from anxiety and a bigger setting it ranges from um some especially maybe Juniors and seniors have a job and they want to be able to concentrate more on the job and we have to be careful with that because we emphasize the job cannot come before the schooling and we have some that are working that do a phenomenal job in ccva uh we have had some enroll that Tred to work and then ccva goes on the back burner and we've had to address that so it runs to gamut from you know flexible time with jobs anxiety uh maybe a preference to want to go to

134homeschool but want to are inquiring about our program first first and um it has spared um several students from leaving Coffee County schools and staying with us because it's sort of it it's not a home school but any stretch of imagination but to put it in a nutshell it it's sort of like a homech school with a lot of extra support and staff and tutoring and assistance so so it runs the gamut and um then we have had some health issues parents present it to ourselves you know they're having some issues it's hard for them to sit in school eight hours a day 7 and a half whatever it may be and they do fit the criteria of being a good student that self motivated self-directed it works well for those too so it runs

135the gam it with things of that nature and you said 54 students right is that your limit or is that just how many wom it's not our limit our limit is actually set at 70 students with five Reserve slots and let me explain the five Reserve slots the reason we reserve five slots is for students that are transferring in from maybe out of state out of County because the way we look at that if these students are transferring in from out of state or out of County and they desire to have an opportunity to go in Coffee County Virtual Academy I figure they have that right um to apply for that as would any other student so we cap it at 70 we leave five slots open flat slots I call them for movements from

136transfers outside of state or County or things like that to give them a fair opportunity Mr Gilly and excuse me is your is your your you've got 54 now you can go to 755 a reserve is there a reason you don't have any more just participation not a lot people come after it or are you intentionally trying and not as a bad thing just to be able to handle that many manage uh right we have quite a bit of interest um some semesters because here's what we do we do it by semester we don't do it by year so and here's what we ask students to do if they're interested in the file semester our applications will open up around probably April for the fall semester if they're interested in the fall semester they put

137all their application requirements in we sift through that and see if we're going to recommend that student for ccva or not if they are accepted in enrad ccva we ask them to commit for a year so once they're in the program for that fall semester they have to finish out through December if they get to December and they decide this is not for me I want to go back in person uh no harm no foul they transition back to whichever school they were before and and the spring works the same way U now sometimes there are anomaly situations to where uh we can have an anomaly situation where a student because of an extreme health issue with parent or something like that we will acet them mid semester because we try to be have exercise

138humanity and way those individual cases but they commit by semester um so your question is do we have more interest yes we have we have interest it if we recommended every one of them that applied we would go over the 7075 but there's a reason we don't recommend all of them because some of them are looking for an escape from attendance issues some of them are looking for an escape because they're not doing their work at the other school so logically why would we them because it's not going to improve there with less supervision you know with them working at home last question on the other side of things in the same building how many students do you have in alternative school currently currently we're running U and and honestly we're at our lowest number

139we've ever had since I I've been there right now not going we are running we've got we've got about 25 students right now I heard you're getting I just now heard uh Fresh Off press you're getting three more next week yeah it's starting to roll in flood gates case you didn't know I just happened to hear that great here I have had up to 40 or 50 this time of year now I'll say this our cap if you go by state recommendation is 38 it actually was 36 we increased it to 38 because I allowed Middle School two more slots uh and the reason for that is you want to try to keep a one to 12 ratio for Teacher to student in an alternative school and do you have more staff on the alternative

140school side ye yes I have three teachers I have three teaching assistants one in each room uh we have a counselor a part-time she's there three days a week which I used to have a counselor two days a week so that's increased in time and my counselor that is there I'm incorporating into ccva and she's really helping and benefiting us with looking at transcripts looking at student data for those that need deficiencies identified and she communicates with Betsy and Elizabeth my ccva staff so but the LA the last thing I got is basically uh by doing the math uh uh Virtual Academy is loaded with the staff that you have on hand if you looked at it in a teacher pupil ratio yeah alternative school is maxed you can't really take any more I guess

141you could I mean you can make do and do what you need to there students but as far as the teach people ratio right but as far as a teacher people ratio we we really don't want to take anymore you might have to yeah I mean the day may be coming with population growing around here I mean it may have to incorporate another teacher assisted at some point in time um of course you know then you're going to get into uh room in the building issues so um but but yeah it it's could be possible U right now it's not necessary um so is what it is did you have a question what do you do if you see a student is not being successful speaking to the microphone what do you do if you

142see a student is not being successful in your program from their test scores or just general lack of doing okay we're talking about ccva or or C the virtual school okay what we do okay this is our attendance policy because people can get it it it can be very hard to understand the attendance problem uh policy on a virtual school because when people think about attendance they think well how do you gauge attendance in a virtual school when they're not coming to school well here's what we how we do it and it's really not overly complicated attendance is based on the progress of work they do weakly uh of course my staff members assess them and evaluate them daily they're looking at the work they're doing daily but they have weekly goals that they have

143to meet if they do not meet those weekly goals they're put on a probationary period then once if they're on that probation per uh probationary period if they F fall 3% behind on their work they're required to come in person sit in the computer lab where we helped them and assist them get caught up okay once they get caught up they're released back into virtual their home where they can continue to work and hopefully they do if they go beyond the 3% and they get up to 5% behind with a combination of and we've experienced some of this them uh ghosting us not wanting to communicate back and or the parent and honestly sometimes the parents are worse about this than the students if they get too 5% uh behind and we can't get app

144communication with the parent then we pursue treny board so the work the production and the progress of the work suffices the quality or the quantity of the work suffices for attendance the quality of of work suffices for the grade so that's how we do attendance and if they get behind they're not doing being successful that's what we do a go by the three and 5% um and we bring them in even if it's before that we bring them in if they're showing deficiencies in a particular subject we bring them in and Elizabeth peek and pa uh the facilitator will work with them one onone in addition to we will have the advisor teachers that are teachers of records that work in other schools um that vol uner to do this with a stop and we

145do pay them a stop and they will start tutoring so that's what we do so right Mr Johnson thank you very much for for coming in I know you've had some health challenges so we really appreciate you well I'm glad to be here working through that I'd like to ask him one question sorry we got one more question I is there a policy now that the Virtual Academy students uh can participate with uh the high school isn't that a new policy that was just in athletics what yes yes now I know they weren't allowed to previously there are some programs uh they're still not allowed to like you know I don't want to get off into the weeds at far is just off top of my head but there still are some programs they're not

146allowed to but Athletics they can uh we've got that worked out through twsa uh I'm I'm thinking ban just comes to mind some of those programs they're not allowed to or you know various are they allowed to participate in the prom they are now okay yes so that did that recently change yes okay yes we do they still have their own prom even though they can well okay that's a good question too and this is this has been a long long track here we we attempted to put on a prom two years running MH we have a low number of students anyway and then when you take a low percentage of that low number that attends and you're dealing with three four five students at attend it really does it work so it's best for

147them to attend prom at the high school I mean I one other you do have a Sr WR now we do Dy okay yeah we have an SRO and we're proud to have him he's working well yeah we sure do I ain't going to talk about him on the record all right no yeah I either all right appreciate the insights thank you all right Dr Anderson Wells I I know we uh we wanted to get Dr Anderson and then Lee Rogers and then we're going to have food let me put it up okay yeah yeah I didn't I didn't think we were going to go this long we just get it and eat while we're talking well you just want to grab it and eat while we're talking we could do that yeah it will

148not me one you want to eat while I talk okay whatever you want to do you get less questions whatever you want to do yeah or you'll get incoherent yeah go ahead let's let's go ahead and eat and or grab the food and if you want to present if you want to grab food and then I'll talk while you are eating okay and you ask questions along is that is that okay is that acceptable yeah so you want everybody gra St over [Music] med e e e try not to chew too loudly all right we are live again and uh we are now going to have a print we're going to change the agenda around a little bit and have Lee Rogers talk about Tennessee achieve program so um so take it away and let

149us let us know what want to tell us well number one we we came early and we have learned so much just listening to all the different we just didn't realize what all went on at a at a Schoolboard Workshop meeting so we're we've definitely been educated uh my name is Lee Rogers and I'm a volunteer with Tennessee achieves which is just an organization that serves students at the high school mainly on in their senior year we will be um assigned you know five to 10 high school seniors and we help them fill out the Tennessee promise the hope if they're looking for that the fasta college applications grants scholarships um it's a totally volunteer totally volunteer position that Mary Beth and I both do and um we really enjoy that and we have some

150ideas that we think that we've learned through being Tennesse a chieves mentors that we think can help the high school in their progression towards moving the kids from their High School experience onto that next level of either teat to your community colleges or possibly a four-year school so um I'm Lee Rogers and I have two boys and both of my boys went through the school systems here um my one son he actually presented to you guys I think maybe a couple weeks ago he was the student government representative you know he did that so he enjoyed doing that and he's a junior at Cofe County High School he's actually on the DECA trip right now with Miss Prader who's an amazing teacher I have to throw that out uh and my other son is a

151senior at Tennessee Tech Trey and he went through Coffee County high school and he graduates in May from Tennessee Tech with his RN so we're super excited he's going to be doing that he already has a job at Vanderbilt Nashville so good good success story there you always want to hear some good things about the kids that come through Coffee County Schools even though you might see these grades from the different schools and you think well they're not doing well but there's all these great kids coming out of these out of our high school doing great and amazing things that we hopefully can help guide them into their future either you know whether it could be the two-year school to your free school the teap programs or the fouryear programs so uh this is Mary

152Beth Johnson Mary Beth Johnson and thank you for having me this has been very informative and I would encourage more parents to come to the workshops um there's a lot of information a lot of information um informative there's a lot of factors and um issues serious issues that um that are here and I think it's apparent that the school board members and the leadership and the Educators um care about the school system and and each student uh I had three children that have went through the Coffee County um school and um I hope that they will eventually move back here and maybe their children will also be a part of the school system so I continue to have a vested interest um so yes we I am also an achieved mentor and have been for

153three years and I think that it's important that we try to reach these students um as as as much as we can so that's what we're hoping to do here um with the we have a um so here are some things yeah that we we that we've kind of encountered and you know we we encounter these issues and we think well how can we make that better how can our Tennessee achieves program and our volunteer me mentors there's 50 volunteer mentors uh in Coffee County that have agreed to do this so that's a great number that we have I'd love to bring them all and let you guys meet them because they're all volunteering they're meeting with the high school students or helping them F out the fast with the Tennessee hope the Tennessee promise

154and doing all these things um there's a couple things that we we've come across that I think could be beneficial for the high school uh I did attend the teat open house last week which was amazing where the one that's out in the industrial park course they're going to be expanding that out near the middle school and have tons more programs so if you have if you want any information about that um I got the entire list of all the different courses and programs that they have and it's it's really neat I mean between you know uh building construction computer technology cosmetology industrial maintenance massage therapy they're going to have tons of different programs they also have a licensed practical nursing program which you might have seen that on Facebook where they just graduated I

155think you might have saw Thunder radio posted that and there was 12 or 13 that just graduated with their LPN and so that was through our teap program Unity Hospital plays a hand in that as well but they graduated those students and they're LPN now which I think that's amazing it is um I did not realize until I went to the open house and met with some different people they have a dual enrollment program now you guys may know this but you're able to start the teap programs while you're in high school and finish them out when you fin when once you get out of high school you finish that program so say you can knock out one year while you're in high school and knock out the other year post high school like you

156do for college it's just a Miss for the teat as well so anyway of course we're going to have our own teat and they had the building plans they had the model they had everything out there that night and I got to see it all and they you know I told them I was going to come to the school board meeting they said please have them come out we'll open probably this coming summer and so they'd love for you guys to come out and see the new teat facility and so it's going to be it's going to be really nice um I did talk to Richard Skipper at the he was also at the teat uh open house and he does a wonderful job with his CTE program I mean he's he's on top of

157it um I did talk to him about our Mentor program and he's going to try to pull in the mentors the night of the night that they talk about um the F the F the fast for parent night that they have at the high school at the very beginning of the school year so we're going to try to pull in the mentors so that we could meet with some of the parents that come to the fasta meeting and talk to them about the Tennessee promise the Tennessee hope and filling out the fasta just kind of like as a helpers because what he's you know what he's experienced which you guys have talked about this there's not enough there's not enough to go around right I mean you've got 450 kids per grade and you have

158one counselor per grade and they're doing a great job doing amazing just they can't do it all themselves and so one high school counselor Donna Jones is the senior high school counselor and she's fabulous but I mean she's servicing 450 kids I mean she's trying to make sure 450 kids you know do all the things they need to gr do to graduate and then to their next their post High School careers I mean it's just a lot that many kids per grade just per one counselor so that's where we try to step in and we'd like to reach these these kids before their senior year that can can kind of need to know their direction that they're headed whether it's College teat what where it's going to be before their senior year so um so

159in anyway what I'm leading up into leading up to is The Heirs foundational Grant so I've looked into this and I had a friend from high school who's a teacher in Johnson City and a couple years ago we got the talking about this and she was talking about a lady that she works with who worked for the airs Foundation has anyone heard of the airs Foundation it's really neat it was established in 1999 and um basically it's a trust okay um it's been it's it's been around for 25 years let's see here I want to kind of make sure I give you the exact information Jim SS was a successful banker and businessman from maral west Tennessee the town of Parsons and he was one of the first in his family to graduate from college

160so once he finished College he was successful business person he started the airs foundational Grant okay so that started in 1999 um and basically they just started adding schools and so what the ARs foundational Grant is they pay for a full-time guidance counselor to be in the school systems working in conjunction with Tennessee achieves to help them fill out the FASA the Tennessee promise the Tennessee hope so airs works with Tennessee achieves but airs is who can who can pay full-time for a counselor to be in the school systems so from some research I did I'm trying to say the number of once they've got here let's see by 2011 they had added up added five schools um okay in 2021 Governor Bill Lee and the state legislature invested in The Heirs Foundation trust to

161scale the airs Scholars programs to 11 high schools in seven additional counties so at that point in 2021 11 high schools were had a had a guidance counselor that was paid by The Heirs Foundation who was full-time in the school helping these kids transition from their High School career hopefully to the next phase of their life okay uh let's see to the mic on that I think that that would help yeah okay and let's see in August 2023 the legislature funded a second expansion to add an additional 10 counties in 2023 so in total about in 2023 the ays foundation provided services to 33 high schools in 21 counties so 33 high schools had it depends on the size of your high school like I don't know the exact numbers but for instance Warren County

162was just added to this list so Warren County received the a foundational Grant they have four high school guidance counselors that the a foundation is paying for my mind was blown when I started reading all this so I just think in addition they work with Tennessee and Chiefs which is great I just I just think this could be unbelievable for Coffee County now I'm not saying that we're eligible for it I don't know the exact requirements if it's Financial it would definitely be nice to apply for this now I did talked to Michelle shyal at the high school she's the junior um high school guidance counselor great lady super efficient does a wonderful job I think they looked into this maybe five or eight years ago they weren't eligible then but when I started reading

163the different schools have been add and I saw Warren County I thought I mean I think we're potentially just a a rural school just like they are um they may be a little bit larger than we are maybe we only get three heirs foundational counselors instead of four I'm not sure um but anyway I just think it's definitely worth worth looking into and um and also we've reached out to um Tennessee achieves I don't know if you guys are aware of Tennessee achieves and what they do but I think they'd be willing to also come to a school board meeting and talk more in depth about what they do yeah Tyler Ford is the guy that we talk to and he's over the mentors and he's C would' be more than happy to come and

164do a presentation about what Tennessee achieves is and what their what their mission is and how the Tennessee achieves mentors which are volunteers like us you know try to help with the program so I would just like to possibly talk to someone in central office that does the grant writing um I'm not sure who that is but maybe we could facilitate trying to receive this airs foundational Grant M Gardner uh so you're so you're willing to uh you're in other words you're willing to help write the grant is that correct I don't know if I if I have the grant writing abilities I would be happy to pursue it call about it look it be the facilitator of that I'm sure someone is a lot better grant writer than I am yeah but we want

165to be a part of that absolutely yes right and help and do what we can and maybe bring on more parents that would be I do know that that what you're doing is very very useful because me I'm a grandparent of a of a child that just graduated and I know Chelle it was terrible what she had to go through to try to get is it called Fast what very overwhelming very over it was ridiculous and I'm thinking you know students that didn't have anybody to help them they would just give up exactly well I think that's a great Point you're making and you and I discussed this before you and I private but the reason I became a Tennessee achieves mentor of course Co hit tre's junior year but Co was still Fully Alive

166and Well Tre senior year and we didn't have any fasta meetings no Tennessee promise meetings no Tennessee hope meetings so I just felt like where do I start I mean he was going to go to Tennessee Tech but you know I went to high school and graduated in went to college and graduated 1992 from UT oxville so I mean that's been a long time ago my husband went to Swan and graduated in 1989 I mean he has two college educated parents but I felt like we started the process it's a whole different world now so even though you have parents went to college if they're a little older it's a whole different process now and if you have parents who have never gone to college it would definitely be it can be a lot of

167work and deadlines and the deadlines are so much earlier than you realize you know August one of their senior year you need to be on it the that you know you should be applying to colleges star to apply for scholarships because basically if you're going to a fouryear school if you don't have everything in by December 15th you're not eligible several scholarships at the school that you may want to be going to that their deadlines are the December of your senior Year yes so whose grant writing realm does this Fallen that's the question would that be yours okay I thought I saw your hand back there whenever we looked at this several years ago we were not under being served right I knowy countyy I guess when I saw Warren County I was like I

168kind of perked up I thought maybe we have a chance to get this you know so that's exciting definitely something we want to expore great awesome well that's why we're here communication there to see if yes we just weren't sure who to talk to but um we love what we do I we both consider this a passion of ours so I really I really enjoy I should have been a high school guidance counselor but it's a little late for that but but I really enjoy it ESP you know as far as the training the training if you ever want to think about it Dr crab tree mentioned I mean we want every student to be as successful as they can I think it's very commendable of of you two to to be the way you

169are because it's nothing to you I mean as far as personally but it is for our students it is um I know I I'm sure all of us have got invited to be in that program and I I thought boy I you know I just thought I don't have time which I should do it and y'all are example of people that did take the time are the future of they are working I mean like you and I discussed before these kids need to be going to teat to your community colleges or for your colleges or I don't mean this to sound crft but how do you pay your bills if you don't have some sort of training certification something to help you in the future you know to be able to have a family and

170afford a life I mean you need some sort of and and maybe you know you could tie it in with CTE program when you're writing the grants because there you know it's you it takes everybody to put in their knowledge when it from what I read The Heirs foundational counselors they kind of bridge the gap like they're at the school full-time and that's all they do I mean they're on it they're and they start when they're in eighth grade they start with when they're in eth grade which I think is amazing because that's you know um and they follow those kids all the way through their senior year these these a foundational counselors do so' be great that's awesome thank you guys so much for everything that I think probably already saved some kids from

171falling through the cracks that would have so like Bria said very commendable of you all we really appreciate it thank you all so much thank you for coming before you leave I want to make a public apology to Lee she text me about a month ago about this and I talked to Mr parsley and from there on out it went above both of her heads I think because we didn't get it back on radar till um Miss Jones said something about it but I think it's something that uh I'm gonna let Miss Garner look into to um that's all right with her if it's not it's still okay um but one more thing on your plate but but I know there's people I know there's people up here at this office that will more than

172be glad to help her so it's not just her working on it they work as a group up here do a very good job and work with our counselors and so forth and I know that it's a situation where we don't have enough counselors particularly with the with the seniors yes it's a difficult process uh we had a problem coming this this week that that unfortunately happened that we can't do anything about it this time but that's neither here or there there but uh I appreciate Lee and Beth coming at and talking one question does it take do y'all have to go through a training process yeah but it's not extend it's just zoom calls it's probably like six or eight Zoom calls okay um and in those Zoom calls it's amazing what I learned

173I mean I had Trey all the way through high school for four years and I never knew there were 14 schools in the state of Tennessee that accept the Tennessee promise that are fouryear schools so there's 14 four-year colleges that your child can go to and the first two years are free I didn't realize there was that many schools till I got to the Tennessee achieves program and I just I mean I I've learned so much just by doing it well I I'm like you when my daughter was was finishing up high school that wasn't a pop wasn't anything going on like that so I didn't have any experience in it either thank goodness I guess for the most part but I know for the younger parents now that that are having these students coming

174up through Junior and senior high schools uh or our Middle School senior through the high school process that they need some more counseling and individual information that they can take care of because sometimes we slip through the crack unfortunately that happens but hopefully we can work with this and and get some things going on it so I appreciate you all taking your time to come out thank you thank you very much thank you thank you let me share something with you to keep you going yeah my sister was the valid dictorian at her school and she didn't have a good counselor and she wasn't able to get a single scholarship oh my goodness so she had to pay her way through school and so it is important what you're doing it's very important yeah and

175I'll tell you one more thing I learned that I did all these things that just come out that I learned there's there's this new it's really not that new past couple years called the UT promise the Tennessee Tech promise the MTSU promise and it it's based on financial need but for instance if you make less than $65,000 a year you can and you you all the other qualifications and deadlines which is around November of your senior year to apply for this which is really early if you make less than $65,000 a year UT Knoxville is free I mean there is all there's all these things coming out now now they're based on financial need and you've got to meet the requirements but they're so early in your senior year that if you don't know to

176apply for these then then the deadline passes You by and so that's where somebody with The Heirs Foundation could just be on top of that just meeting with the that's all they do is just meet with the kids and just make sure they're getting all the scholarships getting everything they need getting on the right track because it's just you can't wait till the spring of your senior year to decide what you really want to do you have to start so much earlier than that now so yeah learnon a lot of people would fit under that less than 65,000 I mean 65,000 is quite a bit of money yes if you can if you don't go over that then it's amazing that they can go at YouTube free right there it's it's unbelievable what's out there

177you just have to research it and find it so yeah thank you thank you very much thank you so much really appreciate okay now miss Dr Anderson so we're talk about CCMS road to success all right yeah play on words there so are we turnning around yeah if you if you choose to um put the um so this is I I wanted to take a few minutes and talk about where this journey started at least with with me at the middle school you all know that um I've not been there very long this is my fourth year there so I kind of want to talk about where this all started so in 2122 when I came on board the school was designated as a TSI School specifically for the white subgroup which you know that's

178the majority of your school right but but that's that that was how it was categorized um our second year we held on that to that TSI designation but it moved to an economically disadvantaged subgroup which is smaller a smaller group and last year we became an atsi designation specifically for our special ed population and and so that was kind of a a punch in the gut so to speak and so um we really worked hard people put a lot of time and a lot of effort in and so we learned this year that we are no longer an atsi school and so that's something that to accomplish that I'll show you some numbers here in a few minutes but that was a pretty massive feat uh going from uh performing at a pretty low percentage

179uh to where we are now so so year one year One what did we do in year one we really had an instructional Focus okay so every meeting that we had um whether it' be a small group of folks a staff like we zoomed in on an instruction we specifically talked about what are good sound instructional practices what strategies should we be using in our classrooms uh and so we also did that whole staff but we also did that in our plc's our Prof professional learning communities and so we really uh zoomed in on how are we teaching our students is it being effective or not and so along the way we also really try to strengthen the culture in the building um I'm a huge component prop a believer in that if the culture

180is not right you're not going to get anywhere okay and so we created buyin and folks began to see look this is things that we need to be doing right and so um so we created Lanes of support for teachers with our instructional coach and with our assistant principles myself and so really worked hard to have that instructional Focus year two year two was intentional PLC work again we really had uh time to zoom in on what do the state standards mean what do they say how do we interpret those what does success look like for every standard how do we communicate that to our students and so we spent those weekly PLC meetings zooming in on that work and it's easy to say well a teacher ought to know what they're teaching yes that's

181true but when you start zooming in on those standards and sometimes you know the state likes to change things right so those standards change every so often and so really being able to take some time to see what specifically changes for Middle School there may be a standard in in in Ela that looks exactly the same from fifth grade through ninth grade but there might be a change of three or four words and that three or four words is what what the difference is right uh and so to make sure that our instruction is really aligning to those standards like they need to we also spend some time with looking at the student work and doing what we call a student work analysis and so making sure that what the work that students are doing

182is aligning to those standards don't take for granted that it's coming out of our textbooks that it aligns to the standard and so we really took time to make sure that we were meeting the bar with every assignment we also started to become more data focused which goes into year three Dr blessing mentioned earlier about data driven decisions I had a teacher tell me last year she said I've never spent so much time looking at data but it really makes the picture clear and so we spent every month in what we call data meetings where administrative staff met with teachers to talk about what does it look like for students what's their progress looking like at this time of the year or in the fall of years whatever it may be um and making those

183data decision intentional data decisions uh about who need remediation and what type of remediation do they need what standards do we need to zoom in on and try to help support those students last year we also piloted Mastery connect Mastery connect is the uh assessment platform that Dr Cornus mentioned to you all a while back when he was giving you a Tissa update but our students uh take those benchmarks this year we've done it this week is is our third Benchmark um but it gives us a predictive score for each student in every content area and how they'll do on teap ladies and gentlemen I went through every kid score this last summer in every content I spent days looking at this data and I can tell you that this tool is spot on spot

184on when I got the teal results we went back and we compared what did those teap results say compared to what did this tool say and I'm telling you it was right on um and so so we have put a lot of stock in this assessment tool but I think it's very much needed okay um and so it it lets us know how are students going to perform on the ELA test or the math test science test based on that last year when we piloted that it was about this time of year that we did that we started making revisions to who needs to remediation and looking at what standards do we really need to focus on between now and teap the other thing that we did is we we changed our interventions uh so

185our special La population you know they go and they receive an intervention in ela or math or both in ela we changed that program that program is more standards aligned grade appropriate age appropriate than what we we were using in the past and man the success we saw with that students really were making progress with that as well so our special lab population went from performing at 3% in the 22 23 school year to performing last year at the 22nd per. that's a ginormous jump um and that is the reason why we lost that atsi designation because that group that subgroup made such a ginormous jump uh in in their achievement there so how does this connect to report card right because that's what we're supposed to be talking about so just like Dr blessing

186was talking to you earlier um we are scored on that achievement that growth in that growth that needs uh for the students who need it the most our achievement is a level three which is 50% of our score I'm proud to say that that has grown since I've been there right um something that we're we're seeing the needle move growth is where we need to grow growth is where we need to focus and that's something that we've that we've taken a lot of time in this school year and trying to focus on so since we've had benchmarks all year long we're able to see how are students performing in October versus now what kind of growth have we seen um and so that's that's something that teachers and I are constantly going back and looping

187back to in looking at and then our growth for the highest need specifically those that are performing at that bottom 25% we were at a level two% level two excuse me last year so areas of support biggest thing what can you do funding right um and that's what you've heard all night uh but but we you know Master connect I will say this it's an awesome platform but it cost some money it cost some money uh roughly 20 something thousand for Just Coffee County Middle okay that price could go down if it is expanded across our district I do know that um if that's something that the district wants to pursue um but to me it's worth every penny because we're able to see what kind of progress are our students doing yes teachers make

188assessments and we get assessments out of our textbooks and those kinds of things but we know that this platform is a platform that's already has a high relability um to our teap and so I think it's something like 90 something percent um and so it's it's a very effective tool that we need in my opinion to continue to to have yes TSA funding would help for sure in that area and that's that's my plan um moving forward uh as long as we get to keep that so questions what questions do you have so with the u m Mastery connect Mastery connect that particular tool so it predicts how the kids are going to do onap correct but can we do can we now then take the data triends and figure out you know obviously if

189how they're going to do on the TCAP you know their deficiency areas that so we should be able to predict that as well and can we focus on those things moving forward is that kind of the next and that's that's that's that's what we're already doing okay so after every Benchmark we look at those results and we say Okay Johnny needs help in reading specifically these standards we have a time in the day where we call reaching Raiders okay and that time is spent where we focus in on what do those needs are what are those needs and what are we going to do to support those needs uh so yes so we're we've been doing that all year long so yeah Dr blessing talked about data driven decision making which is the big buzz

190work these days but but you know taking those things and then predicting the trends and and that should help you focus so right so this tool is is it used in any other schools not in Cofe County um but it is used across the state I've been in several meetings before um where I've heard other uh administrators in other counties mention this tool and and I know Warren County is one of them specifically um yes and how did we get it into the middle of school you asked for it in your budget um yes because I asked for it okay yeah it it one of those things that I heard in other meetings that was talk talked about uh we reached out to the company they said last year hey we can offer you a

191pilot for the spring and so we took them up on that and um Sol the the correlation between it and teap and and and the benefits of it and so that's what we did we purchased it for this year so you have asked for it in this next oh absolutely y absolutely yall have a school Improvement plan in place did yes ma'am okay and so you're going to was that part of the school Improvement plan it is it is how we're measuring our Improvement okay because you know but I mean measuring it is one thing but strategies and and so those strategies instruction or what's important yes ma'am so those things that I mentioned back here about the plc's and and working through those strategies um all that in part of our plan um we

192also I didn't mention this but we also are doing those same ipg walkthroughs that Dr Crabtree mentioned we're doing those in ela and math and we'll be picking up science next year and so um guess Middle School is such a a wonderful age but it's also the probably the hardest age to teach and I would love to see the Middle School get involved again in uh in Middle School conferences and teachers being able to go to uh in services and things that just geared to their needs because they're entirely different from high school from elementary and uh I think that's something that's been lacking and it's not not your fault it's just that it's something that has happened and uh probably Co brought on a lot of that but I would like to see that

193part of your school Improvement plan that teachers are more involved and that they are the ones that are making a lot of the decisions about instructional strategies and things that's working uh that's just a thought but I I think you know when we involve the teachers at the at the classroom level that's when that's when things start changing and we do we do that every week we do that every week through those PLC meetings so I don't dictate what how they teach um they make those decisions right and and they're able to have that autonomy to be able to you know how am I going to approach this this standard right yeah I know you I agree with what you're saying there what I mean is I would love to see say we're not looking

194at your report card right now but if we had it up there to see what areas were maybe deficient or not as good as they should be then involve those teachers teachers that's teaching those subjects in that grade level and and come up with a a a plan and all those teachers being the ones that that make that plan not me not you know not somebody at the state level but right uh but something that they could own themselves and and have steps to how to get to that point sometimes sometimes we get we don't get to the Grassroots of something and make it simple and that's that's when things start working in my opinion is when you you zero in on something that needs to that needs changing and that's one thing you focus

195on um and maybe that's been done I think Mrs Jones we've had since this data started coming out I guess after Christmas when we got it Mr Dr blessing I think has gone to almost every school and sit down with administrative staff and maybe some teachers in there gone over this data with them so they could understand it better because it's as you can see he just gave you a little bit of it and it gets very complicated as it goes through uh I'm I'm not fam was not familiar with it I've learned a whole lot about it in the last six or eight weeks uh but but our staff up here I know Chris I think's been involved in some of these things Jonah's been involved in them our uh administrative staff up here

196has gone to each school and looked at their data and helped them to look at what they might need to be doing in the future future to take care of it well I certainly think that we're all going in the step in the right direction because this is the first time I've seen in a while actually plans you know to to change and to look at things that that need improving and uh I think all of you are doing a good job I just think that this is awesome that we're all coming together and going to work together to to make us just as successful as anybody else I commend every one of you for it too been here tonight too first time in five years I've seen I have just a couple of things

197um first uh the Mastery connect is that 20,000 per year or is that just 20,000 one time fee per year that's year it's so much per license and so we have a little over yeah right so it is it is an annual fee okay so you just budget you're just going to budget that in every year as I'm going lay on central office as much as I can and and and use use Tisa funding as as long as we have it as long as I'm able to say that's what we want to do yeah I think I think April's over April at this point my money list is like three pages long page two right on the T of funding we uh we met up here as C central office staff with the supervisors and

198so forth and looked at various things and our goal was to in in in the past the money came in and you could spend it for anything you wanted to for the most part but our administrative staff up here the supervisors and so forth we got together and felt like that TSA money in the future needs to be toward instructional leadership and toward instruction uh even though we've gotten some very good I guess uh things to the schools that did not necessarily have anything to do with instru ruction but we're looking at this next year that all money at least the majority of it goes towards some type of an instructional process as opposed to you know just having to buy something that you might need which which were needed no question about that but

199that's what the money is going to be going for this next year is for improvement instruction think that's great the other thing I was going to ask is I think it was at some point maybe last school year um you guys started factoring in those um and I don't know if it was Mastery connect but benchmark scores into the students um actual report card grades was that in the spring semester or so that started this school year back in the fall okay I don't know why I was thinking that it was back in the spring or maybe you told them you were going to and you didn't but can I ask like you know what is the logic behind factoring those those test scores into their report card because you know the other test uh

200is I ready or whatever I don't recall them ever being factored in or and teap scores are they factored into their report card grades and so like I guess I'm asking why or like what is behind that is is that something that's mandated or is that just something that you chose to do and like what what drove that decision is what I'm asking sure right right so benchmark scores um we decided to do those as grades I say we teachers okay I mean let me specify this teachers requested that that happen because it's amazing what happens when students know that there is accountability versus there's nothing tied to this test and I thought in my head that's probably where they're going with it they so they'll take it more serious exact you're exactly right and

201and I do know that last year we had kids who took the uh Benchmark that we T did last spring um you know kids that have A's and B's on the report card and would just bomb that test oh yeah and a teacher say well why didn't you try why didn't I didn't have to try why should I why did I why did I need to try it wasn't for a grade there was no reason for it and so that told our teachers there needs to be needs to be accountability there um and so so because of their requests okay that's what's happened okay I did not make that decision yes I finally said okay that's what we'll do but they requested for that to take place right is that one of the master reconnect

202is that one of the tests that like say it'll present a a question to the student and then if the student gets it right the next question is harder no you know what I'm saying because I'm thinking like and then that's factored into their report card grade you know that could be a disaster I know a lot of the students have talked about you know now that these benchmarks are factored in their their averages for the quarters go down most of them so I can tell you this so these benchmark assessments count as an assignment a regular homework grade assignment it could change someone's average one point and that's all that's it so you're saying if if a student got 20 or 30 yes in the grand scheme of things because you think about all

203the homework assignments that are done throughout the quarter right uh and and and so that one assignment that one assessment that we're counting as a homework grade does not have that big of an effect on their overall average just exactly okay yes that makes it feel better yes yes now TCAP that's that's another story right that t now TCAP uh according to policy uh counts as uh is it 10% of that second semer there's actually a policy that is dealing with tat uh in middle school is one percentage High School's another percentage I think we're 10 in high school elementary could be a different percentage and that is decided by the the policy committee and I guess that score just rolls into that last quarter correct well it's part of that second semester average oh

204okay that's also contingent that we get those scores back in time right right so if we don't get them back in time that it doesn't then it doesn't affect the report card but if we do get them back in time then it does go on the card yes great question well you have some great teachers over there by the way thank you thank you I've been very impressed by many of them and we've been greatly appreciative of everything they've done so yeah I'm I am very proud of my staff we've made some great games great games absolutely any other questions not a question but a concern I guess I've been meetings last last week with tsba and toss and there is a move going on to get the teap scores back to us before school

205is out so I don't know how effective that's going to be but that's something that the State Board of Education is working on so that we will not get these teap scores when school starts next year for what these children or these kids performed at at the level before they get there so that makes a difference um and that's go ahead I had a a steroid shot this afternoon so I'm having a voice change I think I'm going through a change of life one I'm not sure which the benchmark scores those Mastery connect tests they are set up when they finish that test and they click submit yeah the score pops up for the student so that that is immediate yes it is so that's great for for kids to know I mean my own

206daughter who's in seventh grade I know on the way home how'd you do today right that it was good we' had several rides home like that so it happens right um but but I do think that immediate feedback for the student is very valuable for them I agree any other questions for Dr Anderson thank you very much for the present abolutely for the principles that came out today this I agree with Dr Gil or Dr Gil you got a easy easy easy take it easy I'll take it all day we really appreciate that down and putting the effort into you know what is our Improvement going to be because I think we got a lot better understanding so I you know of what's going on so so thank you very much for taking the time

207I know it's been kind of a long process but all right so time to move on here see April's checking her watch be good I'm not even going to reply okay um so update on the after school program and and um Holly and Beth and and Jennifer and Miss Garner worked on that and I think we you know that's actually a meeting I tuned into live to see I did and I think you did did a great job thank you I I don't know if I'm supposed to be leading it my name's on here I was going to let you I'll hand out Pap um I mean I can just defer to Tanya she's done a lot of work on uh different scenarios and different proposals um for the budget and I appreciate all that

208that's a lot of data manipulation a lot of time and effort so um but uh she has checked into programs around with different districts and if you guys watch the committee meeting we had um several weeks ago um it got into detail about each one and um I think she uh obviously not being under the grant we're going to have to reduce probably everywhere across the board um in places we didn't even want to but I think you know the worst case scenario is that we would lose the program and we we don't want to do that we have too many people relying on it and um as as a parent I know how valuable it is so we don't want want to do that we want to do everything we can to save it

209so I'll turn it over to Tanya and you can um show us what you've got here and just explain whatever you need everybody can ask questions okay so what you have here is I've I've just done some different calculations as far as some requests that come from the committee um so if you'll look up here at the top um this budget has been cut significantly from what we are this year if you'll remember this year um I think we're a little over $400,000 um to run the program so this budget you're looking at um six schools we had discussed in the committee meeting that we would bust the middle school students that want to participate in the after school program we would bust them to their elementary schools um and so we're just looking at

210six schools in this program right now now um we had um discussed um a month or like the timing of the after school program and based on um survey and interest um forms and stuff we had talked about having the program every day that school is in session um whenever we did a survey at the beginning of this year um it was asked you know when would be the best time to start and end and the majority agreed that that anytime school is an in session that it would be beneficial for the program to be running so that's what we looked at which is 178 days so whenever I was looking at staffing needs I'm looking at 178 days whenever we are looking at educational assistance and the site directors whenever we look at teachers

211we discussed um on Fridays in the past when it was a paid Pro program there was fewer participants on Fridays so we thought one way to save some money was not having teachers on Fridays because the numbers are going to be smaller so the teachers are figured in Monday through Thursday for an hour um a day and that's how I come up with this budget um the Ed so this morning um Mr had emailed and we had been going back and forth the committee and I and we had come down to a budget and I think he's a business owner and he's good with numbers and stuff so he gave me some solid things to do with this and he was like reduce the budget by 5% and let's look at it if we charge

212um $7 a day or $8.75 so this is this is where we've come up with so far and remember whenever we're looking at these possible revenues these are just guest like I I could not tell you for sure how many people is actually going to pay for their kids to stay in this program but these are educational guesses that I've made based off the number of um kids that are staying currently when it's free um the number of parents that said that they would pay for a program at the beginning of the year so these are just guesstimates um so you can look down here and um at $5 a day we had discussed $5 today at one point we had discussed $5 a day Monday through Thursday Friday was free we had we got

213to charge it looks like we need to charge for every day that we're having the program because just funding wise but you'll see if we're only charging $5 a day we would still come we would come up $120,000 short so that would require the school board to um you know help with some funding if you look at the $7 a day for 178 days you could um look at about 83,000 and then um at 875 per day um hitting the fund balance about 51,000 um so those are the numbers that we had the the last numbers that I come up with um no one asked me to do this but I just did it because I figured there might be I know a lot of people's come up here before me and saying I need

214this money so I thought y'all might be interested to know that you know if if we didn't hit the fund balance at all if we could be self- sustainable what that might look like and that's on the um second page and like I said these are all guest I don't know you would have to if if we ran off like it has to you know sustain itself you pretty much have to go week by week like okay well what did it look like this week do we have funding to have an extra teacher next week you know you have to it's not like you're going to decide what you're going to do for the rest of the year and that's what you're going to do you have to really manage the budget look at the

215number of kids staying your Revenue coming in and do the program like that so um we wouldn't have the funding to pay teachers to have any teachers stay so that's just looking at teacher um assistance staying on that back page and charging $8.50 a day Monday through Friday and that would that would change the Excellence program a lot yes oh it's totally different that would be we're just there to give the kids a safe PL and no matter what any of these are number one priority is to keep the kids safe so um but it would totally change us babysitting or teaching yeah huh babysitting or teaching yeah I mean it's right that is the difference we had a really really good meeting I thought if if any of you haven't had a chance to

216watch it I encourage you to go watch and hear the discussion on all this stuff and I know we're trying to not pay for things but I'd rather pay for this than Furniture I'd rather pay for this and some of the other things that I've paid for so so I hope that we really consider leaving Excellence the way that it is with the way that Tanya has come up with this and let's make it happen if we possibly can and not make it so hard on the parents that they can't pay to have their kids attend it what we're seeing on the first page is really the excellent program with with the teaching and the back page is or the second page is babysitting yes sir as Mr Gilly yes sir clarify so on that

217back page you're saying that would be that would not hit the fund balance at all right but you're not getting like we're not having teachers come in and do any tutoring but totally different program which is probably similar to what T does yes I would say it's yeah because and we had talked about t t doesn't have any teachers um it's just babysit I don't even she said I don't even think she can hire the ones that are already working in the school because then it could add into overtime and stuff so these are these are not people that probably know our students and um you know so that's that's and if I recall I think in December when you gave the report like we asked after we started the first of the year with

218it you had data showing results yes we good results and stepping up in learning and yeah tutoring and everything else well and with the small groups that these teacher and even on this first page um Miss Matthews had asked me to really try to you know reduce the budget even having teachers so right now we normally in our bigger schools we have a teacher for each grade that's even on any of these that's not the case like we'll have one teacher for two or three grades and the plan would be like we rotate them through small group throughout the week um so it's still a reduction in the teaching the actual teacher staff in all of these but you do have a teacher present one or two right yes for that hour like we have

219been doing for five six years how many how many I can't remember I can't recall how many AIDS were like say uh you have two teachers present how many AIDS were we reducing the number of AIDS or tremendously so with my big schools and this is how I actually reduced it by 5% so our program goes till 5:30 and um I normally have a teaching assistant there with the site director until the last kid has picked up the way we have really worked on security there are a couple schools that we're going to make some more changes with as far as like pickup and stuff for my bigger schools I said that the um all staff except for the site director would be clocked out by 5:15 and the site director would stay with the

220kids until they're picked up at that's 5:15 at my bigger schools 5:00 at my smaller school so that could leave you know the site director with the kids for those 30 minutes because I follow those numbers and it's doable it's very manageable after five five o' you know a majority of our kids are gone um so that's how I cut that 5% so the program runs now until 5:30 yes ma'am I don't know why I was thinking five was that last year no it was six last year oh okay yeah okay maybe we talked about how many people would utilize for yeah what time did the teachers start teaching they start teaching at 3:15 at some schools 3:30 at some schools it depends on like when they have bus Duty and stuff like that okay

221because I know their their their paid time is to 3:15 yeah well some of them will it's just different at different schools I didn't see how they could be you know teaching at 3:15 that quickly yeah two questions m t if you don't mind y'all may have already talked about these were we looking at the that the students paying for the entire five days a week not just the days they are there what what was our conclusion on that holler do you remember I I was thinking that we had said they would pay for that week regardless of whether they came every day or not am I mistaken about that I think I did calculations by date just because it's so much easier because if you think about like the weeks I mean whenever we

222don't go two you know days a week like how do you figure that out so because of calculations I figured it by day and I also while I'm doing this I'm thinking the kids have to register and pay before they stay therefore we can plan accordingly um so I'm that's something that you all would have to decide what what would in light of what has happened recently with weather what would happen if say you got a lot of parents that paid the week before and then boom we're out of school next week I would feel like that money would have to go toward WS next days because that's saving would be car workers okay and that was my next question is do we pay our workers on snow days or I don't figure they should

223lose it in that case but if they have signed their kid up to stay and then they just choose for their kid not to stay we're not going to reimburse them for that right that's but if we're not in session they can use that I think that that would go towards the next day yeah that would be a bookkeeping now Mar to have it a day at a time you'd have to have it a week at a time and then if the parent chose or child didn't come that day to be honest we we we kept that money but it didn't care for the next week they still had to pay for the full week next week uh and like I said on days that that we have to be out for incumbent weather or

224snow whatever the case may be then that money would that that day would carry over to the next day faint and it's easier to keep up with because it's everybody you know it's not just to serm few and in this and how much are the teachers getting paid for hour $30 an hour okay and teacher assistant are $2 an hour and site directors are $112,000 salary I did not mess with the pay scale that we've been using for a while okay on the on the teachers uh of the students that they're working with do they have a pre and post test to show accountability that these kids are actually accomplishing what yes they do um and this this year we started Ed doing um a an even another assessment but on top of that assessment

225they utilize we're lucky most of the ones are their teachers that are teaching the students next year it'll be a little different because we're having to combine them but um I look what I look at is the I ready data and the as web data I mean do they do that no they're they know that because they're in the classroom so they are are doing the testing and they're reviewing the testing and stuff um so you're saying they already know the children that they're yes it's in their class for the most part I can't see how it could be that if it's for the entire school no if it's say it's a third grade teacher she's just going to have third grade students inol for the this year and for the last five years I've

226had I've been able to have a teacher with that class so you've got a teacher for every grade level in my bigger schools in New Union North coffee um and Hillsboro yeah and sometimes I have to have more than one right my point is if if the taxpayers are going to pay for this uh and it's not serving every child because probably a lot of the kids that need this service are going home they don't have a way anybody picking them up and that's my problem with taxpayers funding a program like this that a lot of the kids that need it aren't getting it mhm and uh and I'm not I think it's a wonderful program I'm not saying that it's just that sometimes we throw our money at the wrong in the wrong direction

227we're looking you know we're looking at test scores we're looking at all this now the kids that need this are not there you know and uh it's sad and of course I know that this you know we talked about it I think at the Hillsboro meeting we had and um you know it's sad that Transportation can't be provided but it kind be but that's my that's one concern I have is that we're paying teachers you know teacher salary to work with these children and a lot of the kids are already at at grade level or above and uh and there's a lot of ta lot of people that are paying taxes that their kids aren't getting to take this opportunity yes that's a valid point yes ma'am so you're saying that the accountability for the

228teachers just goes along with their classroom there's no there's no pretest for child a and at the end of the program what child a did during that time yes so this year in the beginning of the program we did um a reading assessment CA and on top of what they already do we did a read that was in the program that you did yeah that was in that was in the Excellence program um but that's it right yeah we because we needed some kind of data yeah so and that's what we had done so you did that at the beginning of the school year yeah and then and then we did in December we did another assessment and then we'll do another one in the springtime we were doing Excellence kids yeah that's just the

229Excellence kids so do you have those results from August to December I do I don't I didn't bring them with me because I was just doing I think we got them in December at the board meeting yeah cuz she had the data that that was when because when we initially passed it right at the start of school year December was a turning point of hey we got to see some kind of results and that was some of the stuff you beened is that something you've emailed I don't know I think I printed it out and give you all but I can share that with y'all yeah Tanya do we um have any idea for the most part we were talking about teachers um in travel time sometimes that they we do you did you have

230a pretty good situation where teachers at that school were able to stay after school at that particular school and not have to travel to another school to yes sir to be a part of the program I only have um one teacher that actually um is at the middle school that goes to east coffee she used to when she last year and for a couple years she was at the middle school but we kind of cut the program a little and the number of Staff because we were a funding um so she went to we have one teacher that goes to east coffee and she starts at 3:30 so that's why some of the times are different when teachers start how how long do you have before you could hopefully reapply for the it's 2026 when

231it opens so next year yeah one one more year yeah so what would we need to do to approve the and this is probably more of an April question than anything do we build this into the budget and then approve the um you know the the the fund the hit on fund balance or you know or do we need to approve the whole program as a board so my general thought is I would probably need some idea of how of which plan you wanted so I could build a budget so I wouldn't want wouldn't want to build three different but it's going to be encumbered in the big budget packet you get right um so I don't want to particularly build three of different scenarios within the normal budget so like if you could just

232give me a general idea but I think what we would need to do is approve it like like we did the vote for the program we're doing right now you guys maybe make a motion and we would probably have to do it in the uh March way right and then we would we would approve the program and then you'd build it into the budget from there with a general idea I guess of which Revenue plan yeah we want to go with because I will need to know that as far as calculating a fund like hit the fund balance and I think there's a revenue component yeah that would be very important to know what you're what you think you're going to charge right build budget or not yes and you know whether you'd even plan

233on taking it from fund balance or we build it into the budget I mean that's you know well it'll be it'll it'll hit fund balance because it's an additional expense if the revenue doesn't support it right it's automatically going to be a hit to fund balance okay so we don't just budget for that amount we we have to anticipate the fund balance right okay now we could have other revenues that would help balance that but more than likely it's going to be F balance hit but it's going to be in a general budget that we've got for the whole entire year that we're right getting ready to do so and and to streamline the work on her instead of having multiple budgets that she's presenting well if you do this this this or this we

234already know we're going to have one presented to us probably that's showing a 3% cor yep that's later in the agenda okay yeah so um and just so y'all know um just so y'all don't think I've been sitting around doing nothing I have I'm working on two um grants we P that every day can't believe just said that but these grants are bring that up T these grants that I'm working on currently I'm partnering with um recovery Court the uh prevention Coalition and uh diabetes Foundation Grant and these will not be able to say fund this program but it will be able to supplement I've been asking for like positions for um staff to come in and offer physical activity and nutrition classes which can take you know some off of what we have to

235pay for so so we may have some offsetting Revenue sources but nothing guaranteed and again remember this could stay an annual thing right because we're eligible in 2026 again to apply again and hope exactly you have to keep in mind too that everything's going down here ucation Dream It's really competitive very competive so I don't think that you know going forward I'm not sure that we can really count on getting that Grant worried that that yeah that so you know Dr Gilly we need to be prepared to not get it I totally agree I'd rather definitely be prepared don't think get it on nothing for sure I also think too you know if you're going to work with your budgets here and you you're going to have to if you have to take something out

236of fund balance keep in mind that these figures are based on speculations of who might may attend or may not attend so that number may go up it may go down if it were to go down then there have maybe have to be adjustment to the to our portion it U or if it goes up that could be adjustment the other way to it possibly now we'll say to the last couple years that we had ESP it was not it did not self- sustain it like the in the income we we always took a hit in budget for that so even though like she's built and I appreciate her for building one even though she's built a zero cost one it that's probably not going to happen so just keep that in mind no matter

237what you pick this is very very much an estimate and and the the last two years of es where it was hard hard to try to make it balance okay so what we're going to do is we'll put it on the March agenda and and vote to approve one of them one of one of them that way you know something to work for the budget of kind of where to go with the budget okay that worked yeah we can do that so here but hopefully she's watching on video I'm sure she was just here she was just here any other questions for me I think we have a game plan thank you very much thank you and Jennifer and Beth and Holly for than forget about Chris down there he's and Chris too you know

238hard on it were you on that were were you on that committee too oh okay I'm sorry I didn't that's all right apologies you don't want to forget the minority or yeah that's right all right next item on the agenda is Mr Gillie I'm RI is fast really really fast well you got some paperwork here that you presented us with I have and I think everybody's got a copy I've got uh just two things here that's all I've got uh both of these are online also to be viewed in the uh work session documents these are just examples of the things I've been talking about for four or five years here when it comes to Athletics and this systemwide athletic director as I call it uh this Williamson County they uh that was a really

239that was basically their job posting when they were looking for the current uh system ad that they have uh if you've had a chance to read that and read over it that gives you a pretty good idea of what this position is and what uh uh how it could benefit in health uh from continuity all the way through Elementary all the way through your high school levels uh we have a lot of athletic participation and a lot of different uh Sports and things uh last count I had I think we've got 16 at the high school and 11 at the middle school different sports got 12 11 but you may be close yeah so that's uh that's a lot of different different things and a lot of moving Parts there's a lot of monies travel

240through Athletics uh I think we do a great job of logging and auditing but I don't think we have a good clear picture that helps everybody fully understand how much help the community actually does for our school system when it comes to Athletics and how much boosted money runs through uh you know we're we we stay on top of that and just to have that ability of that person to keep continuity between every every one of our schools all of our programs even our local Recreation leads and and also be a uh tool right here in central office for readily available information for directors Deputy directors board members and board meetings all of that would be a a highly beneficial tool I think we could really use especially as large as we're getting in our

241system most most uh most 3,000 students to upwards to 10,000 students have systemwide ads when they have multiple schools and uh scattered out throughout their system they have one they usually try to have one to keep continuity between everyone and uh that was just an example I'm a little behind I was behind getting this out to everybody uh I have a lot more information and and more job copies examples of job descriptions throughout the state uh I think I got up to 64 systems in the state of Tennessee have a systemwide athletic director that oversees all the other athletic directors at the other schools in conjunction with the principles and their One-Stop shop for information for administration uh there's great job descriptions uh of course I'm I'm still Gathering and compiling all that data uh

242you know this is uh this is something I don't think we've ever it's never happened here but I think it's getting close to the time and definitely we're the size and we have enough going on when it comes to Athletics I think it's definitely something we should maybe uh look at the goal be to have this an athletic director um on hand for next uh that would be that would be wonderful of course if you if that be the case I mean Mr Shores probably correct me if I'm wrong but I think uh I think that would start with a uh I can't remember if we need to do the job description first or approve of the position first and then we'll have to work on a job description and then work on a budget

243I think you have approve a job description before you would decide whether you want not yes you the board would have to approve since it's a new position you'd have to approve a job description and then go from there position instead of the position in front I think that's correct and then we would have to look at budgeting to see if we can even actually do it for information right now of course we have three athletic directors in the system there's two at the high schoolart time and when it's to Middle School uh the board right now is paying out uh right at $220,000 for those three individuals the high school assistant principes uh get 8% of their salary and that's based on the experience etc etc and then the Middle School uh his is

244a little bit higher the his a 133% but he's also in charge of field maintenance so that makes a difference too so you need to kind of decide where you want to go and what their responsibilities might be of course remember what Williamson County has about six or eight or 10 high schools uh has a fulltime a director I think you I talked to yeah he's just at the he's just at the high school I talked to a lot Olive is all over the whole system at the I talked to uh I asked Mr Gilly last night I called a lot of over the past 30 years I guess since kin's been in ball and stuff I called uh about eight today around here Lincoln County uh they've got an assistant principal that's their ad

245Lawrenceberg they've got an assistant principal that's their ad uh in Rutherford County uh their assistant they've got some assistant principles that are their ads but talk to uh and all three of those that I talked to like Robert said uh it's that's something that they're looking at going to as well uh Bradley County is uh they have just a systemwide athletic director but they've got uh Cleveland and Walker Valley over there and they've all got a single athletic director and so I I agree with Dr Gilly that uh that it's a uh it's an adom it's it's it's something that everybody's trying to go to because it's just it takes out a lot of the miscommunication with things um and you know and I I put out some calls but I I just talked to

246Robert yesterday because this is something something that he is he is obviously put together and I I didn't want to uh step on his toes but I we we as a board is what we all do try to work together and uh I use some of my contacts and uh the guy in Bradley County that I talked to U he said that uh most of the schools in Knoxville is going to it as well it's just a system Statewide thing as Robert has already pointed out that I talked with Dr Stevens over in T at the toss meeting last week and of course uh coach Olive is there full-time athletic director for the whole school system which is basically the high school and two middle schools um his salary is based on his teacher salary

247plus a supplement whatever you come up with and I didn't ask her what that what that amounted to but uh the athletic director of course it talks about it in hear a lot of things that that they need to know about and need to have uh it's got got to the point now almost where uh there's so much paperwork in getting eligibility standards and if this law passes which I hope doesn't that you're going to get a one free transfer uh from one school to another uh that's going to create more paperwork but having been an athletic director in a small school which was a junior high school at the time I know and I was assistant principal it it took up a lot of time that you don't realize I guess and and right

248now uh there's things that has to be done that has to be done now you can't wait till this time next week to get some things in that's that is that is exactly yes uh Mr Darren goens is the systemwide ad in Williamson County and that's some of the information I I emailed y'all that I I just he hadn't sent yet he's just very busy that's what I run into today yeah he was very busy he said look I'm going to get it I going to get it to you because I want to I want to present to you guys a pros and a cons yeah approached to looking at this and he said there's a whole lot more Pros than there are there are cons cons and especially like you say for them yes

249large systems have it this was just the only one that actually posted good literature of yes the position and what it entails and all that good stuff uh he's he's put me together some great information that I'm going to make sure that I can get it to everybody in a timely manner yeah Brad like I said Bradley guy I talked to today with one of C's buddies and he's with Bradley County and he's in the Athletics over there and that Bradley County obviously is a pretty big system and that that's something that he talked about just as Robert was talking about it's going to come to the point and they also hired he had an assistant pretty much a secretary that that have to do a lot of the work too so because it it

250is uh like you know Dr pal and Dr Gilly said you know there's that's a uh that's a lot of paperworkers going to be coming up so when when you're talking about this are you talking about still keeping a middle school ad and a high school ad as well as add a whole another position I'm just curious I don't know what you're thinking talking yes that's what it is this guy this is the this is the head chief of Athletics other than short of the director and it's just like Williamson Cy's the job reports to the syst superintendent of secondary schools uh that's uh that's pretty high well my thinking is that this systemwide athletic director would cover Elementary because that elementary basketball also it's and and like the Williamson County example they recommend and

251it's it's from elementary all the way through High School espcially designed for continuity but also community within Recreational Sports so you know from our little leagues to our youth football to everybody else keeping some kind of continuity in and this athlet this this athletic director would not be uh tied to a certain sport see right now we have two ads I think at the high school and they're both coaches of a different uh sport of a different sport but you know this this person you know we've got all kinds of sports and this would cover everything year round and there there to know you know if you look on that Williamson County one which you know obviously there's going to be things we're going to want to change but a lot of the stuff is

252in there like you're saying about that and and things they are even required to do as far as continuing training and education with twaa on bylaws rules regulations of all sports and and like I say this a lot of this paperwork and stuff it's already a nightmare with just in Coffee County right now on our ads what they have to deal with with that stuff and it's only going to get worse robt I have several things I'm sorry H go ahead okay um so I'm interested in seeing the pros and the cons that come in from the other systems and the actual job description you you don't really have that with you today right no that's pretty much just Williamson County now I I mean I'd be glad to take and everybody shoot me an

253email or some things they've read in this CU I've I've got a list myself of how I want to rewrite this to kind of what I think it order to be around here but you know you can shoot me some ideas and I'll put something together that everybody could consider um I guess um I do have some concerns um I guess my first question is how does this position benefit the students of Coffee County and I'm not talking about how does it benefit the person that gets the position how does it benefit the students here in Coffee County uh as far as benefiting the students I kind of look at it uh I kind of look at it you know number one I'm I'm looking at the staff and management side of things of this

254and accountability uh that's another set of eyes that's more detailed into really digging into what's happening with a lot of our Sports and Athletics around here uh you know I could see it doing doing a lot of things from from uh potentially uh providing better and safer coaching safer situations safer issues uh safer like like you talk about like uh techniques from techniques to not hit somebody the wrong way or from things of that nature a position here at CER office somebody sitting up here overwatching his ad at his schools would benefit the students of Coffee County in that I think it would respect I think it would and many other things I mean that's just something that just popped right off the top of my head well the continuity thing is important too seems

255like well that and I mean when you start when you start sticking your nose into Recreation here around Coffee County and you start trying to work kids and train kids properly all the way up through Elementary into Middle School all the way through high school and you're you're a you're a guy here that's charged with this task of making sure everybody's kind of talking to everybody and working from the ground up you're helping the students you're preparing them better you're preparing safer hope directly more directly well you you said a thing there if I may uh and talking to the guy in Bradley County hireing yes you know the background checks and stuff you not just that eliminates you have in you bads for coaches well yes and they would be over I'm not going

256to say it eliminates bad hires you could help but it puts more eyes on the subject and and and taking more time to to research H hires instead of just taking the first guy that comes across town or something you know and you have you have a centralized location here you have a centralized location here that a man knows pretty much every job position that is open within the whole school system if he's up here he knows every one of those and he also knows needs at every one of the schools when it comes to Athletics that's where he can reach out and he can do some helping with that when it comes to the hiring process to feel too not too birds out one stone a good teacher that can fill a coaching position

257that can do this and know where all those spots and positions are so what what would this position bring to the table that our athletic directors now they're three of them we only have one high school but what what does this position do that the current athletic directors now aren't getting done I just said one right there hiring they don't know they don't know no they're hiring but they don't know all of the opportunities and spaces and positions which we have throughout the whole system I mean could they probably take some more time out of all the paperwork and the stuff that they are currently doing now could they take even more time to dig around through the system and try to find and then try to figure out exactly they may not even know

258a lot of the principles cuz they're at that school every day well I I was under the impression that the two athletic directors we have at the high school actually have time built into their schedule some planning time specifically for athletic director activities well they that carved out into their schedule already where where at because that means I understand that but that means they they' probably got a half a day out because no both of the two that we have at the high school are current coaches so they're tied up with coaching and the afternoons I believe this was morning time okay well then in the morning and they also teach classes correct right yeah apparently they have time so they're using their classroom planning time no I don't I think this is a side

259of that from what I so they have classroom planning then they have athletic plan I don't know about classroom then they teach some then they do Sports sometimes mostly by 1 or two o'clock I think in the afternoon correct best I remember right now I think both I at the high school um have either three or four periods of teaching and that varies I think from individuals and then the time that they're not teaching class they are set toward athletic uh schedules I mean they're they're considering an ad an athletic director and I don't know that they have the same planning time I don't know that they have the same I was thinking it they're all at the same time in the the same same exact same times I could be wrong on that they

260they do have a period for them to do their PD jobs and then our uh our Middle School athletic director does he get a half a day or two periods a day teach he teaches get any F in time for athletics right no correct okay yeah I think that was actually changed a few years back but miss SAR I think I think I think right one thing you need to think about too when you start looking at the position and responsibilities and I don't know how actually how Williamson County addresses it and I'm not sure how tah addresses it but keep in mind that all football games all basketball games boys and girls and all soccer programs boys and girls has to have an administrator at the beginning of that ball game and they have

261to be there has to be an administrator there what they call a player I mean a u doesn't have to be a principal and most right now most of our athletic directors are taking that responsibility but if you've got a single athletic director you're probably going to have to have someone at one of the other schools that would fill in at that at that position as as the um game director is what it boils down to because they have to meet before the each game with the officials with the U uh medical staff and with the security people so the way our schools are set up now I don't think we play that many ball games on the same night particularly in basketball that's your biggest in soccer probably they do play the same nights

262a lot of times but what you and I didn't ask Dr Stevenson how how coach Olive does that whether he has someone if he has to be at the middle school that he has someone there at the high school that fills in as his game day uh administrator but keep that in I've seen football football soccer basketball basketball and another one on the same uh golf and something else on the same night but yeah that's what I'm saying and uh but all the football the basketball and the soccer have to have a game administrator by twaa guidelines sofball and others do not I guess you know I see it maybe a little differently than you Robert um and in all due respect that's part of a democracy that's perfect it's supposed to I appreciate the

263work that you have done on it um I just see other areas in our system that I feel like for lack of better term maybe we've sort of neglected along the way we don't have art programs in our elementary schools um that's something you know that 35 years ago Manchester City Schools put into place um and and I think that is a a big place that we would want to invest in is that um we've got a lot coming down the pipe is you know we've all talked we're actually paying two directors right now but we've got two major renovations on tap for our elementary schools um we're talking about Metal Detectors I don't know how close we are to that you know that's a huge expense um but we've also got school um Club

264sponsors um throughout the district that are actually doing things like f culinary arts Deca um SGA they don't get compensated a dime for what they do and a lot of that is done during the school day uh but a lot of it is not just like we were talking about there's a Deca trip uh right field trip right now that's that's an overnight trip and those teachers are taking those tasks on and they are not compensated for that extra from what I understand and if if we've got the extra money to create another executive level of administration here at the central office to oversee athletic directors who are already supervised by building principal I guess my question is why can we not compensate all these School sponsors Club sponsors who are doing this you know

265out of the goodness of their hearts or on their own time they don't get anything um I feel like that our our academics right now is where we should really focus our funding and our money because that's where we're not proficient uh as far as Athletics we've got we've got enough high school basketball coaches to to create a first and second string team um and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with having a lot of coaches I think it's a good thing but we've got a pretty robust athletic department in my opinion in this system I don't really feel like we're lacking um I think if you include freshman coaches our football team has around 11 on staff our baseball team at the high school has five um softball has five coaches we are I

266feel like we are rich in athletics um and but in academics we're struggling in proficiency and if I'm just saying you know if we've got the extra money to create another position up here in the executive branch I guess you could call it for a school system um if we've got it for that I I feel like our priorities would be more aligned if we could use that money towards the academic side of things that's just my opinion how about if we do this I mean we we would first have to have before we did anything else we'd have to have a position description we would have to approve and at that point if you approve it then you proceed on if you don't approve it and then then that that subject is dead and

267that's it you throw a job description out with an intention and it's voted down that's it if it's not and that way we would put it up for vote at a I strongly disagree because I'm in the Athletics I know how many coaches they are I know how many students actively participate in athletics in Coffee County schools and we have three athletic directors so what percentage is that what percentage stent we have over a thousand students that are athletes an athlete atics how many students do we have districtwide I mean are we looking at 25% almost 45 so that's 25% so about 25% so you know I guess what I'm saying how many how many do and I mean I love the FBA FBLA teacher I love Miss prer love her to death always will

268I think she gave me my first paddlin love her I think everybody love love her to death you always remember your first but there's a difference there's a difference there's a difference with size and the amount of rules and regulations that are behind Athletics of what we must follow and we must be watching we must stay on top of and we must prepare because we're not going to get smaller in athletics well let me ask this if this should get approved is there is it a need for two at the high school then if we've got an overall athletic director I mean because that this taking away responsibilities possibly not but I think I think what would play into that and my just my personal opinion is being a coach and an athletic director as

269well I think that would play a parted if you needed two or one but what I'm saying we've got two over there now if if you get a a systemwide athletic director that athletic director is going to be taking a lot of the responsibility of the High School director M Miss Jones uh Paul Mr parsley sent a text during the the sports that they are over they get two periods that's free for ad the other one gets one so they then swap but truly there is one a D at the high school and it's just a split position they they took one and split it so that there's there's actually we could do one so ultimately one full time they get three periods right now per day if you want to think of it that

270way when you put them together it's three periods the day that they do for Ad work you do one other thing like these other schools have done too Lin County Lawrenceburg Rutherford County make an assistant principal of athletic director I was going to say say Mr H up until and I don't know when I don't know when you changed over to 2 ads but uh early on in in the system the ad was an assistant principal that was part of their we got assistant principal we could do that pull that off what their what their responsibilities were as assistant principal I have no idea well I do too but but they they were there fulltime at the high school in in as assistant principal position and did not have any coaching responsibilities uh and personally

271I think that's good I do too that's my personal philosophy out of five people that I talk to five five schools today that I talked to and that's all I had time to talk to about but out of all those five that's what they do their their principles are the assisted athletic directors that way it and out of four of them that I talked to because for that very reason like Holly and Fred has talked about it it it they have that because you're you're you're not taking away a teacher position they need that's what they said today they need the teacher the teaching position and with an assistant principal you know what have we got five how many how many assistant principles we got at to many what four four I believe four I

272think is correct you have three one you have one for each grade yes and then you have um an administr he um Jason Creek's jobs what is that he's he's classified as but he's not an he's not an assistant principal he's over testing instruction I guess my point was just that like if we maybe this is something that we want to look at down the road um possibly but you know as far as priorities and how money is delegated at this time I just don't see how in the world we could justify creating a position for another level of athletic director when we're in the situation that we're in academically and we don't even have art programs in our elementaries you know we we list the things that we need these capital outlay projects bleachers

273all this LED lighting Etc why would we want to create an executive level position um why would that be at the top of our priority list right now I mean in my mind I'm thinking safety you know metal detectors which could actually save Liv lives and I'm not saying that Athletics does not enhance the academic experience I do believe it does I have a daughter and she is involved in two sports so uh I I'm I'm an athletic athletes mom so and I do believe that it does but I do not believe at this time that it would be wise to use our money to prioritize another job to oversee athletic directors who already have a supervisor in their building that's just my opinion and I just want to encourage citizens of Coffey County Teachers

274coaches administrators parents reach out to us as board members and and let us know how you feel about it you know I mean you you might sh some light on it please please tell us what you would like what you you think that our priorities should be because we want to know from from everyone ju just a reminder that that um it's a multi-step process you'd have to approve the uh the the position uh description and then you would have to then approve the the budget for that so you can have we could approve the position description for an athletic director but not necessarily the budget board that could be down the road too and I think that's kind of where where we might want to go yeah there's two two you know I'll T

275I'll I'll get this something put together send me I know two or three's already sent some good recommendations I'll plug them in put together a packet and uh everybody can yeah and it'd be interesting to hear what what folks folks out it is what it is how it goes all that good stuff yeah so that might you know kind of in the interest of time because we're going for a record here the door is in front of it and I can't even see yeah so we might want to close debate on this for now absolutely so so uh so Robert will work on a description we'll get it on the agenda and go from there so next up uh update on capital projects and that's going to be April and Shores um so I put

276together a um at the request of someone on the board I put together this document um that shows kind of capital outlay outl it shows what we spent on Capital outlay what our budget was and then um fiture and then what what was in the restricted Capital fund so I'll start with um um Capital Outlet so every year I budget the same amount which is 200,000 um so that money is not for a specific project it's just general funds to spend on some of the items that you can see where it says description of expenditures so we put we just start there and then if there is a project that comes up like the paving or locks or the window laminate are great examples then those would be brought to the capital projects committee and

277Kelvin please correct me if I'm wrong if the capital project committee wants to put it on the board meeting then that at that point I would have to find funds to add to our capital projects budget in order to do those projects and that is large large ticket items yes so like we would never budget a large ticket item unless I knew about it in the prior year and that's very odd when you think about building a budget in March you don't know what's going to come up in July April May whatever in the next so those items are usually um brought before the board because they're large and um approved at that time and then I and then the funding is also found within the budget or fund balance so that's kind of the

278general idea of how the capital outl budget Works Are there specific questions um about this part of the sheet I think kind of the idea is to keep this update and it may not change a lot but it changes every day almost well almost every I'd say at least once a week it will change so depending on if there's something that a school needs or something breaks like it pretty common it changes so then to present an updated version every month at the board meeting with the director's report I can do that and so what I'll do is I'll kind of Base it on the same timeline of the month I've just closed and that way you get a accurate picture of kind of where we closed at okay because if I try to do

279it in middle of a month or at a certain time in the month it will it'll be different the next day does that make sense yeah and I know a number of board members have been asking for this this was my first crack at it so so if you if there's something else you want to see on here let us let us know and we can we can change it but this is you know first draft so to kind of get the information back to the board so Mr Ballard back in November the the board asked me to each each board meeting to start give update on the capital projects Y and I told you then I'd be happy to because I I enjoy this stuff yeah and each time I've had it prepared and

280each time it's been well let's adjourn and we're moving on and and that's where we've been I've never seen that yeah seen I don't remember that when did that happen every meeting since the November meeting I've had the stuff ready now I wait for the the the chairman to to ask me to to move forward and and going through it because you go to the director's report right and I was going to be after that well usually what comes after director's report is a journ and you don't ask so I I don't I don't interject but I will be glad to well maybe we need to put it on their deputy director we will if you would like to that would be perfectly fine agenda to have that on there as part of the director

281I will be glad to share with you the updates on any of our projects that we have going on I I like showing the money with it now but showing the money with it and then you I'm not done talking but whenever y I'll finish my rep sorry I'm sorry it's okay you waited long enough talk I think's got something to say okay but I've been remissed and not not specifically asking but well I I don't mind sharing it yeah I've got stuff together but you can always jump in and say hey I got this good information I want to share you're always welcome usually by the time it comes up everybody's ready to go home too nah matter but that's the exciting part of the meetings is SC [Laughter] project um that gets everybody's

282attention back I had two agendas here that that were developed apparently by the capital projects committee meeting there was one on December or excuse me on October the 3rd of 24 right I don't know whether y'all have a copy of those or not and it it gives several items there that that the committee apparently was looking at but then there was another meeting on December the 12th that shows a different in some cases a different set of priorities so I don't know whether the Capal llake committee needs to meet again and decide what they want to put in this because of course there's a lot of things on Capital outlay Money that wasn't on either one of these right some of them were and some of them were not so I don't know what y'all

283may have a good idea the two I was I was at these meetings here and of course we did send these these items I do remember you know they they've been to the main board a lot of them have been approved by the main board to pursue and carry on yeah the lighting and all that kind of stuff lighting's not been approved has we didn't vote on that we just approved to move the money to to do it but the lighting has not been brought to the board for like the bids have not been brought the bids haven't been but it was pushed forward to to send for bids yes um I'm I'm out on that one I don't know remember the guy from meu is here musco musco we stumped you on one April

284he was here and we didn't we didn't approve it well we also have also if yall think about about about the bleachers if it's a large construction project which you had out we have to put it out for bid and so that's kind of why we switch gears on the lighting and the bleachers I think that's why the the hold up has happened because and it's my fault because you know I went to this meeting brought back this new information and obviously we don't want to we don't want to delay it but we also want to do it the correct way so that's kind of what the hold up is with the lighting and the bleachers i' be glad to go over every bit of this you want me to well and and yes yes

285let's let's just add it to the agenda we'll make it right as part of director's report forget he's talking about right now right now I'm ready to go home what did I say what well let let me ask you what are we discussing right now just adding the what are we discussing right now Kelvin just adding the money to the report of this and then y'all two agreeing it'll be on the agenda next time I will do it however you want me to I will go over now I will go over it at the board meeting I don't think we're talking about lights and polls and act we're not talking about we're talking about information because basically I've gotten feedback from from everybody that says we've talked about things we voted on things in meeting

286I've lost track of where we're at so this is the whole thing is keep track of it here and then you can discuss it um in in the board meeting and I think that would be awesome I'm perfectly fine follow me squirrel stick together same path yeah I think 4 I would like I would like to suggest if possible to have another capital projects committee meeting and decide what you want to put on here is possibilities because like I said there's things on here that are not on here yet and there's been some and there's been there's two big projects coming up that uh are going to knock a pretty good Lick in this in this budget right this is a draft so we need to Kelvin won't be able to sleep not we don't

287let him speak I think they're all in line it's it's all in line if if you want me to share I'll share with you where it's in line we it didn't we just we just the bids back on the bleachers let's start with that what we get on the bleachers you got the bid back let's let's just go through these all of these I I don't I mean got on on the asphalt yet they a like three or four but okay all right medical locks they have been ordered uh we're on this sheet I'm going do you want me to go down the other sheet I don't care no what are you what are you looking at are you looking at these this one real quickly it won't take us long the the medical locks

288they have been ordered um we have a change in the uh representative that I work with so we're having to do a keying situation with a new person and and that's in in works right now we're hoping to put those in or get them installed I'm hoping during the summertime because it wouldn't make sense to do it now and and having to do re keys on stuff the Hillsboro abatement that's asbest abatement taking asbest out of the building uh this actually took place in June of last year it shouldn't be on this LP there was a fixed it's been fixed but that's what that is it's a baitman of asbest ins out of the gym that's done it it's taken care of it's done Deerfield Deerfield parking lot you have approved it it's been given

289to tinle Tinsley has got to work in the time to get it the work done they have until June the 30th to get that done CTE building sidewalk and canopy that was whenever the the building was being built they were not going to change it or it was not to take out the sidewalk that's between the CTE building over to the new one and it it was it it's going to look junky so I wanted it right and it cost us a little bit money to get it fixed right so that's what that was that's done that is done we haven't paid it so the dates you see on the report is the date that we paid the final payment but the job is done CTE building brick increase in the concrete floors uh we

290had to do an increase in the brick allotment to get to match what the brick is on the other part of the building we didn't want it to not match so there was a little increase there the concrete floor they had planned on putting in a oh my gosh I keep thinking what it's called uh just a a Sant but we put in the the flooring that it should be done for now on it's done they're using it so they mind it don't have on completion date it don't have my it don't have a date on it that's because we haven't paid the final inv she said it's not been paid it's finished but it's not been paid a lot of these projects were done with the ism Grant and so we picked Capital outlay

291picked up part of these part of these project part of the big building so part of the budget was in the ism Grant the other part was in capital Outlet so we won't Mark these as closed until we pay the final what we need to have is another column that says work completed date and then final payment or project completed but would be final payment good idea how about that and I think that's what was confusing me too with CTE I thought that had it separate I didn't know so you're saying part of it came out of a grant for the CTE building and we picked up the risk we picked up a little pieces of it ISM paid for a million dollars of the building and then um Mr Skipper had to pick up

292a little bit in his vocational part of his budget that he was carrying over for and then Capital picked up and he didn't have enough to do the finishing on some of this so we took care of it it was it was almost a 1.5 a little over 1.5 million deal and they only got a million from the state and this and that so that's so we picked up about 50 60,000 we picked up some yes yeah we knew that then the CTE building HVAC water lines and the meter I'm not sure what HVAC is on this uh Miss melson but the water lines that was taking the domestic water off of the um fire hydrants and also is was running through all the area where we're getting ready to pave so that need to

293be done before the paving because we don't want to do it after get done Paving so that that's what the 34,000 uh the board did have to approve that uh C HS exit devices and push plates this is a security thing basically putting in new devices to to secure the building even more uh floors in wall repair we had some floors that was uh yeah I keep forgetting there's two different parts of things with concrete one is a cyant and the other is epoxy no it's not epoxy but but we we fixed the floors in the bathrooms in the at the high school as well as a side closet that had to be done so that's what the $620 was Dory and replacement that was at Raider Academy it's the front entrance it's once again

294to make it more secure put stronger heavier doors up if you ever go into Raider Academy you see new doors new hardware it it's a whole lot stouter and stronger for the safety of the school CTE building environmental testing this board uh chose to do the methane testing this is only a small portion of it because some of it was done actually before in June before the July 1 uh switch over fisical year window laminate uh it's been ordered uh we're waiting on them that measurements is all there it's all taken care of there but they are getting ready to get that started and as a piggy back off to Williamson County uh CTE door access to the main building this is a safety issue uh and that's all I'm going to say in an

295open meeting here uh but we we're getting it fixed and taken care of um down here at the bottom you have the CC s uh Paving we have opening bids coming up on this Thursday for the backside of the high school that includes drainage uh striping and Paving as well as some grade work as well uh so I'm hoping those come in low that will be on the March agenda as the plan for approval to move forward there uh if you decide to go that direction yes Scotty some of the stuff on this bid we didn't we it was never brought up to the board I looked at the plans and and there's the whole parking lot on the backside when did we decide to do that that was on the agenda for the capital

296projects committee which happened on October the 3 yeah that was that was right after here it is yeah we met right there right right before it's either right before or right after that that was on the the parking lot in front of the garage doors not all the way back there no it was no all the time it was all the way around the building and if everybody remember when we were there doing our tour I took you out there and I walked around and I said every bit of this will be paved this is part of the parking lot area as drainage and everything fall Retreat fall Retreat and and we I showed you everything and that so that if you remember we was talk about it back then uh to CHS bleachers the

297bid was open today um I'm planning on it being on the agenda for March as well March 10th agenda uh for approval and the decision of what direction you want to go as a board on that uh so that that touches all of those switching over here to the capital projects uh committee meetings uh once again you have the parking lot you have the deer field damaged area parking or Paving uh the LED lighting the LED lighting was already approved for 1.5 million to be put over an amendment over here for lighting but that's as far as we've gone I already had prices but we had to change it like April said and now I have a meeting with W on Friday about engineering architectural work to get the drawings from electrical engineer because we

298have to have that for bidding it out so I'm I'm going to be talking to them on Friday I'm hoping to have that on your agenda March the 10th a proposal to move forward or not with uh their their services on that um Jim bleacher on here then the walls which you just approved at the last board meeting the walls doors and partitions for the 1975 Edition or building at the high school up to $60,000 by the hour for that job so y'all already approved that but there works on that that's just for drawings though that's for drawings need to prove need to need to mention that that's not for the walls just for the drawings just for just for drawings and uh I I I just assumed everybody here was part of that and

299knew that part but it is for the drawings and they're going to be talking to us on Friday as well and also Paul on that part switching over to the other one that was December the 12th the LED lining which mus go guy came in had him here here just going over things I do have prices on the musco lighting for the materials only but not the labor because the labor is what we're having to bid out um also the classroom Furniture was discussed it came up at the board meeting is voted down the second time and that's where that was at so it was discussed and we left it there that's it let you g questions what was the the C CHS track Improvement what the see the track improvements there was $100,000 when

300we were doing the lighting that was put over the side to be used on track improvements and I've not received anything from the track coach in the ads at the high school they are aware of it but we're waiting because that's that's some things that's going to have to be done when the ground is dry because it's going to require some concrete and some work done is that where some maybe some dirt's going to be brought in or you know the drop off the side it's GNA be trying to add in like P Vault your your high jump your long jump uh possibly mats if needed uh your discus area your all those areas try to get them up to to where they need to be because they they they look pedoph I think what

301she's was initially talking about was the cliff around the track yes where the field that was not part of that no okay and part of the problem with that is you also have uh sprinkler heads all around that area so you're going to run into some things there as well okay okay on on this furniture uh so we didn't have to approve the central the this the Coffee County High School front office furniture 20,8 correct we we had a another U counselor uh W is below 25,000 it does not have come before the board to be approved uh This was done at the during the summertime and we had to have some furniture so we went ahead and took care of the furniture that was in the counselors in the office areas up at the

302at the high school and I think that was it for that furniture so we don't have to approve that time if it's under 25,000 no so y'all have the y'all have the right to buy whatever you want up to 25 that if there is yes so basically what happens is is someone can submit a requisition like we we we'll put in a requisition so like for example Kelvin got probably got quotes for this and then he'll brought he filled out a requisition or brought it to Stacey she filled out a requisition I look at the line to make sure it's the funding is there um and then also make sure the li like it's below the 25,000 threshold it's a lot of our checks we do in my office and then once I signed the

303requisition saying hey the funding's there it's with it's an allowable within the budget that gets put into a purchase order and then that goes to the director of schools to to approve or not approve so Dr Lawson approved it uh for 1120 11 what I'd have to look back but yes I would say so because say so yeah we would have had to order it early in Su I guess what confuses me because we were having to approve the furniture for here because it's over 25,000 so so in in other words if y'all wanted to buy half of it you could do that without coming before us we could buy $25,000 it was always $10,000 years until three years ago they raised it to 25 you've got the leeway to like once this is budgeted

304and we approve the budget then you've got the right to put whatever Furniture you want in here without board approval if that's the direction I feel like I needed to go but but but the of course the director would have to prove it that's correct over over 25,000 it goes to the board anything under 25,000 we're able to take care of it here in house the director can well yes I mean yes so not going back on the the one that didn't get approved we can't do anything with that one so like if he was to pick aart and say oh I'm gonna order this and I'm going to order that oh yeah yeah we can't do anything with that because it voted down so just to make that clear all right but if you

305thought ahead of time the proposal from you thought about it ahead of time I still wouldn't have done it because that's not that wasn't my purpose I didn't say that I didn't point no finger at you I was talking about the concept over I guess I should say that's not the way I work I didn't say that's the way you did all right so we were conceptually chatting over here we never talk about that until you said it conversation I guess I should have talked to you first Robert you could have give me those ways to get around things all right yeah yeah that darker stuff right so if we add a column on here that says work completion date and payment completion date would that make this useful for everybody and then we can

306just we will add you to the agenda so I don't miss you and we're going to call it Kelvin under the agenda we just capital projects I mean well yeah I I I think you know I mean from what I've heard from board members it's important to hear that so so I have been remiss and and not letting you get up there F because we want to hear about it so so yeah so thanks for bringing that up all right so Melissa will make sure that's added to the agenda permanently yeah as I like it just being called Capal projects capital projects update let's call it starring Kelvin Shores staring Kevin you can do that to's report we're starting to get so my name's Kelvin let's let's put it that way they know who we're

307talking about y gave me a headache let's change the agenda up a little bit since we're on to April's uh April's um discussion here let's talk real quick about the teacher salary increases are we going to skip policy committee and time time with talk about those but I just wanted to oh can we skip please yeah talk about so that April as long as she's on a roll so so I didn't get to finish my report but I'll let yall slide this time yeah I think we talked about enough yeah so but we need to do a teacher salary increase we need to get do a baseline of 50,000 by 2027 which is going to require some increases and I understand probably 3% and 3% over the next couple years is that correct so that's

308that's the ideal obviously I don't have any funding information we haven't gotten our first estimate from Pisa yet right that hopefully come in this week um so we'll have a better idea at that point um what we so as far as teachers go it should be relatively Revenue neutral with Tissa since they're requiring it is that so basically the base increased I think I wrote it down 7,295 so they didn't increase the base a little bit to help with the raise the 50 $50,000 um reg by 2027 yeah so um basically I think you know 3% should be doable it just depends on you know I have to put those some I have to put that after school program in there you know and then if we just decide to do at the athletic director

309and then we have the art te it just depends on all the things that we've been talking about in um right because you know everything we talked about tonight cost has cost money but if we didn't do 3% this year we'd have to do more next year then right so yeah we would have or we would have to do a flat amount pretty much okay could you do two and a half two and a half I mean you have to we have to be at six% Delta to get our scale to where we need to be I was thinking it was five zero that's why I said that and so three and three okay so yeah three and three or you know whatever number or we've got two and four two and four we've got

31038 teachers is all that there is and they're not any of them it's over what uh the most is we're just $2,700 off yeah so that's what if we had to do flat like if that was the ab say I put the budget together and we could not give a 3% or we could only give a 2% this year and next year we couldn't give a three a 4% I would just figure out the flat and then everyone would just get a flat like a flat amount as long as we could we'd have to do that we wouldn't have a choice is that just teachers is that teachers and administration does that include Central office like who does it include so that scale that the scale that there's there's two scales there's a certified scale

311that has everyone that's certified which would include your building admin your admin up here and your teachers so principes so anyone that's in a certified position yes would be on that same scale got and then we also have a scale for all of our classified employees and they are listed kind of by job um and so they're two different scales so typically in the past we've given and Kelvin please correct me if I'm wrong um we've given try to give the same amount of raise if we can to both we've done a lot of work to the pay scale so some years we've staggered it with like the year we did we fixed the pay scale for classified we maybe only gave them a 3% and then gave a 4% I'm just using general numbers

312to certify to kind of make up the difference so we can't I want to say everyone that certified is on the same scale so like if you give a 3% raise it goes to everyone on that scale is that state required or is that just local uh decisions I I know we did the Rises before but what I'm saying getting to that that's what we've done every Ved everyone every because it would have been real simple for us three years ago to just come in and say okay we're just going to set our base at 50,000 well you had people that been here 10 years yeah I understand that and we've got them we've already got them raised and what I'm saying is if the bottom falls out of the sky and we're having to

313do all this locally could it that we could increase you know the teachers uh the ones that that need to be making the 50 I'm just I'm just thinking outside the box that if we didn't have the money to do it for everybody could at one point we uh just do those teachers that needed to be up to the 50,000 Mark so we could but you would have a 0 one two three year that would make all 50,000 and then I don't have that pay scale in front of me but in year four they would get like a $200 ra but basically they would work with they would work for us for four years before they got anything does that make sense no no because we can't just can't go change no I can't go

314just go change Kelvin schwarz's salary to 50,000 why not yeah why because we're on pay scales everyone's attached to a pay scale yeah but we don't they don't have to be if we if we're mandated by the state to have every teacher's salary up to $50,000 we're not mandated to a pay SC SC to give that to everybody that the board because some counties aren't going to be able to do that no we don't and and hopefully hopefully we can keep doing what we're doing keep in mind and I understand what you're saying and if the bottom falls out we'll have to figure something out but also Tissa gives us a lotted amount of money so I think last year it was like $520 something, and that we have to use that on pay pay

315raises for certified employees right certified or teach for certified certified anyone certified counts right okay so but if you you have to do I have to do a report to them each year and tell them how we how we use those funds is there any regulation on non-certified employees and what the the raises need to be or have to be or what the minimum pay scale is for non there's there's nothing obviously you want to give right because they're your lowest paid and they're you know they're working hard for it we want to give them and that's what really was worked on two or three years ago because they were getting paid so little in in a percentage raise we all know that's going to help your higher end more than the lower end so

316I think it's the biggest thing that we're getting the complaints about is from from everybody after the 7% raise is if y'all get us if the the classified gets a 3% raise then you've gotten a 10% raise in two years and r the rest of the the rest of the county hasn't gotten nowhere near that the other County Employees that's the that's the complaint that we're getting what outside of schools you talking about outside schools I'm not worrying about I don't either inside school system other taxpayers are and our people and our we' got a mandate to do that needs to be fair in my opinion it needs to be fair you could like I say you talk about the last step there of yeah we could just do 2700 but then the first person

317that comes in here and gets hired right now is going to work here for four years just for a $200 increase that's not I mean that's I mean as of right now like if I think about our payroll system and how our salary scale gets loaded into that payroll system without without just you know brainstorming with my payroll girls that is my only Logic on how that we could accomplish that because I would have to take those people off the pay scale and just make them a base salary of 50,000 and then somehow figure out like I don't I don't in my mind I don't know how to I hope we don't get to there's been there's been so many things throughout this whole thing of stepping this pay up over the last cuz this

318is my going on my fifth year here and you know I remember the conversations in here about the the uh cafeteria employees at $8 an hour M yes we we had people having to that was willing to work here and work for $8 an hour and that's that's I mean I I don't even I don't pay that to somebody to mow my grass and the board has done well on getting the pay scales for the classified and the certified in good shape so I would hate to see to get torn up well would I'm going back to this concept if we go with the uh the voucher program and it says $2,000 pay you know the state's going to give $2,000 to every teacher that's just teachers in the classroom so they're you know they're

319looking the state looks at teachers differently you know they're not on a you know and I in my I'm not talking about anybody else but teachers I'm just saying that there's a way that if we had to get them to 50,000 and didn't have the money for everybody else to to have that raise we could do that as a county that's all I'm saying and I hope we don't get to that point that's and I think fre I think everybody kind of agrees with you that not necessarily raises not necessarily raises go all the way to everyone in the whole system were mandated to go to 50,000 just do it and go on from there I think I would have to build a whole separate like an entire separate pay scale which is kind of

320what we got away from when a couple years ago so I that's what I would have to do i' have to move people to different pay scales well I think what there is sorry real quick I'm done go ahead uh when we done our last 7% last year even the director of schools got 7% on $145,000 yeah added to it and I think that's what the issue is is when you start getting in those higher higher higher administrative more expensive money getting the 7% just like the first year teacher getting so we have the entire I think that's what they're talking about for for uh certified employees what what is what's included in certified employees um so certified is your obviously your regular instruction teachers your special ed teachers your occational teachers your guidance counselors

321your Librarians your your assistant principes your principes your supervisors up here nurses say counselors I didn't so everybody in the central office is is on that same pay scale everybody we are because that we there used to be a supervisor pay scale and that went away about what three or four years ago we Consolidated The Supervisor pay scale um and it it would be became one pay scale because that's what most districts have they have one certified pay scale so you would have to if you wanted to break that apart you'd have to break apart the teachers separate from everybody else in order to do that we'd have to um supervisor which is as principal and assistant principal is that what's considered supervisor or we talking about central office assistant principles are not considered supervisor

322they're all on the same scale though everyone's on the everyone's certifi on the same scale okay okay yeah just on yeah that was done I don't know three three years ago two three years ago about it yeah it was all busted apart and all the steps and everything because before that and I'm not like you know obviously you're you know guys can tell me what you guys want me to do but it was a it was a payroll mess like because we had three different scales actually we have four because classifi broken into two because it's so big we had four scales and we were trying I mean to you'd have to every time you have a payroll year you have to go manually load each person on the scale they're on where when we

323have one Certified Scale we have we upload that to everyone certified I got a question here's y'all's pay scale how could we have so many supervisors I that's not for I don't I didn't make that decision I don't know I don't I don't approve positions I just manage the budget well you're you're talking about supervisors I think this is the this is everybody's biggest problem on the first page right here we got four supervisors like I said I didn't approve those positions I just managed the budet the the board would have had to approve those positions at some point in time'll that so do we think we can do three well 3% across the board for for certified I really think so like I said I haven't our number our number of students hasn't decreased

324that much so our funding should go up um based on the new base here's here's my concern my personal concern you know is basically what Mr sh said is you know a percentage when you do a percentage you know people at the low end of the scale are getting a lot less and the people at the higher end of the scale are getting a lot more and it's you know and that every with every percentage increase that disparity increases so yeah so a lot if you look at our central office a lot of those people are degreed and they're your highest experienced people because that's who you want running right who you want running the office and so obviously yes they make more because they're on the higher year of the scale right so whatever

325raise you give them that's going to be more than right you know someone who's non-greed that's working in a classified position right I mean that's that's we also did a 7% to everybody last year which is you know at least at least twice inflation rate so that central office employees are not on the same pay scale as certified or that's correct so um that would be a totally different load for you right supervisors are on uh the same pay scale as a certified employe and then like if they're if if they're in a classified position so like my finance ladies they're on the finance scale and that's on a classified scale and then um there's a scale for like teachers assistant that all teacher assistants are on in the schools and then there's a scale

326for all custodians head custodians and assistant custodians and bus drivers so there's like there's specific jobs within the classified scale and it like all those have different pay rates okay so so you can you you could change it based on the scale that you were putting the data in right you mean as far as like breaking apart the like if one group didn't get the 3% or got more or got less like you can change that number based on the different SC that you're putting it in for so it's a little easier for classified to do that because they're on a different like they already have a scale set up so like in my payroll system I have I'm going use Kelvin again because he's sit in front of me and I can look at

327him he's my head custodian that eats coffee he's he's assigned in his job head custodian that job is linked to head custodian P scale okay so basically when I put together whatever raises are given I adjust those pay scales with the raises and I send those to our software company and they load those so each specific job is loaded on that scale into our system so like those are easy because if like if you wanted to give a 4% to this one and a 3% to that one I would just change each line but as far as certified they're all linked to one okay and so everyone is on the certif even central office employees are on the certified just the C just the certified so just supervisors just supervisor okay classified employees are linked

328to the classified so are we going to see all of that in a proposed budget what do you mean all of that like every raise in the system are we going to see are we going to get a listing of all of that to approve so what I usually do is that is done it's off their base so if you're talking about a supervisor at each area of the central office that is a separate line in the budget most of them are a separate line in the budget byel you can visibly see what that's going to be there is one area in the budget that has three or four supervisors in it so that will be a little more difficult um and then um as far as classified they're all grouped together so you're going

329to see a group of like all teachers in one area of the budget and then like so I've have to so for like supervisors I have to calculate I have a calculation sheet that I have to do that is what y'all have so what when we load salaries for anyone that has a supplement so anybody that has a supplement I have to calculate them on a spreadsheet to make sure what we've entered what we've loaded and what we've entered is correct um and what the payroll company has loaded on the pay scale I have to we have we we have a three check system system we load it and then three people check it to make sure we've actually not messed anybody up so for me to put that spreadsheet together for three different pay

330raises yeah would be hard okay so is the raise calculated on base pay or on their total pay includes all the supplements and it is modifiers so basically it's on base pay and then that gives us their new daily rate and that daily rate is calculated um so like it'll be their base pay and then their 15 so so you're talking about a supervisor their base pay increas by 3% and then if they have a multiplier that multiplier is calculated on that new base pay right I think we voted for that uh couple years ago and then their extra days are you take those two amounts the new base pay and their supplement amount you divide it by 200 days and then you multiply it by say their 257 well that would give you their

331new salary okay how many teachers are not making 50,000 I think he has 3 and so how much money would it take to get them to 50 71,000 so to me that just why don't we just get them up to 50,000 and go our away well we can but the problem is it messes their pay scale up and then the second problem is we have to spend a certain amount of money from TAA requires us to spend 3% amount of money on certified raises like there when when our final estimate comes out it'll or our March or April estimate it'll say so like last year it was like $521,000 and I had to prove to them that we spent $521,000 in races so we're we're required to spend a certain amount with a anyway outside

332of this so do it to to bump them up to 50 on some of these would be like a five or six% mhm you know but that wouldn't mean that we would want to do that for everybody yeah that's but that would meet that requirement I mean is a one time thing know I don't want to mess the accounting system up as you go up but you have a salary grid that's based on years of experience and degrees so it's basically a grid so basically that goes out of the way since the state's requiring us to do this they don't care what kind of GD we got now they're below the grid the minimum on the grid so we're going to have to make a new grid but if somebody's at you know with multiple

333years of experience I don't I don't want to do that right now [Music] that's if you make a new if you make a new salary schedule that has to be done before a budget can be done because I can't build I have to have a I know I'm just saying what what time frame would we expect that to come through you know to to us so basically I try to get it ready um the big things will be the next board meeting I let you guys I'll have to know all that and then funding when I know funding I can start looking at raise like what what potential raise we could give um but I typically try to give that out in an email like I try to send you guys out the budget okay

334um at least two week we before we go I try to it just depends on if budget requests we talk about we get time to talk about budget requests if there's last minute usually around Spring retreat teachers we need to add like we we try to scrub if I get the last minute report from the trustees office that has new Revenue numbers like I try to scrub it just as much as I can and get it as clean as I can to give to you guys before so I usually try two weeks sometimes it's 10 days um so I usually send in an email and then I'm open to questions I'm open for you to come in and sit with me I prefer that you know if you guys have I'd rather explain it to

335you you know maybe we can work through an issue then have you know hour discussion here this is just my first round at any of this so I just trying to you know figure out like when to expect it's gonna be um sure okay yeah I hope so I'm I hope so thank you for being so open in answering all our questions we appreciate it because you really answer any it's just I know it's really hard to if you haven't done the school budget or seen one it's really hard to understand and I I get that because I came from a non-school world so for me to build a budget I was here three months when I built my first budget we go to TS we go to tsba last week and then they tell

336us something totally different so what did they tell you that it didn't have to be connected to the the the the the central office didn't have to be to the system to to the teachers you can have 15 or 20 pay scills they don't have to be that's just the way this board don't we just chose to make sure everybody grew together and so that's faes us new guys I will start with a 3% because that's what we need to try to get there all right but I will also if the if the budget looks okay I will build another another couple options as well all right we'll have about three options to look at all right all right thank you for that confusing sorry about that um all right policy committee we had this

337on the agenda Melissa we were going to talk about the chair I think we we made yeah so we were going to uh talk about the chair I think we we voted we voted on policy committee changes in the last board meeting and and we moved to make it uh you know kind of a permanent four board members three um principles um and then the the chair would be a um board member so that was just did we need to talk about anything here about that is board member GNA be the fifth person on the board or the fourth person on the board chairman the chairman is that going to be a fifth position or one of the four on the board I think we generally have up to well four I'm just don't have

338for you on the committee so how many's on the policy committee right now four four yeah and no I'm talking about the hidden Tower I know it will be seven yeah principl okay yes so principl well that's the say well the director was going to say who you're the director appoints yeah okay the three principles and I think Dr Anderson we do Middle School elementary school and and Mr parsley yeah yeah but then we need to decide who the committee chair is and on it um on policy Scott yeah okay so there's your four one of those beair would be the chair yeah don't say it I don't want to hear it I don't want to hear it most experienced very being one of and there's aair no how many you got how many how

339many we got seven four and three four and three no no your chair is just like in the board here your chair votes to bust a tie nine times out of 10 the chair only votes and parlamentary procedure unless it's to make or break a motion yeah just like on the so they wouldn't more than likely they wouldn't vote more than likely they wouldn't vote unless they're to break or make a right pass or a fail now we do here and we always have here the chair is always voted the reason being because the chair represents a district within this system exactly and that's a reason why so they have another question is do do principes have the right to vote on these items now under these new guidelines I don't think they I don't

340think they had it even before yes we did yeah in the last Bo meeting it was discussed and I think voted on they would not be no no no we decided that they were they would be yeah we didn't change yeah it's it's all I think it's a majority of the committee yeah yeah I don't recall I yeah administrators have had the right to vote and I think that's way I think it's still good Mr made the motion that didn't change I yeah I'm just likeing I just lay so I guess the next policy committee you're just going to need to decide on the chair so so it'll be one of these four so all right oh did we what did we who's waiting on you to get back yeah whatever the minute say yeah

341whatever the minute say what took you so long it says reorganization of the policy committee Robert Gilly made the motion to officially change the structure of the policy committee members to include four board members and three school system employees the employees will be selected by the director of schools and the chairman of the committee is to be one of the four board members Freda Jones seconded the motion the motion passed 7 to zero yep so it's everybody gets a vote everybody gets a vote and I would say next commit next policy committee meeting you you schedule one and then you decide to chair there so so now would that go before the board meeting though in March because we do all the committee meetings there and we've appointed them all at board meetings we're not

342just pick one yeah I mean I don't think we got to vote on that personally but they can call it who yeah because we we we selected we we chose that committee members aren't changing okay so I don't you know you pick a date Miss Melissa me yeah we don't have a chairman so you pick a date when you're available to have a policy committee meeting we'll have the first instead of chair careful what you asked for right 9 uh maybe maybe not I'm not guaranteeing nothing all right let's move on I'm not thereare you can't elect me fin this is just you know that's when we can let you good policy so we yeah grab the microphone oh what I'm sorry I didn't hear you timeliness of agendas we talked about that as getting

343the agendas out five days before the meeting and making sure that the the materials were available so board members have anything they want to discuss get it on the agenda and always good to read everything before you come into the board meeting so we can be prepared to discuss it I guess that's yes I usually try to send everything out the Wednesday before the Monday meeting um and I send all the verif you know all the docents and paperwork and all of that and then I'm sending you guys the minutes for you guys to help me make sure everything's good on them and all right just trying to that'll be open that communication the draft minutes before or the minute before we okay and then last item is and I don't think we really need

344to even discuss it but it's well two items left I guess there is Melissa made everybody a copy of the you make everybody no uh oh she's going to send it out to everybody I can send that out she will email it this is the hot off the press director salaries 2425 for Tennessee so you can get an idea of what uh what the directors are are making throughout the state so Melissa will send that out to everybody by email and we got to kind of decide a salary range pretty soon so can anybody log into their tsba like can you log in I tried about to run off in the ditch when I going by what you sent me today I think I did not too long ago when I had to there was

345something that that I didn't do I need to see if we can get you all set up because if you can log into your tsba it is a world of of knowledge out there it has all the they just came out with a new U salary database across the uh state so it has every County every position that we that we're counting that we have on our website it's on there there's podcast to help so I will get with and see what we can do I get into m y just might not have logged in because Chris can get in he's new but he's logged in all right so he can I saw this last item is in your packet you have the um a memo and a uh resolution that will be on the

346uh March board meeting agenda to uh this is kind of a weird deal because the state is going to give us $2,000 for bonuses for teachers but we need to pass a resolution to accept the money so what we're doing we need to make what you're doing is making a resolution saying you agree with the law that was passed right that's is true and keep in mind too that that's only teachers that are paid by the state that's not the ones that we pay above the state well but that could help mitigate and offset like right that wouldn't count toward the salary no that's just one time thing that's a one time bonus okay one time payout so that doesn't go on annual Sal and I know at the tsba we had one County that

347stood up and said they were going to make a a a motion at their board meeting that they they would accept the money but they were not going along with the exactly they didn't agree with it's kind of a blackmail thing right if you'll say that that that you agree to it then we'll give you some money I thought it was going to just be given to everybody you know and that's that's sad never been given anything and then we'll have it on the agenda but everybody's going to need to go back and look at the law see if they I don't know where the funding how we get the funding for it it's built in I don't know but it's built in the state's going to provide no it's built in through the through

348the yeah what they approved for that suppos that's what they said like a to us mhm it's a one time I don't know anything about it all right it's kind of like play playing spend a bottle you know don't spend it all place you got a 5050 shot on that on the no yeah emails so it'll be on the agenda is that discuss it is that for this school year that's next what does it say that'll have to be in the budget I don't know when when they was talking I think that would my understanding it would yeah be the coming school year yeah the next year when that when the program when the voucher program takes place it microphone I wrong that's a wrong the daycare um we may need to order in breakfast

349mod I know so on uh September the September of 2024 uh Jennifer made the motion that we would revisit the daycare program in March and I think Miss Yin it so um that will to March so it'll be needing to come up on this board meeting so we kind of need to think about what you want to do on that I know we've talked about the after school program oh that's that yeah dayare yeah yeah Miss seore did that um yes yes and you know she had reached out to people but then when she reached out it really wasn't a good time because i' had already found babysitters for the school year so that's something I just wanted to see kind of put out there that does Miss has Miss seor done any surveying or

350anything to see if that's something well she didn't want to to send the surveys out if that was something that you guys were not even interested in she said she could send another survey out yeah I would because we're going to need a survey to yeah see okay to see if there's anybody viability than is that the right word I'm so tired I don't even know we're done I know we're done if not I'm leaving I believe we're done unless anybody really wants to stay