08/23/22 MNPS Board of Education

001again momentarily but since we have a quorum we'll move forward with the pledge of allegiance and then i'll be looking for an adoption of the agenda um mr ashford hughes it's your night if you wouldn't mind leading us in the pledge of allegiance of the united states of america and to the development of which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you do we have an amendment to the agenda or do i have a motion for an adoption i have an amendment all right mrs tyler can we put her on screen please sir i moved to add a covered lead discussion under governance issues after the resolution so you want to add action item number three and make it a board discussion on covet code lead for teachers okay so

002mrs tyler has recommended or has uh requested that we have a board discussion around covet leave for teachers do we have a second second all right um any discussion all in favor please raise your hand four five all right we have a motion passes so we will add a board discussion on coveted lead for teachers after the equity resolution all right with that amendment do i have a motion to adopt the agenda i make a motion to adopt the agenda as amended all right do i have a second okay all in favor please raise your hand all right seems unanimous thank you very much all right we will move on to awards and recognitions dr battle please tell us a bit about the mnps grow your own teacher development initiative let's do it thank you

003so much chair bugs and good evening board members when i spoke at the district's new teacher orientation in july a group of our first year teachers approached me afterward with a spring in their step and excitement on their faces they were members of our first grow your own cohort former mnps support employees who have trained to become teachers and are now leading their own classrooms for the first time grow your own is a partnership we have with the state of tennessee and four educator preparation providers to help mnps support employees become licensed teachers and tonight we're honoring the first two groups of employees to take that significant step grow your own help support employees get a master's degree at no cost to them from lipscomb university national teacher residency relay graduate school or tennessee state

004university they earn licensure in a hard to staff content area while also earning an endorsement in exceptional education or special education or english language learning participants also commit to working as a paraprofessional in an mps classroom during the first year of the program and then commit to working as a classroom teacher in the district for at least three years this is a wonderful way to develop teachers from within our own ranks these are employees who have already served our students in schools with great dedication and now feel called to do the same thing in a different role and i'm grateful for their commitment and looking forward to seeing their impact in the classroom because we all know just how important good teachers are tonight we have with us several members of their first cohort of

005grow your own participants who are now in their first year in their own classrooms as well as the second cohort who got started this month and are serving as paraprofessionals for the 2022-23 school year please cohort members come up as i call your names and we'll take a big picture of the first group and then we'll do the same thing with the second group so if you hear your name called and you're here please come on up towards the podium lejean hamad rachel cunningham espinoza laquisa dobbins jared freiherfer david gagda anita goodcase lisa shadrick mary beth shaw daniel schust angelia slater janice smith erica spann nicki steen and ashley strahl and samuel williams please give them a round of applause congratulations to you all we're proud of the work you're already doing with the students

006you're serving on a daily basis if you would please come on up i'm here and i would like to love to get a picture with you with myself and our board chair thanks for being here y'all congratulations before we take this picture can you tell us what your role was before and where you're serving today i started off as a substitute teacher then transitioned to paraprofessional and now i'm a middle school classroom teacher at harris hilly special education i was a parent at stanford montessori and now i'm in a first first through third grade blending classroom [Applause] yay awesome all right [Applause] closed captioning not and then we'll get available big photo like we did with the first group so if you're here jump on up and be proud to represent mnps jill barber lindsey

007cauldron onyx donaldson devon fisher nadia francis rhaegar gottas emily gott destiny hogans arena ibrahim ranik jackson jocelyn jordan george cadawala donna parker jerica patterson jeannie piper victoria ross lisa varley kayoko wade lincolnwade and reginae wales come on up and y'all let's give them a round of applause all right if you can join us up top and we'll get another photo and as your wall can be thinking about what you're going to share with us about where you've been and where you are now thanks for being here uh my name is donna parker and i'm at gower elementary i am in a pre-k classroom that is a general education we have 17 students at present and they are quite here for the past two weeks about potential lots of love and encouragement [Applause] i used to

008be a parapro accessory education in azpini and now i work my teachers in seventh grade in jfk i'm renee jackson i started off as a math tutor and a care pro at mcmurray middle school now i work at antioch middle school as a sixth grade math teacher i'm jenny piper i came from a permanent sub at lachlan elementary i'm now working in english 7th grade at stratford medal congratulations um [Applause] [Music] for the record for that pre-k teacher you are doing god's work both dr battle and i have a pre-k have pre-k students in mnps right now so thank you all right thank you again for that dr battle uh now we'll move on to another update where we're here he'll we will hear a bit from you around the equity road map and have

009an athletics update all right thank you again chair bugs and board members before we jump into the director's report i'm at the request of the board i wanted to give a brief coven 19 update so last week monday through sunday there were 104 confirmed cases among staff and 473 among students of course as much as we'd love for the virus to go away it appears that it will continue to persist in such a way that we have to deal with its it as a function of our normal operations and lives the good news is that we've come back better than normal i want to thank our school nurse program who is doing a great job of tracking and reporting these cases and you can get weekly reports by going to the coven 19 tracker on

010our website we are keeping that updated also i'll be getting the board and update on staffing as soon as it is available in the coming days but right now all of our hr resources have been focused on processing new hires transfers and payroll to ensure everyone is paid for their hours worked but we will be providing additional updates to the board board as it is made available now the school year is off to a great start and we had some wonderful news to share last week that mnps is a level five tvos district for the first time i cannot tell you all how so proud i am of the teachers our students our staff our parents this board everyone who pulled together under difficult circumstances to make this happen and you've heard me share on

011multiple occasions that while we've been at this thing for a few years last year was probably more complex and complicated as we returned to our all in person learning environment and shifting in lots of ways there are some key highlights that i want to include to make sure we're all aware so again level five district we have level fives and system wide literacy numeracy and literacy plus numeracy okay i'm going to say it again so overall level five in addition to that a system-wide five and literacy numeracy and literacy plus numeracy which we've not had since sometime before 2015. we have a district-wide social studies grade of four and our score has not been that good since 2016 which did not include grades three through eight our lowest on score is for science and that

012is a level three meaning it was the expected level of growth so level three is expected level of growth level five is significantly above evidence-wise the level of growth of our students of our 132 district-run schools there were 42 level 5 composite schools which represents over a third of our schools there were 51 schools with a 4 or 85 composite and 86 schools with a level 3 4 or 5 which is expected annually that's great news on the academics front but here at mmps we serve many different needs and interests of our students and they overlap to create a well-rounded student and adult to be we are excited we are inspired by this growth and what we've been able to achieve with our academic growth this year we know it will continue to be our

013focus to improve to know where we are but don't stay there and we will not stop we will be relentless until we get all of our students where they deserve to be so the work continues but we celebrate today the growth of our students across the continent areas as already shared so again we serve very different students many different students and their needs and their interests and we want to ensure that we're developing well-rounded students and adults to be and that includes our social media social emotional learning and it includes our extracurriculars and athletic programs so i'm going to provide an update for you around where we are with athletics as well to respond to those interests and talents of our students this year we are expanding our elementary sports offerings available to students with

014a focus on equity ensuring that all quadrants are represented transportation is provided and necessary insurance is covered to give each student the opportunity to compete if they choose this year we're going to be expanding our offerings in cross country for the fall and soccer for elementary students in the spring we are excited for these sports clubs to get going and again we'll provide them free of charge to participating students starting this fall as well we are excited to have 33 elementary schools participating in cross-country this is near and dear to my heart as someone who went to college on a cross-country and track scholarship i know the value and benefit of this endurance sport that strengthens the body and mind and the great thing that as soon as you are able to walk and run

015you're ready to start training for the sport this year meets will be held at two rivers middle school where students will run two half-mile loops to complete the one-mile course practice starts on september 10th with the cross-country championship on october 1st again i want to commend our athletic department our leaders and roosevelt sanders and mark north for your vision and execution y'all this is the first time that we've had sports and sports clubs available to our elementary students so we're starting early providing them what they need free of charge now we also know nashville is a major league soccer town now and i think it will be great to have as many of our schools provide an opportunity for students to play this spring we'll be surveying principals in january to get interest for participation

016with a march 2023 opening of the season that will be held at the dale soccer park on saturdays so no longer will families have to go out in the community and figure out how they can connect with soccer they can engage and be a part of their soccer club at their school within their quadrant we'll provide again transportation and the support of is also providing the soccer equipment and the shirts for all participants to be a part of our spring soccer for elementary students we will also be adding two sports to our high school athletics portfolio unified track and field is a partnership between the tws double-a and special olympics of tennessee and joins students with and without intellectual disabilities it was added as a t double s double a sanctioned sport in 2018 and

017last year white's creek student athletes won the 100 meter long jump and finished second in the shot put the team finished second in the sectionals and qualified for the state meet this year we are expanding our unified track and field programs and expect eight to ten teams to compete now in addition to that i told you we're adding two sports in partnership and with the support of the tennessee titans we're also adding girls flag football this spring we will be one of a few school districts with girls flag football and have more teams participating than any other school district 15 of our high schools plan to offer girls flag football and are gearing up for the inaugural season so that is huge out of the gate to have 15 schools have interest to field a

018girls flag football team we're excited now even possibly more exciting and in alignment with our equity conversations that we've already had today and that will continue to have as we move throughout this board meeting one of the issues that has come to our attention over the summer has been that some of our students are not eligible to receive health care coverage and because of this can't participate in sports as one of our core tenants is to identify and eliminate inequities i've had our athletics team work on a solution to ensure no student is turned away from sports because of their lack of coverage the contract with scholastic insurance is on the agenda tonight for the board's consideration lastly as a reminder we will continue to provide additional updates as needed as we continue to enroll

019students hire staff and fill our vacancies we're extremely thankful for a smooth opening to the school year and all support supportive teams and schools will continue to process and update information in our systems to keep us moving in the right direction but again with regards to athletics and this insurance we are opening doors of opportunities for all of our students regardless of their ability to have insurance to participate now at this time i would like to invite ashford hughes up to the podium asher serves as our executive officer of diversity equity and inclusion he's going to provide a brief update on our equity road map this is not the first time that you have received an update around our equity roadmap from ashford he is back to discuss and share some of the progress that

020has been made over the last year he will highlight a few key areas of progress and will continue to provide additional updates as needed throughout the year and in the years ahead and in accordance to our new equity policy so ashford i will kick it over to you thank you dr battle uh good evening board chair uh good evening board uh thank you for allowing me to come before you this evening um before we get started there were two things that i did leave at your table one was a physical copy of the equity roadmap the second one was in a partnership with two strong community leaders within nashville mr frank garrison and ms gail williams and the frisk museum the vanderbilt press for our summer training this year they awarded me several books that

021you see in front of you right now the one that depicts nashville civil rights history and our mold to train our educators on how we actually got here we gifted that book out to all of our executive principals to many of our instructional leadership team members during the training and we'll be gifting many of the books to several of our seniors this year so that we have information on inequities and equities and where we're going moving forward wanted you all to have that as well i want to take a quick point of privilege just to recognize two members of my equity team two of my equity specialists who are here tonight that the work couldn't be done without them dr joy gus as well as melissa gordon two strong leaders on my team i want

022to begin to ground us in several things and this quote is one that we use throughout the summer to talk about where we are in mnps along our journey because we are along a journey it has been two and a half years since i've been in this position and we have come a long way but we still have some ways to go today i know i want to realign our vision for equity as the last time i spoke with you was around last school year an update on our road map where we have been since i last spoke to you and the work that we've been doing to implement the work of equity across the district but then an update on our training plan the training that we did for educators this summer and what

023we're going to be working on this fall going into next spring as well always with the mantra and understanding that we're doing now but building towards and do now the work that we already are doing i want to share a video that really grounds us again in our why this work is important in the work that we're doing the need for this work within our district when the youngster walks into the school the youngster doesn't check the world at the door and come in with nothing the youngster brings the world with him or her into the classroom we talk about racism we talk about police brutality talk about issues of health care we talk about issues of of housing and jobs and employment and well youngster is bringing all that with him to school and

024the question is does the teacher know that world undergraduate school prepared that teacher for the generic child but it did not prepare that teacher for that kid who's just as brilliant but doesn't have the same privilege and doesn't have the same opportunity if you think about a race 100 meters long that youngster's not even at the starting line that youngster is like 100 meters behind everybody else and now we're saying but you got to finish with the rest of them how but if i got somebody in there that understands why i'm 100 meters behind everybody else i'm in better position to help close that gap so that now that youngster can make up time and catch up with everybody else and now have an equitable not an equal but an equitable opportunity to be successful

025is a renowned principal now trainer and educator from new jersey but does the equity trainings across the country and have been working with him to align where we can also be within our district uh again reiterating our universal terminology for educational equity one of the important things that we wanted to do is have the same terminology what equity is in the southeast needs to be the same that we depict and articulate in the north so this is what our term is you have this in the roadmap we've talked about it in the past again looking at differentiated supports for our students and this is what we've been working on with our educators but understanding that equity does not only live within our educators or our principals it has to be within our divisions of nutrition

026transportation it seriously has to be across everything and every department that we initiate here within mnps i want to make sure that we also focus on our universal focused outcomes these are our universal goals literacy sel numeracy and transitions the equity work that we've been working to institute is also how we uplift and make sure those focus outcomes come to fruition for each and every child within our district our work as we have been uh articulating that equity map is how are we working with everybody to create the conditions by which every student has what they need to meet our focus outcomes again important pieces of the puzzle that we see depicted diversity equity and inclusion social emotional learning teaching and learning important pieces of the puzzle that i always talk about we have to

027have those connected and aligned and we have to be collaborating across the departments so that we can see closed opportunity gaps we can ensure there are improved student outcomes and we are consistently focused on every student known i'm fortunate enough to participate with dr battle and members of the senior academy as we go on uh trips and school visits and doctor battle is always asking what does it mean to in your school building to make certain every student known and we know that the social emotional learning is important as well relationships but we cannot do that at the discretion of not doing and having rigorous uh articulation of our curriculum we have to make certain that we're doing everything in order to get that student where they need to be successful and that is the

028work that we have been articulating leading and partnering with our educators and leaders across the district since we last spoke again wanted to lead you to this framework and draw attention this framework around leadership culture and practice should be common to you now because we hear it in everything that we talk about no matter when you're in front of the board you've heard various uh departments talk about the leadership that they're working on displaying with our leaders the culture that we're setting for equity and then the practices those things that we're doing every day to make certain students get what they need again operating off of a do now build towards mantra this summer is we talk about how to how we how do we build equitable systems we've really been focused on the personal

029how do we make certain educators see themselves as board members you often talk about implicit bias and how does that show up when we work with students but also through the instructional leadership teamwork we have begin to dip into professional strategies to make certain that school buildings and leaders have what they need collectively to make certain their communities have what they need as well i want to draw attention to something really important that dr battle again has has stressed stressed often from the senior cabinet level how are we utilizing an equity lens and decision making from senior cabinet on down what are we doing to ensure that all voices are heard in decisions the questions that we now are molding and asking is once we utilize our equity lens across departments across decisions how do

030we go back and continue to make certain we made the right decision did we accomplish what we wanted to accomplish but that is the work now that we still are creating together with educators stakeholders across the district as you all talked about a little bit earlier today so i want to talk about how we have progressed since we last came together we often continue to talk about our equity matrix this was the methodology we used to make certain that where there was resources things that needed to get to our community we looked at it through a lens of our schools of innovation our students with disabilities our el populations and our economic disadvantage students these are things that we've been doing now to make certain that equity is lived and not just spoken of we

031talk about our equity roadmap which we fortunately launched early last spring in preparation for what we're going to do with our professional learning over the summer for a lot of our educators you hear me talk about quickly our equity pillars of measurement those areas that we leverage to support our focused outcomes one of the things i'm going to talk with great joy about tonight is our equity summer professional development and the work that my team did collaborating with other leaders across the district to do something that has never been done in mnps before and i would dare say if you look across the country not many other if any school districts contributed to the learning of our education community this summer as we did and then i'll briefly touch on equity advisory council which we

032continue to work with stakeholders to gather feedback information consistently i want to talk to you about equity pillars and what those are these five strategic pillars that are aligned to our focused outcomes i keep drawing us back to always contain and remember about our focused outcomes these pillars are leveraged to reach equitable academic outcomes for each mnps student we talk about instructional equity programmatic equity equitable leadership and operations cultural competent and a diverse workforce and an internal and external community engagement as we define instructional equity this is how we implement professional learning programs that build teacher effectiveness and make certain it takes into consideration learning styles and cultural identities the work that we've been doing now i really want to highlight our literacy reimagine right to me there is no greater thing that we can

033do within our district and make certain our young boys and girls have access to quality reading instruction i really believe equity and literacy are hand in hand most important thing that we can do and we're doing that now thanks to our great leaders up here that you see today programmatic equity identifying key indicators to remove systemic differences across programs that we've all talked about you talked about that today some of the work that is happening now as we build towards that access to advanced coursework our gate program the episodes and our academic magnets we are doing that work now i also want to highlight something that our student support services have been working on for this last time really our advocacy centers our peace centers and our research centers focused on making certain that we

034are providing that sense of belonging that support for our students that need it right now equitable leadership and operation advancing racial social economic and educational practices to display accountability across all departments now we talked about this some in terms of teaching and learning but this is also again inclusive of nutrition services a transportation department school-based administration those things that we're doing now district-wide pd for all support staff we are focused on doing that as well but also looking at how do we also access allow our principals to access information to be informed by the student dashboard and the power bi dashboard one of the things we worked on this summer was having all of our leaders look through data through an equity lens and what that meant for their individual school community culturally competent and

035diverse workforce intentionally intentionally investing in the professional learning of all employees this summer it was required that all of our certified educators went through both dei foundational training but also social emotional learning training as well one of the first time that has happened in our district to great success what we have been focused on now is making certain that we provide that professional development to make sure that educators have an equity mindset and equity leadership and working with the hr department to making certain that we are hiring a diverse workforce finally internal and external community engagement our stakeholder engagement really establishing the tools and the guidance that focus on how do we intentionally utilize stakeholder participation and feedback the work that we have been doing now student voice framework across our district family university making

036certain that the feedback is constant and continual so that we know what we're doing these this is the work that we have been doing thus far i want to highlight a couple of equity benchmarks that we look at to track progress across teachers administrators staff and support hub i'll highlight just a few how will as a teacher i leverage students background and experiences to build bridges to curriculum administrators how will i ensure that novice teachers are mentored staff how will i reflect an equity mindset in my workplace and for the support hub how will the supporter attract a more diverse workforce these are some of the areas that through a lens of equity we say how are we measuring in ourselves and what are we working towards again building equity leadership capacity this summer we

037embarked myself dr gus melissa gordon on training all of our certified teachers but not only us we recruited seven other leaders they had to be trained a week with us from across napier nashville school of the arts mcgavin overton pearl bass and donaldson middle school these seven educators were recruited to be facilitators with us to embark on this journey throughout the summer these were some of our trainings of training objectives you'll see number one is why you have the the book in front of you we also took our respondents our participants through the by design documentary but also number three develop an awareness of personal implicit bias this summer we wanted to make certain that we focused on the individual doing our dei foundations training to make sure that everybody knew how they showed up

038impacted a child impacted a colleague impacted a family and what could we do to offer them tools guidance and support to make decisions and this was not in a we're coaching or telling you this was then we're going to learn together and that's what made our uh training so successful this summer so again we had two trainings this summer one was dei foundations training where we really talked about the terminology the universal work around how do we understand equity within our district but then we also had a separate training for principals and their instructional leadership teams again 40 almost 4 200 teachers trained nearly 90 of the eligible teachers at that time trained from june 1 to july 29th that meant we had to have five days of training a week four sessions in the

039morning four sessions in the evening monday through friday three hours synchronous and then also a three hour asynchronous course to really drive in what was important to me is not only the success of being able to get through those numbers in two months but the respondents ninety-seven percent of participants respond to favor really that the content shared during this session was relevant to their role essential as we talk about adult learning theory this was essential to making certain the training actually had the opportunity to show up in the classroom setting in the leadership setting the instructional the ilt team important to have principals there with their leadership cohort looking at data from an equity lens but also identifying how they can build out equity teams within their own school building kind of a train to

040trainer model so equity can live with them because it can't just be in my department it can't be only in dr bellamy's department it has to be collectively amongst all of us and this was how it started this summer wanted to provide some quick feedback from some of the participants i want to highlight from our facilitator mark pete who's the community manager uh community achieves manager at napier i felt invigorated relevant and valued as i was presenting and as i after i presented i felt and still feel like i was making a significant impact on the education students and families across the district i want to quickly highlight a principal from donaldson middle this training was outstanding the facilitators were knowledgeable respectful personable and organized the course was right-sized for the time available provided opportunities

041to reflect and share and met each participant where they were at while challenging challenging them to advance their thinking this was just some of the great feedback that we got from many participants in the training this fall we plan to also begin to train everybody within the support hub we're also going into the spring be preparing to train all of our support staff as well in the same di foundations training moving forward so as we kind of surmise where we have been over this year i think back to again framing our efforts around the do now build towards the equity roadmap is not a stagnant you have to do this whole process right now at this point in time but it is a guidance to how we can work collaboratively and effectively some of the

042things we're doing now and it will take some time to build out and do uh move towards but that's how we began to set the equity mindset then we looked at establishing decision making through an equity lens again monitoring our growth in our practices then we also began to cultivate a growth and equity mindset elevating leadership at all levels across all departments for each and every child but across all departments is really vital because equity has to live within everybody and it has to be something that is viewed as important to the role in each department so how do we build equitable systems continue to build equitable systems one of the things that i will continue to do that we will continue to do in my team is to build out an equity advisory council

043to make certain that stakeholder engagement is top of mind is essential to the work that we do that feedback is a must we will continue to move that forward we have a clear path that is drawn out we will continue to work across departments we have over the summer collaborated with various new departments that after taking our training said how do we get engaged in what you're doing we want to be equity leaders we want to build efficacy across the district so we're in the process now of building equity leaders if i could leave us with one thing to ask the board to do service equity champions when you look at and you dive into the road map i know there are things that your school community cares about it's important that you champion the

044efforts that we're taking right now in your school community but also outside of your school community when you're at other uh political meetings where other community meetings highlight the work that is taking place around equity with our roadmap being a driving indicator of where we can be the last thing i would say invite myself and my team out to one of your community meetings to come and talk with a group of your parents and your teachers to say this is where we're going this is where we're leading to utilize your social media efforts to talk about all the work that is taking place invite us to send a blurb to be in some of your compliances when you talk or when you send out newsletters we really need champions you have already shown the passion

045for equity now at this time that we continue to build the work out i look forward to coming before you every school year to give you updates to talk about where we're going and to talk about how we're getting better and how our journey continues to move forward dr battle i will stop there and turn it over to you observingly and thank you mr hughes for that update around our equity road map i will now turn it back over to um cheer bugs to lead us through any discussion all right thank you for that presentation mr little um so just want to highlight i really appreciate not only you presenting the equity roadmap but anyone who knows you like your work in the community your volunteer work and the work that you do with other

046organizations and i and i think this is needed my only question and maybe we don't know what all it is how will this impact our our kids and when we look at equity around kids not reaching their greatest academic potential and and how will this serve as a catalyst to get students where they need to be academically socially emotionally and and other things that have set them up for success um i'll start if you don't mind i'm mr little and i'll kick it over to to ashford as you heard throughout mr hughes's update today and which is also evident in the training led by our great facilitators we're grounding this equity roadmap in our focus outcomes so we're extremely clear about what we're expecting to see in academic performance as well as seo performance for

047all of our students this is also why when you receive our benchmark data in years past we've used a map you've also saw it in our summit of data with regards to tn ready elc exam that's why we're measuring the sub group performance what we saw last year was literally all of our subgroups grew we did see significant games around our students that were economically disadvantaged we still have gaps um that exist across our demographics and so we're using those focus outcomes as measured by our benchmark assessments as well as our team ready suite of assessments to help ground us we know that those numbers aren't everything um so when we're talking about every student known that's why we ask that question that's what we're seeking for that evidence when we're out in schools so

048that we can make sure students see that value feel that expectation but also the supports necessary and so when you think about how we're going to measure that keep in mind those focus outcomes that we have for every student at every grade level and why we break down that data into subgroups so that we can measure progress year over year i think mr hughes said it best we still have a lot of work to do this road map the equity matrix really slicing that data into those spaces as you've described is going to help us be even more targeted and intentional around the supports needed so one example to that when you think about our accelerating scholars program it is specific to the needs of our students so we get the question asked often why

049these grade levels why these schools why the selected students why this particular content area that is intentional based upon where students are and meeting the measure of our equity definition of giving every student what they need when they need it and so that's how programmatically we're aligning what we're sending our data to our response and making sure that tier one level of instruction is strong hence mfps our literacy reimagine work but also um the ways in which we respond to those individual needs of our students ashford you might want to add something you said it you dressed at all any other thoughts questions i just got okay go ahead go ahead mrs masters thank you for this work i um i have a question about the stakeholder groups that were engaged and what stakeholder group

050represented the lgbtqi population of students and their needs so the stakeholder groups that we engaged were one teachers some parent groups parent organizations we did work with some students some students were intern at mnps some students were in the community if i had to call out right now which one represented that particular demographic my work with the lgbtq chamber and some of that communication was one stakeholder group that we work with but specifically for our students that is a work in progress that we continue and that's why the stakeholder engagement is continuous but we are working with trying to get in front of more student groups and making that population in every population particularly students with disabilities as well become more seen and visible in these conversations and then what were the stakeholder groups that

051represented our immigrant populations oh various teams uh speaking i know um molly hedgewood and her department have set up several meetings um i can get you a list of all those groups that we talk with and that we continue to talk with members of turk conexion various stakeholder groups many of the families this summer we talked with several of the families as our training was at glencliff talk with students and families in that community as well they represent my ell population and it's still ongoing the stakeholder engagement will not quit that is part of what the road map dictates so we will continue to be expansive and get in front as many groups as myself and my two coaches and our team are able to get engaged with okay thank you you know i do

052see um a lot of amazing work in here um i'm looking at the common language and and finding you know a lot of information about racial inequity and institutional racism and white privilege which i'm very appreciative of um i see a couple of references to sexual orientation and gender identity no references at all to gender expression and so i just want to be sure um that we were being mindful of all forms of equity and diversity and that we're bringing in all of those stakeholder voices um just so that we we truly are um we're being true to our every student known do thank you mrs elrod thank you um particularly in response to our equity um conversation that we had during governance forgot the word for a second i apologize um i want to

053make sure that we are actually measuring and benchmarking some of this information and i'm curious of how we're doing that so an example would be on slide 20 we had the equity benchmarks used to track and measure progress and i think they're good questions and necessary and needed to particularly um start this new process and kind of initiate it and also dive deeper within it within all of these subgroups but how are we asking these subgroups whether it's teachers admin staff for the support hub how are we asking them to do this and then how are they measuring it particularly because we're asking them to like identify certain things are we how are we measuring what they thought was going to happen did that happen what were the outcomes and then how can we change

054course for the future to better this but so i think as airline before we really are at some of the early onset of establishing and making our way through a lot of that that's why the stakeholder engagement with teachers with educators continues to be important but every time that we do have our sessions whether it be coaching whether it's through mtss we continue to find ways to say this is what we're looking towards we all talk about sel and that sense of belonging what does that look like across our school community long story we still are working towards those to be more definitive uh but right now with our engagement this is where we've landed and we're our educators where our community says these are important measures to us and is that the equity matrix

055as we can you give me a definition of what that is and how that's different than the road map um well miss hughes go ahead i'll let you respond well our h our make equity matrix is our decision-making tool when it comes to resource allotment so when we so for instance when you think about moving to a one-to-one technology district how did we prioritize where do we prioritize and get those resources first and in which order based upon need when you think about our transition of fifth grade back to elementary school we use that equity matrix where is the greatest need who needs what when and where and allows all the other complexities that exist so that is our decision-making tool with regards to how we deliver upon resource allotment across all of our schools

056and is that only used within the support hub or are there plans within this expansion because there is so much work to be done is there plans to expand that matrix and to tailor it within individual quadrants to schools and so on yeah so we are very transparent about the matrix we've shared that of course as you can imagine with our leaders and our teachers so that they know when to expect what it does differ depending on what the resource is when we're looking at the academic performance seo needs of our students and and and our families that we serve i believe it's also discussed in the um dei training um as well which all mnps team members will be participating in so yes the plan is there we're transparent about that we're sharing it

057with them so they know what to also expect with resource alignment as well i guess my request would be as we get to our budget uh times and we talk about our school-based budget that there's a review over that information and these questions that we're asking to measure the progress as we discuss individual things within their school-based budgets since it's a newer practice for us just to make sure that it's more institutionalized yeah thank you for the point i think it's important to note that because we have been a student-based budget for the budgeting district for so long this is really the way in which our schools budget their investments as well when we think about their allotment for student-based budgeting it is based in equity when you think about the funds that have been

058spiraled to our schools for esther investment that also is based in equity in our equity matrix so of course we had to all learn what that looked like to know exactly how to use it but then how to allocate and track their return on investment other questions all right so ashford walker um you know the the board tonight discussed an equity policy i think we um as a district are trying to figure out how we get there from governance point of view and so i continue to sort of struggle with how do we see at the 30 000 foot level if we're looking at our focused outcomes if i wanted to look and say okay on this particular focus outcome what does equitable progress look like how are we defining it what is the goal

059year to year i don't feel like i have uh in insight into that i mean i i know what they they all i mean i know what our focus outcomes are and like how we define what we're working on but i don't know how we would define equitable outcomes for each of those and so that's just a question i have but really i have a question for you so if you if i were in the seat which i won't be in a year from now um i would love to know what does a win look like for you a year from now i think we've done important work on defining our terms uh identifying appropriate trainings getting key staff in place like for ashford hughes head of this whole shebang what would victory for you

060look like a year from now what would be some big wins for you like what are the big rocks you love to move in this equity work um and i don't think like shifting mindsets is what i'm looking for i'm looking for tangible kind of results what would you like to see different in a year from now go ahead so i would say that constructing mindset shifts to me is tangible i think we have to start with the individual right so what the success would look like for me is that one we finish the training for everybody at the end of this year right and we have that complete and we can say we have that continuum not just the training but now we have next uh section two set up for you as well

061i think what a win will look like for me also is that everybody that has the road map document understands it can look at it and cite the principles that are in there and they see within their building how are they looking at the data that they see their students through the lens of those principles and the equity lens right does every school have a equity lens document that they make decisions based off of is everybody looking at decisions through that lens that is something when we talk about shifting things i believe without trying to move the titanic in one year i think those are tangible measures of success that we can see to say we're moving in the right direction building towards something else all right thank you dr gentry so i'm gonna be

062the big bad wolf today um so we're in year three right we're going into our third year having conversations around this equity roadmap and um and after you and i have lots of conversations about this and texting back and forth and i have the honor of doing this work in a healthcare system and i know it's hard so i'm not trying to to minimize it but i just want to pull the thread some more on miss pupa walker's comments what i would expect is that we've trained there's a documented road map that's something about those school improvement plans is different right so that i don't look at these on slide 20 as benchmarks i look at it as the questions i should be asking as i'm preparing my lesson plans my benchmarks are where my

063students are today whether it's the number of times i have to send them out of a classroom from an sel perspective or the number of times or what their scores and how they're engaging as a student is that student who is part of one of those underrepresented or or traditionally marginalized communities is that in student more engaged have i shown up differently in such a way that a student who may identify differently from a gender perspective or from an immigrant community or english is not their primary language has that student shown up more has that student engaged have i reached that student have i shown up in such a way that created a space where that student feels seen and is engaging so those are the kinds of things i would like to see us

064measuring student engagement not just academic outcomes are my parents coming to pto meetings now because i've created an environment in my school that is a bit more welcoming and a bit more acknowledging of the cultural and and differences that they bring into the space and so i think that that's what i hear miss poopo walker asking and where i think that we've got to get too quickly i understand that building this was the long pole in the tent and setting the foundation doing that sort of that that stomp speech right you got to go and engage the stakeholders internally and externally about this is the right thing to do i think we've got to find a way to now fast track it that we can't come back a year from now and our win be

065that everybody understands the equity road map well i've trained and i've done 2.0 of dei training which i'm going to get on that in a second so i think for us it's what what where what should be lighting up on our dashboard because we now have an equity lens what should be different what should be shifting what's the shift in the atmosphere what's the shift in the data now that i've done this education i've set this framework i've set the expectation i've engaged people internally and externally about this work i'm trying to accomplish one of the other things i would caution us again because this is it may just be a personal pet peeve but maybe the only one at this table that feels this way is this phrase dei training because i don't know

066what that is uh people call me all the time i do education um strategy for the all of hca yay i'm in this dei space and they call out time to say we want dei training for our team i'm like i don't know what that means so i would just ask at some point and you don't need to enumerate all just to to see what has been that training to get to us a shift in mindset to help people understand how they're showing up in the classroom what are those courses has it been lectures has it been readings i feel it's been a little bit of all of that but i like to put a name to it to see what it is we're trying to accomplish because dei training is just a big bucket

067um and so i would i would appreciate understanding specifically the trainings and presentations and texts that we have employed with our teachers and administrators to again get to this shift in mindset but also get that buy-in and get them to better understand again how they are how we're showing up either for our colleagues for our parents for our families and for our students that may be impacting their ability to show up themselves and engage in a way that they get the outcomes that they really want i mean i think it's we talk a lot about the outcomes we want to see we have to be mindful that our parents don't send our kids to us um just because there are things that they want to see as well so i think it's so that we

068get the district and all of our students to the place where we all want them to be so i guess i'm to sum it up just something a little bit more tangible and measurable and concrete so again i would i would argue that what we have in here is not really benchmarks they're guiding questions to get teachers to better lesson plans to get administrators to set better goals to those school improvement plans to look different so something should show up differently in those spaces as a result of asking those questions but the benchmarks are what the data is saying to us today whether it's tvos or other you know concrete testing scores uh or whether it's the um what do we call those the map scores but there's the other assessments we do of the

069culture the culture type of adorama survey the panorama surveys all of those things should start to look different if everyone is is engaged at the level that we want them to be engaged so um thank you for that um dr gentry um the one thing that i'd be remiss if i did not acknowledge right here is our hyper focus around our focus outcomes we're extremely clear about what we want to see in outcomes for all of our students around literacy around numeracy around them showing up with attendance and what that change was and what it's going to take to get them there around our seo particularly around our five competencies that we want to see and we're specific around age and grade grade of student what we expect to see and would like to see

070for for every student that also includes transition plans we want to know from tier to tier as students are transitioning what they are aspiring to accomplish what their families are inspired to accomplish and how we can be responsive to that so they stay on track and on the path towards success this is also why we launched the personalized student dashboard to your point to make sure that we're moving in a space of two-way communication so not just that hard data right but also what it is that our parents aspire for their students to achieve daily and year over year and so we ground everything in our focused outcomes we're in the pro process of identifying those leading and lagging indicators as well that will point us in the direction if we're on track off track

071so that we can make those adjustments but everything that we do has to lead back to improvement around those focus outcomes and yes there are lots of things we can measure but we we're very clear around moving the needle right now with literacy numeracy attendance our sel and our transitions for for our students we'll continue to slice that data make the adjustments as we need to but through equity mindset understanding that what our kids need might vary based upon where they are and getting them across that threshold but that is the grounding measure within our equity road map and that's what we're bouncing our success up against particularly a year from now and years from now and those focus outcomes could change in the future because our kid we believe our students will continue to

072grow and learn and so that will force us to continue to shift to make sure we're being responsive thank you all right mr little miss tyler and then mrs bush i just wanted to highlight also dr gus i think when i go back to this and look at that's why i asked about academic achievement because when i think about measurement it's it'll be hard to measure engagement um from year in and year out but i i the reason i'm excited about this one because it's in it's in black and white is being vetted by a board i'm pretty sure it's been vetted by the community and i think we got to continue to look at where we are like our success is determined by you know are kids growing do they feel supported i went

073to united way and miss bugs helped me out i forgot the committee but one of the things that i noticed in that committee there were so many resources and programs outside of the school system that dealt with social emotional learning that dealt with home visits therapy and i was like we are we're missing you know because money is always a major issue but i think a little partnership in in and help me out what's the committee call at uni for tennessee statewide bright start and it's for supporting supporting families work group and and what i would recommend because i think it's a lot of when you talk about wrap around services i was blown away by the amount and unfortunately a lot of those wrap around services go un underutilized because no one really knows

074about it and so i think with this road map and in your support groups it may be and maybe you guys are already there but it may be helpful of jumping into some of those meetings because i think it'll strengthen the current plan that you already have i just i think about and i'm gonna just be candid like i think about poor people whether they're white black latino asian and other and for a long time in nashville and a long time in this country you're poor it's like a caste system and you never get out of it but you never get out of it because you're you're in a place where it may not be enough resources to get you out of the caste system it may not be enough people who who care enough

075and in my school days i remember if a kid came to school and they had a bad day and it was noted maybe it was child abuse and it could be anything that was personable i remember teachers wanting to hug and love and just let them sit the day out and in my mind that was the worst thing to do is like sit out like that was a day where you need to be hug you need to be loved but you need to also be like stay on track and don't get further behind and so i i won't be on the board but i look forward in a year to seeing the progress and i think the actionable goals i think you you responded everybody needs to have this training it needs to be centered

076in leadership if leadership is not bought in if leadership isn't behind it it's not going to go anywhere so thank you for this presentation i just thank you for leading this up i just wanted to bring to light we are partnering uh with the blueprint for early childhood success united way and i serve on multiple committees many of my colleagues up here serve on committees particularly around the literacy piece and the family engagement spec as well so that is work we continue to partner with the united way on to make certain that we are connecting those families with the resources available to them and speaking of those immediate wrap around services the advocacy centers our restorative practice and peace centers are that immediate response because we do have to maximize our instructional time and so

077they are staffed with caring loving adults who are trained to meet the needs of the students where they are but it's a very structured time frame where we our expectation is within 15 to 20 minutes the student is re-engaged back in their learning environment so that they can continue to make progress on a daily basis so that's what those advocacy centers and restorative practice assistance slash p centers are all about and we're thankful for the collaborations and the partnerships that have allowed for us to have that immediate resource in our schools thank you for highlighting that all right mrs tyler if we could have her on screen yes um so we know that there's a particular spaces where inequity resides nationwide and the mnps is unfortunately not free from experiencing some of the same problems

078um we talked about it a little bit during the governance committee meeting but but it's three of the spaces that we talked about were equitable access to and success in advanced academics discipline disparities and reducing barriers for students who receive exceptional education services and those several of those things i know it's really hard to tease out exactly how do we get to a point that makes these things better because there's a lot that goes into it for example with advanced academics you know a lot of people will focus on how many um p classes are we offering how many ib schools until we have dual enrollment we're and we're looking at that and that is important but the work to get into those classes starts in elementary school and a lot of that starts with

079being represented in the classroom and having a diverse workforce that represents the students that are sitting in the seats makes a difference as to how they're going to perform in advanced academics moving forward and we know that because there's lots of research out there about that which i'm sure you're familiar with are we teasing some of this information out to those root causes that we can kind of say we know that there is some causation we know that there is this correlation between having a teacher who looks like you and doing well and being referred for a gifted program or being in advanced academics in high school or those kinds of things i know we already track our diversity of our teachers and that's just one example but are we looking to get down to

080kind of those more basic ways of something that you can track and i know several people have asked this but i'm trying to get a little bit more specific because sometimes just looking at a number is not going to tell you how we got there or how we can fix it and as you've asked your question ms tyler takes me back and i share this african proverb all the time and it says if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go fargo together so part of this is taking the time setting the right conditions so that we can have those very conversations we alone can have that conversation at the support hub we need our school communities who know our students best to have the right knowledge the right resources to

081continue to dig deep you've already heard me share i share with the principals all the time know where you are but don't stay there that requires us to get to those root causes around the disparities that we're seeing in our data and so we're having those questions this is also why we're prioritizing school visits to our to our school so that we can be side by side with our leaders asking these questions again set in the right conditions we just had this very conversation on monday you might be shocked of how deep we got real quick um into what might be happening and what that trajectory might look like for students if we don't intervene early so yes those kind we understand the need to have those deep rooted conversations doing doing analysis of what

082we're seeing in the data but it also takes the time and intentional effort to do it right because we also don't want to diagnose something that is not kind of that symptom to what we might be seeing so as you alluded to when you think about um you know we can talk about increasing um advanced academic numbers right and that's one thing but we also want to make sure that we have the staff prepared we want to make sure the students are on a journey for success so they can actually access those courses once they get there regardless of their grade we also have to make sure that they're successful when they get there the last thing we want to do is to have that access and students feel ill equipped to really engage and

083to be successful and so we're having those um conversations one recent memory conversation is around industry certifications for we were measuring our industry certifications we were making progress and then we stalled a bit and we had to dig and we had to dig and one of the things we found was that while we have effective and great educators all across our district we were lacking experience in ourselves knowing exactly what those industry certifications were demanding of our students and so we stepped back and we provided the resources and time for our teachers our leaders to engage with that content and those certifications so they had a better understanding of what they were truly prepared students for that wasn't their fault it was just an opportunity for us to dig a little bit deeper then we

084have to dig a little bit deeper around those career pathways right what's happening in elementary school that's preparing them for middle school that's preparing them for high school our school teams are now doing a significant amount of work with our metro schools reimagine and aligning those pathways that's why we have to do that that's why we i mean foundational to the fifth grade transition back to elementary school so yes there is a fundamental understanding there the right conditions have to be set that's why we have likely and like other districts have had so many misses because if you're not intentional if you're not careful you'll continue to run into challenges and barriers to moving that equity mindset along so that we can make those informed decisions to get to those deeply rooted issues that or

085challenges i will say are opportunities i should say that exists with our student population so we are we we fully understand that we're with you on that journey but we're also being very intentional very strategic about how we achieve that um holistically we it cannot this equity work and this decision-making process when we think about our equity matrix can't just live at the support hub it can't just live in one school or one cluster for that matter and so we're thinking about systems change uh when it when it comes to how we go about their work how we work with our research evaluation and assessment team uh asking the right questions to get us where we need to be so thank you for like bringing attention to that that is near and dear i think

086astrid and i both could go on and on and on about that work and our continuous improvement with unpacking and digging deep around how we can set our students up for success as early as possible and keep them on that path as they graduate from mps goals have we partnered with any group to help us attract that like know that we're working are they doing any work with tracking stuff like this so we have um several partnerships of course we had we have a fabulous research evaluation and assessment team who leads that work but externally we have several evaluation teams i'll be providing an update for the board this week around our extended learning programs and what we're seeing with disparities and what it's doing for students who are engaged versus not i think is

087going to inform some priorities for us as we move forward so that is just one of the latest latest data sets we're engaging with i believe is brown university vanderbilt university of course we have our peer partnership with them as well as education resource strategies so we have lots of partnerships that's helping us really evaluate dig into the data facilitating these conversations so we can we can have the tough dialogue and make the tough but right decisions daily for our students i keep looking over here and then i have one more question you talked about that um equity advisory committee and i was just wondering i may have missed it it has been a little bit of delay on my end so i may have missed it if you spoke about it a little bit

088more um in depth but did you talk about who you would include on that and how frequently you'd meet and what you're talking did you elaborate on that anymore and i missed it or i did not currently we have a equity progress committee that consists of different department leaders different teachers within the school district extending that out to community i know successfully within the mayor's office we had an equity advisory committee that was looking at business development we met once a quarter looking at trends looking at national indicators but also looking at hey what is unique to our community to really wrap our minds around what can we do to partner because a lot of the equity work does not live solely in mnps a lot of things we can't mitigate for that's why i

089say you and the board being an equity champion in different circles as we talk about housing as we talk about transportation and economics in the city and how that impacts school and the school-based community is vitally important but it will we we do want to extend to more community and have greater conversations and that will be coming into play here within the next weeks okay and then once you have information from um once the progress team's information is is kind of consolidated and you know what it says and once you have that advisory committee what are your next steps after that well i always want to come and provide information to senior cabinet to our school community to say hey this is where we are this is what we're looking into so we're always communicating

090the steps moving forward and then ultimately how are we looking at progress again as we've talked about today what does it look like from a school base from a stakeholder community engagement but then how do we find the information and the gathering as we come together how do we find ways to support our educators more having that information how do we find ways to support parents and students better with the information i think oftentimes we think of only the teacher the educator but many times we don't include the family support system and that's what the advisory committee will be doing also how do we look at the measures and the indicators and support families in their effort to get their students to be in line with our focused outcomes great well i would love to

091hear when you next report back to us i'd love to hear more about how that went and what steps happened from there to where we are when you next report to us because it sounds really exciting and so i really would love to hear about how to continue to move forward with this so thank you newly noted all right mrs bush yes um one of the things that happened during the pandemic we we had a lot of our iep students they got lost in the shuffle making sure their iep plans were met uh making sure that students got that support so around this um framework uh the equity framework and the roadmap how do we change that that vision about iep students i hear we talk about the real students but i'm really highly concerned

092also about our iep students and making sure you know as we transition with our new teachers and new classroom teachers and meeting their iep plans how does this framework look for iep students i'll kick it to ms hughes if deb anybody else would like to chime in please feel free to do so um just for a frame of reference those students who are um served and supported by iep are the exception education students that we're referring to in the equity road map um and so when we're talking about our subgroup data and how we're monitoring that we always look at how our exceptional education students are performing um as well the iep process is more of a i mean it's a compliance piece and i think deb if you want to add this please feel

093free to do so we particularly over this past summer we offered extensive amounts of it extended school year thank you um services um to students that is something that i'm very proud of with our exceptional education team that we are responsive to the needs of our students and if there are needs beyond the school year that we continue to offer that but ashford please feel free to lay in any response and of course sorry mason and team if you'd like to add anything to it please prefer to do so just a piggyback have been partnering with uh debbie and her team to make certain that we do highlight what are the some of the areas of focus that we need to change moving forward making certain that we're getting in front of her department my

094department is very big i'm very strong on meeting with other teams on a regular basis so we know what's going on and we can see the shifts that are needed uh but it's also important that we hear from families and oftentimes that is the reason why we continue our stakeholder engagement to see if there are issues focused how do we take that information back to departments and figure out a ways in which we can mitigate the problems or the opportunities that present themselves for our families that we can work on but i will defer to dr bellamy or mrs mcadams if there's any other way that we want to expand on that thank you ashford and certainly i'll let deb correct me on anything that she'd like me to note here that i don't i

095would just call out that you know our subgroups in particular our exceptional education students can be uh subjected to almost subgroups within the subgroups um ee students of more affluent families know how to advocate um have more access to resources and i think it's our job to tear down those barriers in particular for families that don't know they exist because they don't know services are out there one thing i'm particularly proud of here in mmps is our access to the general education classroom and curriculum our percent of students who spend the majority of their day in their tier one instruction is higher than many other districts that i've worked with in the past and as a former director of services for exceptional students i can tell you that that's a metric that we should be

096proud of and talk more about the amount of time our students stay in the tier one curriculum and so again this is not going to be an easy fix for this sub group just like every other subgroup and that we have to focus focus in on their access to the curriculum and their success within that curriculum so you know i just wanted to call out that one measure that we are fairly successful in through the hard work of our iep teams our our principals our special ed teachers because that doesn't happen without intentional supports and intentional plannings for doing so the hard work of debt mcadams and her team and so deb if there's something else that you would like to add that i've forgotten you're welcome to uh well and i think the i

097think the short answer is that our exceptional education students are at the heart as well of our equity equity role map so all right mrs pooperwalker i just make one quick request i understand federal uh definitions are subgroups but can we say student groups instead of subgroups sub the prefix sub means below and so if we could just say student groups as opposed to subgroups that's just a personal request julie noted thank you all right any other questions or statements all right thank you again mr hughes thank you dr battle and team we will now move on in the same vein of equity we're in that same vein of equity nope we will move on to consent agenda first and then we will talk about the equity resolution and then have a coveted leave for

098teachers discussion all right uh do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda as listed that's second no it's moved and segmented uh any discussion all in favor please raise your hand pass unanimously mrs tyler are you there i am i want to make sure i'm recording you okay thank you yes uh vote your vote on the consent agenda if you don't mind i'm sorry your vote on the consent agenda if you don't mind yes okay so pass thank you passes unanimously now we will move on to uh number two equity resolution mrs poopo walker i don't believe this is mine governance okay mrs tyler um you're so right my apology mrs tyler you are right yes thank you so this is a resolution for racial equity and advanced academics whereas according to the

099metropolitan national public schools mnps equity roadmap equity means every student receives what they need when they need it to develop their to their full academic and social potential regardless of their race nationality gender sexual orientation disability ethnicity language religion family background or family income and whereas the board of mnps supports a challenging curriculum and equitable access for advanced academics for all mnps students regardless of their race ethnicity or zip code across all grade levels and whereas an mnps core tenant is to identify and eliminate inequities this core tenant is central to guide mnps towards its signature initiative the equity roadmap and north star which is to establish mnps is the premier large school district in tennessee and beyond and whereas an nnps core value is excellence which embodies the belief that all students from high

100quality instruction and expectations each year in each subject and in each classroom and whereas the mps offers a range of advanced academic opportunities from gifted and talented education in pre-k elementary and middle school to early post-secondary opportunities or episodes in high school mnps has made progress by placing at least one gifted and talented teacher in every elementary and middle school and whereas nationwide black and latino students are successful in advanced academic opportunities when given the opportunity and whereas nationwide teacher race is the factor most associated with gifted assignment for black students so much so that black students are three times more likely to be assigned to gifted reading programs when previously taught by black teachers than when taught by non-black teachers and whereas there are undeniable disparities in educational opportunities and advanced academics for black

101and latino students in nnps and nationwide white students in mmps were four times as likely to be identified for encore in the 2021-22 school year compared to black students and white students were two times as likely to be enrolled in an advanced placement class compared to black students and whereas nationwide high schools that serve mostly black students offered many fewer episodes than racially diverse schools further racially diverse schools or schools where no single racial or ethnic group represents more than 50 percent of the school's total enrollment they tend to have the largest racial inequities in enrollment in ap courses data of mnps exo participation in fall 2021 mirrors this nationwide data and whereas dual enrollment courses have proved to be a successful method for mmps students to earn college credit and mnps has made progress

102in expanding access to these and other early post-secondary opportunities at historically underserved schools whereas facilitating deeper understanding of explicit and implicit bias against the brilliance of black and latino students requires appropriate communication professional development and a commitment from the board the district and all school teachers administrators and support staff and whereas many students benefit when they receive gifted and talented services at school it helps students develop motivation and problem-solving skills while also developing positive social and emotional skills further students from historically underserved groups who receive gifted and talented services at school benefit even more than their affluent classmates and whereas completing advanced academic courses helps prepare students for college and career success improves access to college scholarships and to college admissions and passing scores on exams reduces college costs and helps students graduate early therefore

103be it resolved that the metropolitan national board of education supports the setting of clear measurable goals for advancing access to and success in advanced academic opportunities for all racial groups and publicly measuring district progress toward those goals such as those outlined in the mmps equity roadmap and furthermore it supports creating and adopting a board policy on equity that includes advanced academics as well as equity in all aspects of the district's work [Music] all right do we have a motion to accept the resolution as read mrs tyler would you like something right quick it's okay mrs tyler would you like to make a motion to approve this resolution it's red yes i did i'm sorry no no worries still have a second second all right and it's been seconded by mrs tyler all right open it

104open for discussion it's elrod i am so sorry yes all right no discussion all in favor of this resolution please raise your hand passes unanimously thank you [Applause] thank you mrs tyler and tim i know the amount of work you all put into it so thank you thank you all right we will now move on to have a discussion around covet leave for teachers mrs tyler yes so um our number of teachers that are out judic remains high and unfortunately the state made that law that those teachers could not work remotely any longer and that means that our teachers who contract covet after labor day will have to use their sick ways even if they're feeling well enough to work with the cdc recommending a five-day quarantine after a positive test regardless of symptoms that

105sets up our teachers to use up to half of their sickness in one go even if they don't feel too sick to work and it becomes especially problematic when a covent positive teacher who feels fine is out of sick days then they'd have to actively lose money from their pay to pay for a sub for them to come into their room so i'm just a little worried that allowing this policy to come to sunset means that teachers are going to avoid testing for it because they don't want to have the quarantine and that will unintentionally have created lots more unchecked spread so have we thought about other ways to be creative around the perfectly that won't break the state wall that will allow us to meet those regulations but still take care of our teachers

106and don't put undue hardship on them and i have examples of thought that i had but some of our teachers who feel well enough to work complete virtual professional development during their quarantine and use a professional day for that instead of a sick day um or if they have to use a sick day could they do some sort of pd and stipend that would pay for the sub day just something that helps them not have to use everything up um there's i have a couple other ideas but i'd just love to hear your thoughts thank you for that mr tyler so are you looking to update the policy or are you looking to collaborate with dr babel and her team to see about any future recommendations so i i would love to collaborate with talked

107about because i understand that we are kind of we don't really have control over what the states said so i know that we have to let that particular code believe policy sunset after labor day the one that we have been using where teachers could work remotely if they felt well sure um but moving forward i would love to work with dr battle to find some sort of middle ground that helps support our teachers when they test positive and doesn't deplete all of their sick name if they don't sit sure for my understanding dr sevier these would be administrative policy is this something that the board has to sign off on or is this because we were once using a state issue or state mandated policy since that sun setting does the board have to step

108in to vote for something or can that be a conversation that mrs tyler has with dr battle and her team i think the answer is it depends on what comes out of that conversation and how that aligns with the mou that's in place and aligns with our current administrative procedures and if there's any conflict or if it needs to get elevated up to the board level to to render a decision on that okay but so for now it's not mandated that a policy has to be voted on by us to be enacted well a board level policy yes absolutely but not necessarily uh like a lower case policy sure an administrative policy that goes into it so okay i'm trying to make sure that i understand how to have it but my point in bringing

109it up is that we need to talk about it since we won't have another meeting before the existing one sunsets sure that's what i was trying to make sure that when you talk to dr battle is that something that we have to come back and vote on or can she develop can she update or develop a as you say a little p policy that it meant yes okay so dr battle it sounds like mrs tyler will be reaching out to you to talk about uh some suggestions or recommendations she might have or even questions that she has and if there's dr severe and metro legal if it's that we need to enact a policy can you find could you look to kind of find that out now what the parameters would need to be and

110while you're doing that either dr battle or mrs i think the policy is what i mean we have to abide by say law um when it comes to that i don't i don't think there is is there a request for another policy is the question so certainly any supersede the board level policy or administrative procedure would have to be in compliance with state law uh so i think it's i think miss tyler's asking i'm not going to speak for but i heard her to say that she's hoping to find something that is compliant with statute but is still able to provide some flexibility within the current parameters and guard rails that are in it ms tyler okay okay good good okay so thank you okay uh mrs masters yeah i just want to um talk

111about sort of what metrics we'd be looking at you know like at what point would we we think wow we we have so many teachers that are either you know having to use up their sick or vacation days um in order to quarantine even if they're asymptomatic with covid i mean the cdc does still recommend the five days um or at what point so many teachers are out actually sick with repeated cases of covet that they've used up all of their sick days i get i'm just wondering you know at what what sort of metrics would we need to see in order for us to want to come together and support dr battle in creating sort of a an innovative state complying policy to keep teachers from being in that position of having to to

112pay for additional leave out of their own pockets dr sevier you could help me here so with this board with this having being added as a board discussion we it was on the agenda though so that we could have this kind of discussion with more than just the board members that's what i'm asking since it was pulled from it wasn't on the written agenda but still that's what i'm saying since it was added can we have a discussion beyond just the board you can discuss anything you'd like you just can't take any kind of vote upon it gotcha so this is just a conversation to so that you can make your suggestions known to dr battle or you can speak with her after this to make your suggestions now mrs master i mean as per

113our march 8th vote we we will have a coveted update as a part of the agenda at every meeting moving forward so since it's on the agenda it's perfectly appropriate for us to have this discussion sure to have the discussion i was talking about the vote i want to make sure that i'm understanding what's being asked if someone wanted to make a motion they could because it's a part of dr sevilla metro legal if you don't better yet is there a motion for anything to happen or are we just making sure we're adding adding suggestions mrs tyler i'm motionline i don't have a motion for anything in particular to happen right now my concern is that we don't have anything in place yeah sure and so the just the point of the discussion the public

114discussion is for us to decide how can we support our better support our teachers after the sun sets because the state is refusing to do that so how can we step up and so i'm not giving an answer i'm hoping for this to be something we can talk about including dr battle and her team what can we do that's within the parameters of the state that helps support our teachers all right thank you miss tyler mrs bush dr battle is there anything that can be altered or adjusted in a policy that will allow this to be i know this is a state this is gonna be a law right um but is there anything else any type of room to add anything for the teachers that you can think of that uh any um anything

115no i don't have any recommendations at this time um what we have um looked at is the compliance with all of our other i mean you know we deal with flu we deal with um other illnesses as well and looking at you know how we respond to those those typically fall in the category of sick time of course i think we've been very supportive as a district as we've continued to navigate but i do not given the requirements by law and our own policy i don't have any recommendations at this time that i can shoot mrs elrod may i please get some clarification on what is our current policy after after the september uh sunsets what what is what's going to be reenacted so the covert policy itself is due to sunset after labor day

116correct and then what will happen after that our normal procedures got it and we've we've used that policy for two school years now two school years and a court half a quarter we're going to get into september so we've um been pretty supportive as far as covet leaves since since then but again the virtual option um as we're digging into it functionally will likely not be an option for us after labor day and i would also acknowledge that this also changed for our students so up until this school year our students were able to have excused absences or covet excuse absences [Music] mark president if they log the attendance and completion form and that is no longer option to our students either so they will also be in a situation where we're talking about chronic

117absenteeism i should flag this now it will have a great impact on our district's chronic absenteeism possibly um giving students um attendance i'll also note that it is not an automatic five days i think abigail can you hear us now now i can hear you okay it was packed in and out and then i couldn't hear anything at all sure so abigail i was just i was up dr battlefield talking about how our students no longer can be present but they get excused absences if they are yeah so they will not be marked present they were marcus whose absences which goes against chronic absenteeism um as well and so all of the policies are shifting at this point from virtual school flexibility to how we mark student attendance to our ability to teach virtually all

118of those areas are are shifting in a different direction [Music] go right here would we have do we have virtual professional development that's available for our teachers in general our teachers all have the option to use professional development days throughout the year they they have that option already there are likely some but limited virtual options currently but our teachers always have the ability to leverage their professional development days throughout the school year and is something that could be if the teacher says i don't want to use up my sick days i want to use one of my professional development days because i feel fine and i would sign up for this is there an amount of time yeah do they have to be approved yeah they're they're it just depends there are guiding kind of

119principles around all types of leads so our teachers are eligible for sickly professional development leave personal leave as well and if i'm not mistaken i mean they have to meet the definition of the leave but when it comes to professional development professional development if you're participating is professional development or pd day so our staff i mean for years have had access and the ability to leverage those days throughout the school year okay so if a teacher tests positive on monday and they know they're going to be out the whole week regardless of how they feel and they decide they want to do a virtual professional development pay for third stepping and friday is that something that could happen there's nothing that prohibits that as long as they meet the prerequisites for the specific trident and

120i'm looking at my team to make sure i describe that accurately yes so for as an example [Music] you wouldn't have a first grade teacher sign up for physics training just for this purpose right it has to be relevant to your current um role or assignment when i would want it to be relevant i mean if they if they're home and they feel fine why not have them learn something more that's i think it could be a win-win situation if that is if there is something available yeah that wouldn't require any change to our current administrative procedures our our staff has the access to throughout the school year to leverage um their specified leave days according to the policy and we are again offering still offering in person and some virtual trainings throughout the school

121year and so those options will still remain available i mean that there will be no cova check um as long as it's not in person for you to participate in those okay all right mrs elrod oh you've gotten your answer any other questions all right can you and i have a more in-depth conversation about this before labor day of course great all right that concludes that discussion we will now move on to announcements we'll start actually we'll start with you mrs tyler and move backwards um unfortunately i've been i've had covered myself for the first time in the whole pandemic so i am not as caught up on my area my uh district as i would like to be so i apologize for anything i may have missed um take care of yourselves wear masks

122thank you mrs tyler do you need a mama miss masters we can we'll go on to dr gentry okay i needed something dr gendry announcements all right mrs pupa walker so i won't don't want to cry so i'm just gonna say i love everybody we'll miss you i'll watch you on the television thank you mrs uh football walker mrs bush uh yes um so just wanted to say it's been an honor to serve on the school board and it's definitely been an honor to serve our students and teachers uh staff across this district so it's been a a great ride for me this is a chapter in my life in my book that is closing and i have a new chapter that will be opening so i won't say goodbye i'll say see you later

123to the board and dr battle good luck i'll be praying for you guys and um that's it i'm done with my announcements oh my goodness all right i'm out of here thank you thank you mrs bush mr little yep i think i'll add on from from jenny and fran to just say this has been an honor like learning the inside and outside game of public education having a son in the district growing up in this district and serving on the board has been a dream speaking at the the high school graduations have been heartwarming to see the future of our our city and our country walk across that stage and and start the next journey of their lives i appreciate the transparency the information and the dedication to grow i look at our growth and

124see we're going in the right direction i was having a conversation with someone in the audience earlier and i want to be a supporter not only of growth but the academic achievement and even as we get presented with the equity roadmap um that was a great presentation for me to hear before i leave out the door and so i thank you guys for the camaraderie the the jabs the the hugs the laughs yup all of that um and just look forward to the future of metro national public schools thank you thank you mr little mrs bush yes i will be remiss if i didn't say thank you to our parents they have been a champion for this city and they're our students and support for this this board so thank you to our parents i

125didn't want to i thought i missed you so i didn't want to make sure thank you again thank you mrs elrod thank you um first i'll go through what we have coming up on in this trick too so the overton pack is meeting on monday 8 29 they're meeting now in person and meeting at overton in the community room so again 8 29 is the first in person at overton pac meeting they are really excited to have representation from the entire cluster additionally at overton meet the teacher is tomorrow night from 5 to 6 30. and i also wanted to congratulate antioch and cain ridge as now being included in the bell tower in scholarships that's a really exciting increase i'm really proud of us at mmps for having this increase of having scholarships available

126to our students and so i'm glad that it's been expanded and i appreciate that from the internal work that's been done for that and of course from belmont as well um on the endnote uh because i'm not going to cry either jeanne i have really enjoyed getting to work with you john i know that we didn't know each other before and it's been such a privilege to work with you um i i know that you will still be here um as long as fred frantu and of course jeannie um so i have enjoyed working with you and i appreciate learning a lot from you and i've seen so much growth and so i just want to say thank you and we'll see you soon and same of course to both of you thank you vice

127chair elrod i will echo those same sentiments we hope that this is a small parting gift these roses these plaques to commemorate your time on this board please hang it at a prominent place because being a school board member is not for the fate of heart so thank you for your service to the city this community and to our students please continue to remain a friend of the district and help serve in different capacities but with that i am really excited to share the oh my goodness i am so sorry mrs masters you go right ahead i'm so sorry i thought you were gonna let me have the last word tonight i thought that was what was happening here i should have i did i assume you didn't forget me um okay i have things

128things to report on on august 12th the parent advisory council met with family engagement team to do some planning for the upcoming year of work so that work is very much continuing um more to come on that on august 17th our insurance trust meeting took place and i just i wanted to highlight a couple more awards that we got for the benefits we offer with mnps david hines our benefits director received a lifetime achievement award from the state and local government benefits association and that is a one person gets that each year so like literally he got it and it's because our benefits are awesome um and we also received a point of light award from klas research which is a health services organization for our work with vanderbilt on the maternity bundle and we

129have all of these amazing bundles where you can can have a baby for like i don't know like no money or like a dollar or something you can get like shoulder surgery or get your hip fixed or anyway we've got all these cool bundles um that you can take advantage of so i'm just i'm always proud to go to those meetings and hear about our good work to support our staff in that area um i also just want to say that like as part of the consent agenda we again i've got to say all our athletes can have insurance and can play sports now i mean that's like a really big deal there have been a handful of students who weren't eligible to play because of that and now they are so that's that's an

130action step around equity right there um also want to state that i keep checking in maybe driving some people crazy about when our staff are going to get their bus passes and the work is very much underway it is going to happen there's like a whole thing with ids and being making it into a bus pass and stuff it's happening it's happening and i'll be shouting about it um when that is finally taken care of i'm very excited that our staff are also going to have access to mta buses at no cost to them i also want to say that august 26 which is this friday we have a football tailgate party happening at stratford um very excited about that and it is a joint effort coordinated by the school principal but also with all

131of the cluster schools ali elementary schools middle schools so definitely plan on joining us this friday at 5 30 at stratford for pre-game tailgating and then also hunters lane high school thursday is going to have their open house academy showcase and annual title one meeting and you can find all of these events if you're on the social medias stratfor is really good about updating instagram and her lane's really good about facebook so that's just a little tip there and then i also want to just say thank you to our outgoing board members i have felt that i have had such open conversation with all of you throughout all of this even when we've disagreed on the board floor um i've just i have i've appreciated the relationships so much and it's it's hard it's it's

132like change is hard um but i know you know i've gained i've gained um you know not only a friend but a mentor in genie i feel very fortunate to have you in my life fran um the card i gave you says you are truly one of a kind and girl you are you are one in a million an entrepreneur with um just an amazing spirit for um doing good in your community john is this just amazing father and advocate and he's the one who like wants to get down in the nitty-gritty and talk to everyone about what's going on with their kid and and how you know he can just get at whatever the issues are for everyone just such a caring person and i um sometimes i've wanted to strangle all y'all at

133some point but i i'm just so appreciative of your service because at two years in i know this is hard it's hard it you know it's very rewarding work but it's difficult work and can be very overwhelming so um you know friends some of the way you vote like i'm okay for that to go away but that's what i love about it is we can vote differently and still care about one another okay i've gone on enough as that sharon's like shut it shut it you sure should i read a poem or something okay okay i'm done i should have unless you have the last word but i just have one quick update the pearl home uh cluster still moving forward with our community pto we had a bit of a snafu uh with a

134conversation with the state but we have found a fiduciary backbone who will help to support if you want to make donations to any of these pearl cones or 37208 schools who do not have ptos if the school does have a pto please continue to directly submit your donations there but a couple things between cockrelo elementary park avenue elementary um jones elementary john early middle school mckissick middle school and pearl cohn middle school we have a number of open houses coming up uh september 1 jones i'm sorry this friday there will be for first to third graders fatherhood fridays so if you are a man in the community who would like to spend the morning uh eating breakfast with and reading to to young people at jones we would love to have you we'll also be

135having a breakfast club that begins september 1 with our new principal dr wilson so please join us there later that evening on september 1st we'll have our open house and title 1 meeting from 5 to 6 30. um august 30th at park avenue elementary at 5 30 there will be a parent meeting you see this theme of making sure that we are continuing to engage our parents i love to see it the pearl cone cluster really is rocking at robert churchwell next thursday i'm sorry this thursday at 5 00 p.m they will have their open house for families and uh the principal will have a bagels with bonner event on september 6th so please visit there one thing that's really special about robert churchwell on september 9th they're having a robert churchwell day where they're

136actually having a living museum exhibit if you're familiar with a robert churchwell senior he was he's made history his historic advancements in media and members of his family who are still living will be there live to share stories about the church well name and their family so please visit that september 9th we are looking to do a number of things in our community i will continue to share updates please visit us with in a virtual link and very soon you'll be visiting our website so 37208 we will not continue to be known for what forbes and brookings once suggested we will soon be known as having the boldest brightest community members in the south and i can't wait so with that being said um our outgoing colleagues be there no further business this meeting is

137adjourned thank you this has been a service of the metro nashville network if you would like to see this presentation again or for more information on this and other programs visit nashville.gov [Music]