001i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you dr cox all right we will begin tonight's meeting uh with awards and recognitions dr battle it looks like we'll be discussing oh i'm sorry i am so sorry we need to adopt our agenda uh do we have any amendments to the agenda as it is listed i see mrs masters mrs tyler go ahead um i'd like to pull um a1d from the consent agenda for discussion okay that's the tdoe pilot plan correct all right and i'd like to pull um a one a c 7 stars nashville okay all right we'll pull those two from the consent agenda do we have any uh or do i
002have an uh a motion to accept the agenda as amended so i moved we have a second second all right all in favor please raise your hand it passes unanimously thank you dr battle it looks like we have a couple of national i'm sorry maybe several national merit scholarship finalists please take it away we sure do thank you chair bugs and good evening board members and those joining us in the audience tonight i'm excited to recognize and honor 16 amazing students from our graduating class of 2020. each of these high school seniors was recently named a finalist for the national merit scholarship a prestigious honor that just 7 500 students in the entire nation receive this each year that puts them in the top one percent of all seniors across the united states these students
003have proven themselves with their skills their accomplishments and their potential for success at academically rigorous colleges and universities this is a tremendous honor and i'm proud of each of you and so grateful for your families your teachers your principals and everyone else who has been with you every step of the way so i'm going to ask you to please come up to the podium as i call your name if you're able to be with us tonight um first i would like to recognize from hillwood high school rudra patel out with us for a few minutes up front get used to that from hume fog academic magnet high school arden anderson then aver bush eli burge emily gilmer anastasia kostova sharon lee jennifer lee elizabeth peebles and renee she for martin luther king junior academic magnet
004high school eric lutz alexander mayo laurel nichols julie queen and zion raymond and let's also recognize from nashville school of the arts maya underwood listen these students make us proud with their talent their dedication their diligence and their ambition let's give them let's stand to our feet and give them a round of applause and congratulate them national merit finalists if you can join us back here kind of on the stage with the respective board members and we would love to get a quick photo with you before you head out congratulations [Music] congratulations everybody yes this was even worse today [Applause] i mean she's young too so yeah yeah foster the melrose please give these young people another round of applause all right as they are exiting before we move on to the records report mrs
005football walker yeah i just wanted to take a point of personal privilege and apologize for my language uh last meeting not professional not something we should want to see from staff and students certainly not something i'm proud of just wanted to apologize everybody thanks well thank you for that dr i mean this is football walker all right and dr battle we will move to director's report we'll be discussing core tenant 3 creating supporting engaging rigorous and personalized learning experiences for all students thank you dr battle take it away thank you again madam chair we'll go ahead and jump in i'm going to start with just a quick update around where we are with covey cases in our schools the number of covey 19 cases in our schools has continued to decline since the board met
006last week with the latest report from last week showing 40 students tested positive and 15 staff which is close to our low point last semester and indicates that the situation has continued to improve and we're in a place where we can consider as we have previously around our universal mass requirements when students return after spring break this also coincides with new recommendations from the cdc showing it is safe to begin modifying universal mass requirements in schools when cases and hospitalization counts are lower we will continue to remind families and staff of these upcoming changes with an important message for everyone to continue to be kind courteous and considerate of others who might make different choices when it comes to masking let's continue to support one another as a reminder mask will still be encouraged and
007we'll have kn 95 mask available at all schools for students or staff who need them so we'll continue to support in that way now i wanted to take a few moments to give a brief overview of what we know so far about the state's proposed change to the current school funding system that is being called the tennessee investment and student achievement act or tisa the bep is a resource based funding formula with allocations where allocations are made for certain items like teachers paraprofessionals nurses transportation etcetera tisa is supposed to be a student-based budget formula with a base amount that is increased through weights around student or district characteristics here you'll see what the state of tennessee is projecting will be the m p s share of tsa funding in the fy 2324 school year if
008this goes into law there are a few factors to note one this does not include pre-k students which aren't funded through the bep or tisa the state is showing a base of 79 595 students among mmps traditional and charter schools achievement school district and charter commission economically disadvantaged is defined to define as those students who qualify for direct certification which will get to in greater detail in a few slides concentrated poverty represents students enrolled in a title 1 school small and sparse are not for us charter are those students in charter schools that funding will flow to them and unique learning needs 1 through 10 are not established in law but will be promulgated by rule the state has provided a crosswalk that was used for their projections which include existing spare codes 1 through
00910 english learners tiers one through three and characteristics of dyslexia which for projection purposes are assumed to be five percent of the student population for schools those are the weighted funding amounts there are also direct funding amounts which aren't subject to local match provisions which include 500 dollars for students in k3 500 for rising 4th graders who are below proficient on tcap 5 000 for students enrolled in cte programs and 185 dollars and 34 cents for juniors or seniors who haven't yet taken or have only taken one a.c.t exam this results in an overall funding allocation of 776.7 million on paper in tisa of which only 324.8 million comes from state dollars and the other 451.9 million comes from from our required local match the required local match only really comes into effect if that
010number exceeds the maintenance of effort which is the total amount of revenue a local government directs towards an lea currently we are more than 300 million dollars above the required local match in the maintenance of effort one aspect where this does matter is in terms of how we allocate funds to charter schools currently it is a total amount of local and state funding divided by the number of students with a per pupil amount given to each charter school under this new proposal the charter schools will receive allocations based on these tisa calculated funded amounts and then anything mmps gets from metro above the tisa funding amount is then given the charters based on that per pupil amount we don't yet know what the fiscal impact is going to be what fiscal impact is going to
011be related to this as the tdoe has or has been unable to provide a breakdown between mnps and charter schools for these various ulns and adm projections and we've we've requested those going further as to what this means for metro schools here is a breakdown of the state funding increase per pupil nashville will receive one of the lowest amounts per pupil based on these state projections with 159 more dollars excuse me 159 dollars more per student compared to a state average of one thousand ninety eight dollars per student this chart here shows the total amount of funding for a select number of districts along with a state and local funding split davidson county and sevier county which is home to dollywood and gatlinburg have a greater local match compared to state match here we see
012our state per pupil funding amounts under tisa mnps is just slightly above severe county in terms of funding but that doesn't include a special exemption that they get in state law that allows them to receive a grant above the normal bep or tisa amount so why does nashville lose out so much on state funding a good part of it has to do with fiscal capacity which equates to the share of the total local match that each county must shoulder mnps and davidson county taxpayers have been losing out because of this for several years and it will only get worse under tisa which they chose to use a fiscal capacity index that is least advantageous to mitchell nashville under this plan mnps would currently shoulder 17.99 of the local match under these projections we should all
013note that this is based on the current sieber fiscal capacity numbers and this might go up by 20-23-24 meaning nashville students could get even less of the state funding one of the aspects of concern we have relates to how the state calculates economically disadvantaged for a while now tennessee has used direct certification as the metric for economically disadvantaged which represents students whose families have applied for and received the various state and federal benefits mentioned on the slide with the bulk of them coming through snap a few issues with this metric is that the income limits are based on state income levels and do not necessarily reflect the higher cost of living in nashville compared to other surrounding counties meaning that families who are experiencing financial stress in a very real sense may may not be
014represented in the economically disadvantaged numbers it doesn't include those families who might qualify for free and reduced priced lunch but for various reasons are not able to apply for state or federal benefits those students still need the additional wraparound sel and academic supports but they will not be funded under this new formula this is part of a broader point which is that the funding formula goes to great lymphs to address rural poverty or challenges unique to those student populations or districts but doesn't doesn't do anything to address the higher cost of living in nashville and in fact we get penalized severely for the growth in real estate property values and our own sale taxes these three charts summarize the problem our student population is 8.28 percent of the state's total davidson county must shoulder 18
015percent of the entire local match requirement of the state our share of the new investment proposed by the state of tennessee is 1.2 percent based on the current projections or 12.6 million out of more than one billion dollars in the new state funding so in short this may be an investment plan for some districts throughout tennessee but it represents a continued divestment by the state from metro nashville public schools with added strings and red tape that won't necessarily result in better outcomes for our students there's no legal or policy reason for this to pass as is in the next few weeks and i hope lawmakers will take their time do their due diligence and get this right for all student students including those here in nashville now that was a lot but we're going to
016keep going more to unpack um i'd like to welcome up dr lisa norris who will kick off some updates about metro schools we imagine and will further justify why we've got to continue to advocate for the funding our students need our schools need our teachers need in order to continue to advance our work she's going to provide an update around metro schools where imagine work that has aligned to the support to support the academic and social emotional well-being of our students dr norris if you don't mind i will turn it over to you absolutely thank you so much dr battle and good evening board thank you for another opportunity to share about metro schools reimagined during my brief time with you i'll be returning us to the why of this work then you'll be hearing
017from my colleagues dr jamie lomax and dr matt nelson about some great progress that we've made around two of our uniform strategies when the district embarked on the metro schools reimagined journey we asked what types of systems are required to ensure that every mmps student has access to high quality instructional materials passionate innovative and highly effective teachers and safe and welcoming learning environments the answer then is the metro schools reimagine vision which is to reimagine the ways in which mnps provides equitable educational opportunities for all students through a synthesis of in-depth academic data dives community input and feedback and research about how to best support students in communities we always return to the vision as we collaborate with schools to assist them in fostering their unique school communities that are driven toward academic success and
018seo growth and development as a reminder i draw our attention to the reimagined pathway to success through reimagined we focus on each tier and its role in creating pathways to success for all students in elementary grade attention is given to setting the proper foundations for continuous academic success in sel development middle school experiences then center on continued student engagement and academic achievement high school students can expect that they are well prepared for post-secondary success because of the academic achievements and seo development that they received throughout their cluster experience we start with the end in mind by incorporating in the early grades ready graduate experiences that are strengthened through robust transition plans and supports through the reimagined uniform strategies we are setting high expectations for all students through establishing uniform strategies to be used across the
019district allowing school leaders and their teams to tailor these strategies for their school communities means that there will be consistency in the delivery of high quality teaching and engaging experiences from cluster to cluster quadrant to quadrant all in all this work represents how the district prioritizes the integration of sel and academics from planning to practice this constellation of uniform strategies creates the foundations necessary to ensure that all mmps students engage in advanced academics more especially they point us to the district's north star which is to establish mnps as the premier large school district in tennessee and beyond and i want to highlight and beyond the board has heard recent updates about the progress made with fifth grade transitions and sel enhanced supports and resources via advocacy centers in elementary schools this evening dr lomax will
020be sharing more about peace centers at the secondary tier another component of the sel enhanced supports and resources uniform strategy directly thereafter dr nelson will be discussing avid and how it is connected to post-secondary opportunities and transition supports we are beginning a district-wide initiative through a partnership with avid that will mean that more students will have access to systems that are designed to prepare them for their post-secondary lives whether it be the college or career track we know that the integration of sel and academics results in positive student outcomes through metro schools reimagine we are designing systems that support teachers students and leaders in this integration of hearts and minds whatever choices mmps students make they are well prepared to face the worlds of tomorrow because of the work that we do today and with
021that i'll transition to dr lomax thank you dr norris good evening board chair bugs members of the board and dr battle i'm dr jamie lomax executive director of student support services serving and supporting the social emotional learning team and behavior support work that we do in student support services i also have here with me seo director miss kyla kringle and also our restorative practices coordinator mr anthony hall i'm here to share more about the efforts of restorative practice assistance at the secondary level because of your continued support and belief that social emotional supports for all mnps students we've elevated a restorative approach to cultivating a strong culture in our middle schools and high schools through the implementation of restorative practices assistance and peace centers similar to the unified reimagined strategy for advocacy coaches and advocacy
022centers in place of all and all 72 of our elementary schools to help meet the immediate student needs in the areas of emotional dysregulation and behavior challenges the restorative practice assistance and peace centers will expand to the secondary level i must say that during the short tenure of our advocacy centers we've already seen over 6 000 individual students rendered for dysregulation for social emotional as well as behavior needs and over 1800 supports rendered for ranging from class-wide mindfulness small group lessons and individual student check-ins in fact transforming the culture and the climate in those elementary schools and definitely wanted to expand on that implementation again with our middle and high schools with peace centers so let's take a look at what is actually restorative practices just to ground the work restorative practices for us is
023a social science but here in mnps we have definitely created it to make sure that we are using it to strengthen our relationships restorative practices primary function is to strengthen relationships and to provide those structures and skills and tools to repair harm after an appropriate discipline response has been rendered but also to proactively work to prevent potential harm giving students a chance to engage in a participatory learning and decision making is vital to increasing independence and self-advocacy skills the primary functions of restorative practices are to provide and model a three-tiered approach rooted in prevention intervention and support and re-entry to administrators teachers and support staff also including training but not limited to strategies on how to facilitate effective conferencing using restorative circles as well as classroom management parent engagement mentoring implicit bias and transition services
024mnps focus outcomes clearly articulates the need for our students to be socially and emotionally prepared as well as academically the mnps restorative practices framework conceptualizes the integration of restorative practices and our scl5 competencies while providing those specific supports that aid in increasing student academics attendance and successful transitions our restorative practices framework is also grounded in our mnps core tenants providing the structure to the support that our core tenants are embedded in parents and teachers play a vital role in the restorative process providing the platform for us to support our schools through collaborative partnerships as a support hub ensuring students have successful transitions is ensuring all students have personalized supports and achieving success at every tier providing opportunities for students to be heard and self-advocate removed barriers to provide equitable experiences for all students mentoring as
025a key strategy of restorative practices allows all school staff to tap into their skill set in order to equip and empower all leaders at all levels take a look at restorative practice assistance and these are the individuals that carry the restorative practices practices philosophy and implementation of it so in order for us again to move forward with our restorative practices and expand peace centers we have looked at again the schools that we have restorative practice assistance in there's 11 middle schools currently 10 high schools giving us a total of 21 restorative practice assistance we are looking to expand to 38 which will again give all of our high schools and middle school a restorative practice assistant bringing us to a total of 59 total restorative practice assistance when we look at the work of restorative
026practice assistance we want to definitely highlight initially we always want to start with what is proactive the role is for them to be 80 percent preventative and again 20 percent restored we're also making sure that our restorative practice assistants provide the ongoing support and implementation of restorative practices throughout the school's culture they will also be vital in coordinating that assistance to our families to ensure that we are providing practices to improve students learning experiences and also impacting school behavior data they will also be very vital in coordinating the efforts and supports for our students to re-enter when returning from discipline and expulsions also serving as the head of facilitating restorative circles and conferences for students families and staff to repair harm when needed and designing supports and interventions in the peace centers how will we
027support our restorative practice assistance to ensure that they have everything they need in order to be successful we have outlined not limiting to certain focused areas we've listed them here and they are also part of our ongoing professional coaching and bi-weekly meetings that we will have with our restorative practice assistants and also giving them an opportunity to be able to network and analyze data together so let's take a look again at what happens in the peace centers peace centers they are integral to the positive behavior supports and they provide those structures and systems that students will need in order to be able to have those successful transitions and also reintegrate back into our stu our schools they also hold students accountable and provide those resources for students to be able to hold themselves accountable while
028also utilizing sel and academic tools our peace centers will serve as that stationary physical space for students to have a safe space to do this the staff and our peace centers will be able to utilize resources that we have again integrating sel and academics in order to number one assist them with those intervention strategies or prevention strategies and intervention strategies in order to make sure they're better equipped to bet to self-manage themselves so what exactly happens in a peace center the peace center will provide four types of support which falls in line with the model that i described earlier the three-tier model so giving students an opportunity to de-escalate providing that regulation activity whether that is again preventive or also post then giving them the opportunity to also be able to look at their actions
029and then come up with plans and supports in order to repair harm when needed the opportunity to connect and reflect with a caring adult and have that supportive dialogue and of course the goal to always have that successful re-entry back into the classroom here we have listed the investments needed for ongoing support for implementation of peace centers i would like to again just highlight the staffing needs as you could see restorative practice assistance as i referenced earlier are key and vital to the implementation of what happens in the peace center but what we do know is that we do have anticipated outcomes but we also will take a minute to look at some of the proven outcomes that we have from schools that actually already have an rpa so with our anticipated outcomes again aligning
030to our own focus outcomes we know that we want students to continue and to be able to develop that increasing independence and that is established through them learning how to advocate for themselves and developing those effective leadership skills we also know that students will become more personal as far as their maturity level and also emphasizing by doing that by emphasizing their accountability for actions we also want students to be able to have successful transitions including being able to denote academic and sel goals as part of their transitional plan and also last but not least increasing our students understanding of community including that personal and that social responsibility that it takes to be a part of the civil society in fact again making sure all of our students know that they are known so what we
031know about schools that have an rpa so far if you look at the data we actually have seen a decrease in behavior incidents with schools who have had restorative practice assistance for the last five years as i come to a close just really wanting to take a look again at our framework and understanding the expansion of rpas and peace centers will allow us to continue to provide the high level of support to ensure that every student is known i want to thank you in advance for your continued support and i will now pass it to dr matt nelson who will speak to you about the avid system a system that serves as a bridge to the integration of academics and sel thank you dr lomax chair bugs school board members dr battle community members staff
032i'm so pleased to be here this evening to talk to you about avid which stands for advancement via individual determination avid is a system designed to support our district's work preparing all students for college and career success although you may remember earlier references to avid in some of our previous discussions about advanced academics i'm pleased to dig in a little bit deeper this evening so that you have more detail about what avid is in our district and what our plans are for the future so the next few slides will give you a bit more detail about the avid college readiness system the avid college and career readiness framework is about making sure every student is on a path to success that is exactly what our district's mission to make every student known is all about
033we want to know every student as a unique individual and do everything we can to help every student meet his or her goals for the future at the foundation of this pyramid are the four core tenants that drive our district's work and keep us focused on what matters most we insist on rigor we break down barriers we align the work and we advocate for all students surrounding the pyramid you see the four avid domains instructions systems leadership and culture these domains are aligned directly to the m ps core tenants instruction connects to creating and supporting personalized learning experiences systems connects to transforming the central office to a support hub leadership of course connects to equipping and empowering leaders culture connects to identifying and eliminating inequities avid's mission is to close the opportunity gap by preparing
034all students for all tiers for college readiness and success in a global society avid is a system of student and teacher support students learn skills for both academics as well as their social and emotional needs avid support students who may need a helping hand or encouragement so that they can take the very most rigorous courses available to them in middle school and beyond and avid helps students become independent self-regulated thinkers so they can accelerate in their individualized learning path avid helps students see what's possible and how they can pursue their goals and achieve their dreams it provides student supports and targeted strategies for the critical areas of writing inquiry collaboration organization and reading this is referred to as wikor in avid lingo ultimately avid enables students to find their voice and advocate for themselves in
035terms of setting ambitious academic goals and enrolling in early post-secondary opportunities all students in middle or high schools can benefit from the avid system when these things become ingrained into the school community some middle and high school students choose to participate in an avid elective course this is where they work directly with an avid teacher and their peers in a classroom setting students in the avid elective take a deep dive into some of the key components of the avid system and have additional systems of support to ensure they are successful at the center of that avid college and career readiness framework triangle we see student agency this is what connects all of those seo competencies that you see listed in that last bullet avid is a comprehensive k-12 system and mnps currently has some elementary
036some middle schools and some high schools that have implemented avid some schools have had have had avid for quite a while and several schools recently implemented avid this school year this evening we want to focus our attention on avid and middle schools we believe that leveraging esser dollars to support and expand avid as a priority in our middle schools will provide those students an equitable and systematic approach to building college and career culture as you can see this year we have six existing avid middle schools and five middle schools in their first year of implementation next year in addition to those 11 we have seven more middle schools that will implement avid and the remaining 12 middle schools will embark on a year of planning by the 23-24 school year all 30 mnps middle schools
037will have implemented avid schools are eager to move in this direction they were given the opportunity to set their own timeline for implementation schools were even given the option to not implement although no school went that route for our implementing schools the avid summer institute gives educators a chance to learn more about the avid system through three full days of professional learning educators will participate in one of over 30 strands or communities of practice the learning will be directly connected to each person's role in addition to the avid summer institute implementing schools are supported through district and school-based strategies each avid school has an identified avid site team this includes the principal school counselor the avid coordinator and other educators my office provides regular opportunities for avid coordinators to collaborate and continue learning our goal
038is for all schools to meet the requirements and expectations that are defined by the avid center through the certification process schools that exceed expectations in these requirements can ultimately ultimately become an avid site of distinction or even an avid national demonstration school avid is not one more thing for schools to do rather avid can be the lens through which all things function well in schools it is a systematic approach to support excellent teaching and learning it outlines clear and consistent expectations we should set for all students identifies the best practices and differentiated professional learning for educators and ensures that there is a clear focus on preparing students for college and career success when all mnps middle schools become aligned in this way we expect to see positive outcomes this will raise the bar all of
039us know that college isn't just for the kids in the most advanced classes avid expands our belief that all students can and will be college and career ready avid supports the guaranteed personalized and applied experiences we want for all students we want every student at every tier to start thinking in terms of a post-secondary plan and what that might include avid center's college enrollment and persistent report shows us that when viewed nationally avid students from all demographic groups are enrolling in four-year institutions at higher rates than their national counterparts our mmps avid seniors are following suit looking at the last five years our avid seniors have been on pace with or have exceeded these national averages that you see here and this was in face of the national pandemic and natural disasters that have impacted
040our local area avid center's report also shows a consistent increase in middle school avid students who enroll in integrated math 1 or other honors courses and high school credit bearing courses i'd be pleased to talk more about my perception about why avid will help the district achieve our goals but it's important for you to understand the impact avid has on our students we've invited three avid students from mcgavock high school to speak to you very briefly this evening i'd like to invite all three of them up here to speak for a minute or two about their experience in avid lorena shaw luisa argeta villario and kendall derricks are all 11th grade avid students who started avid in sixth grade at dupont hadley middle school with miss ginny presen i will turn it over to the
041students now and miss lorena shaw will be our first speaker kendall derricks will be our first speaker good evening school board my name is kendall derricks i am in 11th grade and i have been an avid since sixth grade in my experience i have enjoyed avid ever since i have had the opportunity to join i was able to learn many things throughout avid and i have also been able to connect with people including other students and my teachers a little more easily since then i have learned i have learned many organization and communication communication skills during middle school i would not ask too many questions when i was not able to figure something out and i would shut down and not ask for help after staying with avid i have been able to communicate more
042freely with my teachers after high school i plan to go to college in middle school miss preston took her 8th grade avid class on a college tour trip to alabama one of the colleges that stood out to me was the university of alabama a m because of their dance and psychology majors the main colleges i would like to attend are emory college university of florida a m university of alabama a m and university of southern texas and many more i would like to become a neonatal nurse and if that does not work i would like to become a psychologist i concluded these careers because i also i like helping people and also i love babies i have always been surrounded by babies and toddlers since i grew up in my grandparents family business of the
043love child care enrichment center because of avid i know i will meet my career goals due to the perseverance i have gained throughout middle and high school years i want to thank all of my avid teachers mr hicks miss dunkib and mrs president thank you for your time [Applause] good evening my name is luisa arguetta and i'm a student at mcgavock high school i've had the opportunity to be part of the avid family for six years thanks to miss person my teacher at dupont hadley before avid i was a abc student coming from a spanish household i've had to depend on myself to answer my school work questions as much as my parents wanted to help their little to no english did not allow them to understand my critical thinking once i was introduced to
044the avid world i had an opportunity to problem solve with my peers and tutorials my tutorial groups helped me answer the questions that i had the questions that i couldn't answer at home were answered in my avid classroom as my sixth grade year progressed i was able to achieve honor roll i applied the skills that avid advocated their students to follow i wrote in my agenda and organized my work by class daily before i knew it i was a principal's list student my middle school years were the foundation that helped me succeed in high school avid encouraged me to advance into rigorous classes once i became a freshman although ace exit and dual enrollment may be challenging avid has helped me stay confident and striving to the student that i that i am today i
045would like to thank miss preston miss duncan ms vinion and mr hicks thank you good evening my name is lorena shaw and i've been in advance since sixth grade at dupont highly i had the opportunity to join avid in sixth grade and it has pushed me to become a better to become better ever since one way avid has really supported me through my middle school and high school transition was that it gave me the opportunity to build relationships with my classmates we did things like team building activities helping each other with critical thinking questions and learning about my choices after high school something i have learned throughout my time in avid is that you will always have a pla you will always have to plan ahead in avid we participate in tutorials these help us
046work together to problem solve in our other classes one time i thought i was going to be able to finish my tutorial request form in class but no miss preston was taking them up at the door this helped me because it taught me that you can always you can't always do stuff at the last minute you have to get a planner and write the stuff that's due that day after high school i intend to go to college to be a physical therapist and play basketball but also get involved in as much stuff as i can like maybe more leadership programs this dream started back in middle school we would look up different colleges we were interested in and actually see what we want to do in life i always wanted to be a physical therapist
047because i like helping people get better i'm always in many leadership programs now thanks to the confidence that was built in my middle school years and i feel like my goal in life is to be a leader i know i will meet this goal because i have learned so much with the avid program it has helped me become a better reader writer and now i can understand things in a better way it has also helped me build friendships and relationships that i am very thankful for i also want to thank mr hicks miss preston ms dunkep and ms vinion for helping me become the student i desire to be there's more power in that than anything i can say so thank you students for being here this evening thank you um and know that we
048are all here rooting for your success no matter what path you take i want to recognize luisa's parents who are also joining us tonight miss luisa velario and mr santos argueta thank you for coming [Applause] in who is the mcgavock high school avid coordinator and instructional coach she's been an avid educator since 2008. i hope you're able to see how avid supports our district's goals and the influence it can have on our students the key takeaways on this slide reinforce our shared commitment to what matters most making sure every student is known and supported on a path towards success after they graduate as always on behalf of my colleagues dr norris dr lomax we appreciate the opportunity to share with you and celebrate the strong programs and systems we have in place to support the
049integration of social and emotional learning and academics we ask for your continued to support through advocacy funding and maintaining high expectations so that all mmps students are supported challenged engaged and able to thrive at this time i'll turn it back over to dr battle thank you dr nelson for the report a huge thank you to all of our leaders for sharing the information shared tonight under our metro schools we imagine always great to hear from our young leaders i'm going to hear their paths and aspirations after they graduate from high school always get to see our parents our teachers everyone who plays a role in supporting our students vice chair elrod i will turn it over to you now thank you i will start with miss pupa walker thanks i have questions about a couple
050of pieces first i want to thank you for the update on tisa this is very very helpful um i a couple of questions about the restorative practices work i know this has been building for some time i'd love to ask just a couple of specific questions um is youth courts considered part of this model um dr max would you like to address that question please yes thank you for your question yes youth courts is part of this model they're part of this model how many schools are in youth court i mean how many yeah how many people have used of course so i'm going to defer that question to mr anthony hall and dr springer for the number so um as you all know we have expanded youth court this year and we are excited
051to say that we are in all of our zoned high schools i'm in some of our middle schools at least two or three of our middle schools so excited about that and to hear them speak on it and um just to see the transformation and leadership of students and an alternative to suspensions is absolutely encouraging okay um i i want to talk for a minute about the um sort of justice assistants that are hired um so i know that that is a job that is um can be complex so what what are what are the sort of background what are the traits what are we looking for when we hire these folks what kind of background do we expect them to have coming in absolutely we we want our um restorative practices assistants who join
052metro national public schools to have a background and some type of social work working with youth about empowerment and um and a background in restorative practices um and so that is what we are expecting for those who will join our team okay i should have a couple more questions about that so the goal is to grow to 59. so i'm curious what the supervision ratio is of supervisor to these assistants because that requires a lot of modeling supervision coaching i'm just curious what that i'm curious as we grow this number how many of those folks are gonna are you growing the support team to help them be successful as well absolutely those um supervisory supports are um included within our contracted services um and so it's part of the package and they will click close
053work closely with our sel department to ensure alignment with our practices currently and to provide coaching and professional learning to ensure sustainability and capacity building and then my last question about this is do these assistants work with students returning from alcs who's managing that piece absolutely one nice thing about this is i i wish i well i know dr bout i don't wish i could go back to be a principal today but if i could i would that's my that was my dream job and i loved it but imagine having this level of supports across all schools standardizing this uh support with restorative practices advocacy centers uh community achieves we can go on and on it really sets a school leader up to free them up to lead and to free your teachers up to
054teach because that end school support is right in-house on demand and available to schools and having that school-based person who's there for the re-entry that's right students who might be otherwise in an alc yes portfolio program absolutely and so um we haven't omitted our alternative learning centers in fact when we were thinking about uh placements we wanted to make sure that they had restorative practices assistance supports on the front end so they were some of the first to be allocated uh to our alternative learning centers and it is critical to have that one person as dr battle mentioned to support our students as they transition from setting to setting so that we can reduce that recidivism rate that we see sometimes in our alcs chef thank you for indulging me a couple of more questions
055but one quick comment i want to give a shout out to anthony hall longtime friend he is a hero in this district and has helped countless children uh in our district so big applause for anthony hall a couple of questions about avid um who are the teachers that teach avid is there a certification required is this just a one-off class for a teacher who's got three other preps i'm trying to figure out who the people are that teach that class right so there's a job description and an avid teaching position that's available to school for schools to use if they have the avid system so it is a elective course in middle schools it usually falls within the related arts rotation ideally the avid teacher would teach avid throughout the day but sometimes they teach
056another content in addition okay and how are kids identified for avid so there's a avid has identification criteria that are expected to be used there is a process through which students apply to as you saw avid is called advancement via individual determination so it's not about forcing kids into into anything or to do something they don't want to do it's really them stepping forward and saying i want to make this commitment and i will go through the process to fill out the answer the questions and do the interview and then that's how they're selected and if i can add we're actually on a journey the long-term vision here is to be an avid information implementation district so that students even outside of the avid elective have exposure to these opportunities these skills particularly the wicker
057skills to help build their knowledge and skills necessary to access advanced placement courses early post-secondary opportunities and to strengthen their path to transition once they graduate from high school so that is the ultimate goal we're starting this expansion in the middle school space and we talked a bit about that um at the retreat and we'll we'll begin to expand up and down to our elementary schools to make sure that eventually it is a structure that every mmps student benefits from thank you so much go out of here miss masters i have a few things ranging across the i'll try i'll try not to go too crazy um first since we were just talking about it on the restorative practices assistance i'm wondering are these to be mmps employees are these going to be contracted through
058like a larger entity [Music] and what will the compensation be for one of those positions yes thank you for your question this will be a contracted services position we knew that given the expansion that we wanted to do this school year with 59 it would be fiscally responsible to ensure that that's through contractor services right now and so compensation will be comparable to our advocacy center coaches um so um and and we're talking specifically to the expansion we currently have restorative practice assistants who are mmps employees but we're talking specifically to the expansion as a part of leveraging and planning around our esther funds which i know this team is fully aware of so again the being fiscally responsible around expanding and getting the services where we need them this is also why you see
059them in continuity of federally funded initiatives in our budget because we want to make make sure that we have a plan post pandemic to continue on with our restorative practice assistance okay that makes sense um okay thank you i think that you actually answered my second question as you were answering that question um i also i want to go back to our coved case in schools report um and since no action has yet been taken on the motion we passed on february 22nd i moved to amend the motion previously adopted to now read a move to adopt dr battle's recommendation to move to masks recommended on march 11th with the stipulation that beginning on march 22nd the board will review the most current cdc covet 19 county check tool community levels and recommended prevention steps
060for davidson county tennessee at each scheduled board meeting and have the option of adjusting mass guidelines according to those recommendations uh mr whitaker would you mind for those watching this is metro legal who is reviewing policy to make sure that this is feasible it is allowed under robert's rules as because it is it was a motion upon which there has not yet been any action taken and i am simply moving to amend that motion previously adopted i would think that you could handle this by just taking it up as a point of discussion on the next meeting for the board rather than having to amend anything right now i'm going to have to basically you just told me i'm going to have to consult something really quick i'll be right back mrs masters with that
061in mind would you mind holding the motion so complete discussion all right so we haven't uh moved or had it seconded so we are appropriately moving that to the end of this discussion all right guard head actually we have miss tyler mrs elrod and then anjali um i had a couple questions about our restorative practices i as a previous elementary school teacher i'm i really like restorative practices i think it works very well especially at that level but i have heard from a lot of high school level teachers who are concerned that if the students don't buy into the program if they don't participate to actually try to have a restorative conference if they don't want to be part of creating a more equitable or more peaceful situation that there's not much else that can
062be done and it feels like students that don't want to be part of the program kind of ruin it for everybody else if that makes sense so i just wanted to ask what are we doing to support our high school students and our high school teachers where they feel like if our students are not participating in this program appropriately what's the secondary thing that we can do to support the teachers so that that behavior doesn't spiral dr vettel you know i'm going to speak for from a few different hats um as director of schools but also as a previous high school principal who implemented restorative practices and first i want to just give credit too because this is this is a model that we're also adapting from something that's heavily effective at the high school
063level which is around our teaming process that our teachers do extremely well within building those positive relationships with our students it's also important that we're clear about what restorative practices is and what it what it isn't restorative practices does not negate the student parent handbook we have with students and in some cases depending on the severity of the incident it could be the response but in some cases it's paired with the expectations and the accountability we have for student outcomes and so it's important to to think about this this doesn't mean that there's no expectations and accountability for students it actually forces us as adults to engage and connect with students in a way to better understand what is happening what's going on and how we can um re-engage them in their learning community and
064so that's what that effort is about it also really echoes the high school model of the effective teaming because this is what high school teachers have done for for 15 years now with our academies of nashville model and so you know i'm not sure of any specific examples in in that regard it is again with a low severity incident an opportunity to talk through the situation um and restore and i think those are pretty well managed with regards to that in other cases when we've required a student reentry meeting this just gives us the tools and the protocols to facilitate those meetings to engage the student to repair harm so students can move forward but it does not negate the enforcement of our student parent handbook i have not heard that it does negate it
065i just have heard that the focus on it has led to out-of-control behavior and i don't know if that's because maybe admin thinks that that should be the only way to do it i don't i don't know i just know that i'm being told by high school teachers that discipline and even some medical middle school teachers that discipline has been a real problem and i know some of that's coming back from the pandemic not a lot of structure at home you coming back and you got to kind of fit your way back into this is the expectation of the classroom and it might be very different from what your expectation is at home or in your community and um so i have some concerns about some behavioral issues at school i do not think that
066we should stop that i don't think that this is i think it is great program i don't want to denigrate it but i also want to make sure that when it's not doing everything it needs to be doing that we're still supporting our teachers and making sure that they're able to actually do their job of teaching instead of spending all the time disciplining a student and then having to start all over again within the same lesson the next class because one student went off rails for everybody and i mean as i would if you feel comfortable talking about it i don't want to put either of you on the spot but i don't know if you have seen anything in your schools as high school students where um restorative practices has been especially helpful or
067where you feel like maybe there has been some we are coming back from a unstructured time and that has played out in the classroom in a way that is not desirable um but again don't want to put you on the spot so don't you don't have to answer that but but i think student voice is important too not just i'm hearing from teachers that there are some kinks in the system that are not working as well as they should um but i'd like to hear from the students are you actually getting to learn are you having the ability to have a full class without being interrupted by behavior issues angelique do you feel comfortable answering okay go ahead okay um i guess this could segway a little of what i was going to say um
068prior i just wanted to um give a shout out to um the three juniors who spoke from mcgavick i know they just left but um as someone said student voice is really significant especially when it comes to restorative practices because like most things that is implemented by the board or any adult or teacher students live through it and just hearing the positives and negatives of anything of that nature is um significant and impactful um especially when making decisions such as these um i personally did not get the opportunity to join an avid class but i know a lot of the underclassmen at my school have had the opportunity to um my brother actually did it his freshman year so this was during the pandemic and it was primarily online um as for just misbehaving i
069i don't necessarily think that there's a connection between restorative practice practices being put in place and that being the problem or issue i think it does have to do with students just readjusting to coming back and being in a big room with students in person i know in some of my ap classes similar students who didn't get an opportunity to take avid um there there are some struggle struggles with um just staying focused or maybe um being well behaved and that's coming from maybe senior ap classes so i feel like it's not necessarily just on avid or particular classes like i think it's scattered throughout the board no matter if it's standard avid ap classes i think all students are kind of struggling right now in terms of behavior and just staying focused and trying
070to learn yeah thank you is tyler um okay well then i guess my next question is um i think then clearly we need to continue to use this but also what else can we do because this is and i hate this word but it's unprecedented we are coming back from a time where students have been away from school for so long and that has never happened in our generation and our parents generation that's just not been something we've had to deal with before there is no road map for how to do this successfully so what can we do to support our teachers and our other students who are trying to to learn when there is a discipline issue and i would love to find out how can we better support them all right you want
071to move to mrs masters or were you i mean uh to mrs elrod or were you okay mrs elrod then anjali and then dr gentry thank you um so in response to the restorative practice assistance and the expansion for 2022-2023 is that dependent on the funding of the 3.4 million dollars or is that going to happen no matter if we receive that funding or not in our continuity continuation of services dr battle thank you dr springer thank you so for this upcoming school year there have been funds allocated through our esser allocations and relief funds that will be able to ensure implementation for this school year after that we always are thinking ahead and looking at sustainability and that is what dr battle presented today in her budget uh presentation i just wanted to make
072sure absolutely and of course um excuse me all my allergies um let's see we have i'm so sorry i'm having to scoot through all my little notes with um avid we um where's that question there's a long list of proven outcomes that are listed here um are we following these currently it sounds like that we are because i think there was a mention of the last five years our seniors were at the same national outcome are we currently monitoring these and will we continue to do so or are there specific data points we're going to be monitoring to prove its effectiveness if we implement this dr nelson sure avid the avid system has a robust data collection system that is used and so we have modeled the data that avid collects in our data warehouse
073so that we can track it internally but then also turn it over to our schools so that they can meet that requirement by submitting the data to the avid center so we do track all of that data internally and then it is reported to avid so that um it's reported to their national reporting as well okay thank you and then we had so much great information shared um so the the information uh about the new tisa funding was very helpful um i really appreciated uh slide eight nope i mean that's a good slide too i know whoever made that i don't want to dismiss your work slide six i think that that is a very telling and of course i i like graphs so um i appreciate that this is alarming information not only because
074of just the decrease of per pupil funding but also just the lack of transparency on whether what are what are considered unique needs and the ed scores and all those other things besides us as a board and our teams that we have as leadership and of course whatever lobbying support that we currently have what other partnerships or community needs do we have to help advocate and educate legislators about the inequities seen here dr battle so what other partnerships are we leveraging yes so um um could you come on up sean i'll just say on the front end of this response we just got this a week ago we have all day all evening all weekend been trying to dig in and get the details of this and the details have not all been there and
075so that's been kind of our first outreach is can we get additional information to help us put into into context what this means for um mnps but i'll also let sean share some of the other yeah just uh i mean so this is not just a metro schools issue this is a metro government issue so we've been working closely with their lobbying government relations team to try to make sure that they have the information they need to go to talk to legislators we've been working with class toss has put out some lists of suggestions some of which align to ours related to this legislation and then just talking to the media and then putting out the information wherever we can so that people understand exactly the impact of this specifically on nashville but broader to
076that so it's just a continual effort to talk about it and you know i'm sure we'll get plenty of questions after tonight too i'm sure we will um i appreciate the amount of work that went into explaining this um to our general public and to us as a board and keeping us updated on this information as i know we've received several emails as well um i should it would i think it's important that we also keep in mind that this has been really hard for leadership whether board or within mmps as mentioned to keep us up to date as that information has been kept quite confidential and not easily shared among different districts and so there's been a lot of information not shared with us and so i know it's hard for us to have
077that react and to have a reactionary response i i know that we have had a lot of discussion recently with different advocates within our communities and i would strongly encourage them to be advised of this information and know how it affects their students whether they are a student that would be considered economically disadvantaged or have a unique learning need it will still affect their student as of course the entire per pupil amount is decreasing and it will have long generational effects for us i also would like to just say well i have the board floor that there are community partnerships that like to claim that they're partners yet sometimes their actions are different than they should be like today with the chamber and they need to instead focus on supporting us and providing additional supports
078services and additional funding that's right we need not critical friends but partners thank you and really quickly for anyone that may feel lost on what we see what we're referring to as tisa that's the tennessee investment in school achievement that is state-level legislation feel free to google tsa it talks about the state level funding that our students will receive in comparison to what they have received in the past the modification to the bep and actually this goes to you dr gentry i'm sorry anjali did you have go ahead dr gentry i just want to just revisit the comment about restorative practices and schools still having discipline problems this is nothing to do with covet guys when we remember you all remember when we changed the codes so that we weren't suspending elementary school kids principals
079had the same concerns that i got a kid i don't know what to do with i mean we've had i had principals in my district like i don't care what you all do that kid got to go so it's it's not about that and so i just want us to be very careful that we have and i'm going to say one-offs i'm not trying to minimize the magnitude of any emails you may have gotten but we've got a standardized practice and we can't keep i don't know how to figure this out or how to say this and not sound insensitive but to charge the system now with how do i figure out for this principal who can't control their kids even though i have invested significant funds and resources into a nationally recognized restorative practices
080process so i don't know what the answer is miss tyler i don't think it's not restorative practices i think it's maybe helping principals understand better how to leverage those resources helping principals understand and we've talked about this for years that our whole classroom management vibe in the district has is on a steady decline so i don't know what's happening with our teacher prep programs but we don't have the teachers that you remember the teachers i remember the teachers my daughters remember in their ability to manage classrooms and set that level of expectations not saying we don't have kids that don't have behavior challenges and have home life circumstances that make it difficult for them to conform right we talk about american male students who you're still still asking to sit in rows and be still
081anybody who ever raised a boy oh none but i give all of y'all when i just see parents with their sons i'm just like how do you do it and they're not even in a classroom they're doing i mean it's it's a lot it's a lot so snatch them up snatch them up yeah so i i would just like you know i just want to make sure that we don't start at and we start at let's be clear on what we have are we leveraging what we have appropriately because the and comes back to us with you're giving us something else to have to use and do so i would ask that it's more let's revisit in making sure we're socializing is it a resource issue is it that we're not completely i mean i
082know we're talking about additional funding and sustaining the funding that we have maybe that's where it is i just want us to be cautious that we don't take the one-offs or the 10-offs in a district this size 100 is a one-off right we don't take the one-offs and let that lead us to a whole new strategy an additional strategy implant and if i can just um add to that because the effort here is to standardize having the support in schools across the district and we've i mean this is a grand opportunity for us to have the on the ground support you know being a previous teacher myself being able to to connect students immediately to resources support someone to help reengage them back in the classroom is is a grand opportunity but we've not got
083to the standardization yet which this effort helps push us towards all right thank you oh so it looks like doc i'm sorry mrs tyler mrs masters then mrs bush and i want to make it clear that i support restorative justice that is not what i was saying and i think you get that so definitely i think maybe more training on the student handbook and steps in the handbook for how to handle behavior issues needs to happen across the district because the student handbook is more than just restorative justice because we need to have all the tools available to us so let's make sure that we have the system that we have like dr gentry was saying and we use it and in order to use it we have to know what it is and we
084have to be well trained in it so um that's a suggestion sure thank you mrs tyler mrs masters yeah i was just thinking you know i guess it's a question and a thought about engaging principles um in a really meaningful way like i'm sure principals have been involved with like the decision-making around this and moving forward with it but you know i'm also just thinking about how different each school is and each school culture is um across the district and so i'm thinking has there been an effort to really meaningfully engage not just a sampling of principles but every principle with sort of the the practices around this absolutely i mean this is ongoing they're professional educators and and they understand this work and so i just want to note that despite our ability to
085invest to scale across the district with restorative practice assistance until now we've had a number of leaders and school communities invest in restorative practice assistance so they despite waiting on our investment they've made the informed decision that this is the support that they need and as we're looking to scale up we're very intentional and strategic about where those supports go and in some cases how we can have multiple supports on the school level based upon the needs based upon the size of the school so on and so forth and so i think it's a testament that our school teams have invested in this space despite our ability to take to scale a resource that we know has proven to be impactful to our students all right mrs bush uh yes um i i just want
086to make a comment um so i'm one of those boy moms i got five of them five boys and um a program like avid my sons participate in and they went off to college um but what i don't want us to do is put our african-american boys in a box okay no you're not doing that what i see with our boys is that we need to come up with more programs we need to come up with more interest we need to come up with things that they love and like right we have to kind of meet them where they are too and it's just not for african-american boys but we do see a high prevalence of our boys that do have that needs more support so what did my boys do i was involved right
087as parents right some of our students may not get that support but let me tell you what happens with support then when they come into the schoolhouse is when they can get that support when they go home they can't help it so what we have to do is we have to take a deep dive in and figure out how we're going to continue to do things at school on school levels levels after school programs things like that that can really kind of keep our students more engaged yes during this pandemic it was hard transitioning back into the school was hard but we have to figure out how we're going to meet them where they are and figure out how we're going to continue to invest i'm not sure with the esther funds and things like
088that but what we have to figure out to do is how we're going to figure out what's what's going to happen in the school and if we can do that that's where you change things because i was there so my my aspirations what happened at home when i came into the schoolhouse it was different and so i had a lot more opportunities a lot more support and became very very successful so that's how we start to engage our students is that we have to find the money we have to make sure that we are investing inside the schools avid is a wonderful program my question is i know we have it it's going towards more into the middle schools how many high schools do we have have it i know we have it over at
089hillsboro we have several high schools dr nelson do you have that exact number we have nine currently nine and how are we expanding in the high school level i know we're doing the middle school are we still expanding through the high school um that would be the ultimate goal oh dr battle no uh you're right on track that's the ultimate goal and we're looking as i mentioned to i'm starting our middle schools we've been having lots of conversations about our transformational models i'm in our middle schools and because we have some strong structures in place and many of our high schools we're going to start with middle school and then grow up through high school and also expand our reach into elementary so we have several elementary schools that are coming on this year as
090well it's i mean the schools are fired up about their avid implementation and so we have some despite the our attempt to pilot this into our middle schools who are raising their hand and saying we want to go ahead and join this year as well and we're trying to support as many schools as possible but we're also trying to be efficient effective making sure it's manageable in our district supports as we onboard our school sites to the avid structure and i'm really impressed about the elementary level i'm so excited about elementary because it starts at that level right it starts early so i was really excited to hear that it is trickling back into elementary of course middle and then of course high but we have to be more um in in intentional making sure
091that we capture those young ones because i'm all about college and career ready a.c.t all the way and we have to continue to still do more and i'm going to just keep you know kind of piggyback of talking about making sure we can put more programs into schools it's going to directly impact those students that are having the issues with restorative practice that we can add those different programs because it's a lot and i agree with you that we are starting to hear a lot more of an uh uptick when it comes to behavior so we're just trying to do whatever we can to support our teachers and what they're going through on a daily basis because it is a lot it is a lot and i've heard it too so but i do want
092to make sure that i'm clear that we need to still do more in our schools to make sure that we can have more programs that can actually directly impact the restorative just uh restorative practices and things like that because it's where that's where it works that's how it works so just wanted to make that comment avid's doing a great job my boys have done great and they didn't have another choice because they have a mama who's a little bit crazy so but they didn't have another they didn't have a choice but programs like that helped them programs like avid they went to college because you guys provided something that helped them and i was really impressed with the program and very very excited about it going to the elementary level also so good work thank
093you mrs bush mrs tyler and then we'll move on to mr whitaker in the motion okay um just a couple questions about avid in general um so i understand that it is an opt-in elective not everybody takes it if we're expanding it to all of the schools will it be continue to be an elective where people are not required to take it but that the students who want to take it are the ones who get to do it dr battle yes dr nelson thank you yes that's correct so the avid system is such that students express that determination and make the commitment and that's what we want to see continue that's part of the certification process so we wouldn't stray from that and the basic principles are um from what i understand kind of so
094helping them organize and figure out how to keep themselves on track is that correct is it kind of more of a like a study skills kind of i'm figuring out how to be my best self by not forgetting things and making sure that i'm on track and is that is that a accurate way to do it or is that not i don't you go ahead and i i can help that's certainly part of it so wikor is foundational organization which you reference is part of wikor but it's also the the writing to learn reading to learn inquiry based asking the right questions um all of that is part of the avid student experience it's as much about building those skills that students need so that they can be successful as about the culture that's created
095in that group of students with their teachers that spills out beyond the avid classroom as dr battle mentioned and we would love to see all avid schools really capitalize on avid school-wide which is where all students can benefit but some students participate in that avid elective um and did you want to add no good good job and then um i guess if we oh i was gonna ask about it um if we are looking at um just a lot of the things that you're listing sound like things that classroom teachers do anyway um a lot of them most of them that are really really great do it all the time um so i just are mnps teachers avid teachers yes and so we we have we they are mnps teachers that are then trained on
096the program and implement it and it's not a program it's a system um by which you use to it's your lens on strengthening the four domains that we've talked about instruction culture leadership and instruction um but yes these the teachers who are trained will be our very own avid trained um teachers so make sure we're not outsourcing anything else and then i guess just the last um comment i have to say about it is i think i mean if it's a program that is working and students feel like they are making gains and we're seeing the numbers you know bear that out then clearly that is something we need to celebrate and we need to continue on i also just want to put in a plug for if we are hiring more teachers and have
097smaller class sizes these same things will be able to happen more readily so always at the front of our minds thank you mrs tyler and i will say i tutored in an avid class at maplewood my first year on the school board and i definitely misunderstood what abbott was but seeing them it was the same class size as the other class sizes but it was like a separate period of time when these students could as a cohort work with each other to develop some of the soft skills that maybe they just hadn't had a chance to develop yet that helped to support them be even more successful so yes i saw these different the usage of just different tools around organization around writing around thought processes critical thinking and then they had peers that were
098trained in the same processes so that they just it was interesting to see them work across content areas during one period of time every other day and i think it's just interesting to hear them describe themselves through the avid lens because i asked one student what made avid different from anything else he said well i was never a kid that thought i could be in an ap class but now i'm going to apply to be in an ap class and i was like oh so no one told you that you were smart you realize you were smart got an avid and it supported your growth so it's just another another lens to see that through but to pull on what mrs bush said i think this is a great call to the community that you
099know continue to support our students in the school building i say all the time you know i graduated from mlk and i earned a physics degree partly because yes i had the introduction at mlk but there were so many community organizations so many summer camps that were free of charge that i was able to attend engineering camps stem camps that that supported my growth and development we haven't seen that happen as much recently with the shift in funding and away from education nationally at the state level and so we've got to continue to advocate for that i was just going to echo the same thing because you know we know all the right phrases and narratives we want around education if we truly believe all that we're talking about up here we need your advocacy
100we need the community rallying with us around the investments that our state is currently projecting and proposing will go into our systems you cannot do that without investment so we can talk about all of these great structures and programs but the investments have to be there to make sure that we're able to actually maximize them so come with us come with us on this journey and that's the perfect segue because we will now shift into public participation i am so sorry i keep moving too quickly mr whitaker we have a motion that has been proposed we want to make sure that we close the loop and understand what is most appropriate here sure and miss mcmasters is correct she can make a motion to amend something that's been previously adopted because no action has been
101taken on that previous motion i would suggest to the board that this the substance of miss mcmaster's motion could be accomplished by adding it as a discussion point at the march 22nd meeting uh i believe that that could be a little more efficient it would not need a motion a second or the discussion um the debate that would be required this evening i'm sorry but i'm just really not comfortable with the attorney commenting on my motion i mean that's not something that we normally do i'm fine with with you clarifying robert's rules but i i put a lot of thought into the motion that i made i have reasons for for that motion [Music] if anyone would like to second the motion we can move into the discussion portion of it i just wanted to
102make sure that i heard from the attorney to understand what just if there's anything that we have not considered that we need to make sure we close the loop on but i appreciate your your opinion on how this could be handled i have very particular reasons for wanting to bring this motion forward and in the interest of wanting to follow robert's rules of order i am attempting to not enter into that discussion portion of my reasoning until i see whether or not there's even a second for the motion all right but we can do i just want to make sure that that it's fine and it sounds like you have agreed that this is an appropriate motion that we can it's an appropriate motion that would require a second that would be open to debate
103okay thank you mr whitaker all right mrs masters would you mind restating your motion and then we can open the voice floor i move to adopt dr battle's recommendation to move to masks recommended on march 11th with the stipulation that beginning on march 22nd the board will review the most current cdc covenanting county check tool community levels and recommended prevention steps for davidson county tennessee at each scheduled board meeting and have the option of adjusting mass guidelines according to those recommendations all right do we have a second on the floor a second all right we have a motion in a second we will open for discussion if you'd allow me to man do i do i i just wanted to point out that when we had this discussion two weeks ago we did not yet
104have this cdc tool this is the first time that the cdc has released guidance specific to the county level that specifically mentions masks and whether or not they are deemed an appropriate action for an entire county and specifically mentions schools k through 12 schools within that so i saw this as an opportunity for us to answer to a lot of the feedback we've been getting from parents around what metrics we are using to make the determinations around our covert related safety protocols so my intention with this motion was to make it very clear exactly what guidance we will be following moving forward and to give us the opportunity to do what dr battle's already been doing which is look at some metrics as a part of the director's report at every single meeting and adjust
105as needed this is my attempt to defer to known experts in this area and then put this issue to bed all right any further questions or discussion yes i have a couple of simple questions of clarification um hopefully these will be simple i want to make these very specific questions under the original motion would students be wearing masks on the 21st so masks would be optional on the 21st yes encourage but optional with the current proposed amendment are we suggesting that they wear the masks on the 21st and the 22nd and then revisit no but we're suggesting that we would revisit on the 22nd and depending on the numbers they'd have to put them back on correct i'm making it a part of the motion that we will review those metrics at every board meeting
106the review of those metrics may result in no motion and no action but i'm just i'm building that requirement into it rather than us potentially facing a situation where we notice oh crap that cdc metric is really going up and then we have to sort of start from scratch again i'm just building the process in right because if i understood what i heard at the meeting last time the comment i reserved the right to revisit was an addendum comment but not a part of the original the actual wording of of the motion has passed was i moved to adopt dr battle's recommendation to move to masks recommended on march 11th then later it was said correct part of her report yeah she said she would be checking the numbers and so we while we all
107always had the understanding that we could review those metrics we then on i think it was march 3rd the cdc released this tool so you know just attempting to formalize that process all right dr battle yeah i think it's important for us to um kind of unpack the tool um and what's included in that um mr said i'm going to ask you to come up um because we've we've talked about this and done a deep dive into the tool itself and it's important for us to be mindful of what's in the tool and the measures we've used and not used in the past to inform these decisions well and i will say that i mean i would be open to adjusting the amendment to the motion my attempt here is to bake in a very
108distinct and consistent process that's metrics based so the cdc recommendations are based on sort of two factors one is your your number of cases for 100 000 residents and the number of hospital admissions per 100 000 residents the challenge with that second metric is that davidson county receives a lot of patients from outside of outside of davidson county and so those numbers are not necessarily reflective of our davidson county population but rather the hospital counts within that so we reached out to the to the health department to try to understand what the metrics were like a week and a half ago and that was the issue that they raised is that they cannot unpack right now the out of county residents that are coming into our hospitals and just another point just just you know
109the hospitalization was never a metric we used as a whether it came to reopening or whether it came to mass it was always related to things like the positivity rate or the the number of new cases etc transmission rates so just just just something to be thinking about as you're voting on this motion is that those those numbers may not be reflective of the community transmission in davidson county all right this is elrod oh sorry but mrs master's after mrs elrod um to that point currently according to that map we would be red and not supposed to world not now we're medium we're now medium but when we originally made that decision and then it was notified later in that week it was read at that time yeah yeah yes but we had known that
110that was coming my i want to make sure i understand kind of is your motion stating that we would have to change our decision based upon that or that it's only up for consideration yeah real really i'm just attempting to offer to again to bake into the motion itself that review process and i will say you know to the to the thing about the cdc you know clearly no metric is perfect and no matter what metric we choose to use um we're going to get pushback on that and i want to be clear that my desire in amending this motion is about us just choosing a metric choosing a metric that the public can understand is the is what we are looking at and what we're basing our decisions upon not we're never going to
111get complete agreement on that but i think for us to continue coming to the board floor every two weeks and sort of putting out a lot of you know anecdotal information or attempting to extract from the many communications we get from families what their desire is or you know trying on our own to figure out well the cdc says this but our school-based cases are that i mean the reality is there's not a public health official here in nashville who has raised their hand and said i'll be the one mnps and i'll tell you exactly what you should do um so we're making those decisions ourselves and i am attempting to attach that decision-making process moving forward because this is endemic this is something we will be living with forever and i am attempting to
112attach a specific metric to that okay we've got mrs tyler and then mrs elrod and then mrs bush um um i i like having a metric that we can look so tyler can you pull your yeah i said i like having the idea of a metric that we can look at and use to help guide us but i don't want to tie ourselves to it for a lot of reasons the least of which is that some of it has nothing to do with the actual community spread is there a way we could miss masters include school positivity rate as well and then because you already are giving us that information we're already looking at it we're seeing it go down across the board and the concern is what is the spread in our schools that
113is the concern that's what we need to be looking at i also think you know in the past we've seen that schools mirror community spread um and then so i think it's important to have both um to but i don't want to tie ourselves just to cdc i think that it's that it's a good tool to use i don't have any problem including it in our thought processes moving forward i just think that we should also you know bring it back home and and make it very specific to mnps as well which is what dr battle has already been doing but if there's a way we could include the cdc data as well as what we're seeing in our schools and then i think it's also important to note that ms masters says that the
114option is there she is not requiring us to discuss this every time we have a board meeting she's not requiring us to make a new motion and vote on it at every board meeting none of us want that so i think this is just being responsive to if we were able to add into that school data this would be responsive to what's happening in our schools and what's happening in our community and that's important to me and i think it's important to to other people who truly care about what what the science is saying and showing us mrs elrod then mrs bush and then ebenezer currently with the motion as it is is there anything in our way of already are we already allowed to make adjustments on that decision yes yes and are we
115also going to still be following the metrics that are available to us that we have been following as as they have been available to us so we as a boy i was going to say we as a board follow you know we can make the motion at any point to make mask optional to mandate them we dr battle does recommend at every i mean she does make um recommendations at each board meeting or at the very least shows us metrics yes i was just going to say if the question is will we continue to update the board yes we'll continue to make that um a part of the update provided every two weeks okay um and of course the board reserves the right at any one time to make a motion to change course all
116right so there's already a plan in place to continue to monitor the metrics that we have been following as they've been available to us though understandably at times those metrics have changed um and we're still going to receive those updates every two weeks as a board in the director's report as we currently are that's right okay i um i mean i am a fan for transparent metrics as i was exceptionally vocal last year about as having transparent metrics however it required of our team and the health department to work together to create a whole new metric because it had such a moving point to it my concern is like uh abigail excuse me miss tyler um that if we single if we single out one individual metric like the cdc it will it's not a
117clear or full picture and that is why we currently have so many different metrics though i understand it's frustrating to people um and we have had to try to explain that for two years um i do believe that's probably still the best practice as it is an evolving and ongoing issue that we're going to have to face maybe always so i do think that it's a concern my concern is that if we're only focusing on the cdc recommendations instead of these additional metro health recommendations that we've had to do in the past and other things that it will it'll cause more concern or or problematic and it also feels like we're trying to legislate something um that we're already doing if we're already getting these feed this are we're already getting this feedback and we're
118able to make those changes as needed and i just want to clarify as long as we legally have the ability to vary could shift um at any point in time okay uh mrs bush and then even easier and then mrs masters okay um i'm really shocked i thought we kind of tackled this last four meeting i really thought we were done with this um i thought dr battle had already made her um recommendation i think we adopted it i think we voted on it the last floor meeting and for some reason we're back again so here we go cdc i don't know how many times they have publicly nationally said that they haven't gotten it right okay that they have they've made errors they have frustrated the american people because things keep going back and
119forth okay just do and that's what they do right that's what scientists do yeah so what happens is i think the the most exciting part of listening to dr schaffner a couple of days ago and he said we're going to have to end pandemic and we have to live through it and we have to adjust because we have to move forward over the over our in our country there every day a state is dropping their mass mandate every day no no i know i know i just want to kind of make come back with some points because we have to be really really um careful at this point we have put it out in the atmosphere what our plans are parents have expectations of what the plans are are students having expectations of what the
120plans are going to be our teachers everybody knows what the plan is going to be so we haven't changed anything or we haven't shift if there's something that's going to be heightened back up then that's something that we'll look at at that time right now people are fatigued we have to move forward so that we cannot keep having these kind of distractions and we have to put learning first we have to put that back on the table because this has become a total distraction we need to stay focused our students count on us to do that we have so much learning loss right now we have so many kids that can't read and write and we keep focusing on a mask we got to stop it and this has become an embarrassment this is becoming
121it's just it's just too much and we have to stay focused we have a plan we have a plan so we need to just stop kind of unraveling things that we really need to focus more on our student learning that's what we have to focus on i am completely concerned about the amount of learning loss that our students are faced with i am completely concerned about the amount of uh lack of support that our students are not getting we got to focus we have to steer back into the right direction and we have to be able to adjust we can't do this all the time guys we just can't do it we have a plan and we need to stick to it and all of this keep going back and forth it's just frustrating for
122the parents when are we going to start having their support again when when are they going to start really trusting us again to allow them to be parents allow them to have the conversation with their doctors allow them allow those conversations to happen without the board always trying to interfere can't do it we have to stop it we have to if the numbers go back up we address them we've already talked about it we did it last time we did it so now let's get to the point that numbers are way down and i'm sure they're going to continue to go down right so we want to make sure that our kids as a transitioning again this is a this should be a family decision we got it optional okay they're coming up let them
123come back with some sense of normalcy so there's no more distractions with this we gotta move forward and i am so tired of this because we're not staying focused and this right here it should be your option and and that's what i want us to understand because i want and that's the reason why they keep doing this to us the legislatures keep doing this because they're watching us down here do this and not stay focused and it is alone it's a law it's already a law but what's going to happen is that they're going to continue to have those sessions and and it's true they're going to keep having the sessions and they're going to keep adjusting to according to what they see down here on the local level that's reason why we have to
124stay focused on our own education this right here shouldn't even be a part of that anymore we're moving forward and that's what we should be focused on i'm gonna tell you keep it up we keep this up we need to stay focused and stay on our priorities and that is educating our students and supporting our teachers so that they can do the job that they need to do and that is to teach and not to be flip-flopping back and forth with this mask thank you may i respond to that since then even these are directed mrs madison go right ahead ebenezer thank you um so there are a lot of points that are made i think i would like to respond to but the first one that that stood out to me was that sure
125we've been talking about masks for a while but i'm not tired about i'm not tired of talking about them because it's about safety i know angela isn't tired of talking about masks either what i do know is that students are tired of feeling like they're unsafe and the best way to alleviate that feeling of um unsafety is by legislating this idea that we'll be review revisiting um data to make sure that you know the decisions that you guys make is gonna be the best one for them and although that it's obvious that you know dr battle will give us our her data every two weeks in our director's report it's still good for the students to see that there's something in the books that show that we will be keeping up with the data for
126them no matter how redundant it sounds and also to the fact that there's some talks about us about us not focusing on learning enough and how we keep flip-flopping back to masks well in order to transition to that era of learning we have to make sure that we're we have the safety part you know put down and safety is reliant on us making decisions that are based on good data and that good data is something that's available to us now because of this this tool that we receive from the cdc so i urge all board members to look at the morality of students to think about how students are going to feel much safer now because they know you're making decisions based on tools and based on data that's given to us by experts thank
127you mrs masters and then dr gentry i i just want to point out that i am doing exactly what we are charged with doing i'm responding to my constituents um many of whom have told me they are not comfortable coming to our public comment knots because they are still masking in their family and they are aware that there are people here not masking one of them says i have very little faith in the number of families who will send their kids to school with masks if we encourage rather than require them my child will go to school wearing a mask but i worry she will be teased and even bullied by her classmates i am just stating the other side of a lot of what we've been hearing at public comment i am in no
128way trying to go back on what we decided two weeks ago as a matter of fact i'm incredibly relieved that that cdc metric shows us at medium and i now feel comfortable with us going to masks strongly encouraged i am simply saying let's add more information about exactly what we're going to do moving forward so that the public understands what metrics we're using and what data we're using to make these decisions there is nothing in this motion that says we'll immediately change if the metrics change there's nothing in this motion saying we have to do something brand new every two weeks i'm simply taking a portion of the discussion from two weeks ago and adding it into the motion as because i felt like that was an important thing to do in the interest of
129a transparency b stating very clearly for for the record what metrics we are using even if that means this motion needs to be adjusted and c responding to the concerns of my constituents in district three and they far far those who are deeply concerned about what metrics we're using and about safety measures moving forward far outweigh the communications i received from my constituents asking that we stop masking in schools thank you mrs masters dr gentry i had to call the question all right we have a motion on the floor uh could you restate it for uh for a vote i moved to adopt dr battle's recommendation to move to masks recommended on march 11 with the stipulation that beginning on march 22nd the board will review the most current cdc coven 19 county check tool
130community levels and recommended prevention steps for davidson county tennessee at each scheduled board meeting and have the option of adjusting math guidelines according to those recommendations and with the permission of the board i would even amend the amendment to say in addition to school metrics okay well the motion has been i mean the this is because i had questions but the question has been called so we have to vote as it's stated uh all in favor please raise your hand two four all right uh all opposed all right motion passes thank you mrs masters we will accept dr battle's recommendation revisit on the 22nd yeah that's it all right thank y'all very much we will now move on to public participation uh the board will hear from those persons who have requested to appear at
131this board meeting in the interest of time speakers are requested to limit remarks to three minutes or less we recently had this is the appropriate way to address the school board make your suggestions or even air your frustrations we recently had an adult reach out to one of our to reach out to and harass one of our student board members that is not appropriate please only address adult board members with that being said we will begin public participation with honey harris jennifer claxton and adrian figueroa hello ladies and gentlemen of the board my superintendent my chair my board members and y'all don't have to worry about it i'm a mama baby i'm not going to harass anybody else's baby we appreciate it but that was a great segue i love coming down here get so
132much information and especially about these bonuses it went on my list i had to hand write this when y'all doing these bonuses for these hard to staff schools and these retention bonuses y'all remember i come to work every day i better be included somehow and these bonuses we're a team you make them dollars a team too and that takes me to my speech chronic low pay for support staff i really i will say again i feel that this board has my best interest at heart and having my best interest at heart you have my son's best interest at heart and he's here he's hiding he sleep chronic low pay 80 percent of our support staff represented by my union at ciu earn less than 40 thousand dollars a year and you all know how much
133it costs to live in davidson county thirty five percent of support staff represented by seiu earn less than thirty thousand a year teachers received an average raise of 69 hundred dollars in 2021 and that was a 50 million dollar investment and i'm happy for my teachers because i see them struggling y'all want to talk about restorative practices those are kids i end up with y'all need to take care of me for real cause y'all need me the teacher pay was much needed and addressed the long-standing issues now i want you all to address my issues long standing and i'm still standing 20 plus years and it's impacted because of the cost of living cost of living is going up inflation's going up my health care is going up but my pay is not going up
134the way it should be there's no reason why support staff should not be honored and revered the same way you honor and reveal your teachers to do it is selfish to do it is a stab in the back and to do it is to hurt your children because we have children that we bring to work and we support all children so if you don't honor us the way you honor the teachers you just throw that team out the window because again you are not doing what you say you're going to do i have to work two and three jobs and y'all see i dragged my little man everywhere i go i told you he here he texted me it's my time but i'm just saying a flat raise thank you and show me the same
135love make me the highest paid support staff thank you miss honey all right jennifer claxton [Applause] jennifer claxton adrian figueroa kelly phillips good evening board my name is cindy gardner and i'm speaking on behalf of adrian battle um so let's try that again adriana [Laughter] was that parents became aware what children were learning in school and became more active in their education after many hours of research it was discovered that there are inappropriate books in our school libraries many of these books contain explicit sexual obscene and pornographic material that is not only inappropriate for children it's also against the law to make it available to children and yet these books remain in public schools i'm not making any accusations tonight because you like many of the parents possibly are not aware of these books or
136in our libraries what i'm asking is that after making you aware you will earnestly strive to get them out i brought this book looking for alaska tonight and i want to read some excerpts from it i just i've just never given one she answered her little voice dripping with seductiveness it was so brace and i thought it would explode no i said i never have think it would be fun do i uh yeah i mean you don't have to i think i want to laura unbutton my pants and pull my boxers down a little and pulled out my pee wow she said what she looked up at me but didn't move her face nanometers away from my pee it's weird what do you mean weird just big i guess i could live with that kind
137of weird and then she wrapped her hand around it and put it in her mouth she lay there stuck still with my pee in her mouth and i sat there waiting and then she took it out of her mouth and looked at me quizzically should i do something i don't know i said everything i'd learned from watching porn with alaska suddenly exited my brain that was nice i don't know if there's something else i mean you didn't uh maybe we should ask alaska she walked into the bathroom returned with a tube of crest toothpaste laura and i went back to her room where i did exactly what alaska told her to do and i did exactly what alaska said i would do which was die a hundred of static deaths my fist clenched my body's
138shaking it was my first oh with the girl and it goes on i'm here not only asking you to remove this book and other obscene books like it but to request that we find a way to stop these books from getting into schools in the first place this obscenity has no place in an educational setting i'm asking that each of you who were elected to ask in the best interest of the children stand up for them and protect them from this filth protect them by finding out what porn and obscenity is available to them in our schools then act to remove these books please join us in the fight to protect our children thank you and thank you friends for your comments [Applause] kelly phillips good evening board members i know it's been a long
139little bit so i will use my three minutes and get out but uh thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak could you just stand next to my screen what the mic speaking to the mic oh sorry no better almost two years ago to the day we were told two weeks to flatten the curve it's been two years our kids have carried the weight of kovad for two years i assume that most of us when we leave here do not live ninety percent of our lives in these masks how many of you are here tonight regardless of what it's about how many of you here tonight are here because you want your voice heard how many doesn't matter what the issue is whether we agree or not you want a voice i'm addressing who
140i want to address right now they can hear me as well this is my three minutes thank you our kids have been the ones that carried this the learning loss the emotional loss and let's just talk about the adults in the room that want to interrupt people speaking if you represent a teacher's position is that what we teach our children in schools now it's not what i teach my children our children deserve a board that listens parents deserve a voice whether you agree with what i'd stand for or not i stand for people having a voice i stand for people having respect for people having a voice and not being rude when they're trying to speak because as people we deserve respect whether you're a parent a student a staff member like miss honey a
141support staff listen to us because we are watching parents are watching and just because my opinion differs from yours does not make mine less valuable and it doesn't make the parent sitting next to you have a less important opinion it was the lack of voice that parents and students have had during all of this that made me want to run for school board i am a candidate in district four i represent a group of parents who honestly have been afraid to say anything guess what we're not afraid anymore there are students getting told that after spring break when they don't wear a mask that they won't get help from teachers because they aren't wearing masks i will speak to you all individually on that matter thank you james clexton [Applause] nicole bynum dave rosenberg council
142member dave rosenberg [Applause] good evening that's good great to see y'all thank you um for doing what you do and um i know that you all do it out of passion but 300 f and dollars every two weeks isn't enough change that councilman how do you change it so i want to talk about a school but i really just don't even know what i want to say there are a lot of you on the board and in the audience that i fought alongside on educational matters and they're people that i've battled against on on them including on the board but i've never doubted that if a child reached out in need that every single one of you would be there or if that a teacher was truly hurting that every one of you would i
143never doubted that every single one of you would be there to reach out but there's a large number of teachers who are hurting right now they're scared for their physical safety at this particular school there's a feeling that they're not being heard and that nobody cares that the district doesn't care um and i can't tell them that they're wrong because whether that's the reality or not that's the perception because they're not given being given the opportunity to speak in a way where they are safe um they're being told that the only way that they can express concern about really serious things including a really serious assault that happened last week is to file a formal complaint or to send a text message that identifies them or even an email from their personal email which will
144identify them and they're afraid of doing that for their jobs when you have a vindictive principle and an a district that doesn't appear to care to be responsive then of course they don't want to do that these folks need to be given the opportunity to speak in a safe and anonymous way about things that are going on because there are people that are hurting in the schools they shouldn't be reaching out to me like i mean i love public schools i love my kids school i love the concept of public education the promise of public education but i'm not the guy that they should feel like they have to reach out to because they don't trust the district to do anything to help them um so i'll email you separately just some of the things
145that have been going on it's been shared with people in in the central office um some of these really serious incidents and really just heart-wrenching quotes from parents and teachers about incidents that they've observed in the situations that they're they're going under but i just ask you all to please step up and help over there and not turn to blind eye anymore thank you so much you all have a good night thank you councilman rosenberg laura dietrich caroline hipps anthony shelton my name is anthony chelten i'm the father of a visually impaired kindergartner in district 3. last month i appeared here to ask why my questions about masked policies or effect that were affecting my daughter had not been answered finally that evening i began to receive responses about my concerns the responses for far
146from what i had expected though initially i was told i had missed emails from the board which is strange because i do know how to check my email then i was asked if my daughter had an iep a completely irrelevant question based on our situation then the school principal was copied on the email again he knew everything about our situation but was powerless that's the reason i addressed you guys in the first place in the days falling what i did was dared to email and ask the board simple questions about how decisions were being made so then my wife and i could make medical decisions for our daughter during that exchange i was told i was dishonest unkind and i was disrespectful by a board member on all these messages most of the board were
147copied as well as dr battle nobody said anything as if to condone that's an appropriate way to speak to a parent then imagine my surprise when two weeks ago my situation was brought up again and we were blamed publicly for not following through on a mask accommodation form so you're checking up on us now and publicly discussing medical decisions about my family without our consent is okay it is not you cross the line amen just like you crossed the line using profanity in the last meeting thank you for your apology as noted and accepted when you crossed the line while calling parents the same parents were behaving in a racist manner and then you issued veil threats against these parents at the conclusion of the meeting all while all while lecturing us on the decorum
148right okay so i'm done finished addressing the board parents and staff listen to me i need to talk to you quit worrying about what your friends think about you and start worrying about what your kids think about you our children have sacrificed enough while the rest of our community has moved on you are allowed to question those who make decisions parents you are allowed to be an active participant in your child's education and their health care without fear of intimidation and most importantly i hope everybody was paying attention to the student representatives i heard a lot of fear and guilt for potentially bringing home an illness to family members if mass were taken away that is a huge problem if we are removing mass requirements we need to be having conversations now with students about
149why it's safe i'm only hearing that from miss bush it seems all the other board members enjoy grandstanding about how masks keep us safe then vote right down the line to remove the masks thank you mr chilton sarah sagan [Applause] i just got here 10 seconds i was at home repairing a broken washing machine there's a broken washing machine on my staircase while i'm listening to this board meeting and i left it there and i came right here to address very calculated you knew that those of us who've been advocating for mask optional were not here you could view it so you brought it up well so i got my car and i drove here and this is what i'd like to say if we're watching the data we could have taken masks off in
150november when cases were 36 we could have taken masks off or that was october november it was about the same but at that point there was the county building mandate that we were hiding behind then it was the court case that we were hiding behind and the goal posts have continued to move and i will tell you this anxiety is a symptom of uncertainty so when we tell our kids you're going mask optional and they know they have that choice and they know that nationwide it's been heralded as a valuable option because one way masking which hasn't really been discussed with high quality masks is a safe way to protect those who are medically vulnerable and for those who just don't feel okay yet and that's fine that's fine so one way masking is optional
151or is part of the one the mask optional move and now we're saying oh but maybe and so that anxiety is still there because it's all very very uncertain and when you want to talk about safety i'd like to just bring up when my tipping point was when there was a credible threat seemingly credible threat at overton high school student safety students going into the cafeteria people there with weapons ready to figure out what was going on and i have a ninth grader and the ninth graders are feeling very nervous because they've never been in this situation before there might be a school shooter people are passing notes around on their phones and somebody said comment about how it's really hard to tell what the other students intentions were because everybody was wearing a mask
152and that was the day i said the gloves come off you talk about student safety i want my kid to be able to see a supportive face in school if he thinks there's there's a credible shooter so that is that was my breaking point i didn't practice what i was going to say here tonight because i had things i needed to tend to every other time i've tried to come up very measured and very unemotional because i know that that is the language of the intellectuals but tonight i feel very emotional i'm glad that masks are coming off on the 21st and i'd just like to say that for those who are wanting to run against any of our incumbents other than fran bush there's a group of passionate intelligent parents keeping track of the
153data for two years they'll be happy to help you get elected thank you abe killer maybe abby keller um my name is abby kelleher i have three children in three different metro schools i had a speech planned but i'm gonna pivot um the decision you guys made about masks last week was the right one and i appreciate y'all for doing that you're never gonna make any everybody happy one-way masking is a possibility our own fda says that there are key differences between masks there are face coverings meant to provide filtration surgical masks meant to provide a fluid barrier and lastly respirators which are meant to provide respiratory protection for the wearer that's the kn 95 the decision you made to make masks optional and to provide those to those that are unsecure about it was
154the right decision stick with it and to miss bush's point i just pulled this up on my phone i'm reading from y'all's website i just listened to these great i have a son in avid i didn't even come here thinking about that what i mean we have these great we i just heard an hour of great things about education with things we can do for our children the mission of mnps i'm reading it right here to deliver a great public education to every student every day go back to the mission the media the public you guys the 10 of you all sitting here or however many there are refocus on your mission is to educate don't worry about what everybody's saying focus on education listen to your folks that are up here talking about avid
155and all the other things that we have the ability to do you made the right decision last week or two weeks ago let's stick with it please thank you for your time and i really do appreciate your volunteer work i've been on a board like this myself so i really do appreciate it thank you thank you miss killerher katie mcdonald i'm sorry katie mcdaniel christopher sutherland eve tanner morgan phillips james franklin spencer oh sorry good good evening ladies and gentlemen um miss honey kind of capitalized on everything that i wanted to speak about in support for aciu i'm glad you guys are listening i'm glad you heard our voices i'm glad you guys are actively acting on it i appreciate that so i'm going to speak on another part the security department is in dire
156need of help the security department is short hard to respond to things that go on in the district talk an hour two hours response time doesn't need to happen everybody's on behavior help we can't get there fast enough because we're short staffed because nobody wants to be there nobody wants to work under the current executive administration okay today was kind of a wake up call for me because i had a situation with my son and i come back to work and find out that people are talking about that situation this is one place that i should be safe and be left alone about personal issues okay i think i've said it before i don't play about my peace i don't play about my money and i don't play about my kids after today i'm going
157to sit back and watch what happens because right now i'm shot y'all i'm shot i'm ricky i'm turning walking down boys in the hood i'm shot i'm shot i thought it couldn't happen but i'm shot thank you mr spencer hattie bryant patrick norris sarah shelton mariah antonio maria antonio andy rowley malachi dobbins elizabeth self judah sagan bernadette minyard heather andrews donna clay jesse sagan james brown i do appreciate y'all getting all them people out of my way when i come here tonight i i got to looking around the room and thinking 12 years ago i was standing this very spot talking to jesse register about the budget and i remember very clearly that the man didn't even look at me i like you a lot better dr battle at least you got the gumption to
158look at and i remember telling the man that he'd be gone before too much longer and that years later i'd still be here dealing with the damage he did and here i am a decade later and we're still hurting a third of my fellow union members make less than 30k a year living in a city where rents are going up for even a modest apartment by hundreds of dollars a month where food is getting more expensive gasoline the lord knows everybody's complaining about gasoline and support employees are having to deal with that now last year teachers got a much deserved sixty nine hundred dollar a year raise on average and i'm to do the same thing honey did i think we deserve exactly the same [Applause] and i'm also going to tell you something i've
159also been preaching for 10 years you want to do apply the money in the right way make it a flat raise percentage raises just open up the income gap and make the people at the bottom hurt more apply the money as a flat raise give the same amount of money give sixty nine hundred dollars to the grades one employees give it to the grade 16 employees and it'll do a lot more good than if you just apply it as a percentage and i'll tell you i'm closer to grade 16 than i am to grade one so i ain't doing myself no favors by asking for this and that's all i really got to say thank you for your time uh things are looking up i'll say that y'all have a good night thank you bethany
160riddle johnson good evening board um my name is bethany riddle johnson and i am an mnps parent and i am also a leader in the noaa education task force and i live on loan oak road in jenny pooper walker's district oops sorry i'm here tonight to thank you for all of the great things and leadership that the board is doing and the dr battle and her team are doing you have committed to valuing all students identities that includes welcoming lesbian gay transgender bisexual and queer students in our schools that students of all races ethnicities countries of origin are welcomed and valued that medically vulnerable students are valued and deserve protection i'm grateful that you're supporting our teachers to continue to teach the truth about our country's history it's so critical that my children and all
161of our children learning about the contributions of all of the people of our country including the many contributions of women of native americans black americans mexican-americans and many other americans it's critical that they learn and discuss both the good and the bad the harmful the uplifting all the things that make our country what it is today and you are giving and supporting our teachers in doing that my daughter's u.s history teacher is fabulous and we need to support our teachers not make them fearful and devalued and i appreciate that you're standing up for that i applaud your expansion of restorative practice assistance to all middle and high schools i experienced firsthand the benefits of restorative practice assistant in my daughter's high school who stepped in and provided some really needed support to my daughter and
162led a restorative circle that was critical to resolving a situation allowing my daughter to return to focus on learning and so i think it's a great student resource for all students in the building finally i found what dr battle presented about tisa funding alarming and my myself and others at noaa are committed to advocating for a revised state funding formula to support mnps students and all the great work that's happening so in closing i applaud that you push to don't hate and instead educate in mnps schools thank you thank you lynn hoyt hello everybody my name is lynn hoyt thanks for allowing me to speak tonight i'm an mmps parent i live in miss tyler's district and i'm a noaa member i'm here to thank you for standing strong against a national movement that is
163divisive and disruptive i'm here to stand with you to demand censorship stop i'm here to advocate for local control i support your governance process to determine our unique needs for nashville a process our state has no business taking over i'm here to speak out against the attacks on educators and librarians in library collections the chilling effect of teachers afraid to teach means state legislation could make kids afraid to learn fear has no place in our classroom there are policies in place if you don't want your kids reading books you don't approve of you don't have to create fear in a boardroom the practice of critical thinking makes space for differences not teaching the truth about sex or the holocaust slavery jim crow racism bigotry or even climate change really means we're being in denial of
164sin worse described in the bible has been banned historically you can't improve do better be more without recognizing mistakes and sometimes the truth is uncomfortable learning the strength it takes from people groups still systematically victimized to overcome historic oppression is also a powerful lesson truth is in power it can reconcile and build the common good solutions to move us to a more perfect union and i agree ground in the mission stay the course now about funding our state is in denial they don't believe that our schools have enough money to deliver on the promise of a great education for every child parents need to wake up to the fleecing of nashville that is our governor's new funding formula if the governor gets his way he is the reason your taxes will increase we generate billions
165in nashville that bankroll the state not our city that money should come back to nashville and cos the cost of living and fair poverty calculations should also factor into the state's fair share i am however not in denial that our teachers are suffering and working conditions are not sustainable we need to demand smaller class sizes added support staff and pay them the kids behind so kids behind can be helped while supporting kids ready to move ahead i like the mnea idea to create a stakeholder committee made up of educators parents and district leaders for parents in the pack i take it a step further ask to see your school level budget see how principals allocate funds where's that money spent maybe we need to state an mmps dashboard for each school or parent so they
166can quickly understand what student-based budgeting really looks like at the school level and student level i think it will actually help people appreciate what is done and how it gets done and how much how much money it takes it also takes strong leadership i appreciate yours for our kids thank you thank you cassie norton [Applause] hello my name is cassie i live and teach in i'm here because we are reaching a staffing crisis and i'm asking you to take action to address it i heard some of that in the budget meeting before the meeting tonight and i hope you consider to keep having that conversation moving forward right now our students are getting to school late on crowded buses because we don't have enough bus drivers they're being shuffled from room to room without teachers
167some of their classes have gone months without a teacher there are no subs so they spend their day in the gym or in overcrowded classes or with teachers who are giving up crucial planning time to cover classes their teachers are burned out we're exhausted from being overworked having giant classes addressing student emotional academic and behavior needs with very little support then students do ask for help with their emotional needs many of them are struggling with their mental health and with all of the individual and societal traumas that we've been going through for two years but there aren't enough counselors therapists or social workers to help them and at the end of the day they wait an hour for their bus driver to finally come back from driving an extra route and take them home on
168a crowded bus this is the situation in our schools and if you do not make fully staffing our district a budget priority things are going to be worse next year we need raises for all of our staff especially support staff subs and bus drivers otherwise we can't keep expecting people to step forward and do these important jobs when they can't expect to be able to live in nashville on their wages we need retention bonuses for teachers the staffing crisis has meant our workers are doing the jobs of two and sometimes three people we've been sacrificing time resources and our own mental health to ensure that students learning doesn't suffer we need to invest time and resources for social emotional support for students and teachers we need to stop wasting time on apps and self-care webinars
169and email blasts and invest in counselors and psychologists good teachers have already left this year more have said that they're not coming back next year what are you going to do to show teachers that you care about us enough to make sure that we stay thank you diana flagel flegel hello i'm diana fleevel i am an mnps alum and also i work as a blended pre-k teacher at fall hamilton i would like to express my concerns about staffing and budgets my school is currently not fully staffed we are down some paraprofessionals and our speech therapist since we are missing out on these roles children with ieps who need extra support for speech language or support in the regular ed classroom are not receiving it this is a legal violation of their ieps we just hired
170a new teacher last month for position that has been open since the beginning of the school year it took us almost the whole year to find someone to fill this position i believe part of this is because we are not paying enough for our non-certified positions we need to increase pay for both certified and non-certified staff if we hope to fully staff mnps i know teachers of who will not be returning next year this too is a staffing issue when i spoke to my colleagues to find out why they mentioned that they weren't getting a lunch break or planning because we don't have enough staff this has led them to feel overworked completely burnt out and they see no other solution but to retire early or quit this again is a staffing and budget issue
171we need to increase pay for all mnps employees otherwise our schools will continue to be understaffed and our students will not get the education that they legally deserve we are also unable to find subs to come into work so when i need to take a day off because i am unwell my paraprofessional is stepping up and teaching in that position for me and not getting paid for it we need to increase sub pay and we need to allow our other employees in the building who are covering for subs to receive some of that subpay money that we have staff has worked so so hard during these difficult times please pay us a bonus and to recognize our hard work thank you thank you graham spencer good evening chair members of the board dr battle my
172name is graham spencer and i'm lucky so lucky to teach sixth grade at google i'm sorry middle school uh not our elementary school or middle school elementary school is great too but i'm all middle i love getting to teach my students the students of madison rivergate and goodlucksville like most of my colleagues across mmps the reason i teach is for our kids if it wasn't for our kids i wouldn't be here my students are smart creative and passionate about so many things and i love what i get to do i met most of my students last year one of the strangest years ever in fifth grade i knew that to survive this super funky year we were going to have to pull out all the stops from home technology health to delivering prizes to evening
173small groups to attending soccer games i did everything i could and my team did everything we could to support our students looping up into sixth grade with them this year i've gotten to see my students emerge from the confines of virtual learning it's been really funky as we work to adjust back to traditional school and what that means i realized yesterday with my kids this is the longest school year as of today they've had in three years but i continue to support my students teaching re-teaching prior year standards teaching my full team when my other two teachers were out with kovid restocking cleaning the bathrooms when we didn't have full-time custodians for months making visits to a bus stop when there was sketchy activity from a community member and as of three weeks ago also
174coaching boys track but i cannot fully support my students alone education is a team sport beyond my phenomenal school team we must work as a district and a community to ensure that we are doing right by our students we must ensure that all of our students have equitable access to a great education my students are in class sizes that are far too big because teachers have continued to leave at unprecedented rates then when a teacher is out my students end up being split into those already larger classes because we do not value our substitutes adequately finally when our students leave for the day they're crammed onto overfilled buses because we have multiple routes without drivers some of the buses are so crowded that i can't even fit on them thankfully these issues do not have
175to compound any further thankfully there are steps that we can take to improve our students educational experiences we must ensure longevity pay and cost of living adjustments for all of our employees our team loves our students but everyone must be compensated fairly and appropriately for their investment the cost of living has increased drastically in the district so employee compensation must keep pace we must include increase bus driver and support staff pay all of our mmps team works hard but our bus drivers and support staff are some of the hardest working among us from picking up double or triple routes to covering for teachers who don't have subs these two groups regularly go above and beyond their job descriptions together we can do right for our students together we can propel mnps to an unprecedented growth
176and together we can be the premier large school district in the entire southeast looping back to what we said before thank you all so much have a wonderful evening thank you too julie trudel trudel trudeau all right beverly whalen schmeller greetings i live in ms buggs district i'm here to talk about teacher burnout and what we can do about it the research identifies two factors that can protect individuals against burnout an internal locus of control and self-efficacy both factors help us to fight burnout it reminds me of an alice walker quote the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any well we have power at the individual level and can harness it by using these two factors and you have power as a board as well right now
177we need this power to combat a sense of helplessness the pandemic is an invisible deadly force that has disrupted our lives and killed more than thousand americans there are also political forces at work trying to kill the democratizing force of public education by stealing funding and scapegoating teachers individually i refuse to give up my power i harness it by listing what i can control i can breathe deeply get rest help my colleagues and ask for their help we can unplug and spend time in nature cataloging our previous accomplishments will help us achieve new goals when we are stuck this is where our individual self-efficacy kicks in what has worked for me in the past where are my students successes in difficult times no success is too small to honor i will thank you the board
178for your service i will help my colleagues that's what we as educators can do individually but what can dr battle and the board do at a macro level the research also indicates that school climate can foster resilience and help retain teachers encourage your principals to honor the mou and get those facs up and running help educators afford to live here by funding longevity pay and a cost of living adjustment gas rent food teachers are more likely to stick around if they can afford these pay the substitutes better so that teachers can get their planning time back invest in more counselors social workers and school psychologists so that we can help our students use their self-efficacy and locus of control while we are using our individual power please use your power of the purse thank you
179for listening thank you rebecca soto susan norwood susan had to leave because public comment didn't start till 7 pm 13 hours after she gets to school every day um so i'll be reading her statement my name is susan norwood i am an english teacher at mcgavock high school where i've taught for the past 10 years this is my 15th year as a teacher in mnps how is nashville going to fund public education this budget season and how will we spend our covet emergency funds known as esser funds teachers should have a say so here's my say first of all teachers and other educators who work directly with students need to be adequately compensated for the important and difficult job we do in educating our city's children teacher pay was adjusted no not raised but adjusted
180last year to compensate for all of the previous years our pay had been frozen my pay had been stagnant for the majority of my career during this time i got more experience and became a better teacher but my pay didn't go up in any meaningful way during all that time so my pay was adjusted last year but i like other teachers still struggle to live in nashville my pay increased that is true but the increase was still less than the increase in the cost of living that occurred at the same time you ask why you can't recruit and retain teachers it's pretty obvious we can't afford to live here independently despite being college educated professionals those of us who work directly with students including bus drivers subs parapro secretaries campus support et cetera need more
181pay and we need it now there is no affordable housing for us rent has gone up food has gone up gas is going up we need a cost of living adjustment and covet hazard pay let's look at housing the asking price for a 300 square foot home in woodbine is about 500 000 of course if you actually want to buy that house you have to offer at least 25 000 over asking price in order to compete with all those california buyers so if you're a single teacher you can forget about buying a house ever and if you have to rent for your entire career you never really get ahead you never get the financial security that having equity in a house provides a cost of living adjustment is a modest ask for an increase in
182pay for one year only it is to help us get through these increased expenses and still be able to afford to teach it is a band-aid but better a band-aid than nothing at all we are also asking for covet hazard pay most of us educators have to work second jobs and most every teacher i know has gotten sick from covet at least once and couldn't go to their second job please increase compensation to ensure sufficient adult staff to safely educate our children thank you sarah morrison good evening my name is sarah morrison and i'm a third grade teacher at schwab elementary and a member of mnea i'd like to share with you all a message that i got on social media this past saturday march 5th i came from a mentor teacher i worked with
183at the start of my teaching career nine years ago it started hi sarah when talking to a friend today your name came up she's an ex-dodea teacher and a former college professor she now works for the curriculum company blank she does remote work and it is all online i told her about you she works with the science curriculum she said if you're ever interested in employment contact her she would be happy to speak with you the person who sent me the message goes on to share the other person's contact information and ends with i know you are a great teacher and i thought it might help you i'm here to ask all of you to give me and many of the rest of us a reason to stay in your classrooms i need a reason
184to not go work for a curriculum company we need longevity pay a cost of living adjustment and compensation for the crisis work that we've been doing for the last two years we need you to invest in the backbones of our schools and get us more support staff bus drivers and substitutes these roles i don't fill but i could not do my job without and some days i'm having to miraculously find ways to do so and maybe even some that don't speak only english as that has even become a hurdle to some of my most vulnerable students this week who needed sel support and couldn't access it because of the language barrier if the goal is to drive out highly qualified and carrying teachers out of the classroom the trajectory that we're currently on is working
185well there's no secret stash of us waiting in the wings to fill these positions we don't want you to spend this esr money on another program we don't need another new curriculum we don't need more walkthroughs feedback forms peer reviews protocols or initiatives we need help support dignity and respect dr battle you spoke back in december during the m a town hall about identifying and eliminating inequities within mnps as a core tenant in the district so i'd like to leave you all with a quote from researcher educator and speaker dina simmons that says no one really learns well when teachers are stressed and burnt out which is why i say that a stress and burnout teaching force is an equity issue if we believe in equity and we want our students to do well we
186have to ensure our educators are doing well too thank you thank you michelle sheriff greetings chair members of the board including our student members you are very appreciated thank you for volunteering your time and doctor battle my name is michelle sheriff president of m e a m e a is proud to have partnered with mnps to secure the 50 million dollars from the mayor and city council to correct the certificated salary schedule we celebrate with you and the city of nashville for having the highest paid teachers in the state we're also glad that our joint compensation committee recommended including step increases in the continuity of effort budget and we thank you and appreciate that the district is following that recommendation mnea urges the district to build a budget prior prioritizing student-facing positions we know the
187most important thing for student learning is to have a certificated teacher in every classroom the reality is this year we have been far from that teachers and support staff have had to sacrifice their time and exhaust themselves to cover unfilled vacancies and particularly unfilled sub-jobs what our students needed stability to achieve this mnea asked the district to be forward-thinking and prioritize the student-facing educator and staff retention dr battle stated educators need to feel appreciated every stage of their career and we agree the following are priorities identified by educators and staff as the most important to help them feel valued implement a longevity pay plan for certificated staff similar to the longevity pay for principals assistant principals executive directors directors and others on the administrative pay plan budget for a minimum of three percent cost of
188living adjustment for all staff to offset the skyrocketing cost of living in nashville increase substitute pay to be competitive with the national job market utilize esser funds to offer coveted bonus for educators and staff and fortunately we continue at mnea to have teachers reach out to us every week seeking guidance about how to resign and not have an action against their licensure at the state and many who are leaving plan to leave the education profession or the classroom such as what just sarah just explained another priority is having school-based stakeholder committees to give input on annual budgeting and allocation of s or funds dr bells also stated that the process should be transparent include stakeholder input and feedback and again we agree on asking for that process to be consistent and equitable for educators students
189and families and other stakeholders across the district i appreciate your effort we know you don't have an easy job and we appreciate all you do to support educators and we stand ready to be part of the solution thank you thank you kellyanne graff hello it is so nice to speak to you today i'm kellyanne graff i teach at thurgood marshall middle in fran bush's district and i live in um player peter's district um and i absolutely love working at marshall i love the community i have i have taught the students of janitors support staff um nutrition workers other teachers and um front uh secretarial workers and i'm a second year teacher so we are really deeply embedded within our community but i want us to take a step back and think about what our budget
190as a school is doing for our students we know that poverty undermines education it sets students up for failure in the classroom it creates hurdles they have to overcome we are creating the conditions of poverty in our own classrooms by failing to pay our support staff a living wage we are making it harder for teachers for students to get through the day because of this wealth disparity we need so much more staff to make these schools happen today when my counselor was out at cane ridge helping kids take classes my dean of dean of students was in a meeting my social worker was in a meeting my front office worker took a student who using restorative practices i prevented from getting into a fight and needed a safe space for her to go and all
191of our sel workers were occupied because their caseload is too high we need easily twice as many sel workers and support staff at our schools to make them run smoothly in in the past week i've intercepted fights i've been a first responder to a car accident i'm directing traffic i'm building relationships with parents through these interactions but like i lost my planning to correspond to a car accident today i lost my planning to have a talk with a data coach about like how to implement a new data strategy i need that time to plan i need that time to grade and create feedback meaningful feedback for my students i spend my lunch talking with students about um war and iraq and how their families have been impacted by war throughout history because they don't have
192time in class to talk about these things i last week i subbed every single day for at least two classes and i don't know when or if i'm going to see subpay for that we need a clear and transparent way to see subpay because teachers are owed thousands of dollars because we have been subbing every single day and we don't know if we're going to get the money thank you [Applause] thank you next is dr berthina mckinney ooh it's been a long day good evening dr battle chair bugs school board members students teachers staff and families in the audience my name is dr birthine and obama kinney i have five children who have graduated from metro schools and still have a son in third grade in a district four elementary school i'm a candidate for
193school board in district four but today i'm representing the parent advisory council for the mcgavitt cluster as their coordinator before i begin i would like to personally congratulate our mcgavick high school students on their leadership and the opportunities metro schools has afforded them in their classes and the skills they have learned from the avid program those three students kendall derricks luisa argeta and lorena shaw not only have shown leadership to represent mcgavik but they were also selected to participate and just graduated from the elevate which is formerly leadership donaldson hermitage youth leadership program of which i'm the coordinator for that as well and so the yale program brings together a cohort of high school juniors from mcgavock high school donaldson christian academy tennessee school for the blind and a homeschool student and so it brings
194those students together to share and learn with one another as well as hone in on their leadership skills that will prepare them for college career and life and so i want to give a round of applause not only to principal angela bailey but also their teacher mentor zachary hicks for a job well done in supporting this leadership program um and giving them the the space to participate and a round of applause for the students our students are brilliant y'all and we need to we need to show up and tell them that you guys are brilliant and i've appreciated your voice on our school board from the parent side we are concerned about the public discourse around education recently my son came home and asked why people don't like our teachers i really like my teacher
195she's really nice i just don't understand why people just don't like teachers right now the public comments the public attacks and the disparaging comments and disinformation is really heart-wrenching i don't know how many times i've heard that this is the nature of the beast and shouldn't take it personal but my response is how can we not take it personal my children's life and the lives of all of our children across this district are worth us taking this serious this discord has not helped our district not helped our staff and especially our students we appreciate dr battle your attention to prioritize the health and safety of our students and our staff we hope we can focus on more critical issues though happening in education currently we are faced at the tennessee legislatures with making and voting
196on policies that will affect us and we need to really hone in on those policies so that we have um so that we are working together to make the impact thank you thank you doctor bob mckinney uh sarah pasqu pascal pascal thank you so much you're actually probably the first one today of all the judges i've talked to at work that has actually pronounced my last name correctly so thank you my name is sarah pascal i am a mother of three children two of them are here in davidson county one was in davidson county but i did have to pull her from the district the mass mandates i know it's a big subject and everything um i sat down and i asked my first and third grade or first and fourth grader um what they
197felt about the masks um they said they were hot they're sweaty they can't breathe they can't talk you know it's a hard time talking they have a hard time hearing their teachers talk all day long it's pull your masks up pull your masks up and it gets very irritating to the children because it's taking time away from their learning with my oldest who is actually here with me today uh reason we had to take her out of it was because um she was having constant asthma attacks at school she'd be in the bathroom hyperventilating because she would get overheated couldn't couldn't talk i'd have to go pick her up almost every other day because of it and it caused her to have such anxiety that she could not i mean she's still dealing with it
198and stomach pains that were causing it too seeing it in the schools that they are not learning these kids are not taking it serious they just feel like you know the masks are hot everyone can hide behind them like one of the other ladies said you know you cannot see the expression on the face of the other person that you're talking to so what if they are contemplating on doing something you don't know at least without masks you can see there is a chance that you can make classrooms where those who want to have masks stay in the in that class and the ones that are okay with um the option they can go into another class not meaning to try to do a segregation at all but if it's to help save you know
199keep people safe that is a good cause one of the funny or i thought was funny mentioned by one of the board members was the fact that she said it's here and we're having to live through it well does that mean that it's here we never know when it's going to be leaving so do our children have to wear a mask every single day for the rest of their lives or through the whole up to 12th grade so from pre-k to 12th grade for the rest of their lives are they going to have to wear a mask every day also um i can't remember what i was guessing that's it i'll tell you that's where i'm at end thank you thank you mary cram hi my name is mary jo cram i'm a teacher at
200the academy at old cockrell i'm also a metro parent with two boys at dan mills elementary i'm here in support of the mnea campaign to fully staff mnps but more importantly i want to tell you about miss linda cotton and miss vicki cotton no relation these women are part of the support staff at our school ms linda cotton came to our school this year and we call her miss c so we don't confuse her with miss vicki cotton before she came to us she worked at eagle view elementary so she has a total of seven years of service in the district she's our attendance clerk when students are tardy she welcomes them to school and puts their attendance data into infinite campus she also deals with transcripts cumulative records and truancy letters ms vicki cotton
201our campus supervisor has worked for the district for 18 years her job is to ensure student safety her nickname is the bulldog because of her tough stubborn insistence that students act right she commutes from white house every day because she loves her job but with rising gas prices she needs a raise now more than ever these women are the first friendly faces to greet our students in the morning so they play an essential role in building a positive school culture they know all our students by name they help kids to feel cared for from the minute they walk in our building the relationships they build with students are every bit as important as the ones we build as teachers our school motto is acceptance recognition and a sense of belonging these women put it into
202practice every day in addition to our two miscons we also have ms van assaul russell our secretary bookkeeper mr tim etter our custodian and miss lorenda hogan a frequent substitute teacher they and all the other stellar support staff in the district are vital parts of the mnps team every long-term employee of metro schools has suffered from years of misstep increases and cost of living adjustments last year teachers got life-changing long overdue raises now it's our turn to stand up for our colleagues who work just as hard and whose contributions to our students educations are just as valuable let's not go one more year without giving miss c and miss cotton the raises they deserve i trust you to do the right thing thank you thank you paige babcock paige couldn't make it this evening but
203she did ask me to read her statement good evening i'm paige lagrone babcock mother of an mnps junior at hillsborough high school and a wife of a second grader grade teacher at j.e moss elementary i'm also a sixth grade literacy teacher at apollo middle school i've been advocating for public school funding here in nashville for over a decade i am tired and now here we are two years to the week into a pandemic that has thrown things cattywampus yes this school year my husband and i and many of our colleagues got our first significant pay raise since we began teaching in mnps for our family of three it has been a great help we no longer are forced to decide between paying for extracurriculars for our son or scraping together enough to repair a ten-year-old
204car we can now pay our mortgage for a small modest home and also buy the needed sports gear without worrying about the utilities we are grateful and yet the pandemic has magnified everything the needs for students communities and educators and their families have increased we have a mental health care crisis among those who have suffered health issues job and family losses social isolation and a divided nation in racial turmoil students seem not just to be struggling with academics this year but with social structures and develop developmental milestones behaviors in schools are turned up responsibilities too we are hurting all of us the kids are not okay the teachers and the bus drivers and paraprofessionals and cafeteria workers and front office folks in schools are not okay we are desperate for more boots on the ground
205even with a raise teachers can make a fraction of those with similar education and it's hard to keep up in a boom town like nashville money is part of the reason teachers are walking but add to that to the intense scrutiny and micromanagement of our profession legislation making it ever more challenging to teach and the loss of support from the public teachers are stressed and sick trying to balance their work and home life responsibilities and coming up short on both just this past sunday i learned news of two educators from our district who i greatly admire each of them loves students learning diverse literature and being part of a school community yet one just left the district because of work stress induced health risk factors along with long covid the other once a much beloved
206teacher of my son is plotting their exit strategy i am heartbroken to learn of the district's loss of these educators yet applaud their decisions to take care of themselves and their families this is what we can expect teachers will leave we are trying to bail out a sinking boat with a teaspoon and we are drowning help us not have to go help us be able to stay we need a coveted bonus now for all educators we need to attract and retain educators with better pay greater protection against legislation that threatens our livelihood and our students as learning and to have more social workers and counselors in place to deal with the mental health issues the perfect pandemic storm has rot for our students and their families please help teachers healthier teachers means healthier schools help
207us thank you all right and that concludes public participation for this month but we still have to get through um the consent agenda and governance issues so we're going to take a quick three-minute break to allow for biology yeah we will begin at 8 10. thank you all for obliging us for a quick break we will now move on to consent agenda we had two items that were removed from the agenda items seven stars nashville i'm sorry items one c7 stars nashville and one d tdoe pilot plan uh do i have a motion to accept the consent agenda as amended did we already do this oh we adopted the agenda do we still no we didn't drop this cassandra oh we're good okay i don't know what that means so do we have to vote
208on the consent agenda no we haven't yet yes we do have to vote in the comments right do i have a motion for the agenda for the consent agenda as amended we have a first and do i have a second second all right all in favor please raise your hand motion passes unanimously we will move on to 1c7 stars nashville mr tyler go right ahead um so i just wanted to pull this off because it i noticed that it was a 12 million dollar contract for two years and i don't know a lot about stars i've heard some good things i've read about it and i just want to make sure that we are doing our due diligence so um i i feel like something that large needs to be put out on the floor
209for us to discuss so if if we could just get a quick rundown on on what stars is going to do for us that's worth six million dollars a year i would love to hear it all right and just as for the viewing public just so you know every contract comes before the board via consent agenda it's not that we just push them through the board at any time can remove any item for discussion so again every single contract that's above fifty thousand dollars has to come through the consent agenda uh to the board dr battle would you like to take this um dr springer katie approximately please good evening again so the um amount of the contract is reflective of mental health service providers and yes 70 mental health services provided 30 social workers
210and 40 um other certificated certified personnel to provide mental health support so that is what that contract entails um and again that is just focused on contracted services to ensure that our students needs are met all right this is tyler thank you dr springer mrs masters is that what we were talking about earlier the yeah okay that's that's what they're providing is is there would it just be impossible to source this kind of employee to to hire for mnps is that why we're outsourcing it dr battle um i think we mentioned earlier um because we're leveraging esser funds for this being fiscally responsible um given the sunset in september of 2024 but also trying to proactively plan for the shift into our operational budget that's not a guarantee and so we need to be mindful
211of providing the supports and resources to our students i'm at the same time knowing that this is my recurring funds all right any other questions let's go right ahead mrs poovo walker i just want to give a shout out to stars i worked at overton and stars came in support and offered support groups for grief for drug abuse for all kinds of things just first class staff and program and just a tremendous resource and thank you roger dinwiddie for all you do business masters i was just going to say yeah i'm familiar with stars too and i definitely think very highly of their program and i have um a college savings program that is administered by stars they do that as well so little plug all right mrs elrod and then mrs player i don't
212have anything um question all right uh you said move to follow the question call the question there is no question could i have a motion oh motion to approve the contract first contract do we have a second second i'll suck it up all right all in favor please raise your hand uh uh motion passes unanimously we will now move on to item one d tdoe pilot plan this is not different stars that has the college savings program sorry i'm tired but though the development director for this starts okay deep breath okay so i pulled this one for discussion as well because this is sort it's kind of a big deal um because just to sort of refresh everyone's memory we voted um on a contract about this school intervention plan for jerry baxter middle school
213and it is the result of state legislation um senate bill and that what that puts into place is this program where the state chooses was 10 was 20 20 schools statewide that are priority schools 10 of them to be in a sort of control group and 10 of them to actually receive contracted intervention services there is a fiscal note attached to that so the funds that we voted to approve were state level state funds to pay a consulting firm we were given two consulting firms to choose from by the state we chose one put the committee into place and the work at jerry baxter has begun and i i really wanted to again in the interest of transparency around this and in the interest of us fully acknowledging that this program is the result of
214the state in essence taking over one of our middle schools or taking over a whole lot of the operations um the operational planning for one of our middle schools given that that middle school is in my district i will also want to point out that we had already dr battle had already put into place um an amazing principal who already had begun a lot of really important interventions and procedures from the very beginning we are already starting to see changes at that school changes in the school culture changes in the outcomes um all that to say well yes the school is in priority status what you see in the plan presented for us to approve is very much also a reflection of interventions that had already been put in place before this consulting firm came
215on board having set in on quite a bit of the planning process um because the the school board member got to be on the committee um and then having attended some of the wrap-up sessions that included the consultant um they you know they they were good at their jobs and did a lovely job i will say that a lot of the um motivations and decision making was very much led by the school team and by our mmps team which i did i appreciated that and they did a great job they showed themselves to be highly knowledgeable um and and ready for the tasks at hand this legislation allows us as a board to either accept the plan as presented or to present our own plan for turn around also in conjunction with the committee the
216consultant will be paid 125 000 a year for four years and an additional 500 000 should the school move out of priority status um and again that's not something mnps decided all that to say i just want us to be highly aware and i want to state for the record that we are in a situation where it's highly likely that this school was headed in that direction anyway because of the very strong leadership and that five hundred thousand dollars will not go to the benefit of jerry baxter middle school at the end not saying that the 125 000 a year going to the consultants isn't helping jerry baxter in some way because there are some educational experts helping being a part of the team but i just want to point out in this larger conversation
217about state-level funding for davidson county there's half a million dollars investment um that that could have been put to very good use at jerry baxter middle school through decisions made by jerry baxter middle school so i just had to say my piece about that and and also i feel like you know um i see members of the team here and and i sat in on it so if anyone had i know that um it's unfortunate mr little isn't here this evening because he had a lot of questions about it when we did the contract to begin with but if anyone had any questions about it about the legislation about the physical note attached to it about the process i just think it's a really important thing for for that school to understand and for us
218as a district to understand what was happening there and i think it's really really important that we acknowledge the good work being done by jerry baxter middle school staff and shout out to the jerry baxter staff in the audience and they're still here after all this time it's also my dad out there but that neither here nor all right so does that any other discussion around this garden hit mrs pooper walker first i want to say thank you emily for giving your time to this work you know i don't think when you run for office you think you're going to sit on a school turnaround team that's that's some of the most important work we can probably do is sit in and help a school you know and and bring that perspective i will say
219that school turnaround of party schools is a perpetual um feels like experiment right that we have not always cracked that nut uh as a state and i want to just say for the record that dismantling the school board and creating a different model of governance for us is not an evidence-based strategy to address school turnaround and so i just think people need to be careful about imposing uh an agenda onto something as critically important as that you can't add one more thing all right would you say can i add one more thing um i also want to add that while i don't you know i don't hesitate to say that i think i think we're okay to move forward with adopting this plan i do feel that at some point some of the language was
220um wordsmithed in a way that reflects um negatively on some of the past past practices of the school unnecessarily so i just kind of want to put that caveat out there while i think that the overall plan is okay and i know that dr battle from what i understand was really hopeful that it could align with our strategic plan and our core tenants as a district so that jerry baxter can continue to exist as a part of our school system and not not have to be sort of like you know set aside for these four years um to follow its own plan and i do think efforts were made to to to follow that um but i what i really don't want is for the team at jerry baxter to read any of the language
221in this and think wow they just really they thought i didn't do such a great job last year they thought i wasn't trying to connect with parents or because i did that was not at all um from my experience with um being a part of the committee the intention of it and i do think that some of the language is unnecessarily negative just throwing that out there this is poop mrs player twin uh motion to approve the contract we have a second pilot plan we have a second second all right it's been moved and seconded all in favor please raise your hand uh uh all opposed all of staining understanding okay all right we will now oh goodness we will now move forward to announcements i'll take that back i'm sorry we did we shifted
222two weeks ago from committee reports are there any committee updates or reports that have occurred in the last two weeks i'm sorry reports from committee meetings that have occurred in the last two weeks including today are not including today go ahead and include today for anyone just a quick recap we had a budget finance meeting dr battle presented a well lovely presentation look in your agenda and we will have a budget finance meeting in two weeks where we have a work session to get into the details the powerpoint presented the continuity of service the cost with that and then cost of the aspirational budget thank you we also had a board retreat i'll be following up with dr sevier about uh scheduling that title ix training that has been mandated by the city uh we
223also began conversations then about the budget and set priorities there we will likely mrs player peters talk about another budget meeting and see if we need to have a second retreat sometime in april or may um advocacy did you have any reports any reporting out you'd like to share i can share it during announcements since we didn't officially have a meeting okay then uh you know what we'll switch it up anjali would you mind starting us out for announcements okay um i'll start by saying happy international women's day um second congratulations to um all 16 of my senior peers who are named national merit finalists special shout out to my best friend rudra patel and i know he's going to hate me for saying that um but thank you for all those who attended the
224third annual youth climate summit led by the cumberland river compact this past saturday with that um i want to extend a huge congratulations to all students who participated in the tennessee deca state competition this past weekend and congratulate all those who qualified for the international deca conference which will take place next month in atlanta mnps was very well represented in yet another competition so i just wanted to say congratulations and because i get to go first i just want to say congratulations to ebenezer and all other students who received acceptances to one of the many tennessee governor schools i went to school for international studies in memphis last summer and it's truly one of the greatest experiences that i've had offered to me i met some of my best friends and um met i just
225had the best time so i highly encourage anyone to take the advantage um for next year and following years too um with this i wanted to say that there's a lot going on in the world right now let's not underplay the current state of what's happening the atrocities that are allowed to be carried out move past the selfish tendencies that are drawn from personal inconveniences and educate yourself on the tough realities that many are currently facing outside of the city outside of the state outside of this country finally i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent support to me and abanezer since the last board meeting as well as this board's discretion to ensure the safety of the student board members as well as the rest of the student body so per
226a saying my parents had instilled in me um growing up be kind and think before you speak i want to preface this by saying that i do not say any of this seeking for applause or praise i say it because i intend to fulfill my role and represent the students it's appalling how individuals adults students leaders are deemed as unintelligent because of their views that may differ from yours is that what we're teaching our students is it okay to come with threats and rude words just because things don't go your way or when you're met with oppositions let's emphasize on respect and create an environment where people can offer constructive criticism because dissent is okay let's lead by example let's focus on student voice and students choices because regardless if it's this board or parents
227students stances are often oftentimes drowned out by adults final say so i would encourage the adults who speak in the space to reflect on your intent and how you articulate your points students are watching you and you have a lot of influence on how we may view things um but it should not be my responsibility or any other student's responsibility to call out adults on behavior that is frowned upon for younger individuals anything that is said in this room especially towards ebenezer and i does not stay in this room as every student is being represented thank you thank you i told you the children will save us all right mrs tyler [Applause] well first of all i want to let you guys know how much we value you and what you say and i'm going
228to continue to ask your opinion on things because we're here to represent students and that's who you are and that's who you represent and again a reminder to adults to be adults and to treat one another with kindness and to stay away from attacking student board members that is just i don't understand it i don't understand that compulsion to attack somebody who is a student moving on i want to also congratulate congratulate the 16 national merit scholarship finalist especially hillwood high school's rudra patel and um on a personal note today is my middle son's birthday so happy birthday aiden nice mrs masters thank you um so i wanted i did want to mention that the parent advisory council um will be here at the board meeting on march 22 to present their annual report to
229go to go over all of the good work that they have done over this past year um i also wanted i know i'm talking about jerry baxter a lot tonight but i wanted to um give a shout out to jerry baxter um both their boys and girls basketball teams had really good seasons and um with the help of mr robert taylor and fisk university the students were able to go to a grizzlies game in memphis which was very exciting and wonderful and yay field trips yeah field trips um so that was an exciting opportunity for them um i also wanted to thank the nashville scene for the first ever student issue featuring our student board members on lots of very compelling topics i encourage you to pick it up and read all about them and
230their thoughts on things and there was also a student essay contest and the top essay was by mackenzie bransford a senior at nashville school of the arts and full disclosure i do work for the organization that helped with that essay contest but i did not read the essays or have any part in choosing the winners because i would have been too too biased because i knew too many of the kids that submitted essays um so that that it was a it's just a really exciting issue and it really when we want to talk about you know getting in the heads of students and what it's really been like for them through this difficult interesting time i just i thought it did a nice job of illuminating that then on the advocacy piece i just would
231like to encourage everyone to pay attention what is going on in the state legislature right now when it comes to the new funding formula bill it was it was rolled today so it'll be in an education subcommittee again tuesday at 4 30 pm and you can email me directly if you want me to tell you which legislators are on that committee you can also look it up but i just encourage you to be in touch with your legislators if you have relationships with legislators outside of davidson county all the better because of course they all get to vote on it and let them know that you're not okay with davidson county schools being shortchanged in this funding formula um and that you're you're not okay with the considerably higher cost of living in nashville and
232in our urban districts not being considered and not being any given any kind of weight in this formula um so i just i do encourage you to advocate i know i talked at the last meeting a lot about advocating about things that really matter and this really really matters and can have a long-term impact on our schools so um i think that's it thank you mrs player uh again happy international women's day women rock [Music] also congratulations to lakeisha rayford who won the community favorite award at the inaugural national public education teacherman teacher panor event she's she's at glencliff elementary in my district so congratulations for that and then all congratulations to miss angeline over here she's being bashful but i am alum of this program of ymca youth and government and she was selected
233on the national conference of national conference of conference on national affairs it's been so long since i was a part of that a long time ago when i was a high school student so i'm just happy that someone's following the same program and then one day she'll be still duly elected just like me i loved it all right vice chair elrod [Laughter] thank you um so first time i say congratulations uh to several overton bobcats first we have vivian marascal and she won the state title for her weight class in wrestling so that's really exciting for her the picture of her is so great if you go to the overton twitter account it is just exuberant additionally oh and there's also a great picture of her with dr battle thank you for going and cheering
234her on additionally i would like to provide some congratulations and this is just to their first names jojo lance roberto montserrat and fatima they all earned the bell tower scholarship the bell tower scholarship provides a four-year scholarship to belmont and all of those again are overton students so congratulations to them again anjali mentioned the deca international championships that are happening next month but she did fail to mention that she additionally qualified for them and so good job and also i she's still in my thunder and congratulations on governor school i also want to thank tuscum elementary they invited me to read for readme week last week that was a really exciting experience i was so glad to do it in person i spent most of my day friday at the school and read with i
235think seven classrooms at the end of the day um so thank you so much the or the organization of it through uh tara and mary gildry for organizing all those visits i know that's a lot of work and then lastly i just kind of want to make like a lot of my colleagues a statement that if you participate in public partation public participation excuse me then you are addressing us as a board of education um as an elected official and uh not our student board members but also not our employees like our teachers and staff i want to make sure that we're really clear about that as that's not appropriate as this they also would have um addressed you as well so make sure that we have some decorum and civility please thank you thank
236you i'm sorry mrs bush oh yes um so my announcement um you know as i said here tonight and i listen um through public comments every time we have them it seems like the same thing keeps coming up every single time and yet this board doesn't address those things every single time teacher shortages where's your hand for that but you got it from ask bus driver shortages where's your hand you got it for mask support staff underpaid i'm so tired of honey coming i like hunting but honey wants her money along with the other support staffs and how long are we going to keep this pace study going okay raise your hand to that okay little to no substitutes raise your hand for that board but you raise your hand for masks failure with wind
237wisdom where's your hand raise your hand to that board but you raise your hands for masks subpay where's the subpay where's the teacher's subpay for the extra work they do you hear it over and over and over again but you raise your hand for that do you where's your hand for that but you what you talk about you raise your hand from mask and yet you focus so much on that which is such a distraction that we have all these issues all these issues that we have that our students are not learning they are not in a place and space where there couldn't even be college and career ready we do have a lot of children but we have the majority of children that are not learning and it's not the teacher's fault they're doing
238the best they can so by the end of the semester when we start losing more teachers let's raise our hand on how we're going to fix it mask should never be another distraction we should stay focused on our priorities on this board all of you guys i'm looking at all of you focus on what our priorities are focus is all about some totally opposite from what we should be focused on our elementary students they can't read barely writing barely but you know what the teachers tell me we were just told just we just have to meet him halfway we just have to meet him halfway so what are we going to do are we going to raise our hand to go back to our priorities our parties is all of these things are listed that
239we're having a problem so what are we going to do you don't go sub don't go sub you know volunteer because we're losing teachers we don't have enough subs we don't have enough bus drivers so we're going to get our cdl license but those who already have them already have the education as far as their teaching degrees and their cdls and everything else they have in order to be productive in our district because they are in the trenches and they are the professionals but yet they're leaving they're leaving they're leaving they're leaving where's your hand where's your hand are we going to help them stop it i want to stay focused on what's right for our children that's why i got my hand up for but all we do is destruct just somehow try go
240away from the grain of what we should be focused on it's ridiculous and we should be ashamed of ourselves let's get back focused on what we should be doing as a board making sure that this district is moving in the right direction making sure our students are educated make sure the ones that don't have have make sure the ones that need to get scholarships so we can support them i'm proud of our student board members but we need thousands of more like them thousands we need to support them i love to hear it i want to hear more of it because the rate we go on right now we have lost generations with an s and we have a lot of work to do and i take this seriously because our students are suffering and
241we need to stay focused on what is our parties on this board making sure that they're educated making sure we stay focused and keep teachers in the classroom bus drivers we lost 30 bus drivers since last july did you know that it's a lot mm-hmm so let's stay focused on our priorities and let's move on it's time to re-enter this our environment as normal as possible so our students who are paying attention who are watching our parents who are paying attention and are watching we need to stay focused on our priorities and they're tired of it and nashville looks great our school district should look great but we have we're not there yet we still have a long way to go and our parties we're not focused and i'm getting very frustrated because you have
242a due diligence to make sure that these students are getting the support they need so they can academically be college career and trade ready those big buildings downtown we're not going to be able to fill them up with our students because we have to focus on getting them to that level where they can be able to be corporate if that's what they choose you can blow all you want to because i'm blowing because i'm pissed because i'm tired of us veering off and doing something totally different from what we need to be doing teacher shortages bus driver shortages support staff unpaid little to no substitutes failure with witness wisdom i know you're tired of listening to it i am too i am too so until we can start focusing and making sure that we're doing
243what we're supposed to do with due diligence to our our people who are in the trenches then we're going to keep having the conversation keep having a conversation until things are finally done until this board starts to prioritize that's what we should do i'm offended that i got little students that don't know how to read i'm offended that our literacy and numeracy is way down we all should be it's not about my five boys it's about 80 000 more students to me and let's make sure that they are ready for life so get your priorities together at least do that that's why you're on this board thank you mrs pupa walker so my priority as a board member is to do my due diligence which includes a superintendent evaluation which include includes coming to finance
244committee meetings and weighing in on the priorities for our billion dollar budget which includes you know participating and engaging uh in a way that is aligned to what we were elected to do and so i'm good with my focus i'm good with the due diligence that i'm doing and so i want to salute my board members who are also doing the same thing and not up here making a campaign speech i would like to congratulate all the students who got bridges to belmont scholarships super exciting thank you belmont i want to celebrate school social worker week we love our social workers i also want to congratulate hillsborough girls basketball team regional champs and i want to thank all the women in my life my mother my sisters my daughter my board members my friends love
245you all couldn't do it without you thank you mrs poopa walker thank you mrs poopoo walker um so i want to actually acknowledge women's history month super don't don't guess okay super excited about it um [Laughter] so you know we we brag about this board being mostly women um and so i do want to thank you all for for tonight's meeting right we talked a lot about a lot of great things that are happening in the district a lot of great initiatives so thank you dr battle for that report and thank you to your staff for getting up here and sharing and answering all of our questions it's always greatly greatly appreciated there are great things happening in this district we've talked about last meeting some great outcomes and some great scores and growth we're
246outpacing right the state is that right yeah here in nashville davidson county um we know that through funding challenges and some leadership challenges we're digging ourselves out of a hole but we're digging and i then again want to thank you dr battle for that i want to thank you also earlier for the discussion about our priorities which we do through our budget and so thank you mrs player peters for leading us in that discussion where we revisited the priorities that were established by this board and we talked about those things we talked about teacher pay we talked about support staff pay and what that's going to cost and what that ask is going to be we know that we may be challenged in getting another 88 million dollars but they're going to be some hard
247decisions that this board needs to make so that our priorities are recognized and reflected the priorities of any organization is in its budget and budgeting on another note uh genie stole my thunder i had a couple of f-bombs i wanted to drop today but she apologized so i feel undermined so i'm going to let that slide and but i do want to uh again as miss elrod i got the opportunity to participate in read me day in person and not over zoom so that was super exciting over at churchwell elementary and to thank mrs freda player peters and christian buggs who led or participated in a panel yesterday it was just yesterday yesterday that was yesterday no monday yesterday okay hours ago uh educating a bunch of women who are members of the lynx incorporated
248in what is known in the central area they come from across the state of tennessee uh representing uh and well living in those uh large urban school districts and they did a phenomenal job of answering a lot of questions and doing giving great explanation about what bep is what it isn't the challenges it provides imposes for large urban school districts and that's the kind of messaging and advocating we need to do as board members and they volunteered to do that for me and i greatly appreciate that as well so part of our job is advocacy part of our job is to understand that to bear this burden and to lift and to elevate this district requires us to not necessarily chastise but to go out and let others understand who have an impact on our
249ability to do that that they do have a responsibility to provide us with assistance so that we have the right resources to put into place the appropriate levers to make the change and that does go from what we do in the classroom and how we support our certificated our non-certificated employees as well so i want to thank each of you who come here a couple of times a week and then everything you do between coming here a couple of times a month excuse me on behalf of our students our teachers and our family and all of those individuals who provide serving any role when it comes to educating our kids thank you dr gentry ebenezer thank you yeah i do want to recognize today as women's we do celebrate women i want to celebrate the
250most important women in my life which is my mother and i want to give her a shout out because even to this day she still wakes me up at 6 00 a.m even though i'm 17. i own an alarm clock she wants me to you know start my day with a kind conversation with her and it just it reflects on how important women play in our society as not only mothers but and every other aspect i also want to talk about quest bridge which is which is a beautiful program for high schoolers and their college prep scholars program is open for application until march 24th thursday and they're basically trying to help students who come from backgrounds that might not you know let them be able to compete with other students that might have a
251better um a better background because of you know money and and other aspects so to all juniors you have until march 24 to apply and to to be part of something that can that can be very helpful i also want to give a shout out to the mlk basketball team we did win district and region but we sadly lost yesterday in sub state but no matter what we still played very great and we showed our school spirit and also our mnps spirit and i'm really proud of them so thank you that's it thank you so no so much even easier i want to first say that everyone should be watching the legislature right now tuesdays and wednesdays are days that most education amendments or bills are are um proposed you can stream them online you
252are certainly welcome to go to the capitol just to see it in person and understand the democratic process it would it might enlighten you because it certainly enlightened me and it was the reason that i ended up running for a school board seat just understanding the kinds of conversations they were having around education so again tuesdays and wednesdays typically at 11 a.m on tuesdays 2 p.m on tuesdays 3 pm on wednesdays in the senate so please please please go to capital.tn.gov you can look at the agendas you can see the amendments you can't see caption bills that'll be another conversation for another day about the sneakiness but just know that you can't at least see basic policy i want to shout out pencil for their continued tutoring efforts i have enjoyed being able to tutor
253my student at john early and i anyone in the community i think the the the time has passed to be able to sign up for a new oh no you can still sign you can still start you can still sign up to tutor every the school board our our staff our student i mean the community members can sign up to to our students to make sure that we meet benchmarks and that our students are getting all the resources that they need it's only 30 minutes a day three days a week it moves very quickly but it is so worth it and so enlightening um i thank those people that came to join us today for public participation or just to just to again participate in our democratic process and we will often disagree because we
254are all none of us are monolith we will all have different ideas ideals and focuses foci but please continue to come out and engage the school board and i thank you for doing so appropriately i said what i said uh we did have a four o'clock budget meeting today unfortunately everyone couldn't be there to talk about the priorities around staffing and funding but we will continue to have those again we might even engage in a new retreat at the same time dr gentry i'll follow up with you because maybe this time everyone can engage in the director's evaluation we can have all nine board members actually evaluate our only employees so i'll follow up with you about what the next evaluation cycle will look like um the substitute shortage i think last year there was
255an engagement on facebook with some teachers around having parents sign up to be subs unfortunately i found out that the school board cannot uh substitute but we certainly engaged or certainly would encourage the rest of the community to consider signing up to be a substitute teacher it really is a rewarding experience especially if you get with the little babies but i don't want to ignore the big babies so with that there's so much more that i could say and want to say but be there no further business this meeting is adjourned 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] you