12/14/21 MNPS Board Of Education

001good afternoon everyone and thank you so much for joining us in this first and only meeting for december 2021 uh we welcome you to the board of education and cannot wait to both present to you hear from you and have discussion amongst ourselves with that we've already established a quorum we have two that will be joining us virtually mr little and dr gentry uh we will now have a pledge of allegiance by gin would you mind yes eugene please do all right i pledge allegiance to the life of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under control indivisible with liberty and justice thank you now we will move into awards and recognition with east high school's football team dr battle all right thank you so much chair

002bugs and good evening board members i'm excited about several awards and recognitions that we're presenting tonight to honor some of our outstanding student athletes and athletic leaders first up as they walk up to the front are the eagles of east nashville magnet high school let me start by saying what a great season the eagles won the football regular season region title and earned home field advantage in the playoffs behind a balanced explosive offense and hard-hitting defense the eagles marched through the playoffs captured the hearts and support of the community and reached the t-double s double-a class 3a blue cross bowl in chattanooga finishing as runner-up it is the first time in east nashville history that the eagles reached the state championship game and e started playing football in 1932. it was truly a team effort

003and i was proud to be there in chattanooga to cheer them on alongside so many of their other fans who made the trip to support them support them and the team congratulations to head coach jamal stewart and his staff on a job well done and congratulations executive principal slow down executive principal jamie jenkins thank you for your leadership and your administration as well as the wonderful faculty staff students and fans at east nashville high school most of all congratulations to the players the team east nashville high school eagles we are so proud of you congratulations uh [Music] why are you not up front jamie you need to be up front all right [Music] all right fantastic good to see you [Music] you ready for the next round yes ma'am i'm ready all right congratulations again

004as they head out because i know they have school tomorrow and likely exams congratulations east nashville high school the young people say audi's for life this is the cutest thing all right we now we also have a recognition of tws double-a region five principal of the year uh dr battle yes ma'am next up is cane ridge high school's executive principal miss michelle sanchez if you can join us at the podium double s double a honored principal sanchez at their annual meeting last month naming her principal of the year for athletics district 5. she has led cambridge since 2010 and serves as a member of the tws the belay board of control principal sanchez we appreciate your service with twsaa and we're proud that they recognize your good work at cane ridge high school congratulations on

005this honor now my [Applause] uh all right congratulations again sanchez now we have another recognition from mr football class 4a dr battle all right finally congratulations to baryon brown on being named the 2021 class 4a tennessee titans mr football let me tell you a little bit about them this pearl cone high school senior had a tremendous season with 59 carries for 817 yards and 10 touchdowns along with 22 catches for 303 yards and three more touchdowns and he played defense for the fire boards too and made 24 tackles marion is the third metro national public schools football player in the history of the award to win mr football most importantly baryon has committed to continue his education and play football at the university of kentucky and now we're going to keep reading and hearing his

006name for years to come congratulations byron right where's christie thank you [Applause] i think he was a good person wait for me all right and now we're going to turn it over to the glencliff high school ambassadors for a presentation about all the great work they're doing this year ambassadors and a wonderful academy coach y'all come on up and share with us [Applause] good evening i am tomy kelly the academy coach at glencliff high school and we're so excited for this opportunity to share with you our academy story from one of the buenos diverse high schools in tennessee glenville high school i am brian tully a senior in the academy of agriculture automotive and technology in the technology pathway i am anna chicas a senior in the academy of health and hospitality and the therapeutic

007services pathway and i am mercy with samantha a senior in the academy of agricultural automotive and technology and the pathway of environmental biotechnology and this is our academy story the academy structure at glencliff high school has shaped my academic and personal experience throughout the past three years prior to high school i was homeschooled for roughly four years and the transition from home school to a public school was difficult but coming into an accepting environment where being from an ethnical background is valued and when you have different resources available for you made it a lot easier when i chose my academy and pathway i did not expect to build the relationships i now have with my teachers specifically those who i have worked with for the past three years through my pathway having similar faces every

008year gave me an opportunity to get the best help my teachers know my strengths and weaknesses allow me to excel academically and perform better each year my engagement with my school and community has shaped my experience at glencliff being involved in academic programs such as student government association beta club academy ambassadors as well as programs that promote inclusivity like international teens outreach program escala and international day has boosted my overall experience during high school glencliff offers engaging extracurriculars ranging from those in each academy and pathway including future farmers of america health occupation students of america to sports and other clubs i'm in peer tutoring which is basically best buddies but as a class i am given the ability to guide my peers emotionally and academically i will not have received this this opportunity if i

009wasn't at glencliff and if it wasn't for my technology pathway teacher that encouraged me to sign up our academy and pathway teachers are not only cte teachers but also close individuals being a part of the environmental biotechnology pathway has allowed me to expand my knowledge in the industry of agriculture by giving me hands-on activities that have shifted my interest in the agriculture field some of the opportunities given to me by this pathway were earning the osha 10 industry certification as well as 9 college credit hours through dual credit with tennessee state university working with business partners i have been given the opportunity to attend industry related field trips with tennessee state university and middle tennessee state university colleges of agriculture this has laid the foundation for my post-secondary plans after graduation i plan to attend

010beaumont and study nursing after graduation i plan to attend belmont university to study architecture after graduation i plan to attend belmont university and study nursing thank you so much for the opportunity of listening to our academy story we hope you have a safe and great holiday season [Applause] thank you good job [Applause] and they are the best high school in the entire district thank you very much personal privilege you and your one high school my one high school but the best high school you can tell i like my school don't you you try to take it away from me ma'am i'm like i already have seven all right uh so congratulations to those students those families and all of the staff that support those students every day with that we'll kick it over to dr

011battle for the director's report for today for the day all right thank you again chair bugs and to our school board members i wanted to start off tonight by thanking first mnea for the opportunity to speak with their members last night at the town hall and to answer some of their questions about the work we're doing to address the challenges experienced across our district and in all schools across the country thank you all for that space and opportunity and time to collaborate the other day i also had the pleasure of watching a panel discussion featuring some of our own mmps teachers from around the district i got to hear them talk about their work their challenges but also their excitement that they've had about some of the new ways they're connecting with their kids for

012example through our navigator program adopting new ways of teaching that are designed to accelerate learning and academic progress and the way school teams have coalesced around each other to build off the successes and tackle ongoing challenges it has never been an easy job and it hasn't gotten easier during the pandemic but i know how much our teachers recognize the significant needs of our students and have stepped up to support them in so many ways so thank you again to our entire team and mnps now as a reminder on august 5th the board approved a motion requiring universal masking throughout the district based on cdc and aap recommendations and consistent with metro's masking requirements for government facilities metro's mass requirements have since been nullified by the state of tennessee's new law which created title 14 to

013restrict local governmental entities and private employers from taking some common sense mitigation strategies to reduce the spread of cover 19. the new law also sought to preempt school districts from following cbc guidelines on masculine schools but that action was halted by the u.s district court two days later after governor lee signed this legislation into law judge waverly crenshaw issued a stay to prevent enforcement and this past friday he issued a more thorough injection not only from the mass components of the new law relative to schools but also the restrictions on quarantines the injunction does not require masking in all school facilities but rather gives school districts the ability to continue making those decisions to protect the health and well-being of students and the staff we serve i believe we all desire a return to normalcy

014however hopes of the pandemic going away have been dashed several times over the past year and a half with new waves and variants that have caused us to take added precautions to mitigate against the spread of the virus currently we are still requiring mass indoors and the cdc still recommends this precaution be taken in schools in that regard little has changed since the board adopted the mass requirements at the start of the school year what has changed is access to the vaccine for everyone age five and up it takes five weeks from the first dose of the pfizer vaccine for someone to be considered fully vaccinated and that is occurring right as we approach winter break for those students first in line mnps has partnered with the health department to offer vaccine clinics to support

015vaccination efforts and we'll continue doing our part to ensure our students and staff have access to the vaccine over the next few weeks we will continue monitoring the conditions as it relates to community spread the risk posed by the new variant so with that my recommendation to the board is that we review current conditions and contacts at the next board meeting to consider moving to a policy of mass been strongly encouraged but not required as i mentioned before the federal court decision has halted the new law that limits the authority to quarantine relative to schools based on the new law we ended the practice of quarantine in close contacts but we have maintained that any student who tests positive for cover 19 must remain isolated for the 10 day period before returning to school while

016cdc recommends close contact quarantines for students who are within three feet of another student in a classroom setting that is tested positive the most recent department of health recommendations are the students who are wearing masks don't have to quarantine if they are closed contacts my recommendation is that we continue to monitor the situation and seek feedback and guidance from local health department if we see transmission rates increasing we would reconsider our current practices and possibly look to what other states and districts are doing with regards to test to stay policies that require students who are close contacts to get tested for cover 19 if they want to remain in the classroom environment however at this time i don't recommend changes to our existing policies now i want to take a moment to provide an overview

017and update of our sr3 application for those of you watching at home as well and for those of you who are here our esther 3 application was finally approved by the commission of education on november 29th the esser 3.0 process was the most involved to date and required a significant amount of stakeholder engagement into the final plan there are also a lot more strings attached in this funding allotment and there have been many rule revisions or updated guidance that came from the state in the middle of the process which required several adjustments to ensure we are in full compliance with all their requirements now that plan has been approved our teams are able to make those strategic investments in areas such as technology transportation academic resources and materials social emotional and mental health needs of

018our students with investments in restorative practice assistance in our middle and high schools counselors social workers as well as other strategies to improve the services and support available to students families and our school teams as a reminder we also spiral 24 million dollars each year starting this year through the 23-24 fiscal year to our schools so that principals and their leadership teams can allocate those resources to meet the unique needs of all of the students that they serve the sr3 process requires updates and additional feedback every six months so expect some additional updates and requests for input early next year all right so we're going to turn our attention to our metro schools reimagined updates of course metro schools reimagined encompasses a lot of different strategies to improve student outcomes and strengthen cluster pathways across

019the district one aspect is the fifth grade transition from middle school to elementary which started this school year in the maplewood white's creek and pearl com clusters we know that many families are eager to see this transition occur as soon as possible so i've asked our team to prioritize this particular aspect or uniform strategy as we call it of our metro schools reimagined so that we can find cluster pathways where transitioning earlier is feasible and to work with our facilities team to prioritize the investments necessary to bring this to all of our schools by the 24-25 school year now at this time i'd like to welcome dr lisa norris our executive officer of strategy and performance management who has been leading the reimagined work to go over the progress the team has made to accelerate

020fifth grade transitions across the district dr norris good evening chair board members and dr battle i appreciate the opportunity to share updates about the great reimagined work that has been ongoing i'm elisa norris executive officer of strategy and performance management with my colleagues mr ryan latimer director of boundary planning and forecasting and ms casey mago assistant director facilities planning and construction we will be taking a few moments to celebrate the wins and outline next phases i'll be providing reimagine updates mr latimer will share more about the pre-k-5 district configuration and next phases will be outlined by miss mako brewery imagine we focus on each tier in its role in creating pathways to success for all students in elementary great attention is given to setting the proper foundations for continuous academic success in sel development middle

021school 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 sel development that they receive throughout their cluster experiences 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 now i'd like to celebrate the progress that we've made on these uniform strategies around instructional technology advocacy centers community achieves and the pre-k five school motto that we'll be discussing in greater detail as a reminder the reimagined uniform strategies are those that will be used across clusters to set district-wide high expectations for teaching and learning because of accelerations in instructional technology we are now a one-to-one district our teachers continue to develop innovative

022strategies in blended learning to accelerate and personalize student learning all elementary schools now have advocacy centers spaces where students can learn regulation skills which will minimize misinstructional time due to behavioral challenges community achieves will be expanded to more schools so that we are able to link students and families to enrichment opportunities and vital community resources and we have moved to the pre-k five school model in maplewood pearl conan white's creek and are planning for phase two in hunter's lane mcgavock in stratford by school year 2022 2023 all elementary schools in the north will have fifth grade and as we transition to a deeper dive into the pre-k five school model i'd like to highlight some of the important reasons for the fifth grade transition mmps data show that fifth grade students who remain in the

023elementary setting outperform their peers who are in the middle school setting mfps parents would like their fifth grade students to remain in the elementary setting state standards are package 2 3 5 6 8 9 12 meaning there are certain arcs of learning which follow the contours of these grade bands curlicue materials written to our state standards also are packaged by these grade bands and state teaching licensing requirements fall along these grade bands elementary education license is k5 as a reminder here are the elementary and middle schools that are involved in the 5th grade transition process during reimagine phase 2. i'll pause for a moment for your review of the information previously shared along with the elementary schools in hunters lane mcgavock and stratford we're accelerating the fifth grade move in the schools listed here on

024the left they are yuna fall hamilton glenview woodside charlotte park gower carter lawrence aiken sylvan park creve hall and norman binkley these schools have been selected as acceleration sites because of considerations of available space capacity and ease of transition to this school model and integral to the reimagined framework is a focus on maintaining and strengthening pathways and feeder patterns from elementary to middle school to high school margaret allen h.g hill west end and croft middle schools also will be affected by this move the support hub supports these middle schools as well to ensure that principals have all that they need to transition to the 6-8 school model important to note is that in transitioning fifth grade middle schools are now able to concentrate on one grade band and leverage resources accordingly additionally we have been

025working with all principals regarding staffing there will be opportunities for all employees in good standing to retain positions after the fifth grade transition and now i'd like to transition to mr latimer who will share more about the pre-k five district configuration mr latimer thank you dr norris so the next series of slides will show the enrollment and capacity changes that are taking place with the second phase of the fifth grade transition for the start of the 2022 school year the next four slides will follow the same format as this one and they show the three years of enrollment history a tentative projection for 2223 that includes the fifth grade remaining in the elementary school and just a quick note here uh without of zone for schools with out of zone enrollment we will be closely

026monitoring and managing out of zone enrollments with strong preferences given to end zone students in order to avoid potential overcrowding and maintain as close to practical ideal learning and volunteers the next number you see is the school's capacity followed by the projected utilization with these changes so for example amqui currently has 428 students and with the fifth grade transition we are expecting enrollment to increase to 493 students the capacity for the school is 629 which would make the projected utilization 78 percent for the principles following along it along this isn't the final projection and the projections will change some as we go through the normal process over the next few months i'm not going to read through all the changes at every school but do want to hit on a few highlights for the hunter's

027lane cluster 405 students would remain in the elementary tier and increase enrollment in the cluster by 193 students for goodlett's bill the capacity shown reflects what it will be upon completion of their new school and the same for old center they were recently approved for an addition with sr3 funding and the capacity of 408 is what it will be upon completion for the mcgavik cluster 591 students will remain in the elementary tier and increase enrollment in the cluster by 94 students at this time we do not anticipate any capacity issues within this cluster for stratford 187 students will remain in the elementary tier and enrollment will increase by 25 students i also wanted to point out that stratford high school serves grades 5 through 12 currently and with this change they will serve grades six

028through twelve and the last slide on enrollment changes shows the schools where we are going to accelerate the transition of fifth grade and again for schools with high out of zone enrollments we're going to work to right size enrollment to the point where zoned and out of zone enrollment will fit within the school with the addition of these schools all clusters within mnps will have some of their schools in the pkk 568 grade configuration and my last slide is just a map that shows this transition this year we currently have 17 schools shown in green in the pkk 5 grade structure this includes elementary schools in pearl cone maplewood and white's creek along with cane ridge elementary eagle view and coal in the cane ridge cluster we are transitioning another 34 schools shown in yellow

029for the start of the 2022 school year there are five schools shown in orange that will transition in 23 and this will complete the glen cliff and hillwood clusters the remaining 15 schools in purple will transition in 2024 and once all of the elementary schools have transitioned to a k-5 structure we will transition our middle magnet schools to a 6-8 feeder path and now i'm going to turn it over to casey ryan just showed you a great map that outlined when we can transition fifth grade back in every elementary school in the district most of the schools remaining to transition in the 23 24 and 24 25 school years require construction and rezoning to accommodate fifth grade in the antioch cane ridge and overton clusters a new school building and rezoning is required to accommodate

030fifth grade in the remaining cluster schools that were not included in the accelerated phase two transition group that ryan and elisa shared with you we received funding for land and fees for design for the new antioch cluster elementary school which was awarded in the capital spending plan approved by metro council last week and we also as ryan mentioned sr-3 funding we received design money for a new elementary school that is slated for the overton cluster and as you saw in the capital improvement budget meeting that we just had like an hour ago we also are including design fee request and school building request for construction for the cane ridge cluster elementary school as well for the hillwood and hillsboro clusters we need more classrooms but we don't need so many that we need a new

031school in the cluster both percy priest and wes mead have been on the cib for a prolonged time due to their low facility condition scores the planned replacement schools will be built larger than they currently are to make space for deficiencies at those schools and to allow for small rezoning efforts in the pathways to accommodate fifth grade and those pathway schools as well in the csp that was rewarded last week we received funding for the design of percy priest in the cib that we reviewed today we include the funding request for west meade the westmead replacement for the glencliff clusters and the optional elementary schools that are not part of the phase ii transition out of zone enrollment will be monitored next year to allow for the addition of fifth grade and subsequent school years

032generally the five new and replacement schools need to follow the same timeline in order to be open for the start of the 24-25 school year which is the year as dr battle mentioned we're striving to complete the fifth grade transition in 2022 design needs to be completed on these schools funding for construction needs to follow closely behind the completion of design so that we can transition directly into construction activities construction will progress through 2023 and into 2024 also in the 23-24 school year the require required rezoning plans will need to be completed and approved by the board the goal of rezoning is to right-size schools to maximize supports and resources and create optimal learning conditions for all students um one final note and as ryan concluded his discussion as well with an eye on equity

033and access we plan to transition fifth grade from our magnet middle schools in the same year that we open all elementary schools in the cluster with fifth grade again our goal is for this transition to be completed by the start of the 24-25 school year and now dr norris will discuss the timeline for the phase 2 transition schools and finally here are some important dates connected to the fifth grade transition december 16th an informational letter that has been translated will be sent out to families regarding the transitions january 2022 principals will begin engaging with families regarding the fifth grade transitions january 24th 2022 optional schools applications go live and between march and july 2022 further communications to parents both school-based and from the district with transition tips and reminders and preparation for the coming school

034year so with that we'll say thank you board for your continued support we appreciate the opportunity to share with you the great work that is happening with metro schools reimagined and now i'll turn it back to you dr battle thank you so much i'm dr norris ryan casey i appreciate you providing that update um with that um madam chair we'll turn them back over to you all right thank you all for that presentation do we have any conversation from the board go ahead um mrs poopo walker just let me know if you have others thank you so much for that presentation uh i know a lot of parents are eager to see this change obviously would have we would love to see it for my own kids and uh we know it's it's the right

035thing to do i want to salute the logistical effort that is going on here it is multifaceted it requires facilities changes enrollment zoning changes transportation changes it's a it's a huge undertaking and i just want to salute your team for doing that i was wondering if we could talk a little bit about this balance now we're going to have to do between um kids who are out of zone who in elementary schools who lottery in or you know have choice option how much of a change will there be in those numbers in order to accommodate this this move from fifth to elementary thank you miss people walker ron latimer will address your question um you know kind of as you said logistically every school is a little different so it really depends on the school

036but overall we'll be offering less choice seats but if a family is currently out of zone they'll remain there until they tear out it won't impact them any so it would just be the new seats we would take a few less in some places so that we can accommodate the fifth grade transition without overcrowding the school okay thank you ryan all right mrs masters and then mrs tyler um so two questions um the first one i think is just a clarifying question so the lottery elementary schools there won't be any effort to add space to those schools correct like we will add seats as able but yeah that's correct we would still just because they don't serve his own population we would just take a few less seeds to make room for it but overall

037they would stay about the same enrollment they are now maybe increase a little bit and then my second question is i i understand it makes a lot of sense to me that stratford would transition from being a 5 through 12 to being a 6 through 12. so my next question is mlk being a 7 through 12 what what is the plan to adjust there part of the reason also why magnets are last is that there's some transitions with that that take place we need to look at and study what's best for the head and the rose park feeder pathway into mlk with head having fifth and sixth grade and then there's sixth graders going on to him okay we need to study that further and then so just kind of need to research a little

038bit more perhaps a good time to eliminate those pathways hey dana all right mrs tyler yeah i want to pivot back to our overview of sr3 dollars um looking at that 48.8 million to be spiraled directly to the schools i got kind of excited about that because i had been asking about our teachers who've been having to stay late to watch the kids who don't have a bus driver to take them and if you read their mou it says that they're not supposed to do that that the support staff who is paid hourly is supposed to stay with the students after school because our teachers don't get any extra pay for that i was told at the time that that was going to be hard to do because they don't have the money in their

039school-based budget to expand pay for those hourly wage support staff now that we have these funds spiraled down are we going to emphasize following the mou and using support staff for that after school time and letting our teachers go home at the end of the day so i'll take that um question um the first thing is that we do have an mou with mnea where our teams are in collaborative conferencing and are talking through the conditions that need to be set so that we can maximize the expertise and talents of of our teachers part of that and i've never been on a school team where you know there's always this kind of cultural aspect of other duties as a sign i mean we as educators we do what's necessary to support our students but to

040your point with regards to the funds that are being spiraled to schools we have only provided guardrails to our schools around what those funds should be leveraged towards to meet the focus outcomes of the district and so with that comes empowerment to our school teams to leverage those schools funds as needed we also encourage just like our school improvement planning process the engagement of leadership teams and structural leadership teams and getting feedback from the teams to make sure that those investments are leveraged in the space that provide for the outcomes we want and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the school so we will continue to spiral funds to our schools as was earlier communicated over the next few years again at about the same rate of 24 million per year which is why

041you got the 48 million dollar total and dr bellamy and team will continue to support principles in leveraging those investments to best meet the needs of their schools that's the purpose that's intent that's why we're not centralizing all of our funds we wanted to make sure those funds are closest to those who they impact most our students and of course empowering our staff members to do what's best for our students okay i just that sounds to me like um it's going to be up to the principal as to how this goes so i think i would i would love to hear that there was going to be some at least a little bit more direction about ensuring that our teachers who don't want to stay after or are unable to stay after don't feel guilted

042into doing it or that it's absolutely necessary for them to do it when we already have a plan in place to take care of students who have to stay late um that we actually follow that and that we compensate to the people that are going to do it fairly so yeah and let me be clear the student-based budgeting process is to equip school teams and communities to do what's best for their learning community and so there's always this tension between kind of the loose and tight around what we want to do but our goal is empower our leaders to do what's best for their learning communities and as such i don't anticipate that it will look the same on any school team schools are different sizes enrollments times it's important for the school community to

043have those discussions and make the appropriate adjustments for those extra duties that require us to supervise our students or provide what they need okay all right so it sounds like we have the ability to directly appeal to a principal as a teacher to say please make sure that we're following our mou and that we're asking our support staff to stay like they're supposed to and that we compensate them for their time for staying and that we prioritize our teachers mental health and that we prioritize our teachers ability to keep doing their job and waking up without feeling burned out so much so that is something you can apparently directly ask of your principles and i would encourage you to do so and then i wanted to ask a little bit more about our 48 allocated

044to accelerate learning process progress um is that including instructional materials as well yes it is okay so if i remember correctly i think it was like 18 000 that went directly for instruction materials just just instructional materials million sorry i'm so tired we've been here a long time i mean that that kind of stuck out to me i was just going to ask if we are including i know that a lot of a big chunk of that was for our math supplemental that kendall hunt program and i just wanted to ask a little bit about that now the the math um investment is for next adoption uh process which includes uh math as a reminder the state pushed that adoption back two years and so we are um proactively planning for that investment so that

045we can purchase the necessary structural materials when that decision is made okay so that 18 million will not go towards something for now like the kindle hunt group the kindle hunt program that we are currently using in our middle school grades um and we will save it for when we have the new math adoption so that we can then purchase those instructional materials that's correct i'm looking over to my team we've already purchased the materials that are being leveraged for this school year so what you see in that budget is for our upcoming adoption process okay i think that's it for now i'm my brain's tired all right um this is elrod any others thank you okay um can you explain what those guard rails are that were given to schools based upon their individual

046allocations for the two years all right i'm going to invite dr kiara randolph up our chief of strategy and our level said here that all of our investments have a direct alignment to our focused outcomes but dr kerry that's right and um of course there is there's pretty broad allowability with esser i think we all know we've been talking about it for a while but there are categories under which um we do have to allocate funds so just a reminder to all of us i always have to tell myself this it is about response to and relief from the impact of the pandemic and so there is accelerating learning so when we created a guidance document that watched that help schools consider the fiscal cliff for any investments that they were considering with their funds

047so limited ability to add ftes for example without approval because that would not be sustainable in the long term but then within that learning loss right and learning acceleration are too called out in the legislation and so we looked at district priorities within that to dr battle's point focused outcomes so numeracy literacy sel and transitions and within that um created that those were kind of the guard rails right think about these things and supporting um priorities of the division of schools such as collaborative planning was called out some of which don't actually require funds but require you know strategic planning to put those things in place so beyond that um there were some i would call them inspirational um pieces as considerations that we had both heard from schools and also knew were allowable um

048and fit within the vision and the goals of the focused outcomes so it would it served a couple purposes that document and it included tutoring for example stipends for tutoring it included consideration of extended learning opportunities but within that it was really up to the school to then fall within those buckets of allowability and those budgets were then reviewed because they had to be incorporated into our application for approval by tdoe and i'll call out on um oops slide four i believe it is um there is a few examples of some of those spirals that schools use that align to those buckets that dr randolph jessica just described yes thank you um on those spirals can those be changed year to year or do they have to continue to be the same year every year

049yes they can they can be changed year to year and there actually is a process for revising within a school year just like with sbb or title or other funds i thought i remembered us having that discussion that they would be able to pivot if there was a change within their school makeup or something along those lines where they could change their usage of those dollars that's correct and we're really trying to ground ourselves in return on investment so we want to constantly be in our continuous improvement cycle to make sure the investments we're making are having the impact that we intended with those particular strategies my next question thank you carrie or dr randolph is um about our reimagined work i know we will have some very excited uh school populations myself included um

050that will be quite happy about the fifth grade being accelerated to next year um they will be notified it's my understanding via email or not email but mail united states postal service starting tomorrow and then schools will start communicating it as well um is there any additional information that will be provided to those students whether it's to those elementary schools or to the middle schools that are impacted yes ma'am there will be additional communications we've learned a lot about the transitions of getting back into our k5 configuration and so we have several resources that we'll be providing given those learnings and the impact that this transition will have on our students dr norris do you mind responding absolutely thank you so much for the question so lessons learned from the last time we transitioned we

051are sending out the letter certainly we're creating a video that will be posted on the reimagine website our page that will talk specifically about what parents can expect what parents need to do in preparation for the transition and additionally we are meeting with all the principals who lead the schools that will be affected by this transition we meet with them weekly and we talk about what kind of communications do you need how can we support you from the support hub and we are pivoting and ensuring that they have all the documentation that they that they need to communicate this out to their community and their parents can you speak briefly about the faq oh absolutely and additionally we have several faqs we have an faq that is um finalized and it's for faculty and staff

052we are also working on an faq for parents every every question that we learned from last time we're capturing in documents so that we can share it with our community members and there is a dedicated website for metro schools where imagine there is a dedicated website anyone interested please visit this the district's website and and search for reimagine and we have all the information including the transition with maplewood pearl corn and white's creek and additionally phase two and what that looks like excellent i'm glad to know that we're doing faqs that are separate for each different stakeholder population so i think that information will be needed and then lastly regarding our reimagined work um a popular conversation that we hear is about school start times and i know that it has been needed for some

053time but a necessary part to that um to start that process was moving a lot of these schools and creating these new pathways so is our priority after this happens in to then have that conversation we um we have prioritized the transition the uniform strategy of transition in fifth grade back to elementary school um after we are um and i won't say completely after we're going to kind of start some of the work before we um finish that last transition year the 24-25 year but certainly our study around start times is a part of our metro schools reimagine that is the next priority um after we get our uniform strategies addressed in in this specific space um so address it and support our elementary middle schools may i make sure i understand that correctly so

054we're going to continue to move schools according to this phase plan that we have here and the very helpful map thank you mr latimer um you're so gifted at the maps so i appreciate all those maps to help us best understand and communicate it with our constituent bases so as we continue to do that particularly as we have a couple years work not just next year's phases we're going to coincide also doing this study on start times and what's the best option will those studies also include you know parent feedback and other stakeholders outside of the support hub yes i mean i think if we think about this with the fifth grade transition process and we got a lot of feedback we had town halls we got surveys i mean enough information for me as

055a director to say this is something that our stakeholders are really desiring for us to shift and then there's a lot of academic research social emotional learning research that helps support that so in a similar fashion we begin the conversation around start times and what that looks like i cannot predict the outcome of that but it is important for us to have a conversation so that we can make the best informed decision for metro nashville public schools um and our entire community so this is a part of we've already identified this as a priority under metro schools reimagined but it will definitely include stakeholder feedback there's lots of data and research that's already out there we'll be digging further into that to make the best decision at that time thank you i appreciate hearing that

056i'm i'm glad that it's going to be in together um as we continue to make those plans and we move students through the different grade levels and different clusters thank you all right any other questions student board members or others i don't mean to call you all out okay all right uh well thank you dr battle and team for your presentation uh we look forward to more updates i appreciate the focus on equity and making sure that our historically and generationally disenfranchised communities got that shift first making sure that we reallocated dollars in a way that really supported families and students that hadn't got that investment so we appreciate that and can if you don't mind because i do need to give a thank you to the team particularly in this acceleration space um we

057took this opportunity particularly with the disruptions caused by the pandemic to try to accelerate this uniform strategy we know that metro schools reimagine is not only about transitioning fifth grade back but the team has taken it on just understanding the importance and the impact it can have on our students so thank you to our mmps team who is meeting daily weekly to make this a reality for our students and families thank you all and with that we move to an even more important or just as important portion of our uh meeting where we hear from the community during public participation so you all were asked to sign up by 12 o'clock on monday your names are listed above you'll have three minutes at the end of the three minutes which will be on the clock

058you will hear this sound and we will ask you to complete your sentence submit any final thoughts to the board in writing or even be a phone call you can find our information on the mnps website so with that i would like to call the first three people feel free to just be ready when you see your name coming up billy savage short all right laura leonard eric warfield yes billy savager please come on up i had sorry i'm billy savage short and i live at 2880 creekman drive and i want to talk about the gender identity that you guys have placed in the schools and gender comes from our almighty creator doesn't come from our feelings doesn't come from what we think it looks like but we are assigned that and you guys are

059placing that within our school system within the written wisdom curriculum and um also that's regarding to critical race theory as well our skin color does not identify us it is a mere description of the melanin or the lack of melanin that god has blessed us with so as far as the the gender unicorn that you guys are wanting to implement throughout the elementary schools it's really disturbing once again your identity doesn't come from what you think it is um it does come from our heavenly father and so i would ask you to re-evaluate what you guys are doing with as far as teaching children or gender that's not your job that's the parent's job and so i'm asking you to rethink that also no mask there's not a peer-to-peer scientific review that says masks are

060effective you guys are following political science and not observational or experimental science thank you thank you laura leonard [Applause] eric warfield jeremiah wooten hello um first just to respond to dr battle from earlier late buses are not a school issue that's an administrative issue so while i appreciate miss tyler advocating for teachers that funding should not come from school-based budgeting that should come from you all because you are the reason that you have not hired appropriate bus drivers right staffing issue is not a school-based budgeting at the district level so i spoke with you all last month about grading and i am happy to say teachers did receive grading information several weeks before the second quarter grading deadline which is a much preferred timeline to hours as it has been the last three times so

061thank you for that and i hope that continues this month i want to speak kind of in support of our new math curriculum adopting the kindle hunt illustrated mathematics as a supplementary resource last fall was a phenomenal choice it's an open source curriculum it's digital first so it was really a lot easier to implement than kind of a traditional textbook when we were in the virtual environment and this year we're able to see that these print resources and hands-on manipulatives also really help promote high quality instruction so it's also a curriculum that's received the highest rating of any math curriculum by ed reports and we've been provided with lots of helpful training i even got the opportunity to participate in a modeled lesson during a plc from one of our district math coaches amber thanell

062and that's been very helpful for us so i applaud the district's director of mathematics jessica slayton for her leadership and really all the math department and coaches for a great job implementing that so they truly have lived up to that name of the support hub and i hope other departments will do that as well as we begin this next adoption process i will definitely continue to advocate for this curriculum next i want to talk quickly about charter schools well i appreciate the strong talk from you all um i would encourage you to put your money where your mouth is and make changes to how metro government buildings are leased to charter schools in a recent metro council planning and zoning committee um david profit shared how only recently did mnps realize that they need council

063approval to lease out metro government property which is interesting but i digress the reason i'm sharing this is because by sending these leases in front of metro council these leases are being made available to the public and we can see how little these buildings are being leased for well under market value in one case less than five dollars a square foot for these buildings so i'm curious why we have this big talk about charter schools are siphoning money away from mmps schools when the leases that you all approve are actively giving away this money to charter schools by charging them below market rent for buildings that we own so i urge you to look into these leases and make sure they are protecting the interests of mps and since i saw earlier council member rosenberg

064here i will add thank you to him for continuing to advocate for mmps schools and our funding thank you for your time thank you morgan phillips hello my name is morgan phillips i live in district four um thank you for having me tonight give me the opportunity to speak um so i am a junior at mcgavock high school and i wanted to talk about the mental health of our students according to the cdc more than one in three high school students have experienced persistent feelings of sadness hopelessness in 2019 a 40 increase from 2009 um also in 2019 approximately one in six youth reported making a suicide plan of 44 increase from 2009 and ages 10 to 24 suicide is the third leading cause of death with an average of let's see 5 400 suicide

065attempts every day just by 7th to 10th 12th graders so sorry to every parent this should be at least a little concerning so many stresses for students with so little support things like deadlines tests bullying among other problems with family and friends so unless you have insurance or a lot of extra money to spend you don't get good mental health support um most schools have guidance counselors but i don't think those should be stand-ins for mental health professionals sorry i'm trying to my best to breathe here in my own experience the best that i've gotten from a school guidance counselor is a very awkward conversation where they sit there and smile at me and at the end they tell me to come talk to them again if i have more trouble when they didn't give

066me any advice or actual counseling in the first place to give everybody a sense of scale in 2018 mps spent three million two hundred fifty nine thousand dollars on security and for a cent to scale 784 700 on social emotional learning which if i'm being totally honest i don't remember seeing in my classroom almost at all and it's something that i believe that should be implemented and mandatory so that me and my peers know how to deal with our emotions and know that we have someone that cares um i know that i might just be a name on somebody's spec on somebody's spreadsheet so sorry but i refuse to let myself my student my student peers and my friends become statistic so thank you for your time thank you kelly phillips good evening how's everybody

067doing my name's kelly phillips i live in district four my dress should be on file and that was my daughter and i'm very proud of her for getting up and speaking tonight i think she has some important topics that we need to pay attention to something that you hold fixed or firmly that you stand by no matter what is called a conviction and most in most people's lives a conviction is something that they stand by no matter what no matter what the circumstance no matter the people involved our kids are being told again that they need to keep masks on which is fine that's what you all have chosen to do well most of you have voted on even though outside those school buildings the rest of the world for the most part has gone

068back to normal and and i would assume that in some of your personal lives when you're outside that school building you might venture to not wear a mask when you go out to do something as well when we choose to take convictions and impose them on other people it means that we hide them that we hold them in high regard and continuing to keep these kids in masks i would assume that everyone on the school board that voted for that holds these masks as a conviction and that they're doing something to protect our children not knowing the long-term health aspects of it mental physical any of it so let's talk about what happens when we don't follow through on that and we go against what we tell others to do good for thee not for

069me that's called hypocrisy when we have a mask we don't get to see smiles two you ladies have some really pretty smiles dr battle was at hillwood high school i like to call this the urban variant when keith urban was there he talked to a classroom full of students and he didn't have to wear a mask and neither did anybody in his entourage and when he was done he got a picture with dr battle she didn't have on a mask either we don't get to see dr battles pretty smile miss bugs went to something in october she was here i guess enjoying a good time with friends or family she posted it on her instagram you have a beautiful smile i wish we could see it because when you're out on your own you did

070not wear the mask guys our kids need to be able to see each other smile i have a three-year-old well he's almost three if it continues this way he's going to grow up going to a school system where he's not going to get to see a smile of his peers during the day it's not acceptable y'all got to smile we got to see your smile let our kids smile let them smile if you want your kids to wear a mask and the only reason i'm not talking to y'all is because they need to hear too if you want your kids to wear a mask wear a mask if you don't that's your choice thank you your kids have the chance to smile like they do okay amy paint hello i'm speaking tonight to draw attention

071to issues parents are concerned with last meeting there was a long discussion of the parent portal but parents don't care about the portal because it doesn't tell us anything we don't know it's like a doctor saying yes your cholesterol is 200 points too high but then refusing to give us any medicine we see the problems we need the remedy one remedy is returning fifth grade to elementary district wide you've shown you have the ability to make it happen you have a large staff of six figure paid employees whose job it is to make it happen but you refuse to put fifth in my daughter's elementary school although it is possible you said all fifth grades would be in elementary next year but they're not you said you would only move schools by cluster but you're

072not you said moving fifth was about equity but it's not next year the richest elementary school in metro and miss bugs area will have fifth grade while many others won't i'm glad they have fifth grade because all fifth graders should have equal access to the advocacy centers extra guidance counselors and self-regulation rooms you've put in elementary next year's fifth graders spent their third grade year mostly virtual due to your bad decisions and coveted closures you spent hours last meeting arguing over charter school students miss elrod voted against them because it wasn't fair they got fifth in elementary and not the rest of her district no it's not fair but instead of denying what's best for certain students why not demand the best for all students another remedy is later high school start times this on

073board has said repeatedly that high schoolers would benefit from later start times like magnet and charter schools yet you refuse to discuss it why another remedy is optional masking we have pediatric vaccines that was always the goal post to allow mask optional yet there's no discussion of it if you're worried that covered rates will increase i urge you to look at every county around us and most of the private schools in town like the one mayor cooper sends his kids to which have been mask optional for months they have no higher rates of covid than mnps optional masking allows speech delayed english language learners sensory disorders emerging readers and hearing impaired kids to learn more easily it takes the burden off teachers to constantly redirect behavior it makes schools more equitable because some kids get

074in trouble constantly for their masks while others don't another remedy is intensive tutoring you have a virtual only volunteer tutoring program it's not enough students first that's the remedy if students needs were first fifth grade would be in elementary high school would start later math would be optional there would be tutoring mnps has the very best teachers but they're hamstrung at every turn buses don't get to school on time you don't let parents in to volunteer you can't keep security staff because they're mistreated and you can't keep students because enrollment is dropping you continue focusing on things that don't matter like the parent portal and ignore those that do i have faith that you can do better give us the remedy now there sagan my name is sarah segand i am the mom of two

075mmps students i live in district two i am one of many parents who are calling for the end of our mask mandate if parents knew the actual covid data buried in the nonsensical weekly mmps reports they would realize it's high time for policy change the fact that mmps deliberately displays this data in the most useless way possible reveals that there is an agenda that favors politics not science for example last year we could download our weekly data as a pdf this year it's displayed in a non-savable format they know this they're counting on us not keeping track so parents are taking screenshots last week only one tenth of one percent of our students tested positive that means 99.9 percent did not have covey but we made them cover their faces for seven hours with cloth

076or paper just in case 80 of our schools well over half posted zero cases last week another 46 of them were between one and four our most vulnerable students have remarkably low case rates harris hillman special education school has 450 students many of whom could be classified as medically vulnerable they have had as few as 10 student cases all year and have been zero for almost half of the semester we have 541 kids across four dedicated pre-k schools they have had to cover their tiny faces for six hours a day yet their schools have all been mostly zero every single week with a total semester case count as low as 15. cambridge early learning center has had zero cases all year long why are we masking our preschoolers a month ago i was missing a

077week of data so i inquired to student health services for the archive of the report when i eventually received a response i was told by the director that she didn't have access to those numbers and it would be a bit of a process to get me what i needed keep in mind the information i was asking for had just been on the website and this is the department responsible for reporting and analyze analyzing the data that's supposed to inform our district-wide coveted policies like masks this is unacceptable mmps is in a credibility crisis where is the accountability well i disagree with the conclusions of the 6th circuit ruling about mandates this note from it stuck out school policies should be regularly reviewed especially school transmission data and adjusted to align with new information about the

078pandemic it's time to join over 140 other school districts in our state by making masks optional so kids and teachers can engage in learning without hindrance thank you thank you leonella tamayo oh i'm sorry niraj to here narage all right leonella tamayo chadwick germany good evening to the chair and members of the board my name is chadwick germany and i live in mount juliet and i work at the great school of knowledge academy i'm very excited for the opportunity to be here to speak to you on behalf of the school i want to talk about two things one i am the athletic director and i am also the college career readiness coach two jobs that i hold that i am very very passionate about as athletic director we went out first and we we got

079the weight room and the weight room has been a tremendous uh asset for the students so we thank the board from nei the board for approving that and making that happen because it's been a huge difference in athletics for our students one for injury prevention and also to help them to build confidence that translates not just on the basketball court but also in the classroom we also we went out and hired the best basketball coach in the country and he brought along a good staff and we hadn't won a game in two years and right now we're having great success in sports and basketball and also we implemented grade sheets so all of our athletes turn in weekly grade sheets and that is to ensure that we keep them above a 3.0 that's the goal

080and also a 21 on a.c.t because we do encourage college which ties to the college career readiness position that i hold which we take our students to visit mtsu tsu lipscomb vanderbilt and our students are very very very excited about going on these college campuses and after they attend these visits they write a one to two page report and if you guys were able to read some of the things that they say about the visits that they take it kind of brings tears to your eyes when you read stuff that students were talking about when they weren't thinking that they could go to college didn't believe and had never been on a college campus and you you see the change in their lives and i think that's what we all are about as educators you

081know to have a place that we can send our kids i have a place that we can work and i get up at four o'clock every morning and i can't wait to get on get on the road to get the knowledge academy so when you have a school like that we ask that you will vote on our behalf to help keep the charter so that we can keep the fire lit and keep inspiring motivating and changing lives at 5320 hickory hollow parkway thank you thank you logan bynum [Applause] nicole bynum gyro matt tells lopez i'm so sorry for butchering your name uh good evening uh chair members and members of the board my name is jairo matos and i'm a senior at knowledge academy and i can still remember the day i first walked through

082the those doors i would was a lost cuban boy in a new country i had not a drop of english i had not a not one friend and i just felt totally alienated but the first day i walked through those doors within the first hour i had found something special i had found something that i didn't think i was gonna find and that year that first year those those teachers those students those walls saw me being able to have a full conversation in english saw me find people who cared for me who fell for me saw me become become one more and by with time i i left the school i went to others and i was i was happy but in the middle of my high school career i fell with i i didn't

083feel a calling and i was concerned i felt no home i feel no calling i was i was concerned what's going to happen once i leave high school so i went to the first home that i remember having i went back to knowledge academy and i there i realized my calling i i i got the skills i i got an education i got leadership skills i i and i realized that what i wanted what i wanted to do and this this june 6th i'll be shipping now and and start my training as a u.s army soldier and thank you and it is it is my school it is this logo that made me a tiger that made me a fighter that maybe someone that learns from their from from every time they fall down that

084a person that learns from hard times and i i'll live my life and i will do my years of service but i want to come back to my school and i want to go back to those doors and i want to see another child and i want to look at myself in him and and say you're going places because i was able to i was able to because of my school i was able to accomplish what i've accomplished to this day thanks to this logo thanks to those teachers think thanks to those walls and i'm forever grateful i'm forever grateful for to be uh i know it's tiger thank you and thank you for your future service uh henna tillehun hello good evening chair members of the board my name is hannox helen and i'm

085a freshman at knowledge academy i have been attending ka since the fifth grade ka is a school of many opportunities i've been offered jobs volunteers and many more unlike many other schools that i have seen and been to the staff and administration january care people like coast germany dr germany coach ellington miss being mr mj and mr lewis just to name a few off the top of my head i've had staff members go out of their way to give me opportunities that the school could not offer such as giving me the chance to go to a private christian school to take ap human geography as you would know that isn't common in most schools my parents being immigrants coming here out of coming to this country wanted the best for me if i could go

086back and choose to go to ka i would choose to do so i believe my parents made a good decision because i feel as if ka is the best for me even during rumors and quote-unquote scandals this school has so strong and remained during the pandemic ka was a second school to open during the virus with the protocols that were followed no student was harmed from the virus that following year ka has treated me and many more students amazing it is a school that is family to all cultures sexualities identities and religions this is a school that needs to stay in tennessee please con consider us i hope you vote in favor for our renewal thank you for your time thank you cedric clark [Applause] good evening board chair and members of the board my

087name is cedric clark i'm a junior at knowledge academies i've been attending campus in fifth grade and we came a long way and i'm so proud uh ca feels like home to me i love i can bond with people and teachers staff to help me grow as a person in and out of school um teachers they always want students to be at their top ability and they want everybody to be reach their highest potential the people a knowledge kind of like a big family we welcome everyone who wants to join we try to encourage people outside of knowledge academies and in our community to come and support the school they they encourage people to um always be active and always be in their community a good example is our nissan stadium fundraisers they always got

088people coming to support knowledge academies lastly i love how they prepared me for college um we had multiple college tours counselors to come speak even a military recruiter came to talk about military path before that i wasn't so sure if i wanted to go to college i was skeptical about it i thought it was too much and i didn't know what to do but now that i got that work and researching that program i don't know what i want to do and what college i want to attend that's all i have thank you for your time an opportunity to speak please vote in favor to renew our charter thank you uh lacelle chapman curry [Applause] good evening chair and members of the board i'm lasalle chad mccurry hermitage tennessee and i'm also a member of

089the knowledge academy team in middle school special education an educator's role is often overlooked undervalued and sometimes it feels to be underappreciated to work with such dedicated professionals day in and day out is quite rewarding and this has been my experience since joining the knowledge academy team the case staff has determined that our student success starts with us each morning we greet our young scholars with a warm smile followed by good morning and occasional fist bump these may seem like small gestures however they set the tone for the day ka has a diverse student population which represents our community some may say that we are an extended family it would be devastating if ka was not an educational option in antioch and in surrounding areas during covert and post covey we witnessed both academic and

090social challenges fear of the unknown virtual settings and return to the classroom seemed like an impossible task as a parent and educator i would be remiss to not take the time to thank the leadership at nei for making this transition less daunting despite the challenges i'm also proud to say that through it all we managed to achieve a 100 graduation rate as we foster relationships with our young scholars providing educational outlets as well as extracurricular activities are essential in providing the building blocks for success i currently serve as the faculty advisor for our student government association and when i say that the campaign trail leading up to super tuesday which was our ka election day was full of energy and excitement that would be somewhat of an understatement this is the energy that makes school

091more than just a school additionally we have the student advisory council which meets monthly with our principal and our student advisory council along with the sga are not only the organizations that exist at ka we currently have in our currently chartering the beta club golden key honor society anime robotics the reptile club fbla cheerleading basketball soccer super skills conditioning and weightlifting as coach germany mentioned earlier student involvement and leadership will assist in preparing our young scholars for the future that we'll need them it goes without saying that i love arcade family and i'm personally committed to our success i wish to have many more years in doing so as my hopes that our charter is renewed thank you for your time and let's go tigers thank you brad martin lisa vale jasmine black [Applause] good

092evening board my name is jasmine black i'm from bellevue tennessee and i am the family engagement representative at knowledge academies i've been a staff member at ka for about a year and i've been involved in knowledge academy for about two years growing up i lived with a family full of educators and i thought i'd seen it all but when i started working at a charter school specifically knowledge i realize i have missed out on a vital part of being an educator that's giving families the right to choose parents want to be a part of their child's education knowledge gives that opportunity to be a part of every aspect of their children's education from the curriculum to being able to be a volunteer just to walk around in the halls working as a family engagement rep

093here has given me the unique perspective getting to know the families and students needs and the community needs us as much as we need them outside of our regular curriculum we offer the food pantry coats for our kids and clothes and a safe space for our children of greater antioch area just to come and simply hang out and play basketball in the evenings knowledge gives our families a great opportunity to be a part of their scholars education in a way that is not offered anywhere else and i would love for their right to choose knowledge academies to remain thank you for your time thank you james lock [Applause] good evening chair and members of the board my name is james lock and i'm currently in my junior year of high school and i've been a

094student at knowledge academy since my fifth grade year it is my honor to stand before you to advocate for my school imagine going back in time to when you were leaving the safety of elementary school and beginning your journey to middle and high school although excitement may be predominant predominant to other emotions a semblance of fear and concern is definitely present i had many qualms in regards to such a foreboding environment all the horror stories and all the how to survive middle and high school videos did wonders on my perception of my educational future if i were to go back in time to 12 year old me i would tell him that although his qualms are warranted he is about to embark on the greatest adventure that surpasses all his expectations meet new people who

095will push him to unbelievable heights and truly embrace himself as the first lgbtq plus member of his lineage my first steps into knowledge academies have greeted me to the greatest family i could ever be a part of students and staff from the community form a community that works together to ensure growth all across the student body everyone both new and former endeavor to raise one another to heights inconceivable to others even when faced with the threat of termination and the pandemic knowledge academies display tenacity and continue to fulfill their mission to prepare students to make the best academic and social choices leading to a successful life connected to college community creativity and culture i intend to uphold this mission for i would not be the student standing before you had i not been influenced by

096their mission for the past seven years i have grown alongside knowledge academies and seen how much it has surpassed its own limits this development and growth has proved to me that everyone is capable of improvement as of now i see so much potential for us potential to provide to refine and to once again surpass our limits if this potential energy is released i can only imagine what pathways we can open for us and our future students i thank you for your magnanimity and hope you will vote in favor of our charter renewal thank you thank you mahir malik and then carol shahata [Applause] good evening chair members of the board my name is carol shahada and i'm a junior at knowledge academies i have attended the school since my freshman year and i am currently

097the chief editor of our news team over this past year we have gained a significant significant increase in supporters and sponsors these sponsors have also opened more opportunities for students and to grow as a whole as word spreads of our president of our presence more more staff joins our school the influx of new staff members allows more ideas and more programs to be added to our school such as new sports teams and clubs students involvement has increased due to more opportunities presented to them knowledge academies have strived to provide more student-ran projects such as international fears but they expect to add more projects meant for the student body knowledge academies is also strength to provide students with more college opportunities to better their chances of a successful future thank you for your time and i

098hope you vote in favor of our renewal thank you isaac august augustine good evening chair and members of the board my name is uh isaac augustine and i'm currently a junior in knowledge academies i've been at the school since i was in the sixth grade and i have never seen such a school put the time and effort into the students i've never seen such a staff so caring and i remember when i went to the school and uh one year i felt like trash but this school helped me learn that everybody could care about you and that you aren't nobody but you are somebody that you can be someone special that the world can accept you for who you are i've been able to join the basketball team even though i didn't have confidence in

099making the team i've been able to make many friends and and be able to relate to them and be able to have great times even though these past years with college i've been able to stay happy because of the school i've been able to stay happy because the teachers and staff care about you and they don't leave you alone they want you to be happy and they want you to achieve something greater than you can be for right now they want you to be the person that everyone can look up to and they want you to be that special someone that can represent the school and represent the generations to come from your kids to your grandkids and maybe even your great grandkids that's how much i believe this school can prosper that's how much

100i believe that this school can help many other generations via so thank you for listening and please support the school and our charter renewals thank you markiana sparks [Applause] good evening chair and members of the board my name is markiana sparks and i'm a junior at ka this is my first year at ka when i first got to k i thought it was going to be full of stuck up students and the teachers were just going to throw work in my face i never have been to a charter school so i really didn't know what to expect but once i got to know the school itself and the students and teachers i notice how the students the teachers actually care about the students all they do is try to create opportunities opportunities for the students

101to push them to do their best this is the first school out of three high schools that has actually took me on college trips and helped me find out what i really want to do with my life the school the students at krka are a big community and that is something that we want to keep around thank you for your time please vote in favor to renew our charter thank you chuck moore [Applause] hey members of the board i'm going to talk on behalf of knowledge academies about a little more than a decade ago i was at a meeting with some of people in this room at the top of the pinnacle building i was an academy partner then with the help to in the very first launch of the academy system on that first

102day we had the academies i joined as an academy partner because i thought we could help create you know engaging and original programs for students about four years ago i joined the team at knowledge academies for the same reason i wanted to create engaging original content when the nei team came in uh i wasn't sure what to think about them i don't think they knew what to think about me either at the time but we extended a little trust to each other a little grace to each other and we set about making up some really great things we've totally modernized and revamped the general business program we've now launched a music business pathway as well that started this year we've got a recording studio under construction our student-run record label is going to be launching

103next year we're outperforming every other school in our cluster our enrollment is up by more than 10 percent this year so i'm left wondering why we're even debating whether the school needs to have a renewal or not you know every school in the area is you know filled to capacity we're increasing our enrollment you know and why would we talk about not renewing the charter of one of the higher performing schools in that cluster that's just that that's baffling to me why we're even talking about it thank you james franklin spencer good evening um just wanted to say the cats out the bag we had a parent tonight come up here and say that we can't keep security staff i didn't really need to come and say it she said it we cannot keep security

104staff why no one wants to work under the current administration no one wants to work under the current ed administration you have people leaving just as of today you had a person transfer out of our department he's been in the district a minute he's going to transportation i mean that's cool we're keeping the body but ask him why he's leaving ask him why he's leaving ask him why he wants to transfer out just as of today we short staffed already on the mnps website six people so that's number seven then come to find out there's an officer that's under investigation of something frivolous really something that can be fixed through the district through the eap program not giving that opportunity he's on the chopping block now to be gone to be terminated used to be

105part of somebody's family sitting up here at their school high school yeah he's on the shopping block to leave um i even got pulled into the office under investigation on what i got the evidence i got the conversation i got it on video if you're interested i can provide it what happened to that investigation nothing nothing at all it was a waste of my time it was a waste of the people's time to try to pull me into the office and investigate me our security department is in a world of hurt right now as of january when we come back to school it's going to be about eight people gone fred kemper's gone dog program 40 years experience gone steve keel retiring gone ask him why he's gone i think you have uh fred kemper's

106letter i think you have it yes the security department is in disarray thank you gwen johnson bethany riddle johnson good evening chair members of the board my name's bethany riddle johnson and i live on lone oak road in genie poopoo walker's district i am also an mnps parent and a college professor and first i want to thank you for your strong support of universal masking to keep our children safe based on a lot of peer-reviewed studies and for supporting all gender identities so that all of our children feel welcome and safe but tonight i am here with the noaa's education task force we are here to recognize and advance black brilliance asserting the need for equitable access and support for advanced academics for all mnps students regardless of their race ethnicity or zip code we

107all agree that it's the right of every child regardless of their race ethnicity or place of residence within davidson county to access a challenging curriculum to help them grow academically indeed an mnps core tenant is to identify and eliminate inequities and one of the mnps core values is excellence which embodies the belief that all students benefit from high quality instruction and high expectations each year in each subject and in each classroom as an educator myself i know the advantages of that advanced academics and i know how to navigate the school system to ensure that my children have access to them but i've had to figure this out myself and not all families know of the many benefits of advanced academics or how to access them i know that mnps is setting this as a priority

108but it's essential that you work to further communicate regularly with families regarding all of the advanced academic offerings their benefits their qualifications for the programs who to contact about enrollment and actions parents or guardians can take to help their students meet criteria for enrollment further currents currently students are acts sorry students early post-secondary opportunities in mnps high schools depends on their zip code with large discrepancies across schools as highlighted in the tennessean today thus mnps must earmark dollars to expand advanced academic opportunities in schools serving the most black and latino students who are currently underserved and so in closing we must work together to address the enact inequities and advanced academics that get us to the mnps core tenant to identify and eliminate inequities thank you thank you lorraine stallworth um council yeah let's get

109i'll skip two i made it never mind never mind never mind council member dave rosenberg been a long day good evening madam chair members thank you all for your continued service during these challenging times um while it's great to see you tonight uh it gives me no pleasure to speak i'm a public school evangelist and have consistently supported mnps in any way i've known how sadly i'm here to share some things going on at one of our middle schools imagine a middle school where a white student steals a soccer ball from a black student says suck my d you stupid blank blank n-word and the principal brings the black child into his office and tells the victim that since the offender wasn't looking him in the eye when he said it there's way of knowing

110if he was the target or a middle school where lockdowns occur without any notification to teachers and parents lockdowns that lead students to fears of being in the middle of a school shooting only to expose other students to the trauma from the drug dogs that are brought in and pat downs that take place in the hall or a middle school where non-consensual sexual incidents go unpunished and are never even entered into the system or a middle school where this represents barely the tip of the iceberg of what we know to say nothing of stories from those who don't know how to reach their elected officials that's bellevue middle school families have been leaving teachers have complained of incessant bullying by the administration and many have left or are planning their exits at higher rates than

111the county aps have been marginalized parents and educators complain of being dismissed and gaslit and the latest panorama data collected from teachers is shockingly negative about the administration bellevue middle two formal complaints were filed and dismissed but there's been no opportunity to share the multitudes of other concerns brought by parents former parents and educators and it's deeply discouraging council members swara hurt hauser mendez and i filed a resolution asking for an independent investigation into the bms administration because these concerns are going unaddressed and appears unlikely and it appears likely that the executive director overseeing the school is protecting the administration we deferred this resolution so we can lay out concerns with greater specificity but have hesitated because these matters should not have to play out in the public square the official channels are broken teachers

112and parents recognize this and there's understandable fear about coming forward when mnps has appeared to be sweeping it all under the rug i invite any of you i have not had the opportunity to discuss this wish to reach out to me or in other council members since sunshine laws limit your ability to discuss directly with ms tyler who's been fierce about trying to get the attention of administrators to get this problem addressed bellevue middle school is in a downward spiral and turning a blind blind eye to this pattern of mismanagement and abuse is not an option children are being done wrong families are leaving as a result and we simply can't afford to lose more teachers don't be complicit i won't please help thank you thank you council member antoinette lee hello how are you

113all doing today can you understand me okay great madam chair school board members and director battle thank you for allowing me to speak today first i want to thank you for standing up for our children our teachers and against other external political establishments that are aimed to divide the cooperation that we have together when i was asked to come here to speak in support of you i immediately said yes the three past years have been abominable for everyone in education so yes i'd like to publicly support you do i look like everything you have done and everything you have brought up but you all have done good your jobs are hard you have wonderful employees that have stood steadfast against all of the arrows that have been thrown at them and they should be concentrated

114on doing and they are concentrated on doing what is best for the students of our city even though they have had lots of barriers before them you have a talented knowledgeable director of school who has also stood fast to do her best to enable educators and employees to do their best work but i will say as you look up as you look at the architects that are building up your school system remember who is working directly with the students and who is there making the difference day in and day out they are they are where you deserve most of the respect and the accolades that's where those should go they are the ones toiling hard to make you look good and don't forget and don't look over them please they are your front line i

115also want to ask you because as the legislature legislative time is about to come up i want to ask you to make sure to work we there's a time when we have to pull together to work together because we are foreseen that there may be some legislation coming up that is not that positive to public schools so sometimes we have to put what we think apart and pull together for what we can do together to make it better for public public school teachers public school employees your support staff your administration and you we are all in this together and we need to listen to each other so that we can find out what needs to be done in order for our educators to do what they need to do to best empire inspire our students

116thank you for allowing me to come and speak with you thank you so much councilmember and we seem to have had a hiccup in our uh in our list we have two that were not listed that signed up together uh miss bb heinz and dr berthain and about mckinney you yes you were you came after councilmember lee but our system was flawed thank you chairwoman bugs and thank you board for this opportunity to address the school board today my name is bb heinz i'm the current chair of the mmps pac please visit our website for all of our information i'm here to give you an update on what we're what's coming up we don't have a meeting this month because we need time to rest and recover and get ready for uh the rest of

117the um school year um so in january of next year we're gonna hold we plan on holding a packed town hall we want to continue the conversation academics we don't have a meeting date time or location yet but the topics are going to be on advanced academic courses career and technical education cte gifted and talented programs and promise scholars 2022 so that's the plan for that town hall in january on the 29th we'll have the by design movie viewing at the bellevue branch library so by january would have gone around all four quarters and then we'll pick up again on in february and do another four the focus for 2022 we're going to work really hard to reach out to more families mmps family engagement has been working really hard with us we're also going

118to shift gears and start working more with mnea our teachers that's our focus for 2022. um i'm not going to speak for the teachers i'm not a teacher i don't like speaking for other people but i do know that they've they would like parents to support their cause reduce workload and stuff like that so we're gonna start talking about how our parents can help whether we can volunteer with their organization um just be ears they can listen to we're gonna try to support mnea as much as we can um so it's been a very tough i don't know it's three months four months i don't know but it's been very difficult but one of the lessons that we've learned from all of this is that we really are all in this together when the parents

119and the teachers are stressed our children feel that stress as well we had a student who came up here and that was pretty sad to witness as an adult i'm we have to do something so even though christmas is coming merry christmas happy new year we have a lot of work ahead of us so our group is going to continue to reach out to you we're going to continue asking questions we do support you but it's our job as parents to continue to ask questions and so that's what we'll continue to do thank you very much thank you again our apologies for the glitch dr berthenabah mckinney and then carrie lindley hey good evening greetings to dr battle chair bugs and the board members and all of you in the audience today thank you for

120the opportunity to speak my name is dr berthina nava mckinney i serve as the co-secretary and recruiting coordinator for the parent advisory council i also have the pleasure of serving on the state's eight one of the state's 18 committees for education funding my subcommittee specifically focuses on eliciting feedback from parents and families across our state so i'm going to pose this question to all of you in the audience that are that are parents and or family members who support students in our in our education system how many of you are aware that the state is creating a new funding formula to determine how we fund education in our state all right how many of you is this the first time hearing it great so one of the things that i am here to do is

121really focus on eliciting parent voice in this conversation and truly making you aware of how we or how the state is looking at funding education there is currently a form there's currently a funding formula in place i don't know if you've heard of it it's called the bep and what the state is looking to do is to create a new funding formula and really look at how we truly fund our schools and how we support children in the way in which they learn across our state so what i'd like to do is starting in january we are going to host some public forums as well as um uh possibly put out a survey to really elicit your voice so that i can truly represent parents in this conversation and bring that information back to our

122subcommittee and really elicit those voices that we need to hear um and so i really want all parents to be aware of that please go on the state department of education tennessee department of education's website look at state funding this is a new initiative by the governor and the commissioner of education please look at please look up that information be familiar with it and also look for communication over the next month or so regarding this funding formula and how your voice can be uh seen or heard in this conversation thank you so much and have a wonderful night thank you next is carrie lindley carrie lindley all right after that's lynn holt it's a hoyt sorry you've known then lynn hoyt thank you for that correction all right next is jennifer claxton [Applause] good evening

123board members i'm jennifer claxton district 8. i have two kids at j.t moore middle and i'm going to give a shout out to dr gary hughes the principal there and the staff who have been tremendous during the pandemic please drop the mass mandate when we return you know as a parent me and my children's pediatrician know what's best for my family in nearly two years the benefits of masking have not been quantified or proven concretely affected in mitigating beyond self-protection in fact most studies have shown that school districts with mass mandates don't fare better with covet cases than those with that are mask optional what has been quantified during this time is that forcing kids to mass seven hours a day have has contributed to crisis level social emotional and physical damage to our kids

124we're seeing a lack of social interaction an abundance of speech delays and massive learning loss the reduced oxygen intake from masking in children can cause irreversible damage to the brain to the lungs to the heart it can contribute to anxiety tiredness reduced performance and cognitive function the warm moist environment of a child's mask is breeding ground for bacteria virus and spores my kids were sicker with sinus infections than they were with coven but most importantly what value do you place on a smile there is a positive chemical reaction that happens in your body when someone smiles at you the feel good neurotransmitters of serotonin endorphins and dopamine are released in the system and we're robbing kids of that seven hours a day five days a week and nowhere else in nashville is that happening i

125think it's um to think that's not having a crisis level damaging effect on our children is naive or ignorant the surgeon general said last week it would be a great tragic tragedy if we beat back one public health crisis but only allowed another to grow in its place one in four kids are depressed one in five are anxious and there's been a 51 increase in suicide attempts by adolescent girls acknowledge that force masking isn't solely responsible for this but it's definitely a factor you were on the wrong side of history keeping our kids out of school for a year please don't repeat the same mistakes those of us who fought for open schools were right but we were vilified closing schools harmed kids there's clear crystal data on that children at the least risk at

126covid for complications schools across our state country and the world are mass optional and it's been fine we currently have 92 student cases of coven this doesn't warrant a mandate on the 83 000 other students the courts aren't forcing you to continue the mandate dr battle i appreciate that your recommendation is to to look at the current data and hopefully encourage coming back in the next semester that mass be strongly encouraged rather than mandated thank you so much for your time i understand it's hard to serve during this i've been there but please just listen to parents we would appreciate it thank you [Applause] james clexton good evening chair members of the board my name is jim claxton i work at granberry elementary creve hall elementary percy priest elementary wright middle school in john overton

127high school i work with some some amazing teachers um amazing administrators amazing people in the cafeteria um we all do what we do because we love kids and and we don't we don't deny that you guys don't love your kids too um i i would just one thing that i struggle with is the lack of connectivity with the internet and i know that sounds so basic but it is so infuriating so much of what i do is cloud-based um just imagine coming into work and you have to wait two hours before you can log on it just it throws your day into a tail spin i do team meetings probably three three a day three days a week it's really it's a burden on the staff and it's a burden on kids because all the

128plts are web-based a lot of the assessments are web-based um i i would i would implore you to put some of that the the money that is i i don't know what covet did to our our infrastructure but it is we have the one-on-one is really stressing out the the bandwidth in the buildings i i was in a middle school today and uh you know the kids are eating lunch in their room and in between bites they had to put their masks on and i work in special ed and uh and there was no talking i sat there for 30 minutes these are five kids all with basically the same disability and they were watching a screen of christmas like a fireplace listening to christmas music but they couldn't interact and i was just like

129i i was kind of bummed out by it i was like these kids should be talking they should be laughing i do appreciate the fact that you mentioned you will think about the mass mandate when we come back i just see i see so many kids not wearing them appropriately i probably touch 10 masks a day that are covered in spit just because they just developmentally can't handle that and i appreciate all you do thanks for your time thank you claudia cornelison anna thorsen ink chair members of the board my name's anna thorson and i have two teens at hillsborough high school both of them have ieps and i want to say thank you for um the mask mandate and my family and with our disabilities we're very grateful for it so what i'm asking

130for tonight is to talk more about the high school start time i know you're talking about considering it in 2026 but i spoke this week with a parent who was up here in the 1990s asking the board for the same thing and they did committees and they had surveys and that was 36 so if we postpone this to 2026 we're talking about 36 years so mnps has the earliest start time in the country at 7 am experts agree at the cdc at the american academy of pediatrics and most recently at the certain surgeon general that high school should start no earlier than 8 30 a.m so why teen circadian rhythms move to 11 p.m which is why teens can't fall asleep and so if they're supposed to wake up at 5 30 to get on

131that six o'clock bus they're only getting about six and a half hours of sleep which causes chronic sleep deprivation which leads to it's very well studied poor academic outcomes greater tardies 16 increase accidents and 70 sports injuries but what i really care about in my household is mental health the um in a study commissioned by school board member jeannie puberwalker part of that study reported that for every hour that teens lose of sleep never remember our teens are usually on average losing about two to three hours of sleep so for every hour there is a 38 increase in depression and anxiety and there is a 58 increase in attempted suicide so we're talking again about for every hour of lost sleep the rate of suicide attempted suicide goes up 58 and recently the surgeon general

132in december of this year has urged had talked about our mental health crisis and has specifically charged districts to take urgent action on school start times because that is shown to really help the mental health health crisis that our teens are in and i know bus the bus situation is complicated but we also do know that districts are size across the country have been making this change seattle denver atlanta san diego and most recently amidst this bus crisis and around anne arundel county and in maryland has done this because they cited the predominant negative impact on teens so i urge you all as parents as teenagers to email your school board talk about this with coaches teachers and principals follow startschoollater.net they have a lot of great information there for parents because in our house

133we a lot of us suffer from mental health around shared family trauma and this is really scary to me i'm also a bereaved parent already and the thought of having this mental health crisis out there is really terrifying to me so i hope you'll take action before 2026 thank you for your time thank you catherine brown tiffany badgett baggett badgett my apologies for my name is tiffany badgett and i'm back here to get on the knowledge academy bang where nick bandwagon again i'm a mother of three boys raising three boys in the antioch community we've experienced both public and private schools over the years based off my experience over the years i allow my youngest son to make a decision on where he wanted to go he no longer wanted to attend private school so

134we mutually agreed on knowledge academy shortly after his freshman year i strongly considered transferring him back to private school but after long thought i decided to allow him to stay and this was a personal testimony to myself we teach our children to stay the course so i had to just swallow it and stay that course with him over the years we're now in his third year we have experienced a rebuilt administration a growing mentorship program volunteer program that has raised over thousands of dollars for the athletic program we've experienced local college tours visited visitors by local college athletes teacher student accountability the athletes have to report grades daily they've even learned about stock so my son comes home teaching me about stock i could definitely go on and on but i really wanted to encourage

135the mnps to pour into the antioch compute community by supporting knowledge academy if i could do it all over again i would have put all my children in a knowledge academy if it was a knowledge academy when my oldest son was in school thank you for your support thank you tanya drostner good evening dr battle chair and members of the board my name is dr tanya drosner and i am a third grade teacher at glenview elementary this is my 12th year as an educator in my fifth year with metro nashville public schools while working in an urban school can be challenging i feel a great sense of purpose and responsibility to my students when i come to work each day i'm here speaking to you tonight on behalf of both educators and students mother teresa

136said i alone cannot change the world but i can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples i feel our school district is poised with great leadership and could serve as an exemplar model to other urban school districts across our nation we could be the change makers the one to cast the stones that caused the much-needed ripple effects on behalf of all educators i want to thank you for making this friday an optional work remotely day i believe you took an important step towards prioritizing the mental health of educators and it is much appreciated i implore you to consider extending our winter break or making more days optional work remotely days during the second semester i assure you it would be greatly appreciated there is much work to be done in the second

137semester but teachers are feeling the strain of so many different things at this time i know you are aware of the vacancies and sub shortages we are experiencing and we want to know more about what is being done to address these issues teachers are tired of not having a much-needed break during the day and more often than not more than two days of planning time are taken up per week due to various meetings or other action items these are not necessarily violations of the mou but important meetings that must happen for the sake of our students and families teachers do not want to miss out on collaborative planning with our teams we shouldn't have to choose teachers care and want to do everything possible to help but we need our planning time to effectively implement

138our new reading curriculum discussing lessons with our teams for around an hour each week is nowhere near the amount of time it takes to effectively plan for these lessons or what we need to be prepared for our students one of our core tenants in mnps is to create and support engaging rigorous and personalized learning experiences for all students but we are not afforded the time to do so when we reach out about needs for our students we are met with their caseload is full when our parents are telling us they need help and we go through the collaborative referral process it is taking too long and we are not feeling the relief or support that we need to be feeling and receiving in these areas i believe your initiatives are rooted in wanting nothing but

139the best for our district however maya angelou said you can only truly become accomplished at something you love while i love my job it is difficult to feel accomplished and love all 14 initiatives there are too many peter green recently penned a letter of encouragement to teachers who may be feeling as if they are at the end of their rope he said it best when he said while you feel as if you're shoveling jello with a pitchfork your efforts are not wasted i do believe our efforts are not wasted but a lot of things are heavily weighing on us at this time thank you for your time thank you dr paula pendergrass greetings and madam chair school board members and dr battle i am dr paula pendergrass the current vice president of mnea this evening

140i came prepared to address a memo dated november 19 2021 that was sent to all the chiefs executive directors and principals the memo stated that governor lee signed sweeping covet 19 legislation on november the 12th and one aspect of the legislative directly impacts our ability to offer coven 19 sick leave it explains that tennessee co-annotated 14-2-102 prohibits a school from taking an adverse action against a person based on their vaccination status therefore because of this change in state law coven 19 sick leave is not available after november the 12th in particular i wanted to address the last sentence of that memo which states that there are no changes to the previous guidance about working remotely if an employee is following cdc guidance and needs to quarantine i have since been in contact with members of

141the hr team and ensured that they would be looking at ways to remove the red tape such as the lack of substitute teachers and rigid definitions of remote working to prevent educators from utilizing the action described in the last paragraph of the november 19th memo we recognize that teachers are having to quarantine due to positive cova testing although many have already been vaccinated and even have their booster shots i look forward to working with the hr team to making sure that we are not creating structural barriers that are working against mnps teachers who are increasingly finding themselves scared anxious angry or just plain overwhelmed by it all i thank you madam chair school board members like the battle for giving me the opportunity to speak before you and i also wanted to thank melissa lisa

142dr bellamy and hera finch who was not present today but helping me navigate a very difficult situation on behalf of a member thank you thank you beverly whalen schmeller [Applause] good evening i'm dr beverly whalen whalen schmeller school psychologist and itinerant i want you to know what is like working in the schools this year in a word it's heavy working in the spring of 2020 was like wearing concrete boots carrying cinder blocks and then being asked to scale a brick wall thanks to vaccines we are not scaling that brick wall but we are still carrying that weight if we do not lighten the load we will fall first we'll celebrate working from home this friday we are exhausted thank you dr battle for recognizing that the district has helped us get vaccines and online therapy

143and a teacher just told me today how helpful the therapy has been to her school psychology has contract workers to help us with some of the cases and that's helped so much and we have several lead psychologists to guide us thank you for funding their positions but i'm here to tell you that we are still wearing those concrete shoes and carrying cinder blocks even if they're decorated for the holidays we are still in the pandemic there is toxic stress at every level so what do we need we need dedicated space to do our work in the buildings we need you to eliminate some of these required meetings because school psychologists have stuff to do we have testing we have counseling we have consulting there's more need than ever kids need group therapy and we're doing

144threat assessments most of the kids are okay but the ones who are not okay are really not okay we need to hire more school psychologists the recommended ratio is one school sag for 500 students and metro is closer to one to 1200 students the district needs to fund this one school psych per school working extra hours isn't going to fix this it's going to lead to more burnout let us work from home occasionally when we're just doing paperwork we proved last year that we could do it innovate most of the kids have some missing skills let's meet them where they are and be creative metro will always get criticized so let's go ahead and find creative solutions we need to hire those para professionals and the substitutes this is a safety issue in our schools

145itinerants are in every single school why not ask us about the innovation and success that we're seeing we're happy to share that info thank you for listening and please help us carry that weight and we'll help you as well thanks 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 adam grant a professor and author who specializes in psychology shared a tweet last week that said the holidays shouldn't be a time to recharge they should be a time to celebrate if work is exhausting people to the point that they're using their time off to recover you might have a burnout culture a healthy organization doesn't leave people drained in the first place mnps teachers are not just tired we are

146completely burnt out a bar has been set for elementary teachers two years into this pandemic that is unattainable and demoralizing and we're reminded of these expectations almost daily when it comes to our new ela curriculum i understand the legal requirement for a curriculum for the district and the need for structured and consistent instruction that is delivered from one classroom to another during my time in mnps i have served on a curriculum adoption committee as well as scope and sequence writing committees for two other departments the whitten wisdom curriculum as a whole has some very valuable components and has allowed many of our students to show tremendous growth in their writing so far this year but the expectation with the extremely rigorous pacing of the whitten wisdom's lessons is impractical and unrealistic for the population that

147we serve in mmps we do use what the district gives us for instructional materials for these lessons but it's not enough adding in this the specific supports that our students need in order to absorb the absorb this content takes so much time and when we ask for that time we don't get it instead we are reminded of what we need to do to stay on track and we are told to push through one lesson into the next we've had visitors from the support hub come into our classrooms to model these lessons and surprisingly they're also unable to meet their own expectations for pacing in a way that actually provides engagement and learning for every student needless to say that doesn't make teachers feel very supported instead it makes us feel discouraged and sometimes even a

148little bit crazy there's a concept in the educator world called the door principle which is the idea that teachers really enjoy the things that happen on the classroom side of their doors that's the good stuff the building relationships with kids helping them understand new ideas meeting their individual needs and watching them learn and grow what happens on the other side of the door is what drives burnout it's not the kids i absolutely love my school my students their families and i'm so so lucky because my building administrators are amazing but as a two-time teacher of the year a mentor to a belmont resident teacher and someone who's right in the middle of completing my national board certification i don't know if i want to continue to pursue that because i'm spending a lot of time

149this year pondering if i want to stay in the classroom i'm pondering if i want to stay in education in general we don't need any more initiatives from the district we don't need any more walk throughs or evaluations we don't need any more planning protocols or tools we need time and trust to do our jobs thank you thank you sarah morrison i'm sorry kellyanne graff hi my name is kellyanne graff i live in 37210 and i work at thurgood marshall middle school i came here today not to ask for a pay increase but an increase in support so as you've heard over and over again we are not just tired but we are demoralized but we are happy to find actionable and expedient solutions with you in 2021 it was not uncommon to see teachers

150leading two or three classes simultaneously in the gym or in the cafeteria using like a britney spears style microphone so that all students could hear them well yes these teachers are being paid extra for their extra work this is not a situation we should be encountering in a fully in a fully funded district increasing pay for substitute teachers supporting administration and recruiting substitutes and allowing administrators and non-teaching staff to repay um to receive in lieu of subpay will decrease this workload on classroom teachers and increase quality of instructional time we're not allowed to to deny split students we're not allowed to deny covering extra classes unless it's during specifically during our lunch or our planning and even those have been taken from some people our mou isn't being followed with in regards to planning time

151there's always an emergency meeting a 504 a safety team a iep review ilp advice there's always something added on teachers across the district are feeling suffocated and micromanaged by the amount of meetings initiatives and less lesson documentation expectations teachers are professionals give us the autonomy and opportunity to show our mastery constantly adding in new curriculums and having a shift this is my third year working for the district and i've taught learn zilean florida virtual school and now my perspectives every single year i've been like okay i'm going to create these materials and i'm going to get to use them again and again in my career and every single year it switches again and i don't have other experienced teachers that can lend me because it's new to all of us constantly as a district we

152say we prioritize sel but we are given um our first grade teachers teaching wit and wisdom they're not given time to get to know their students to accommodate first often majority el classrooms we have students being added to our sheltered el class almost weekly there's a point where we're at 33 students in our sheltered el classroom those students are receiving the services that they need we need more el teachers we need more ee support um and once again i'm not asking for more pay i'm asking for more support thank you thank you mnea president michelle sheriff [Applause] that was part of my intro so i'll skip that part um good evening chair members of the board dr battle i come to before you tonight to speak on several important issues regarding our nashville educators first

153i want to thank you for the district's past participation in collaborative conferencing national educators are thankful that the board ratified one of the most comprehensive mous in the state of tennessee other districts actually are using ours as a model as you know tennessee law recognizes that a collaborative relationship between the board and its professional employees will assist in the establishment and maintenance of an educational climate and working environment that will attract and retain a high highly qualified professional staff your ratification of our prior mou affirms to educators in nashville that you value our work and our opinions we appreciate the opportunity to collaborate on matters that are essential to attracting and retaining a highly qualified professional staff so that together we can achieve the highest possible educational standards in our school district tonight i come

154before you to again express concerns about the lack of time educators have to plan prepare lessons analyze student work prepare individualized lessons for students and do the things that you typically think of educators doing day to day yesterday evening m e a held a town hall with dr battle and mmps chiefs we appreciate the district's participation as it's important for educators to hear directly from dr battle and mnps leadership mda members submitted questions for the town hall and the majority of the questions submitted concerned the high number of vacancies and teacher morale the two issues go hand in hand the lack of substitute teachers causes increased workloads and demands for our educators unfilled vacancies are one of the main issues causing teachers to lack the planning time to complete the tasks necessary for instruction during

155their contracted work day teachers have extra students in their classes daily and are asked to substitute during planning times many educators are staying for up to an hour after school to supervise students due to the bus driver shortage these vacancies take time and focus away from the preparation and execution of highly qualified lessons thus negatively affecting student outcomes the ongoing expectations and normalization that educators will complete assigned tests after contracted hours for free is bad for morale all of this is detrimental to student outcomes we know there's a need for a short time short-term solution to fill vacancies and that we must find creative solutions together to improve the day-to-day lives of our educators and students our collaboration must continue and mnea stands ready to partner with the district to find a solution to this

156ongoing and pressing problem thank you thank you haley trogger good evening my name is holly trager and i am an engineering and bio stem teacher cte teacher at antioch high school and an antioch resident i am here tonight because our students deserve schools and transportation that are safe and allow them to focus on their learning i imagine at this point you may be tired of us teachers coming month after month to speak about bus and substitute teachers but i assure you that our students are more tired of being packed three high schoolers to a seat during a pandemic or forced to race out at the closing bell for the chance at a slightly safer window seat on a bus or waiting for hours for bus drivers to return for their second drop when i challenged

157my engineering students to tackle any one pressing issue in our school community with innovative design solutions the number one issue that my period 1b focused on was mitigating kovid on crowded buses i'm incredibly proud of the effort my students put in and the creative ideas that they pitched but decent and safe transportation should be a basic right for all our students not something that students feel they need to figure out on their for themselves likewise a teacher for each class section and adequate substitute coverage should be basic rights for our students education we need you to urgently take more action to address bus drivers support staff teacher and substitute shortages we also need you to understand that efforts to address to reduce teacher workload and burnout are a critical part of addressing teacher shortages we

158come to work every day because we love our students and we believe they deserve our very very best our students need our time attention and care not additional tech platforms like zone to grow that attempt to standardize and monitor student-teacher relationships without meaningful benefits for student mental health steps like reducing extra paperwork and initiatives or canceling evaluations as the pandemic continues can reduce teachers stress freeing us to focus on our students as individuals and encouraging teachers to stay in mmps finally i want to reiterate that the pandemic continues those of us in schools know that those low case counts reflect serious undercounts from where i sit in the front lines um and as omar khan surges this is not the right time to consider lifting our mask mandate we need continued and renewed mass mandates

159contact tracing and the other basic safety measures to keep ourselves and our students safe i urge you to prioritize students health and safety by returning retaining our mass mandate and other coveted mitigation measures and i urge you to take steps equally critical for student safety to ensure adequate staffing and reduce crowding on our buses and in our classrooms thank you thank you [Applause] lauren herring good evening dr battle on the board my name is lauren herring i have two children in mnps i live in miss elrod's district i am also a regular mnps substitute mostly in the elementary schools i apologize if my stomach growls i hope you all have snacks up there because i'm dying i'm happy to hear that the mask mandate will be discussed next month as you consider please take a

160moment to realize when the current universal mask main date either does not apply or does is not enforced for example lunchtime cafeterias are packed with kids all over each other crammed crammed on the benches around those tiny little tables athletics mnps athletes are not expected to wear masks as they practice or play in matches or even while they sit the bench together on the sidelines third performing arts due to the policy quietly enacted on november 17th students are now able to unmask in theater dance choral and instrumental music performances and finally teachers and coaches who do not cannot or refuse to mask whatever their reasons there are certainly adults in the school buildings who are unmasked or improperly masked if you've spent more than 10 minutes in a school building or have attended an after

161school event you would know that there's a significant amount of time that students and sometimes adults are together unmasked each one of these events involves close contact of more than 15 minutes they occur frequently even daily in the occasion of lunch aside from the performing arts policy they've been occurring since school returned in person for everyone last march and since last march they have not been linked to increased cases hospitalizations or death in our schools or their community your own data show that kids are safe in schools despite all of these times that they are unmasked the time to re-examine the universal mass mandate is here i would like to go on public record to ask for the board and dr battle's plan for removing the mandate what metrics are being used to justify its

162necessity where is the data that you are analyzing to keep the mandate in place this should be public information last year you kept school buildings closed while all surrounding districts returned it in person school this year you hold on to your mass mandate while all other surrounding districts have cancelled theirs there is no statistical difference in case rates from our district in any of the surrounding districts just like last year you're putting covid ahead of the whole child instead of the whole child ahead of covid and just like last year you refused to communicate a plan to remove unnecessary restrictions a teacher i spoke with this week said that the mask mandate is putting our students at a quote pedagogical disadvantage to all other students in middle tennessee and beyond i don't think this is

163the legacy you want to leave please reconsider thank you [Applause] emma um uh jacqueline smith good evening i thought i'd get in place i'm going to take us back to ka my name is jackie smith and i serve as the community engagement director for knowledge academy under the noble education initiative umbrella i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you this evening about the work it took to build a wonderful bank of community partners after a very difficult process of surviving the targeted closing of the school several partners no longer wanted to engage ka because of the extremely negative publicity that was thrown at the school it gave us the chance though to work hard to show the community what we wanted to do to make a great educational experience for students and for families we

164are grateful for partners like the nashville black police association who kept us supplied with food boxes as we pressed through the pandemic we are grateful for total health and dental dental clinic sponsored by meharry medical who provided covet screenings and vaccines for our families we are grateful for the south district metro nashville police department who comes to mentor our kids and sometimes play a little basketball with them we are grateful for the crossings nashville association partnership for being a constant support to our school and we must mention the great victor chapman who donated a baby grand piano to our school and drops in to offer his support pastor cornelius hill was here earlier and he had to leave but he's been with ka from the beginning and he was an inspirational commencement speaker at our

1652019 graduation and we would be remiss if we didn't mention bethel world outreach church who has contributed hundreds of book bags and school supplies to our students and gift bags to our teachers and the tutoring that goes on at ka is also a gift from bethel world outreach church we we couldn't do it without them in addition to being an outstanding partner to knowledge academy joyce styles our councilwoman called us just the other day with an offer of nutcracker ballet tickets for our kids and for that we are also grateful my final mention would be the southeast public library who is now partnering with with us to head up our robotics after school program i mentioned these to say we have a number of great people and community entities who are contributing to the success

166and stability of ka and they are committed to the long-term health and well-being of knowledge academies our partners have chosen chosen to support ka and we appreciate them appreciate them and we would appreciate your support thank you thank you katherine herring good evening board i'm katherine herring i'm in district five my address is on record if you need it i am a family nurse practitioner and i wanted to go ahead and talk about of course the mask mandate again and share a little bit of why i'm so passionate about reconsidering the mask mandate um my dad is severely bipolar with psychotic features he has suicidal and homicidal ideations this has been going on since i was a teenager i hate to since we're all so tired i'll share one daddy's story but when uh when

167i was 20 years old he decided that he was moving to tennessee i'm sorry and um he bought 47 cemetery plots packed up by a grandfather's entire gun collection and um eventually was arrested one of those cemetery plots was for me um so when i say i'm concerned about the mental health of our children i am very concerned because what doctors have told us about my dad is it's related to early childhood trauma and last week the surgeon general issued an advisory for the youth mental health crisis as a reminder suicide is the number two leading cause of death for children for school-age children the surgeon general mentioned that symptoms of anxiety and depression in children have doubled er visits for teenage girls suicide attempts are up 51 compared to 2019. a study from brown

168university revealed the social distancing measures including face masks are suspected of causing young children's development to drop by up to 23 percent and we all know of the learning loss that metro nashville school students have experienced this year adverse childhood experiences can lead to toxic stress development that can cause disrupted brain development and increase the list the risk for lifelong mental health conditions and other health problems that my father has experienced his entire life per federal eua law 564 parents and doctors must be aware of the stats and monitored their children for adverse reactions from long-term daily masking including depression anxiety learning learning loss and suicidal ideation if they are experiencing these things they must have the option to refuse the mask per eua law 564. mask cloth masks are not fda approved products they're

169under eua just like the vaccines are emergency authorized and we must have the option to refuse especially if children are experiencing adverse reactions to them so i noticed that my five-year-old was having adverse reactions i know my family history and so i talked to our doctor and i got a medical mask exemption for her when i've told the school when i told the school about this they told me that her accommodation was that she's not allowed to sit in the group desk anymore she is isolated into the corner by herself she is forced to the back of the school line every day and she has to eat lunch by herself every day this is your ada and 504 accommodation for my child who is already at high risk for mental health issues i ask that

170you please reconsider your mental your medical your medical mask exemptions thank you thank you edwin lee good evening i represent knowledge academies and i live in madison tennessee i'll tell you a little story i had a fifth grader i teach theater arts at knowledge academy i teach high school and it's 8th grade class i had a i had a fifth grader come up to me he said mr lee you decide he's going to wear a tie today he said miss lee help me tie my tie now this notice this tie was on a clip-on and the tie come apart now granted i hadn't used a clip on ty since i was about his age so i try and i say i did the best best i could i said mitch you look nice i like

171the shoes you got on he came back to me maybe a couple of days later with a real tie and he said mr lee can you help me tie my tie so i tied it up for him put it around his neck tighten it up for him i said man you look sharp man i like what you got on you look sharp i said that to say that we add value to our students we add value our administration our staff our all that's involved add value to our students and we add value to our students by three ways first we love we love the opportunity to change and to impact lives we love the opportunity to be able to help to encourage as you heard uh isaac came up and he was so uh passionately

172how he felt about how he feels about being at knowledge academy another way that we impact students is through acceptance we accept students for who they are and where they are because we know and believe that we can help them to get where they need to be and lastly accountability we hold our students accountable because without it they cannot grow and be all that god has created them to be so we understand as i've heard the testimonies that come forth that what we do the struggle is real but at knowledge academy failure is not an option thank you thank you anna barnes good afternoon my name is anna barnes and i'm one of very many unfortunate mnps parents i would like to address all of you today and ask to focus your energy and your

173resources on educating our children there is a clear learning loss among metro students and this is what this board and this administration need to focus on this is the promise that you made to us parents when you took this job to educate our children please do not get caught up in a weird power struggle trying to attach yourselves to a lawsuit that has nothing to do with davidson county this is just as absurd as me suggesting that dr battle is person of interest in gabby petito's murder with this being said i would like to respectfully address the board administration and to ask to follow the state law and stop the mass mandate for davidson students additionally you probably know governor lee has recently removed the state of emergency for the state of tennessee to quote

174one of the best coaches in history bill belichick do your job thank you eric lewis good evening to the chair of the board honored scholars my name is eric lewis i'm the executive director of knowledge academies and i'm grateful and honored to be representing our board and our staff our students and our parents tonight grateful to our volunteer board members especially to our long-serving board chair mr james bristol mr bristol and our wonderfully engaged board members represent several university administrators a prominent partner local law firm business owners representing industries of business consulting accounting marketing public relations and i stand to represent this giving group of leaders today with the board i work hand-in-hand with our not-for-profit and locally present management team of noble education initiative and my duties include operations finance and the like a

175few of the accomplishments operationally financially i'd like to share with you of what we are proud of our most recent accomplishments include our starting teacher pay beginning at 50 000 this year plus bonus incentives there could not be a better time for such a move for our teachers who deserve so much the school has added critical roles of operational cultural needs emerging from the past two years of global and local struggle this includes our director of student services our family engagement representative our licensed school counselor and our college career readiness coach that is literally coaching up students to pursue their post-secondary goals beginning in their middle grades as well our cmo noble education initiative supports the school in unprecedented ways with roles uh that are local such as our director of operations compliance our director

176of community engagement and director of community uh curriculum instruction that are all on site and local for support and leadership in addition to our operational stability our board and cmo are committed to k's financial health as well ka currently cares a cumulative fund balance of a million dollars and is projected to operate with surplus this year for the 2021 school year for all the aka schools combined since ndi has become the cmo in 2019 the school's financial performance has substantially stabilized and has been professionalized the school's balanced budgets consecutively increased the fund balances the school's excellent working relationship with our lender partners and continues to operate with mutually agreed upon pathway forward to keep the school unstable financial footing to resume our debt service payments and advance the school for the future the school hired

177professional grants management team members in the spring of 2021 and is timely in the current drawdowns and compliant with all the requirements k enrollment declined precipitously in 2019 after the the board publicly attempted to close their schools while the school was successful in preventing the closure through the appeal of the state board it impaired the school's ability to maintain its enrollment and yet for the school year 2021 the school's enrollment has increased year over year and is building positive momentum in our community even after uh the coveted closures and our struggles our school knowledge academy middle school was designed and approved as a small innovative learning community to serve families choosing to pursue college community creativity and culture in their learning environment thank you for and i hope that you respectfully will vote to renew

178our charter renewal for knowledge academies again this year thank you dr kim germany good evening board chair board members dr battle my name is dr kim germany and i serve as the director of school operations and compliance for noble education initiative a position that i have had since july i wanted to come tonight to talk about some of the academic gains that knowledge academy has experienced mostly due to the success block at the school because of the high quality professional development for teachers and staff as well as for results-oriented oriented instruction k.a middle school exited csi status based upon significant improvements in growth and student proficiency rates ka is no longer in the five percent bottom of schools in the state k.a is now a t vos 3 for the academic school year of 2021

179in fact according to the state assessment data for spring 2021 ka middle school has higher percentages of students on track or mastery in ela math and social studies than any of the surrounding middle schools including antioch middle of hollow jfk margaret allen and thurgood marshall ka middle school exceeded the tcap participation rate requirement for 2021 with 94 in fact our current benchmark data assessment shows we are on track for growth in our students especially for ela we're so very proud in fact last may 100 of our seniors graduated i am just amazed by ka's growth the growth of nashville as well as the growth of the antioch community this is not the nashville that i left in the current antioch is not the same antioch from my old teaching days at antioch high school in

180room h 200. in the past most of the congestion antioch was on murfreesboro bell road and arrival and dismissal of schools but not anymore with a rapidly growing community breen's rapidly growing in larger student bodies but ka is positioned for growth ka is a gem it is a safe haven for not only academic growth but also personal development and high quality individualized instruction our primary goal is to make sure students are college and or career ready k.a delivers with a personal touch every kid is known every kid is loved every kid has an adult with high expectations for themselves as well as for teaching and learning please don't take that away from our students from our community from our families as a career educator and the former parents of a metro national magnet school student

181i encourage you to vote for the world okay thank you carl kirk [Applause] mohamed jabassini hello i promise you i'm the last one from knowledge academics to speak tonight that's all right uh my name is mahmoud jabussini they call me mj one of the students mentioned my name earlier um after 19 years of working for refugee services in nashville and three tours in iraq as a cultural advisor with the army i landed this job at knowledge academies 11 years ago i was there when they first opened the doors for the first 150 students fifth and sixth grade since then i watched those kids grow with us a lot of them graduated in the last three years some of the kids they spoke earlier before i forget number 15 hanok his sister graduated last year and

182she's on a full scholarship to vanderbilt to study neuroscience and number 21 on the les james his sister she is on a full scholarship she went to lupscom to study nursing [Music] i've been there since day one i've seen the school grow we established a great relation with the families it's not just about the kids it's we involve their families all the time it's a great environment i really i mean need your support we don't have to be scared of you about closing the school we need to feel like you are on our side to help us support and keep the school open um press my case thank you you have a good evening you do the same thank you that concludes our public participation portion of our meeting and to be quite honest we've

183been here since about 2 15. so we're going to take a quick five-minute break for biology needs to stand and stretch go grab a snickers if you need to so we will be back at seven oh my gosh 7 55. steadfast with us we have but a couple more items on our agenda for the evening we will move on to governance issues beginning with the consent agenda do we have a motion or an amendment to the consent agenda as listed so sorry i need to pull some things from you okay so please um i want to pull adams a 8 11 12 20 and 22. i'm sorry i said that one more time you said 8 8 11 12 20 and 22 but we can discuss them as a group because my um concerns and

184questions about them are are related to the they're all from the same rfp okay so we have eight that's in2 electric llc 11 lead company lee company 12 liberty electrical contracting company inc at the irony um 20 southeast electric inc and 22 thompson electric and and these will all be discussed as a unit as they are all from the same rfp all right so we have an amendment to it to the agenda do i have a motion to accept the amended agenda committee consent agenda good move i have a motion from mrs player peters do i have a second any discussion all right all in favor for the to pass the a many consent agenda please raise your hand all right all opposed um mr little uh thank you for chiming in we are going

185to put you on the screen as we have to see your face for you to be able to vote but thank you for reminding us you're here are you in a tunnel do you need help that was a little whiz all right um so it has been the amended consent agenda has been approved we will move on to discuss again um items a 8 11 12 20 22 mrs masters thank you i just so in in the interest of of just providing full transparency around our processes with contracting and i did send some some warning that i was planning to pull these these are all from rfp159211 it looks like they are all around providing electrical services um each one individually is not to exceed 5 million dollars and it's to provide qualified contractors to

186provide quotes on electrical service projects so totaling 25 million dollars potentially and i just my questions my question was around um sort of just the process of putting out an rfp that resulted in choosing five separate um vendors are we actually planning to contract for 25 million in electrical projects or is this one of these things where it's not going to reach that threshold is there a potential that we won't use all of these different vendors um were these vendors ranked or did we go into the process knowing we wanted to choose five different ones i kind of just since it's 25 million dollars wanted to just have a little more information around that whole process thank you if there's anyone left who can team join us at the podium thank you good evening my

187name is stephen pittman i'll be speaking on behalf of procurement this was done the rfp was done to create a pool of qualified contractors so that whenever the facilities and maintenance department has a project that meets this scope they can then reach out to the pre-qualified contractors and receive quotes at that time so with how busy the contractors are with this type of service in nashville right now and with the expected work that we have coming up and from the facilities department we just wanted to have these contractors in place so that they can meet what we need on a timely basis and then also get constant you know good pricing because we're constantly competing each job in regards to the five million dollars per contract that is the cap there is no minimum guarantee

188we just have it set there so if one or two vendors happen to constantly be the low cost we have the availability to use them there is no guarantee to spend five million per contract so are you saying that the the estimated actual cost um of the work or the potential work is more like 5 million not 25 million i don't know the exact david david private could probably speak to the estimates but i know that when it came to us it's probably in the 10 to 15 million range so that we have the availability to use what we need when we need but it's it was not we don't have there's no guarantee minimum how many bids did we get on this rfp we received five and after evaluation all five came back and

189scored very well and were viewed as qualified contractors okay is it typical for us to choose that many it depends on the type of work and when it comes to this type of service we've seen you know three to five contractors chosen for this type before okay and i'm assuming that all of them will be subject to some of the the qualifications that we we've discussed in meetings over the course of the past year and a half about qualified contractors and subcontracting and all the sorts of standards that we're wanting to put on the workers that we hire yes okay all right thank you mrs tyler ask one question um i understand the process of it um i just wanted to ask a little bit about the scores we i had talked briefly about when

190we are vetting these companies before they bid on our projects to not just use a scoring system that dings negative things but also ones that give them the opportunity to have positive responses so companies that have zero safety incidents in their company would get a higher score than a company that had had safety problems within some of their work or where we're looking at making sure that our the workers have always been fairly compensated within the all their far time that would give them like with not just with us but in general with their history with this the city and anybody else that they work with so i know that we were scoring them on a bunch of different things and we had talked about adding some more criteria to that score to see if

191we could kind of incentivize some of the people that we work with to you know up safety standards and to things like that so i was just wondering if that was if that happened or not i don't have the full evaluation criteria on this one with me but i do know that when we put the evol criteria together we score it based on their response so we'll ask a question like a question like how would you mitigate risk and a a good response will receive more points opposed to a response we don't you know view as strong or detailed so we do put that into account when we do the evaluations okay all right that was it i just wanted to see if we had you know we i know we changed all of our

192contract language moving forward so i know that that is not an issue i was just wondering about vetting the companies so thank you any other questions from the board the only thing i want to note is that it's interesting contract 11 is lee company but i'll save my sarcasm and frustration for he who shall rename remain nameless so do we have a motion for these five contracts motion to approve we have a second second all right no further discussion all uh all in favor please raise your hand all right it passes unanimously mr little we'll take it that's fine all right um we see you now just making sure that's a yes vote all right thank you we will now move on to oh tip number two knowledge academy and we've had a request from

193board member bush yes thank you chair um i wanted to um make a motion to defer this particular item for ka first and foremost i want to thank all the students and administration staff that came to speak before us tonight i just at this point feel from listening to other board members that we need additional information so that we can make a better i guess kind of take more of a deep dive into the information that's needed in order to make a decision based on the application and also the consolidation so based on that i want to make a motion to defer knowledge academies application and what's that merger call application and application anyway if we're just doing an application not the but i know you all wanted information on the consolidation right but that's

194not on that one okay so the application until the next board meeting which will be in january okay would you mind just restating yourself i would like to make a motion to defer knowledge academy's application until the next board meeting that will be in january all right we have a motion do we have a second second all right we have a motion and a second discussion all right okay all right ahead and this is my masters i was just gonna say i appreciated all the speakers this evening but i did note that they were all from the high school whereas this renewal application is for the middle school so just thank you mrs masters any further discussion before we vote all right i think it might be important for people to know that we're deferring

195it based on a different plan of action that they have come to us with at the very last second so this is not kicking the can down the road because we're not sure this is we have been presented with another deal that knowledge academy is wanting to to discuss and we need to get more information about it before we can decide on this so we're this is not a kick the can down the road we're not wanting to make a decision this is a we're trying to do our due diligence and for the viewing public's um perusal the november board meeting agenda has the presentation or at least the basic outline from the charter charter office regarding the knowledge academy's um application mrs ellride do we need to have a specific date in that motion

196or can we just say january because we want to be it's january 11th isn't it new orleans i can restate it with a date just fine maybe you should do january the after january 15th right do we we don't have to have a date no no no so we'll just we just defer and then we can have conversation with uh staff you just know i like specifically i appreciate it thank you all right um all in favor of the deferral oh i just want to say on the agenda it's slide nine if you look on the agenda what we're talking about so people aren't confused thank you for that yeah it's public all right all in favor of the deferral please raise your hand all right uh unanimous uh all right so motion passes we

197will finish or have the conversation around knowledge academy's application or amendment application in january we'll now move on to board committee reports we'll have one from budget and finance chair free to player peters uh we had a uh budget finance meeting where we were reckless out began to reconcile the fiscal year budget um it passed five in favor zero against too abstain there was also discussion um about salaries and um also having pay for the pair pair pros and staff um which we will continue at a later um meeting but we just had to sure up the um the budget we do this every year around this time to make sure we have a balanced budget and that um we were able to reconcile the incoming sales tax receipts and the increase in sales tax

198receipt that has to go with state law about making sure we provide the correct allocations uh to students and to charter providers that's it all right thank you and now from capital needs chair mrs abigail tyler um so we had a brief but fruitful meeting about our current capital needs request and it really heavily focuses on the reimagined plan to get our fifth grade students back into the elementary school so if you look at it which is public record if you look at it you can see that we have really prioritized getting those elementary schools prepared so that those kids can get there as soon as possible um so knowing that we all looked at it and and it passed unanimously thank you mrs tyler now uh also mrs tyler for teaching and learning committee

199committee chair um and we had a presentation on our gate program our gifted and talented program um where mr matt nelson came and talked to us a little bit about the training involved and how it's delivered and we had some questions around how students are able to access the program and i think it's going to be a continuing conversation as we continue to move forward but i think good information was presented to us so that we all understand what's happening with the program and how it works i don't necessarily think it was the way everybody thought it was at first so um that was really all we talked we just you know looked at advanced academics and really had a robust discussion around that all right thank you now we'll move on to announcements we'll

200begin with our junior student board member ebenezer um so i only have i think a small amount of announcements um i mentioned at the last board meeting about sn7v and i just want to go back to that point again the applications for ssmv are in january 11 that's when they start so for all eighth graders that are interested in stem there's a very good opportunity to go to vanderbilt to study in a particular field that you guys are interested in and i just i would recommend that um i also want to you know wish everybody that's in high school that has midterms just like i do good luck because i know they can be you know nerve-wracking and exhausting but we have really wonderful teachers and they've prepared us for this so just to everybody

201you know what to do you know you're here because you're a well-prepared student so don't be nervous just go in there and show them what you know thank you thank you abe nasir mrs pooper walker i want to thank i'm sorry thank you congratulate uh daniel myers who is a teacher at j.t moore who's one of the teachers selected by national public education foundation for their teacherpreneur program and for folks that missed the by design documentary by npf it's now on their youtube channel you can watch it at home and want to congratulate our students for an amazing first semester and for being here at finals week and so appreciate you guys and wishing everybody a restful vacation and time off and i'm looking forward to getting back at it in january thank you mrs

202bush yes this past weekend i am so so proud and such a proud mama to have my first son to graduate from college he attended the mtsu which is of course i would have loved the tennessee state university but i still love mtsu i am so terribly just so excited about this young man he graduated in four years despite covet i spent a lot of our students that went on and graduated this past weekend and they did it and i was really proud of their accomplishments through such a horrible panda pandemic one of the things i want to point out and i want students to know if you're watching if your parents are watching students like dylan dylan he persevered he was an mnps student and dylan came with a few challenges um that we

203discovered as a uh a middle schooler that he had a disability and it was called lane language impairment if you know anything about language impairment it basically you know it's a slower process of the brain and in comprehension and things like that but through it all dylan bush said not me it's not going to be me because i'm going to beat it and i'm going to do what i need to do to be successful and it was challenging as a mom when you know your child has a disability but despite it all we have to pick it up and we have to say you can do this despite of and that's what dylan bush did dylan bush worked so hard and he pushed through all his little obstacles to a point that he challenged himself

204that he was going to make a high score on the act and i kept thinking to myself i said well you know dylan i know you can do it he didn't think he could do it but he kept saying i got to study i got to study really hard mom and i said well you can do this because you know that i'm a huge advocate of act and making sure our students get those scores so they can have college access so he studied he did things behind my back that i didn't even know about to a point that he while he was over at hillsborough high school he did all his work and then he decided that he wanted to go to the library and study for the act never knew that until his high

205school teachers gave him these awesome letter recommendations and that stood out that that's what he did so fast forward dylan bush right before his graduation the ma that made that december a.c.t scored a 26 on the act his lower score was um his highest score was a 19. he could never push past the 19. but because he decided that he was going he was not going to let this disability be him he was going to beat it and even after he scored that 26 he never had to take a remedial course at mtsu and he was under an iep yeah so i want to tell all the parents out there who have kids that have disabilities or parents who just get to that point they just don't know what else to do for their children

206don't give up because these students are amazing students but we have to continue to push them and don't ever stop pushing because that's what dylan didn't he didn't stop so he graduated in four years so i'm extremely extremely proud of my son and being having the first son and graduate from college is so so remarkable so i'm very very excited i'm very proud and i just want to continue to encourage parents continue to be a voice for your children and continue to fight for your kids and make sure that they get everything they can to be supported so they can be successful so that's my story dylan alfonso bush i am so proud of you and this young man is going to continue to do big things oh and by the way his major is

207in sports management and he wants to manage an nfl team one day and i believe he's going to do it thank y'all y'all have a merry christmas mrs elrod thank you so today in our committee meetings we discussed as mentioned some additional schools i want to make sure for district 2 that you're aware of the new cane ridge cluster elementary the haywood elementary renovation and of course over to elementary and then we also discussed some um some fast tracking of some schools being uh having fifth grade added to them and i really appreciate our leadership um prioritizing those schools that already had space so that they could move without being inside of their own cluster and i know that that took some additional operational work and funding that we needed to kind of prioritize those

208schools that had that space i could go ahead and move inside those clusters and so i just wanted to publicly say that i appreciate that and the work that was done by all of our staff to make sure that that happened this upcoming year outside of the other years and then lastly um i want to make sure that i announce that at our next meeting i will be presenting a resolution on secure safe and responsible firearm storage as we continue to have concerns about that whether it's been through the recent school shootings guns being found or of course this being the nine-year anniversary of sandy hook i think it's an important message for all of us to be aware that all of us as adults that are involved inside of a school or have a

209student that is a state cult diverse stakeholder of a student inside of our schools that there is secure and safe fire firearm um ownership options so thank you thank you mrs player peters um i just wanted to thank my colleagues for signing onto the letter about not making school board elections partisan even a decision was made otherwise i think it's just important that we stayed on the record we are functioning within a nonpartisan government the mayor's nonpartisan the metro council is nonpartisan the work we do here is not partisan work i have literally been on the democratic party's payroll um i have worked in democratic party politics for almost 20 years that was my first professional job with al gore but when i'm a school board member i check my partisanship at the parking lot

210and i think it's important that we continue that culture here no matter what we have to um have to do legally to be on the ballot and declare a party affiliation um but i just i just want to say that how we educate kids and the governance and the management is that the the education policy is is debated on the state level we have to implement it whether we like it or not um how we manage our director of schools is not a partisan issue how we deal with the budget it's not a partisan issue and i just want to go on a record of just really saying that what we do within a non-partisan government structure under the charter should remain that way so just thank you to colleagues for just stepping up and

211being in unison of that at least making the making the moral important case of why um this sport should should have remained nonpartisan so i hope we continue the culture that we have currently no matter how we have to run and continue just to seeing the same culture because we've been doing great things and we've been working together and i hope we can continue that i have faith that we all do it i think we all have that unity together as what we're here for not from a partisan standpoint but um you know politics is politics and um i just want to thank everyone just for for at least being that one voice um you've unified of what how we govern to educate our children and that it surely shouldn't be a partisan effort and

212happy holidays [Laughter] thank you mrs masters thank you i just want to remind everyone [Music] the surgeon general's report on the mental health crisis did draw to attention a lot of very serious issues around teens and children and mental health issues however it did not mention masks as being a cause of mental health crises in children a lot of the things we're experiencing as a result of the pandemic have exacerbated mental health issues among children no doubt masks there is no evidence that masks are a part of that problem however let me tell you something that does lead to mental health issues it's called transphobia so that and this is i'm circling back to our very first speaker of the night trans kids weather masked or not are at a greater risk of health jeopardizing

213behaviors and outcomes how can we help build a better world for these children cisgender people are more likely to let go of their fears and prejudices when they know gender diverse people directly and i'm going to assume that the woman who spoke earlier this evening perhaps doesn't know anyone directly as schools become safer for gender diverse students they will feel more open to about talking about who they are cisgender people can become more familiar with them communication will increase stigma will decline and mutual respect will increase this is the mental health crisis is children who aren't being accepted for who they are children who are experiencing poor mental health outcomes and i'm not just talking about gender identity and gender diversity i'm talking about all of the different forms of being different that can result

214in mental health crises for children so for us to be talking about the surgeon general's advisory as though masks are causing the problem that is that is not the problem and do not get up here and talk to me about masks causing a mental health crisis and then turn around on the other side and talk about how you don't believe that there are different gender identities and gender expressions and that that is a valid thing for us to accommodate and accept among children in our schools i'm sure i'm going to hear about this one but i just i had to say it and happy holidays thank you for that ms masters mrs tyler um i was also going to take a minute to remember our the sandy hook shooting and just want to kind of

215remind us all that the principal who was one of the first people killed in that one of the things that she has always that she had always pushed was kindness to one another and reaching out and not being cruel and i think that we could all do with a lot more kindness and i want to remind everybody if you are not kind on the internet you're not kind it's not just in person it's everywhere so let's be kind to one another and um lift one another up and i hope everybody has a restful good holiday season thank you thank you anjali our senior student board member who we excitedly we excitedly await whatever her future will look like at our next institution um okay um thank you you all for making this the best first

216semester um being the senior student representative on the board i would also like to say i'm very thankful that mnps creates a safe environment for all its students regardless of their identities however you want to take that i believe that it's important for students to be brought up into an environment that pushes for just this equity inequality and treating each other with kindness and i feel like us as a board pushing for that just creates a better future for future generations um for my announcements a reminder that all gov school deadlines accept the arts is due january 15th for seniors college application and scholarship deadlines please be on that and congratulations to anyone and everyone who has received their early decision i believe some of them are tonight actually some are tomorrow thank you and

217um for anyone taking exams good luck on the rest of the week and congratulations to all students for making it through the first semester i hope all of you have a great and restful holiday season with your families thank you thank you mr little says that he is driving and of course doesn't want to be tweeting or texting or you know letting us know announcements so he'll talk about those later at a later date we'll be sure to pass those to the community i do want to really say that i'm so appreciative of the time that the community and that our staff and our students and some board members took out to attend the different town halls around funding specifically the last one that was at jefferson street baptist church it was fairly well attended

218commissioner schwinn was there to listen to the different suggestions we've made so as you're thinking about the vap funding formula or learning about it please be thinking about what specific asks you might make of the tennessee department of education the governor and yes the legislature as they have the final decision and what the budget looks like i would also like to remind everyone that the legislative season will begin bright and early in january and that that policy and law making season typically extends through either april or may so we would love to have your advocacy up at the capitol our own advocacy committee chair emily masters has been doing a lot of work over the last year and a half to kind of prepare us so we're excited to let you all know about what

219that will look like we will have a retreat in january please feel free to send me any requested agenda items we at least have to have one mandatory training from metro government i believe it's title ix so if there's anything else that we need to discuss please feel free to go ahead and start sending that information to me um i want to reiterate that we really do appreciate hearing from the community even when you even when we need to be gracious in our response to you so thank you for continuing to come and speak to us please continue to do so but i appreciate that there were a number of staff and parents who suggested that we need more supports whether it be around rit connectivity or connectivity issues i.t hr and yes we have

220historically continued to cut from everywhere but schools but we have got to be ready to really support our schools in every way possible and as teachers told us tonight they appreciate pay and of course they certainly need more pay but we have got to be ready to support them as a community as best we can so if there's any way that you could tap in whether it be tutoring volunteering in some way even working with outside programming or non-profit organizations that support schools please be willing and ready to do so we have currently hired everyone that is in the pool to be a substitute teacher to be a bus driver or to be a teacher so if you know someone who knows someone or if you're someone that is a stay-at-home parent that would be

221willing to become a sub maybe even get your licensure to become a teacher or become any member of our support staff please feel free to sign up to apply at mnps.org we are a wonderful organization to to work for we sometimes get yelled at but that's okay because we're doing this work for children and the last thing that i will say is during this time of holiday seasons and times we will hopefully be with our family safely i remember praying before i got on this board for maturity and graciousness and the lord continues to put um situations in my path that will encourage me to be more gracious so i extend that to you and i hope you will continue to extend that to those around you because be there no for the business this

222meeting is adjourned we will see you in 2022 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