07/13/21 MNPS Board of Education

001everyone and welcome to this meet this july 2021 meeting of the metro national public schools board of education we thank you all for being here we're so excited because we have a number of community members here to speak with us remember on the first during the first meeting of each month we hear from community doing during what we call public participation we have roughly 60 community members ready to speak with us i want to offer you this suggestion that if someone ahead of you has spoken and you thoroughly agree with what they're saying please feel free to stand in the grants and if you would like to use your time just to say ditto please feel free to do so with that we have established a quorum uh we'll begin with our pledge of allegiance

002with dr berthina nebar mckinney who is the parent advisory council recruitment director for mnps please lead us in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] all right so thank you you will see your name listed if you signed up before 12 o'clock noon uh on yesterday to speak before us you will have three minutes we will begin i'm sorry you will hear this sound once your three minutes is up and we ask that you complete your sentence and then move away from the podium if you have not been able to complete your speech please feel free to email it to us you can find all of our emails

003at mnps.org with that we'll begin with council member david dave rosenberg thank you uh thank you all very much for the opportunity to speak tonight thank you school board members dr battle for your incredible leadership during really extraordinary times there have been no right answers the last year and a half y'all have done an extraordinary job and i'm very very thankful for you my name is dave rosenberg i live at 7429 riverfront drive i represent the bellevue community on the metro council including the area immediately adjacent to the former brook mead elementary school which nashville nashville classical is attempting to take over and my two children attend hg middle school he hill middle school and they both attended gower elementary school which is just one mile away from brook mead the calendar says it's 2021

004but here we are again in 2012 with a great heart style trojan horse and i would say it's a really creative way of introducing vouchers into our area if not for the fact that it's a great hearts copycat targeting private school parents with the promise of their very own taxpayer-funded private school not a very good performing one necessarily bellevue has reward elementary schools all over that are succeeding by every measure in socioeconomically diverse racially diverse and culturally diverse environments if this were really about the kids we'd see them trying to open in an area of town where schools are busting at the seams or ones with greater socioeconomic challenges instead they're trying to open a mile from a reward school that has excess capacity there's only one good reason to do that that's where the

005money is there is no demand for the school out of all the emails and phone calls i've gotten not a single one not one has been in support not even a little in support it's only surprising that a charter company is wanting to move into the exact location where a far more capable charter company tried and failed not many years ago i'm of course referring to leed whose failure left its declining number of students scrambling to find new schools and produced even more churn that harms our students there are great public schools in every corner of our county and district nine is packed with overachieving elementary schools and with our choice model in excess capacity at gower again one mile two minutes away from brook mead they're open to anyone who wants to go but

006this public school families have no interest in this and frankly our schools can't afford to see resources get sucked out of them for the sake of a grift you're going to hear a lot of sleight of hand from those in support i'm quite certain and i'm very thankful that you all are informed and able to see through that and will always be able to keep in mind that there just isn't demand and there's a lot of choice already thank you for all your time thank you for your unending support for our public schools thank you nicole origi okay um good afternoon madam chair and members of the board my name is dr nicole kendallorigi my address is 154 north timber drive i'm a resident of district 7. my participation in tonight's meeting is to speak

007in favor of the aventura community school my advocacy of their dual language immersion school comes in two distinct perspectives one as a parent of a preschooler and two as a 16-year professor of teacher education who prepares candidates to support diverse communities many of those dynamic professionals are employees in this district i myself am a former metro employee as a parent i can appreciate the opportunity for my child to speak two languages thereby offering her the same bilingual readiness as other metropolitan school districts that value scholars equipped with not only language skills but also important social skills needed to work with others research shows that the rigor of these types of programs offer language acquisition combined with content acquisition which has enormous benefits for native and non-native speakers raising achievement in language and math skills as

008a teacher educator my candidates benefit from field experience in which they can cultivate in a learning environment that promotes the success for all the opportunity to partner with adventure would offer them the opportunity to foster those practitioner skills in a culturally sensitive dual language fluency and instructional environment that boosts those confidence and those competencies for diverse learners now although this is not a conversation about the ib programs i know that metro nashville has 10 international baccalaureate programs two being elementary schools both located in a cluster that is typically known as a high performing high socioeconomic area yet at ventura school has similar aims to develop those students that will have active caring lifelong learners um also demonstrating respect for themselves and they are also located in the antioch cluster which is also an ib school

009which would offer those families and communities the opportunity to support a foundation for that program so in closing aventura would be an asset to the district especially in a time when nashville continues to attract businesses and industries from across the world and i just hope that my statement will offer you some further consideration thank you so much for your time thank you nicholas stefka all right colleen sasser andrea small good evening my name is ann small and i live in east nashville thank you for your time this evening i would love to share how amazing it feels to have nashville classical be a public charter school option in east nashville the community where i live where i work and where i raise my family i'm a realtor and i help people find a place to

010call home and a community to belong to east nashville with its vibrant local stores restaurants and coffee shops has become a highly desired community to call home in our city for a long time however when couples started to have children they started looking outside of east nashville because they could not find a high quality public school for their children today i'm so passionate about the sharing the extraordinary public school we have right in our community nashville classical charter school the dream is having a school that you cherish in the community where you live we have that dream here in east nashville and we would love your support to be able to share this opportunity to more scholars throughout our city as you know nashville classical 2 would be an open enrollment k through 8 school

011that would serve the entire city of nashville i have several friends in the bordeaux area that are looking for just this option that nashville classical could provide nashville classical is above and beyond what i've seen in school options when my husband and i started looking at schools in our east national community nashville classical stood out as the option that delivered and exceeded our expectations like most parents we are looking for a school that would help our child learn and challenge them among davidson county's 87 high poverty elementary and middle schools nashville classical ranks first we also sought out a school that gave our child a more realistic world view we wanted an environment with scholars from different backgrounds culturally and socioeconomically with teachers who taught the importance of celebrating everyone's differences uniquenesses and inclusivity nashville

012classical charter school enrolls black hispanic and native american students at a rate 33 points higher and enrolls economically disadvantaged students at a rate more than double any of the others nashville classical brings families from all over the city and we know that a second campus would do the same the weekly community meetings on at the school on friday are hands down the best part of my week i leave with a sense of pride community and encouragement just imagine what my seven-year-old daughter feels this is the definition of positive community impact the pride nashville scholars classical scholars have in their school their classmates and themselves as fellow peers earned scholars of the week is something that cannot be taken from them the brokerage i work with is compass i'm currently reading a book by the founder

013and ceo of compass called no one succeeds alone some of the principles that robert rufkin has learned and shares are dream big move fast learn from reality and be solution strong thank you again if you are not able to finish your statement please feel free to respond to us or email us benjamin small keena armstrong hello and good evening thank you for giving me this opportunity just to tell you from my heart how sad i am that i have to be here in the first place that our plan for national nashville classical charter school was not approved that makes me sad i may look young i shouldn't say that but i am a wife of 30 years i am a mother of seven children six of which we homeschooled all the way through and have

014gone on to bigger and better dreams and have gone on to college and our youngest daughter zarai armstrong is now attending nashville charter classical charter school the reason we have her there is because we trust this school we trust the parents we trust what they put into their students at home and we trust what they want and we trust the founder we trust the teachers that is not something i can say comes lightly that is something when we leave our daughter behind those closed doors we know that she is loved and that love comes through pushing her to excel that love comes through spending time with her taking her from the 23rd percentile when she came in in reading and third grade because i was no longer homeschooling and i was working and the school

015that we put her in was not sufficient and they brought her up to the 71st percentile and she is going into the seventh grade this is my daughter our child looks and feels like their daughter that founder back there puts his blood and soul into that school those teachers back there put their blood and soul into that school i am disappointed and heartbroken that i have to be here in the first place and beg you all to approve of a school that should be welcomed in the community in east nashville it should already be done that is all i have to say thank you crystal schwartz [Applause] raquel hambrick torvus gardner dwight gordon good evening my name is dwight e gordon ii my address is 922 phillips street i was born and raised here in

016the nashville tennessee community being a native of nashville these days i'm considered a rarity this rareness also gives me ability to see changes many others have not seen or been aware of in this city both of my parents are from nashville and my mother herself integrated helped integrate a school here in nashville tennessee i give this background to say i've seen and been a part of a lot of changes and demographics in this city i'm a graduate of john overton high school and i went on to receive both my undergraduate and master's degree from tennessee state university i'm here today to talk to you about nashville classical charter school when i had the opportunity to have my own kids and it became time for them to attend school we looked for a school that not

017only afforded a great education but also gave them a more diverse education than most kids in today's generation have had access to when i attended schools such as tuscaloom elementary mcmurray middle school and john overton i knew i was getting a quality education having access to the high quality education prepared me for college and beyond but as our city has changed and developed funding and access for schools and teachers has followed those changing demographics many of the city schools are less accessible and culturally diverse today cultural diversity high quality education and rigorous academics are what we saw and found at nashville classical charter school our children have been a part of the nashville classical charter school community for six years now with our oldest daughter going to the sixth grade and our youngest going into

018the fifth grade our daughters have continuously excelled academically whether it was remote or in person learning they've reached a higher percentage percentile of kids in their age groups and their grade year in a year out they have excelled and on numerous occasions represented the school proudly and they're always applauded on their intellectual knowledge my wife herself is a professor of engineering and she finds herself at times thinking and saying a lot to her own students my daughters know how to work these equations i'm giving you this has continuously reaffirmed our kids and every other child in nashville deserves access to a nashville nashville classical charter school education the school culture the teachers and mr friedman the founder want to create and provide the best education for nashville's next generation and i ask that you allow

019them the opportunity to continue this great work by opening a second campus we have seen other kids at other schools and have heard other parents speak of how much their kids academics suffered during the pandemic we have seen or heard stories and kids during being denied the best education and going to schools that are lacking diversity and teachers administration they care nccs offers all those qualities and more and i know that nashville classical 2 will expand those opportunities the education at nccs is unmatched and because it's unmatched helping them develop both academically and socially we believe every child in davidson county deserves this opportunity i thank you for your time this evening thank you hassan clayton good evening i'm hassan clayton and i'm a teacher at nashville classical charter school i've been a part of

020the community for three years now and it all started when i was immersed into the school culture as a program coordinator at one of our after school programs interacting with scholars in that program made it clear how different the school community is in regards to instilling values into the kids that will carry them to and through high school college and life my experience as a teacher at nashville classical has been nothing short of outstanding our administration has helped me hone my skills as a professional in order to become a leader who can give back to our students helping me to become the best that i can be as a black male teacher has allowed me to share my experiences with our diverse community our staff scholars and families leading to an environment of trust safety

021and joy from helping scholars unlock their athletic potential while coaching after school sports to improving their reading skills in the classroom our community of joy has allowed us to be a school community that breeds success this joy for learning has translated to our school exceeding and outperforming many other schools in nashville for example in 2009 our success rate on the 10 ready was 2.2 times the success rate in mnps and 1.6 times the success rate statewide among davidson county's 87 high poverty elementary and middle schools nashville classical ranked first nashville classical is one of the five most popular elementary schools in the city and among those five most popular schools nashville classical enrolls black hispanic and native american students at a rate of 33 points higher and enrolls economically disadvantaged students at a rate more

022than double of any others at nashville classical we bring in families from all over the city and we know that this second location will have a positive impact in the community continuing the intentional approach of mixing socially diverse families and scholars at our second site will help each student learn how to take each other's perspectives and embrace each other's differences this is pivotal to helping them to navigate through high school and college where they will have to learn in harmony with others who may or may not look like them above all opening a second school will be beneficial for all students in nashville because it would allow us to teach kids how to model the values that we teach such as integrity resilience and teamwork in their respective communities this would help nashville come together

023as a community of love and empathy as we continue striving for justice and equity in our society please vote in favor of opening the second nashville classical campus thank you so much for your consideration thank you charlie friedman good evening it's loud my name is charlie friedman i live at 1805 woodland street and i'm the founder of nashville classical charter school about five months ago our school submitted a proposal to open a second campus and in may after listening to your feedback we completed a thorough revision on friday the mnps review committee notified us and you i believe that our proposal meets all standards for approval and while we are grateful for the committee's positive feedback i can appreciate the decision before you tonight and i thought it might be helpful to hear from our

024community to understand exactly who we are and why we want to grow and i'd like to also share a little bit about myself two years ago while my wife was pregnant with our only son i sat in a small dark office of vanderbilt's neurology department when we told the doctor my wife was pregnant he began to cry you see minutes later he was going to diagnose my wife with als a 100 percent fatal disease that kills patients within two to four years today we consider ourselves incredibly lucky our son was born healthy and my wife's arms are paralyzed but her condition is stable she'll never carry our son and she can't stand how i put her hair in a ponytail but those are small inconveniences compared to the alternative in our spare time we are

025dedicated to patient advocacy we work with other patients to increase their autonomy their access and their choices for care so why am i sharing this with you well for two reasons one because i have read and heard that our motivations to propose a second campus are suspect that we're driven by ego or greed or worse i promise you that is not the case all we are trying to do is as much good as we can with the limited time we have second i want you to know that i come to my belief that families deserve autonomy and access and choices honestly and while we may not share that belief i suspect there is a lot we do agree on i suspect we agree that there are generational inequities and injustices in our city and these

026injustices are not just a stain on our community they were stitched into its fabric by design and i believe that accessible high quality open enrollment public schools schools like nashville classical can be one part of a greater solution as you've heard our most vulnerable learners achieve proficiency at rates two and a half times nearby schools we receive more than 10 applications for every seat opening a new campus will make a positive difference and so as you consider our proposal tonight i hope you will at least consider it on its merits and i hope at least you'll understand that we do have a shared purpose we believe nashville classical 2 is an investment in our city not an attack on it and we'd consider it a privilege for you to ratify or at least honestly consider

027the review committee's recommendation and approve us thank you very much thank you [Applause] alexandra ball good evening chair and members of the board my name is alex ball and my address is 605 hickory bin drive in nashville my son is a founding scholar at nashville classical and we are proud to be part of such a diverse caring and academically driven community as a first generation college graduate and middle school educator the ability to choose a quality school for my child is priceless i'm here today because nashville classical has changed our lives my son entered school legally blind in kindergarten and was missing many of the fundamental skills from pre-k that his peers enter kindergarten with and i will be honest the first few years of school at classical were tremendously difficult for us there were

028lots of tears lots of frustration but the staff and the teachers at nashville classical wrap their arms around myself my child and my family they supported us in a way that we had never felt before they created a place where he felt safe to struggle to learn and to grow and when i had no idea even as an educator myself of how to help my own child they provided me with the guidance and support that i needed as a parent to help us feel seen and valued and challenged nashville classical embraced us and teachers like miss kalona miss rusco are the definition of what it means to put kids first and so today i'm coming before you to ask you the board to put our kids first too to put the kids of nashville and

029nashville classical first students like my son students who struggle tremendously kids who need it desperately and need a community like nashville classical i'm asking you to wrap your arms around them and to support them and to support parents like me parents who want school choice i'm asking you to say yes to nashville classical too so that you can say yes to proving what is possible in our city and our community for all kids there is power and choice and i'm asking the board to support parent choice today by supporting a second campus for nashville classical we are open to serve all students as an open enrollment school and even though our students might come from different backgrounds they might face different economic disadvantages and different struggles we know that our students can be successful when

030they have loving and caring teachers and staff and i believe in our mission so much that i've even joined our nashville classical staff this year because i believe in what we are doing and the work that we are doing at our school and i could see myself being no other place than fighting side by side with our staff members and with the people that serve my student every single day at our campus so i'm asking you to give us a chance to choose give us a chance to fight for our students and i want to share a quote with you that's one of my favorite it is easier to build strong children to than to repair broken men and that's from frederick douglass and so today i'm asking you to help us to build strong

031children help us to support them and i thank you for your time thank you diana sanchez vega princilla ridley good afternoon madam chair and board i had a prepared speech my scholar who attends nashville classical said auntie don't go with that speech my scholar is a founder of nashville classical she now has three other siblings that attend nashville classical as you notice i said auntie not mom i am auntie the founder that i have came to me from a broken home six years ago she was about to fail first grade had it not been for mr freeman and his staff that supported me and my family through that time i don't know where we would be literally i don't know where we would be and where those kids would be today today three of those

032children are in the 80 percentile nationwide one of them is struggling i even talked to them about not bringing that child there and they told me oh no he's got to come we got the resources and we can make it happen and believe me that's exactly what they have done they have taken this student who everybody thought couldn't read couldn't write couldn't do anything it's now reading and writing and he'll tell you i could do that i can do that but his confidence and what they instilled in this young man has made him start to soar going back to my founder she is getting ready to take ap courses in the 8th grade she scored in the 90th percentile in her math and her english classes this year on her tn ready i am above

033and beyond pride of this young lady but i did not do this it was the staff and administration of nashville classical that did that and i'm here today to tell you that school has gone over and beyond for those students in person and virtual had this school been around when my kids were going to school they would have been there my school attend my kids attended private school i am a product of the public school system but i put them in private school because the school system wasn't what i thought it should be at the time but now i am the utmost opponent for nashville classical charter school without them in the community i don't know where some of the kids would be today just like they said they're extremely passionate about what they do

034and they care and they're very honest to us parents about the realities of what's going on with our kids so i ask at this time that you do approve their request for a second campus thank you for your time thank you robert mcneely porsche pope elizabeth hines thank you good afternoon uh thank you for your time board members and dr battle my name is elizabeth hines and i'm here as the chair of the mmps pac just here to announce a couple of upcoming events that we have going on on tuesday july 20th the pac will be meeting with via the metro national education committee committee at city hall tonya hancock who's our city council liaison was able to set that meeting for us so a bunch of us will be going on saturday july 31st

035mmps pac will have a booth at the stronger than my father back to school celebration we want to use that chance to recruit more parents to join the pack in the antioch area in school board member fran bush's area and then on august 31st on tuesday evening we're going to have our first district-wide pac meeting we're hoping to have a hybrid both virtual and in person so that we can get as many parents to attend because we understand that everyone will be excited about returning back to school ms masters and the board they're working on something for us hopefully by august we may start to have some town hall meetings where we can invite parents school board members to start having some of these important discussions in an area where we get more than three

036minutes to state our concerns and fears we're working with national public education foundation and viewing their new documentary the plan now is to have these viewings at several libraries throughout the school year npf has agreed to work with us so this is going to go from september all the way to june of 2022 as i state every time i come up here you know we are parents and caregivers of all mnps students traditional charter magnets virtual all of the above i have my own personal story i've only been in nashville for 44 months i came here to live close to my mom i'm not a nashville native i'm not even a us native but i'm here and i feel like i've inherited whatever we have here but i've got two eight-year-olds who need to be

037educated just like all the other eight-year-olds in nashville and so i want to contribute as well to finding solutions for all the kids regardless of zip code school building age all of them if you'd like to join participate learn more about the pac our email is mmps pack gmail.com we're also hoping that we can post some of our events on the mmps calendar we've sent that request to your staff doctor battle to see if they wouldn't mind if we could use your your district calendar thank you brethren and obama mckinney good evening how are you guys good evening chair bugs members of the board dr battle public officials mmps staff parents students and community members my name is dr berthina and obama kinney my address is 4323 stone hall boulevard hermitage i'm a resident of

038district 4. i am also a parent and guardian of five children who have graduated from mnps and i have one more left a rising third grader at hermitage elementary i am here today serving as the mcgavin cluster coordinator as well as the district-wide mnps parent advisory council commonly known as pac the purpose of pac is to provide opportunities for effective involvement of all parents in mnps promote healthy communication and create a strong partnership with the district and among all school stakeholders we are i am here today really serving as the recruiter for our district-wide pac we are currently recruiting at least two members from each school across our district or two parents from each school across our district to serve on the pack if you are a parent with children in mmps please consider joining

039the pac i invite all of you in the audience to please consider joining the pack and any of you who are listening in the if uh if we are looking for really a diverse representation and i mean a true reflection of all parents across our district if you have any questions feel free to contact me via social media or by phone my number is 615 or by email at mnpspack gmail.com you may also contact our chair miss bb heinz that was just up here and our vice chair kevin walker our first district-wide pac meeting is august 31st but in the meantime we are really looking to establish pack paired advisory councils in each of our clusters across our district also if you are a charter school representative please also reach out to miss erica lanier

040she is our charter school liaison but we are really trying to build out this pack and we would love to see representation from every single school across our district thank you have a great day thank you lisa vale [Music] addison hickman erasely rez my apologies for butchering your name [Music] hello my name is dennity romero that name is araceli reyes and i am here to represent her and miss monica fontes they are both parents of nashville classical um classical charter school one day they asked me what nashville classical charter school represents for me well i can say that for me it is more than a school for my daughter it is a home for her their mission is to provide each student with a comprehensive education at each stage of their development starting with respect

041in their beliefs putting the maxim the maximum determination and cultivating human rights creating study habits and the work and interactions is giving them an excellent academic training this is a guarantee to families that in addition to an academic strength academic training our children will have the emotional maturity necessary for the future some want to give the greatest recognition to their great work i give my infinite gratitude for being one of the best educational institutions they are committed and responsible for teaching our children the respect trust equality and autonomy that our society demands today thank you all monica fontes um if it's okay i will stay here for the next person which is araceli reyes um they were missed thank you um my name is aracely reyes mom to diane and leslie have hilarious thank you

042for me and my daughters nashville classical is an excellent school and it has excellent teachers my daughters are happy to be at the school and get excited when returning to school in the morning at the beginning it was very hard for my youngest daughter to go to school but that quickly changed thanks to the patience and hard work of their amazing staff all i hear now is how excited she is about going to school which to me means they are doing a great job everyone working at nashville classical is amazing and i would like to see more children get the same opportunity to attend an amazing school of their choice as my daughters have done for this reason and many more i have been working with the nashville classical team to enroll my nephew for

043the past two years so he too can get that opportunity we believe that everyone deserves an opportunity to great to get a great education and due to the ma to the high demand we will continue to apply and wait until my nephew received that receives that opportunity as well thank you thank you brian vickers victoria gordon hello i'm victoria gordon and i'm a nashville propel parent leader i stand here as a parent of a very passionate unpredictable and rememberable exceptional learner as i en as we end this school year and i was being his teacher and his behavior support as well as we adjusted with remaining strictly virtual the entire time i seen hope and prosperity in his little brown eyes i stand before you proudly in support of the personalized learning plan in conjunction

044with my child's current and visualized education plan my rising seventh grader has a passion for science but is struggling poorly in reading and math with a current map testing score of one percentile in the same areas we were aware of the struggles far before the pandemic and feel this plan can improve all students district-wide and improving learning gaps due to the learning laws from covet and beyond it is apparent we need interventions this statement is true in many households like mine may vary in many subjects and can be presented in this room along with me today but one thing is clear this plan can help every student's individual success overall in addition with their needs and challenges while identifying their strengths interests and goals this is an opportunity to not only empower parents but to

045bring hope to others like mine and create a partnership between parents and schools by the clear communications and strategies and being transparent there's a lot of resources the district is getting to help combat learning laws this should be one of them come on now parents like me deserve the opportunity to understand our child's educational journey no matter where we may find it a district-wide system approach and plan can make this most effective way to do this so i ask you all to help me support my family and other families like mine and getting the our students then visualize the learning plan thank you for your time thank you [Applause] janie zerker clarissa seabree ivory wilson good evening i am ivory wilson a mother to a three-year-old male and a nashville propel parent my son will

046be starting school in august my fears for him is that the mnps school system will fail him the same way it failed me six years ago when i graduated from white's creek high school in 2015 i feel that if personalized learning plans existed i would have a better education and a different life i do not want to experience i do not want my son to experience the things that i did or feel as if i did going through school i felt as if i was pushed through and not taught i was not prepared for college nor the world i was lost when i graduated high school and felt guilty for the type of education i received i believe if i had a personalized learning plan i would have a better education and different life i

047am excited that my son will have an opportunity at personalized learning plans but when will we see the plan for them in my opinion a personalized learning plan will connect students teachers and parents and create a bond that is needed and track learning laws i want to know what is your plan for personalized learning plans and learning loss how do you plan to start using personalized learning plans and when will you use it to track and help learning loss thank you for your time thank you mary sweat i just like to say hello to everyone my name is mary sweat i am a nashville propel powerful grandparent leader had my grandson since he's four and a half he's 14 now he is so smart but it never reflected his grades he's been diagnosed with add

048adhd and odd and the schools he's been to uh signed up for trying to get him an iep didn't get iep teams in the sixth grade it even now he is still behind i sound like i should have had him in the classical school because he plays piano he's played piano for five years six years was in the band played tuba for five years but his grades do not reflect as smart as he is the personalized learning plan must happen it's got to happen i don't know what what else needs to be said for it to happen but i don't want to see him get he's going to ninth grade and still behind even with going back to school he's still behind when school when school started i had no idea what i was going

049to do with him because i had to work trying to get somewhere to take him nobody told me anything me calling around and calling around and calling around i finally found out that i could send him to the boys and girls club even with a child have an iep they had no plan for our kids no plan to what was going to happen with them when it's kids and go back to school so we absolutely need a personalized learning plan to get these kids where they need to be the kids that struggle with the mental illnesses we need more counselors in school a lot more counselors like i said he's had trauma is why he's with me so he's still carrying that even with me the therapy that he's had if they had it in

050school when he gets angry instead of them kind of pushing him to the side because he's actually angry something needs to change something's got to happen i don't know what i can say i don't know what else needs to be said what all these other people need to say something's got to happen with this personal learning plans two years ago it's just something that should have happened reading everything kids are so far behind on reading doesn't make any sense like teachers you know all kids learn different we need to have some kind of program gonna help the kids that are falling behind like i said he's in high school now he's got four years left to school don't know what's going to happen when he gets in the 12th grade if something doesn't happen now

051so i beg and plead and whatever else i need to do something needs to happen he even came with me tonight if he could talk i'm sure he would but i thank you for you all listening to me and i hope like i say i hope this helps when something happens thank you you sonya thomas hello my name is sonia thomas i'm the executive director for nashville propel we are parents requiring our public education system to lead i did not write a speech either this is what i know all they have to do is say they're going to do something they don't have to do anything everybody has already made their decisions today about things are very important votes about amendments and other issues and they're very important but we started this process back in

052may of 2020 because we knew that things were going to be catastrophic and we thought that we had some good collaboration with dr battle and her her central office staff and we're making way and we presented this personalized learning plan that we vetted across the country with experts along with parents just like you and some people from the community just like you and we created we created a task force to address learning loss for our children but nobody's listening those talks have stopped thank you for your dashboard that is great because we all need to see the ugly truth but what we're asking for is what you gonna do with the stuff in the dashboard what you gonna do with it for far too long y'all like i'm tired of coming up here asking asking

053and begging and hoping and praying as a matter of fact father in the name of jesus thank you for this day i'm serious we have fought long enough for our children we have begged long enough our children have hit school yards and prison yards and graveyards and we're tired and all we're asking is for a plane a personalized learning plan it's not a one size fits all none of our children are like all of your children have unique strengths and abilities and i don't care if they have a learning disability that's why they got accommodations they still should know how to read and so today my demand is that you come back to the table dr battle come back to the table dr santelise is in baltimore's at the table and some other people at

054the table but we're not even heard in our old town come back to the table let's put together a plan together let's work together let's go to look at our children's look at their strengths their interests promote a real equity how long have we been talking about inequity real equity y'all through playing with y'all i'm through playing everybody got their agendas i don't care about nothing else i walked away from nursing because of these kids cause i can't stand to see another kid in a grave i watched a kid in january go to juvenile for murdering another kid and he had potential get your priorities straight thank you aisha white [Applause] hello my name is aisha white my address is 3416 cable street and i'm here to talk about support for aventura community bilingual school

055as an immigrant myself my kids hopefully will be bilingual and i know that having a school that has another language will definitely help them studies have shown how bilingual being bilingual helps you learn it helps you in your community i also work with immigrants and refugees and many of them are bilingual but there's no bilingual school in south nashville so even having the hispanic community that's huge in nashville having a school for them will benefit them and also benefit other kids who might be able to learn bilingually so i hope that you will support evangel community school because what they're doing is needed um there's a bilingual school in nashville but it's not in the area where the immigrants live so i think having one in our community will definitely help and support our kids

056so my daughter is going to kindergarten this year first time in mmps so i'm hoping that this school will be available for her when she gets a little bit older i have a second child that's three to also be going to school soon and i hope that they'll have this bilingual school available so thank you for your time thank you lynn hoyt madam chair and board members my name is lynn hoyt i'm an mmps parent and i live in westmead nashville district nine and i'm a noaa member i'm here to support you and our mnps educators and your local decisions to adopt the curriculum you feel will serve our diverse students well in mnps whether black or white latino or asian native or newcomer we want our kids to have an education that is equitable

057and authentic educators do need more training and guidance in these tumultuous times i do not envy you all but i know that this district has its heart in the right place and for that i'm grateful i am concerned i'm concerned about political outsiders who try to make our kids classrooms into battlegrounds hoping to divide us so we don't join together and demand all that our schools need i'm concerned that a charter school opening in my neighborhood will continue to fragment resources at west mead elementary hd hill middle and gower and when enrollment drops in school zone schools so does funding causing budgets to be cut the first things to go are programs that make families excited about schools music art untested academics counselors a variety of sports perpetuating a cycle of running from under-resourced schools

058when schools fail it's because we fail to resource them like with programs like personalized learning plans i want a great school for every child i want every school to have counselors social workers psychologists and nurses i worry we will never have these deep resources we need thank you all for your time this evening and please keep pushing to collaborate thank you dr keita williams good evening i'm dr kita williams i'm good evening chair and members of the board um dr kita williams i'm not a member of or a teacher or education i'm actually a medical doctor but i have a passion for what happens in the school system um my address i don't have to give addresses or anything like that but 64 harper ben drive the house bill 580 prohibits schools from using supplemental

059materials that promotes that one race is inherently superior to another if we are to truly uphold this bill we need to ensure that it not only applies to supplemental materials but that the primary materials also adhere to not promoting one race as superior to another this is particularly true as it pertains to the history curriculum you see the history curriculum today is very similar to what it was when i was in school both then and now his story is taught from his perspective his story teaches very little about the contributions made by people other than him his story instills him with confidence and hope and makes him feel really good about himself as his story should after all it is his while i was taught his story and required to memorize the details thereof my

060story was only taught in the context of his if we are only taught his story then neither he nor i can see much value in people who have scarcely been mentioned in his story though not recognized in his story there are many contributions made by people who are a part of my story and though he benefits from these inventions and contributions like the pacemaker the retinal implant the light bulb filament home security system and many more the inventors of these inventions are not mentioned in schools because they are not a part of his story learning only his story is not inconsequential it causes him to have a unilateral perspective on life and affects the decisions he makes when interacting with people who are not a part of his story when all he hears is his

061story he begins to believe that his story is the only story that is of any significance in his story he is a hero and he's mighty and he's valiant and after all he should be it is his story he seldom highlights the contributions of people who are not like him because it is his story but what if we were not just taught his story but the stories of others and their contributions shall we call it our story if history is any indication of future events he will resist this notion of implementing our story and state that our story will threaten to undo his story at that point he will need a gentle reminder that the english pronoun hour does not exclude his story it just includes mine thank you for your time thank you dr

062williams amity marsh good evening miss boggs chairwoman and members of the board my name is amity marsh and i live in the automotive subdivision in davidson county as we are all aware this past year was very traumatic and caused emotional turmoil for our son along with other children and we want better for the upcoming school year recently when we were researching the 2021 2022 curriculum written wisdom we found there were subject matters included that were not age appropriate here are some examples of books that will be used in middle school and fifth grade thunder rolling in the mountain there are violent graphic killings and it's very dark there's war and blood there are white people that are seen as evil and not trusted another example is a river between us it's extremely dark there's death

063drunkenness out of marriage families there's sensuality war and killing and white people are seen as evil there's another example of boys war where there's graphic pictures of dead boys the fourth example is we are the ship discusses the topic of hanging in text within sixth to eighth grade there is content including lust and sexual content which is inappropriate you're indoctrinating our children some subject material should be taught privately at home not in the school setting with that being said we would be teaching adult subjects to young children is this fair there have been students who have had to go to therapy after being exposed to the content being taught within wit wisdom as a result we would like to see another curriculum used for the upcoming 2021-2022 school year it would be beneficial for us

064to consider the words of the apostle paul philippians 4 8 finally brothers and sisters whatever is true whatever is noble whatever is right whatever is pure whatever is lovely whatever is admirable if anything is excellent or praiseworthy think about such things thank you for your time katie ford mimi pullman stephanie wrap good evening chair members of the board my name is stephanie rapp my address is 100 madison street in nashville in school board district 1. i am an mnps employee a former teacher and now i coach other teachers as an sel coach supporting teachers to implement social emotional learning practices that prevent and address challenging behavior i'm also a member of mnea and i'm co-chair of the social emotional learning committee which is part of noaa's education task force tonight i'm speaking only as a

065private citizen of davidson county rather than an employee of the board and i stand tonight to express my support for two mnps initiatives i'm very pleased that for the first time our city is investing in social emotional learning by providing funding for an advocacy center in every elementary school having a classroom in every elementary school with a teacher trained to support students to learn social skills use calming strategies to regulate emotions and solve social conflict appropriately will serve to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline that has existed across the country for too long i very much look forward to seeing the impact this will have on elementary students i'm also eager to see our city's investment in sel expanded to include middle and high school where the largest racial disparities in school discipline exist i also want

066to express support for the new ela curriculum because our students will have the opportunity to read a rich variety of authentic children's books written by authors who reflect our students and our nation i participated in witten wisdom training this spring and was happy to see that it is based on the reading of complex texts and encourages students to explore first-hand accounts of history i'm aware of those pushing along an effort in nearby counties to ban books that are included in the curriculum which describe concepts of race and racism i reject these efforts to prevent teachers from being able to teach students to think critically about painful truths that are part of the country's history and which continue to impact life today it's through learning history and thinking critically about it that we move toward a

067more equal society and it's for this reason that i stand in favor of the district's adoption of wit and wisdom thank you for your time [Applause] thank you shantaja shorter amity marsh anna williams madam chair honorable board members dr battle my name is anna williams i live at 125 south 10th street in district 5 here in nashville i'm a parent i'm an aunt i'm an educator i'm a native nashvillian i'm a lawyer and one of the privileges of my life was actually to be the student of kimberly crenshaw who actually coined critical race theory which has been all over the news including in an adjacent county for those who fear the teaching of death who fear the teaching of war it is not good but it is among us we cannot ignore rather we have

068to teach done a lot of looking into some of the conversations that have been happening in the legislature and in areas around nashville and i would argue that those who fear the teaching of words of protest or injustice or segregation or of inequality or of evil don't understand first of all critical race theory second of all they don't understand public chapter 493 they don't understand tca 496 106 which mandates for example that we teach black history they don't understand that in davidson county 68.3 percent of our over 85 000 students are students of color who have different realities as a parent as an aunt as an educator as a lawyer i am interested in our children learning truth i'm interested in their reading first-hand accounts and learning how to look at those critically i'm looking

069interested in them addressing things with empathy to learn analytical thinking to appreciate and understand and respect differences to look at the world with ingenuity and curiosity and hopefully with the skills and knowledge they have to gain a better understanding of our past to gain a better understanding of each other and to make our future better as a nashvillian i am particularly interested in kids learning the truth of our of our history here in our county both of the things that have not been pretty and still aren't and of the names of people who have stepped forward to make them better i want my child and my nieces to know who diana nash is i want them to know who john lewis is i want them to know what happened downtown so that they don't repeat

070the same mistakes if we are not willing to speak truthfully about the history of this country we cannot move forward that is not critical race theory that is not anything to be afraid of nor is that prohibited by statute [Applause] thank you honey harrith katie ford jason sparks hi uh good evening my name is jason sparks and my family and i live at 6140 tulip tree lane in bellevue and that's uh i'm a district 9 resident and we've lived in nashville for about 16 years both of my children have attended metro nashville public schools since preschool they both attended the encore program at robertson academy and at harpett valley elementary school where they received a fantastic public education currently my son is a rising seventh grader at meg's magnet middle and my daughter will be

071a rising fifth grader at mags that being said i am we are also very proud of our neighborhood middle school bellevue middle and are so impressed with their principal mr sweihart and their incredible faculty members and i wanted to take a moment as well to say how appreciative i am for metro nashville how they have led over the last year from my school's son my st my school's my son's school getting hit by tornado to how they've managed the pandemic they are truly my heroes in a year that has been short of gratitude i'm a firm believer in the importance and value of our public schools and for that reason i oppose the creation of a new charter school in bellevue if approved this charter school will hurt our public schools siphoning off students and

072resources and taking our school district backwards in desegregation efforts both of our children have been so lucky to have made friends from different backgrounds religions ethnicities and cultures through metro nashville public schools as a result their lives have been enriched and frankly they are better and more empathetic human beings because they are now able to view the world from perspectives different than their own on another note i think we can all agree history is a vital part of a well-rounded education it goes without saying that history should be taught in an age-appropriate way for the grade level but we need to trust in and rely on the teachers and administrators to use their expertise as educators to do just that educate our children they are the experts part of educating our children about history includes

073talking about the uncomfortable parts of history teaching our children about past injustices including slavery the taking of native lands the attempted annihilation of indigenous peoples jim crow laws the holocaust and civil rights struggles to name just a few does not sow the seeds of racial strife in fact it does the opposite if we do not teach our children about history we can never get better and we're doomed to repeat it thank you all so very much thank you bethany riddle johnson hello um good afternoon board my name is bethany riddle johnson and i'm a parent of two mnps students one who has graduated and is thriving and we live on loan oak road in green hills with miss pupu walker's district i am also a leader with noah and i am a professor of educational

074psychology and in all of these roles but especially as an mnps parent i am here to advocate for an honest education that tells the truth and teaches critical thinking skills i trust mnps leaders and teachers to select high quality curricula i want my children and all mnps students to hear first-hand narratives of historical events for example when i think about the fact that ruby bridges was six years old and in first grade when she had to be escorted by federal marshals to school every day to protect her from white mobs screaming vile things at her if ruby bridges had to endure that just to attend first grade our second graders are ready to learn about her bravery and how even a child can help change the country for the better my white children don't need

075to be protected from the harm people who look like us have done and caused they need to learn from honest history so it is not repeated some people are working to try to hide a balanced and accurate accounting of history from our children but all of our stories are important and we want them told not just as dr keita williams pointed out his story and noah is working at the state level to address house bill 580 to address this movement to deny history and i concerned that some people here tonight are working to be part of that movement to deny the fact that we need to have deep and critical analysis about challenging historical topics and current events it is crucial and that our children get to see people who look like them in our

076curriculum and textbooks and most of those children in our district are not white children like my child children it is not acceptable for any children of any race to learn a watered-down version of the truth thank you thank you carmen foster good evening everybody i have the privilege of having three children in mnps schools they attend their local zone public schools so harpeth valley and bellevue middle i also happen to be married to an mnps teacher and i'm the former pto president at bellevue middle school my community roots in bellevue run deeply one of the things that i love the most about my community is that we rally when things get hard we support each other when our community hurts we come together this was evident in 2010 during the flood when we were the

077one of the hardest hit places in nashville and we rallied this spring one of the bellevue middle school teachers passed away suddenly my son she taught my son and the community rallied around that family to support them now our community and our public schools are at a crossroads we are dealing with the aftermath of covid and its devastation on our local schools i know several bellevue families who have chosen to enroll their schools in private school or home school because of covid and it is my sincere hope that those families come back to mnps but there is no guarantee so for us in the bellevue community this is not the time to consider bringing in an outside charter into our community the bellevue parents do not want that we need an opportunity to rally around

078our local schools because last year was so hard this is the time for us to rebuild this is the time for us to support one another our efforts and our energy need to our priority need to be in our students who are living there right in the community we need to be engaging our local schools and our leaders why would we want to focus or do anything else the trauma that covet has caused in communities nationwide in every sector has been felt but it's been felt most acutely in education we need to focus on prioritizing our children and their healing so we have a great opportunity as a community to come together in order to do that but opening this charter school in our community will take away valuable resources from our bellevue schools it

079takes away the very resource that makes our community thrive and flourish it takes away our children i'm asking that you give the bellevue community the opportunity to do what we do well and that's to rally right now after covid and to build up something really phenomenal that has been started our community is not in support of this charter of this charter collaboration thank you so much thank you eli foster hi good evening i am a father of three that was my wife earlier so we have the same children um i've got one at harpett valley i got two at bellevue middle i'm also a teacher at bellevue middle and before i get started i'm also a 2020 recipient of the blue ribbon teacher award before i get started i just want to say hey i

080just want to say thanks from the bottom of my heart you had an impossible job last year open schools close schools look at the science make decisions you guys were fantastic thank you dr battle and thank you board i want to tell you a story okay i want to tell you about my mother-in-law that beautiful woman who was just up here her mama her mama has two master's degrees multiple certificates and she is an expert she handles money with incredible wisdom she is a former educator and she has so much knowledge she is a proud member of delta sigma theta sorority sorority incorporated and when you talk to my mother-in-law and you say what is it that gives you this strength she gives you the same answer every time pearl high till the day i

081die you see she went to pearl high school here in nashville pearl high school was community driven an all black school in the middle of a segregated nashville that community banded together behind pearl high and when i went to see the freedom riders come through here again seven of them four were from pearl three were from cameron and that community stood together the heart of what makes a great school is the community coming behind it community is what supports local zone public schools so i'm not in favor of this charter school or magnet schools or private schools for that matter that were started as segregation academies in the late 60s and early 70s i want to say one thing about this and that's the importance of a common good see what a common good is

082is a good for everybody we don't have competition for fire departments because it's the common good that we all have a fire department that serves us we don't have competition for the library because the library serves us all we don't have competition for parks and recs you're not competing with this traffic light or that traffic light but in education we turned a common good into a consumer good we've said what is best for me not what's best for all what we need to do is return to the sense of common good and support our local zone public schools so please vote against this charter on a final note i was touched by these words from amanda gorman and this is in relationship to hr bill 580. it's because being american is more than the pride

083we inherit it's the past we step into and how to repair it we must tell the truth about what's happened in our racialized history so we can repair it to move on i would echo uh the the lady who mentioned the apostle paul and point her to galatians 2. in galatians 2 there was a racialized situation with peter and paul stood before him and said i oppose peter to his face because he he ate with the circumcised and now with the others stand against racism thank you mr foster cindy goddard [Applause] hi my name is cindy gard good evening chair and members of the board and thank you mr little and miss masters for responding to my email i live in the opryland area in donelson have lived there all my life before i retired

084from 30 years of teaching in metro i renewed my teaching strategies by using trade books to teach my reading skills it's a great opportunity for me i kind of took it on my own to do that and my test scores went through the roof and i was excited to hear about witton wisdom using trade books to teach skills uh then i looked further into the teacher's manuals and some of the required books there are several common threads in the written wisdom that are concerning kindergarten through fifth grade includes themes of dark imagery anti-american themes extreme emotion and excessive violence in first grade there are themes like graphic mating and gender fluidity second grade graders are taught anti-police and anti-fire department themes third grade it's graphic death torture and anti-church themes while rape murder adultery stillbirths

085are introduced to our fourth graders and sprinkled all throughout the elementary grades is suicidal ideation cannibalism and nuclear family and the idea that white people are bad the teachers manuals seem focused on asking questions that divide the students mainly because of their skin color an example is a second grade book called separate is never equal and i quote from the book mexican schools are inferior to whites in personal hygiene and their scholastic ability in what other respects are they inferior in their economic outlook in their clothing in their ability to take part in the activities of the school white students are superior to mexicans end of quote how is this not a violation of anti-crt laws the book clearly teaches that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex the book

086martin luther king teaches about mlk and his wonderful dream for america of course we need to teach that but the book points out firefighters blasting little children with hoses that's tearing their clothes off and bruising their bodies what is a second grader going to remember from this book except that yes this is an ugly part of history i do realize that and it should be taught but with care and at the appropriate age not to a seven-year-old it seems this is another violation of anti-crt laws was that three minutes okay thank you for your time thank you uh karen's son good evening chair my name is karen sun and i teach at east nashville middle school and i live in vice chair elrod's district i'm here today wondering how you are planning to protect teachers

087who will continue to teach the truth about race and racism the truth about u.s history and u.s society despite the law house bill 580 that the state legislative body and governor lee passed earlier this year in may the state attempting to legislate away the ugly truth of this country's history and foundation will not change the facts it will only render a massive disservice to our students and make it difficult for teachers to teach their curriculum our students are not young too young to talk about race and racism especially since a lot of our students are certainly not too young to experience it yeah when teachers talk to students about racism and white supremacy when we talk about the awful things that people have done to others throughout history without redeeming themselves which is the truth

088students are going to feel sad and upset and confused and angry and shameful but those aren't bad things to feel it's okay for students to grapple with difficult conversations and emotions we should give students space to do that and figure out what they can do with those uncomfortable emotions our students are our future how can we ask them to help create a more equitable and just world in society if the state won't let us talk to them about the issues that have existed and still exist how can we ask them to do better if we can't help them understand the oppressive systems that this country was founded on learning the truth of the us's history is incredibly difficult but students need to know the mistakes that were made and more importantly how people have risen

089up together to fight back and resist racism and white supremacy so that they can carry these lessons with them into the future simply going along with the state's guidelines around teaching or not teaching the realities of race and racism only robs students of the ability to imagine and create a future that's better for everyone our families and our students deserve better than that and our teachers deserve better than that so again i'm asking you all what you'll do to protect teachers who will continue to teach the truth teach the curriculum we've adopted as a district despite what the state legislative body and what governor lee says thank you for your time thank you stephanie up church [Applause] hi thank you for your time today my name is stephanie upshurst i live in bellevue i have

090lived there for 18 years i want to i know your time is value i appreciate you being here um coved lockdowns and closed schools have been hard on us and our kids over the last year we've asked them to stay away from friends and family as well as give up athletics movies shopping dances etc when we have allowed them to do normal kid things we have all sorts of conditions like math social distancing and outside only they've done it because we are the authority and we know what's best for them but do we really our kids are in the midst of a mental health crisis a cdc report shows that er visits for mental health issues are up 25 percent for ages 5 to 11 and 31 percent for 12 to 17 year olds 25

091percent of those visits were kids expressing suicidal ideations mental health america also reports depression and anxiety screenings for 12 to 17 year olds were up 9 percent in 2020 compared to 2019 and most of those over 80 percent of those kids were scoring in the moderate to severe range they also found that the kids screened most reported suicidal or self-harm thoughts nearly every day in the two weeks prior to taking the screening this is a crisis this is the new pandemic i don't believe that any political agenda is worth doing further damage to our children's well-being we don't have the luxury of allowing party politics to dictate the well-being of our kids so when i heard about williamson county's distress over the witten wisdom curriculum by great minds and how it was affecting their kids

092i had to know more since it was planned to be used in mnps i'm a therapist and mental health is a top priority for me and a concern i have spent the last two months educating myself about great minds wit and wisdom i've been shocked and really literally sick to my stomach at times looking at the books and the content i have genuine concerns about how children's fragile mental health will respond to several of these books which include content with suicide woven into their stories and let me tell you why when netflix series 13 reasons why it came out in 2017 kids were watching a lot of kids suddenly without knowing exactly why teen suicide skyrocketed they went up 28.9 in one month following the release of this show because that's what hannah baker did

093in her show she committed suicide teens watching the show actually watched her slice open both her wrist in the bathtub and bleed out into bath water 13 reasons why had no warning labels no content or trigger warnings and it didn't require parental consent to watch when the link to the increase in teen suicides was discovered parents wanted the show canceled and taken off the air that didn't happen what did happen was the warnings were added and the suicide scene was removed why do i bring this up you ask and in such detail with wisdom has the potential to have the same effect on our children who don't actually have the same cognitive reasoning skills as teens they are introduced to scenes suicide while reading brave irene in first grade why not freeze to death she

094thought and let all these troubles end and then they asked kids to act out what happens to irene amos and boris in third grade and hatchet in fourth grade also have similar disturbing content thank you pippa holloway good afternoon my name is pippa holloway and i live at 605 rudolph avenue in nashville i taught history at middle tennessee state university for 20 years over 20 years though i'll be departing nashville soon for new job at mtsu i taught freshman history to hundreds of mnps grads based on my experience i share a few observations one learning about racism sexism and homophobia in the past and connecting this to challenges in the present is part of being college and career ready in fact making these connections is boilerplate language for student learning outcomes for college history classes

095such knowledge prepares students for careers and civic leadership as well for example you are better board members because you've learned about the history of racism in american education and understand how it presents continuing obstacles to equity knowing about the racist attacks by white's parents on school integration in the 1960s helps you understand similar outbursts today learning hard stories about the past helps develop emotional skills it's not just an information gap it's not like you can live for 18 years without learning that ruby bridges integrated her elementary school and they just picked that fact up later education and learn includes learning to manage the complicated emotions that learning hard stories about the past provoke and professional educators scaffold this learning across the cage through 12 years if you go to college get to college without learning

096how to emotionally manage a sophisticated engagement with the past you're way behind not just intellectually but emotionally and socially three our kids want to learn this stuff so many of my college students were furious about the whitewashed version of the past they learned especially in other districts across the state young people know that the past is about a lot more than the declaration of independence the gettysburg address and the attack on pearl harbor and they want to learn it four teaching about racism sexism and homophobia in the past help students across the curriculum teaching children that it was illegal for slaves to learn to read helps them understand the value and power of education in fact there's a book about that in the wit and wisdom curriculum helping kids understand that the heterosexual nuclear family

097is a relatively modern development that daddy's seahorses incubate incubate the babies and that in some cultures disabled people are thought to have magical powers and in case you think i've lost my mind talking about sea horses and magical powers these references to the wit these are references to wit and wisdom books that these people have been complaining about all of this helps students whose lives don't look like leave it to beaver feel normal and be able to learn and succeed and finally five our kids can handle this knowledge they can learn with the help of our amazing mnps public school teachers to manage the emotions that real learning provokes they can wrestle what it means to love america despite its flaws they can learn what it means to be both horrified by the past and

098inspired by it thank you mnps teachers administrators board members and dr battle for your hard work across your careers for our students and community thank you very sagan lindsay harris good evening school board members thank you for your patience and for your attention this evening my name is lindsay harris i live at 614 moore avenue in nashville tennessee chairman bugs is my representative i am a future mnps parent my son is only two right now uh but i am representing aventura community bilingual school this evening i am the vice chair of the board and i speak to you on behalf of our board of directors staff and families we request your approval of our application and later this evening you will review the report and summary of our appealed application i myself am a k-12

099spanish teacher and in the past 13 years i've served as a leader with the tennessee immigrant and refugee rights coalition turk and i saw so often how a school like aventura will make a profound impact on the lives of students and families in south nashville later tonight you will be told of some of the concerns and challenges we may face and we have reviewed this report and this feedback i want you to know that we are committed capable and we will be relentless in our efforts to overcome every obstacle we face in the pursuit of excellent education for all of our students we have resolved many of the concerns presented previously and we're excited to say that we've secured a location in the glencliff cluster as well as hired our first three staff members 100

100of our current staff are bilingual as well as 60 of our board of directors are multilingual we have a list of 24 bilingual educators interested in working with our team someday even though we only have six classes in our opening year uh we will continue to cultivate this list and pursue our outreach efforts as soon as our application is approved we would appreciate your support and consideration of our application this evening and i thank you for your time you amanda kale good evening my name is amanda kale i live at 605 rudolph avenue and i'm a teacher and the president of mnea which represents nearly 2 000 educators i know you have heard from so many urgent voices tonight voices that claim to be advocating for children the best litmus test i have found for

101knowing whether or not that's really true is to see if they're fighting for all children not just their own they don't require some kids to be written out of the curriculum they don't require the majority of kids schools to get less funding so a few can attend special schools either you are fighting for 85 000 kids at 167 schools who are majority black and brown and who speak 120 different languages and have just as much right to walk into an excellent school and see themselves positively reflected in the curriculum or you're not the law requires teachers to teach the tennessee state standards which includes the trail of tears slavery civil war the harlem renaissance women's suffrage japanese internment camps the holocaust the civil rights movement white backlash to civil rights and contemporary issues the tennessee

102teacher code of ethics requires us to quote stimulate the spirit of inquiry the acquisition of knowledge and understanding but right now that's really difficult for us because we have a national movement to whitewash history codify white supremacy culture defund schools attack teachers sitting right here in this room and they have the state law on their side and we know that teachers who are black brown muslim lgbtq will be particularly vulnerable to their attacks as a former history teacher i have learned that history is not just a list of facts but a multitude of stories and the story we are seeing unfold today makes me think of another story i want to go back to little rock arkansas in 1958 not 1957. to prevent further desegregation the governor of arkansas closed little rocks schools a movement

103of racist white women called the mothers league by this point infamous for screaming obscenities at the little lock rock nine urged the little rock school board to purge teachers who had a suspected affiliations to the naacp 44 teachers lost their job as a result but before you get too sad that's not the whole story the citizens of little rock organized together and they recalled the school board members responsible for the purge and made it clear that the antics of the mothers league and other racist groups were not representative of the majority of the people of little rock dr battle school board members in all the nashville community who was out there watching tonight take heart we can teach the truth we can protect teachers and we can make sure everyone feels welcomed and honored at

104mnps if we stick together and mnea stands ready to help with that fight thank you thank you julie troodle hi my name is julie trudell i'm a national native and mnps alum and i've been teaching in metro schools for the past five years i live and work in district six in fran bush's district um and i wanted to just talk about why talking about race is important in every classroom um most of my experience has i teach high school spanish but most of my experience has been in the middle school classroom where i've taught spanish fifth grade science and social studies before we as teachers have ever even had a chance to talk about race students have already been shaped by their own circumstances and the conversations are lack thereof of race and class in

105their homes for example i had a 10 year old black student who was worried about his friend being asked to talk to the school's sro because he had already been exposed to the concept of police brutality so whether we discuss race many of our students have already experienced its impact i believe it's our duty as teachers to make sure our students feel safe and seen in our classrooms and that cannot happen without the acknowledgement of systems of oppression and the celebration of diverse triumphs as a science teacher this meant talking about how important elijah mccoy was who patented 57 inventions by 1929 and likely would have had me more patented if he didn't have to have his white employees submit them for him in spanish class this translates to celebrating the diversity of latin which

106includes people of african asian and indigenous society as well as europeans while acknowledging the harm done by colonialism and slavery and the ongoing issues of colorism imperialism and exploitation of indigenous peoples talking about race can also mean exploring the roots of music like bachata salsa the tango and reggaeton and exploring these genres african indigenous roots all of our students deserve opportunities to engage critically with the world around them as well as see people who look like them add to its beauty thank you very much thank you face your car hi it's my name is asha carr good evening board members my address is 2305 crescent valley place hermitage tennessee i came here to speak today because i wanted to express my sincere hope that maths were going to be optional for students starting in august

107i was pleased to see that about two hours ago mmps released a mask um going to be optional moving into next year i'm very grateful to see that the board listened to the parents and all students are being given this option i hope this is just a peek into mmps's plan to move toward normalcy when we first enrolled my son at stanford montessori we were required to or requested to volunteer i believe it was 30 hours of of our time per family each each year um because this made such a vast difference in our child's education they were that was the one thing that i remember saying like we really need you guys to do this we need you guys you know um just we want you guys so much involved and they're like that's

108one thing that we have to say about stanford that makes us different than other schools so of course my husband and i took that seriously we went to lunches we got involved with the like thanksgiving thing they did um and so i want to go inside my son's kindergarten classroom this year i want to eat lunch with him i want to see his cubby i haven't been able to do this and every time at the end of last year he would say mom come inside my school i want to show you this and i'm like baby i want to see this so bad but i can't i'm not allowed and he's like but mom i don't understand why and i'm like because that's the rules right now and we're trying but so i hope that

109this mass optional is just something that's going to move forward into something normalcy i want to meet with my son's teacher in person if he wants i want to have lunch i want to volunteer i want to see these kids i want him to know that i think his education is important and so i hope that mmps will begin to um now and not just like in a few months put out what their plan is to show that normalcy moving into next year or this coming up year so please please please be transparent and what that looks like moving forward again thank you so much for the option the optional for the children but i i want to see my son's cubby y'all so thank you so much you have a great evening and we

110look forward to this coming up year thank you cindy martinez [Applause] good evening board of education leaders my name is cindy martinez a nashville native and i attended metro schools i'm here today to kindly ask for your support and vote for the aventura community school as a parent of three i can see the huge need in our city for our bilingual school for our growing latino community our daughter will be starting kindergarten next year and it's our priority for her to feel comfortable confident and proud of her spanish culture the only place we can accomplish this is at a charter school like aventura where she will be able to tear down that language barrier and feel self-assured to speak write and read spanish and english being raised by an immigrant single mother my first language

111was spanish the experience of being in my shoes as a mentor student in the 90s i felt like i was secluded into the small classroom that was called esl which is now ell i never felt like i belonged because i was different i couldn't find my sense of identity because at home my mother was strictly spanish and i had when i had to have to go to school and adjust to the english environment when i was a second grader a teacher heard me speaking spanish to my peers and directed me to stop i did not listen and i was sent home it was that experience that made me want to hide where i came from i felt inferior yeah it sparked me to advocate for all my bilingual speakers at aventura students will have a

112sense of belonging and as all the educators in this room know early education increases fluency in later years fluency that our kids need as soon as possible finally once again i asked for us your support for the aventhu dak community school so all the children in this district can feel welcome and prepare for their future and have the opportunity to be bilingual don't put our children in a place like i experienced in metro schools in the 90s that i had to pick and choose between english and spanish let them learn both culture is everything please don't take that away from them thank you so much for your consideration and vote yes for aventura thank you brad rayson good evening thank you for the opportunity to speak um i want to talk about an equity issue

113but first i do want to thank you and the administration for the hard work particularly during the pandemic and during this budget process your leadership is inspiring and we appreciate it this year we made a lot of progress we we had step increases pay increases for all support employees we had colas we also advocated that all 10-month school employees be granted seven more days of work during the school year and we helped council get the funding to make that happen but sadly there's a group of workers our nutrition service workers who are currently not included in that improvement we feel they should be they're 10 month employees too when we advocated and and for a fifteen dollar minimum wage nutrition service workers were included every year when we talk about pay raises for support employees

114we include nutrition service workers adding the days is going to be a benefit for the schools our students and the workers it's going to give food service workers an opportunity for additional training and education it's going to be a chance to learn new skills and enhance the ones they already have it's going to give the schools the opportunity for more cleaning deeper cleaning which we know we need particularly in a pandemic and we need to be able to implement other improvements to help address the challenges we face now and in the future now it's going to be meaningful for the workers too no doubt about it you know most of these workers are women majority are black and brown and they like all school employees love the work they do they love the kids they

115like being a part of a child's education and we all know a hungry child is not going to learn but many of these workers struggle getting to 15 made a big difference but even with 15 many make less than 25 000 a year working full-time how can that be well they only work 10 months that's part of it their work day is only 7 hours so instead of a 40-hour week they have a 35-hour week and they only work 192 to 197 days including some vacation and holidays during those 10 months so that's how it all adds up to 25 000 providing an additional five or seven days for these folks will boost their pay by three percent two and a half three percent that's about six hundred dollars seventy five dollars a month during

116the ten month year but when you're making twenty five thousand dollars a year that makes a big difference so we hope that you will find the funds to implement this change whether it's from general funds or from esser funds we feel it's important thank you all right that concludes this evening's public participation oh one more oh i'm sorry emily solomon right good evening my name is emily sauerman and i live at 3606 hewlett drive in south nashville i have two young daughters ages one and four and i'm here today to vocalize my support for the aventura community school i think the need for this school is evident in the question that almost every parent of a school-aged child has namely how to prepare our kids for a 21st century world aventura is by far the

117best idea i've heard of for how to address this question tangibly and effectively and does so by combining the following concepts first a bilingual learning environment amidst a diverse student body the best way to raise our children in this increasingly globalized world is to equip them with the communication skills to build to build relationships with people different from themselves this is best accomplished with an immersive learning environment which aventura promises second the project-based learning curriculum the best way to prepare our children for real-world challenges is to create opportunities for practicing and practicing critical thinking and creativity we need our kids to think across disciplines as they ask questions and pursue answers to complex ideas within a thoughtful and robust curriculum which aventura promises third personalized learning 21st century thinkers will need to exhibit many different

118strengths that standardized testing may or may not notice a reward we need educational models that show learners that there may be many ways to solve the same problem and to help them learn at their own pace and to balance the benefits of individual learning with learning in a group this aventura promises for these reasons and more my husband and i strongly give our support to this charter and we urge you to vote in favor of its approval thank you for your time thank you all right my apologies now that concludes public participation for tonight we will now move on to governance issues we'll begin with the consent agenda are there any amendments to the consent agenda as listed isn't it go ahead uh mrs walker um without objection i'd like to remove policy 4.295 so

119it can be addressed in committee all right so that's 1d policy 4.205 enrollment in advanced courses any other amendments to the consent agenda is listed all right i will entertain a motion to accept remove approval of the consent agenda with the exception of item 1d do i have a second second all right it's been moved and seconded any discussion all in favor please raise your hand all right it is unanimous or uh yeah all right we'll move on then to charter school amendment applications beginning with aventura community school and the room emptied out let me see dr battle you all want me to wait i'm gonna wait for his backyard yeah let's give her about we'll we'll just take him out a little back up at the bathroom what you doing oh dr bob doctor

120barbara we'll take a three-minute recess we've been here for about two hours so dr griffin feel free to take a seat for a minute okay three minutes sure let's just start back we'll resume the meeting at seven o'clock on the dot all right we were begin the second half of our meeting beginning with charter school application or amended applications beginning with aventura school aventura community school dr griffin thank you to chair bugs board members director battle thank you for the opportunity to present the amended new charter school applications for the 22-23 school year before i do that i'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our new director for the office of charter schools director sharika roby grant will you stand she is not new to metro nashville public schools a former teacher

121she brings about a little close to i'm not going to say how many but close to 20 years experience so thank you director robbie grant she's hit the ground running now for an overview for you board for our new applications just as a reminder we are a compliance driven department and tca 4913-1 guides the new application process state law requires the tdoe tennessee department of ed to provide a standard application format and scoring criteria addressing the elements of the charter school application so just as an overview from our april 27 2021 meeting we the office of charter schools presented the evidence findings to the board and this board voted to deny the applications for two applicants for the 22-23 school year just as a reminder those two applicants were and are a ventura community school

122i'll refer to them as acs moving forward and nashville classical 2 nc 2. now let's move to amended new applications in the same law tca 49-13116 allows for any applicant whose application that was denied can resubmit an amended application for those sections not rated as meeting expectations the review team's decision on which sections to review and the denial of the application by the board's vote dictate the scope of the reviewed sections as a result the review team only reviews the highlighted portions of the application in any amended section that was not rated meets expectations again a review for you from that meeting on april 27th acs had two sections that did not meet standards that was academics and operations and nc2 had one section which was academics as we move forward board just to review

123again for you all applications are evaluated according to the following areas they are the quality of the academic plan the quality of the financial and business plan and the quality of the operational plan remember aventural has two sections academics and operations that was reviewed and nc2 had one academics only the scoring rubric is divided into three rating characteristics the same as the original application for the amended sections meet the standard is all key issues are addressed and aligns with the mission and vision a partially meet standard characteristic meets the criteria in some respects but lacks details in others and does not meet standard means that that particular section hits substantial gaps i want to pause for a minute just to give a shout out to the review team and board members you will notice that

124this review team is significantly smaller than our april 27th review team that is because we reviewed fewer sections but nonetheless our review team members volunteered hours to support us in reviewing the sections that we needed to review we had a total of seven reviewers six mnps internal reviewers and one external reviewer all with the expertise in academics el hr ee operations a few reps from our office of charter schools and our priority and focused schools now i want to take a few moments just to spend a little bit of time on this slide because this slide represents if the application is approved or denied if the application is approved the mnps board and the applicant will enter into a chartering agreement if the application is denied and according to tca 49-13-108 the applicant will have

12510 days to appeal the decision to the state charter commission which will be no later than july 23 2021 the state charter commission will have 75 days of receipt of appeal from the applicants to hold a hearing if the commission upholds the decision of the mnps board the charter application is denied if the commission overrules the decision of the mnps board and approves the application the commission will become the authorizer and lea for the applicant if the application is approved the mnps board and the charter applicant can mutually agree in writing that the board will serve as the authorizer in lea within 30 days and now for our first amended application aventura community school they amended a new start application for the school year 2223 and with a proposed maximum enrollment of 930 students k

126through 8th grade as evidence in the findings and determined by the review team acs was rated in the amended academic plan as partially meets standard the evidence included by the review team was the applicant's academic plan did not address the needs of the targeted student population and the school's academic focus the applicant did not describe a realistic plan for hiring highly qualified personnel for special populations and at risk students with a focus on el teachers board we also provided a one-pager for you that pulls specifics from the review team's amended report i'll cite a few evidence findings now from the one pager evidence finding one the applicant had no detailed plan for trilingual students the applicant stated in the amended application that trilingual students would have compounded benefits of at acs but the application lacked

127evidence that supported this statement there was no description of the services that would be provided for the trilingual students or families of trilingual students review teams report evidence the applicant stated that there were bilingual school options in top districts in the united states and around the world but no specific programs were identified for review an identified program that the school plans to mirror or glean practices from would have provided some clarity on the proposed plan evidence finding three the applicants stated in their amended application that they plan to hire a large proportion of teachers with el certification to ensure the delivery of direct services for their anticipated high population of el students it is also stated in the application they would decide that their ideal educators be bilingual there was evidence in the application that

128they met with several local and regional higher education departments around teacher recruitment however there was no agreement or plan to recruit and hire the educators that they desire for their plan found in the amended application as evidenced in the report the applicant is proposing a k-8 charter middle schools provide high expectations for students and provide access to high school courses that require grading practices aligned to state board policy it should be noted that on page 45 of the amended application the applicant acknowledges the state board policy does not require statewide or district wide standard grading policy prior to high school however there was not a plan provided in the amended application regarding how high school courses would be made available for students at acs who would qualify if they were enrolled in other menps schools

129so again as determined by the review team and evidenced in the findings the review team rated the amended academic plan for acs as partially meets standard we will move now to the operations plan for acs as determined by the review team and evidenced in the findings the review team rated the amended operations plan for acs as partially meets standard as evidenced in the report no robust recruitment plan was identified for the specific recruitment of el teachers needed to staff the school no robust strategy and plan with the partnership of higher education partners was identified the applicant did identify a realistic facility and a contingency plan for location the applicant also provided a detailed and realistic timeline for opening your enrollment facilities and professional development of educators in july of 2022. the applicant provided a transportation

130plan carrier that is equitable to attract a diverse group of students board members we provided a one-pager that pulls specific evidence findings from the report outside a few examples now from the one pager provided to you as evidenced in the report and cited by the review team the applicant did not provide a robust recruitment plan in the amended application for the desired and specific type of educators needed it was referenced often as el and bilingual in the amended application the application lacked a detailed recruitment plan with a partnership of the higher education partners listed in the amended application on page 141 acs lists several higher education partners however again no recruitment plan or detailed strategist for recruitment with the identified partners was mentioned in the amended application as evidenced in the report aventura acs they

131did add an additional board member who has a background in accounting and business they also indicated that gray line transportation will provide transportation for families who live 1.2 miles 1.25 miles from the school acs provided specific timelines for the opening year recruitment the enrollment the facilities opening acs hiring timelines and pd of educators or professional development of educators in july of 2022 the review team also cited that the applicant identified 3010 toggle avenue as a proposed location for acs so again as determined by the review team and evidence in the findings the review team rated the amended operations plan as partially meets standard after a thorough review of the amended application and based on the state evaluation rubric the review team has determined the following for aventura community school academics a partially meets operations a

132partially meets and finances and past performances were not addressed in the amended application chair bugs i'll now turn it over to you for board consideration thank you all right we will i will entertain an emotion please um as soon as you make your motion and it is seconded we will open up for a discussion so just make your motion it'll be seconded we'll open for discussion all right do i have a motion uh mrs elrod i think we're too close to each other no still excuse us for the technical difficulties all right i moved to deny the application for aventura community school based upon their continued lack of meeting the standards and academic program designing capacity due to an unclear or unknown curriculum supports and evidence of the programming additionally adventure community school continues to

133only partially meet standards for their operations planning capacity with a vague startup timeline with little to exact details and a very underdeveloped teacher recruitment plan do i have a second okay all right it's been moved and seconded we'll open up a discussion this is all right thank you um so as referred to and uh referred back to in our conversation that just had with dr griffin um we sorry guys we have our packets we got our notes one moment so my concerns are that there continues to be this unclear amount of curriculum supports and evidence not only with a specific bilingual dual language program but also they don't seem to have a lot of evidence about the compounded benefits of trilingual students not saying that that's not a benefit but that there is not a

134show of the understanding of the compounded benefits nor the amount of services and ports that that type of major undertaking would require additionally there are no there's a lack of evidence of rti supports and accountability and as mentioned there's no mention about the higher ed course planning that they would need for middle schoolers as required additionally as operationally discussed i am very concerned about the lack of a teacher recruitment plan adventure adventura is proposing to be a dual language school that will need educators with a dual certification according to the school's desire to employ a large portion of educators however they continue to have no detailed or actionable recruitment plan and in fact they state which i think is quite honorable that the second most important factor is the type and number of faculty that

135will be recruited hired and retained to deliver the bilingual education model that would be unique to adventurers adventurers excuse me theory of action however continuing to not to provide a detailed and ongoing recruitment strategy in both the original and now the submitted application except that they've met with several local and regional higher ed departments is concerning to me because that is not a plan that is just part of a planning action and as we all know as board members recruitment is ongoing and very difficult as there is not a population or a huge pipeline for teachers to be recruited from particularly those that are diverse or have dual certifications and lastly they are wanting to recruit from my district which is the overton cluster or that's part of my district i should say and um

136the only people that i have heard from within my district that are interested in having this school or those are involved with adventura and i you know that is anecdotally at evidence which makes me think about analytically where we are with our current k-4 bilingual school which is glendale which is obviously in a different district at glendale i it's my concern that there is not only not a current want for a bilingual school but maybe considering their current enrollment there's not a current need as well because out of glendale's 413 students only 44 speak another language other than english and out of those 44 only 16 are spanish speakers and again south nashville does have a large spanish-speaking population so i'm admirable to them wanting to meet those students but we also have many other

137languages including we're the home of the largest kurdish population in the entire nation so the trilingual need is an exceptional one and it's a very large undertaking and not respecting the number of resources and the amount of planning needed for that support is alarming to me and then the fiscal impact because you know i have to say it the fiscal impact which i know is not something that the state is concerned about but it is something that i am concerned about as an elected official as noted in our packet it's 4.6 million dollars per year at the maximum enrollment of that school and they have a slow growth plan is what it's called so i considered that within their first five years of course and so that total is not 4.6 times 10. it's a

138total of 31.99 or 32 million dollars over their 10 years thank you other thoughts uh mrs player peters um yes so aventura would be in my district where it's housed i do hold on i do applaud the concept of the school um but as miss l rod um kind of elrod miss elba i did express a lot of the concerns that i have particularly um when it comes to the rti issue but also the trilingual just given the diversity of our school we do have a large um latino population um but also we have other populations so addressing the trilingual um uh concern is something that i'm i'm concerned about not only yes it's a benefit but also may um occur some challenges and so kind of to this echo a lot of what ms

139elrod said i agree with miss elrod with the with the denial of the application it's abnormal in concept especially for for our area of town but i think it's really important that we make sure that the challenges that's in the district particularly with the challenges that students have coming from other populations from other countries given the economics the rti is really important um and so um i'm that's for the reason for it i appreciate everyone who reached out to me from the antora community in school i think you're intense well but when it comes to meeting the expectations i think it's very um crucial that particularly for its population that they really do meet expectations just giving the challenges they come in as we need to educate them with the el issues that they have

140coming in so thank you all right mr little i would love to know like our district's plan when we look at it was either the chamber report card or our own data to show we have about 30 percent of our students who are spanish-speaking or latino do we have a robust plan that we can provide support to those students and have the diversity as we look at having people having people who care about you but also people who look like you do we have a plan that we can provide so we can say we wouldn't need another school like adventure it just seemed like it's a big gap right now dude i don't know if i can ask open questions i'm just you just ask it to me and i ask you to talk about

141it okay dr battle would you like to respond or would you like to respond later um i think your question is with regards to our english learners what plan do we have as a district to meet their needs is that yes accurate um we absolutely do as a matter of fact we have our director of our english learner program with us today molly hedgewood and she represents and supports all of our el teachers and all of our coaches across the district as a matter of fact for many years we've received pretty high marks and data around our ability to support our english language learner students molly do you want to speak just briefly to our iop process and how that process supports our students all across the district and molly just just just uh what

142i was really asking like the teacher recruitment part not what we currently have how do we continue to grow what we already have and what is that number at right now okay so i can only speak to growing our el teacher population because that's really where my role fits the most but um i think our district has done a really great job even over the last year prioritizing this effort there's two different things that were done uh principles were given the option to put el endorsements in their sbb so that they could endorse their own teachers and also esther funds were allowed to be spent on el endorsement programs so we have lots of teachers that are our current m p m p s teachers in our schools that are adding on this endorsement um

143this is going to be really great for our students because we're going to have content teachers math science social studies that hold this el endorsement so that we'll be able to meet student needs in all classes and have more stakeholders in schools that will be advocates for our students and just for clarity you said you we don't know the number that we're at now or the number we plan to grow because someone can say we doubled in growth right if you went from three percent achievement to six percent so you doubled but what i'm looking for is our is our population of latino and spanish speakers and other languages where are we in like what is that plan got it okay so hold on i'm sorry i to interrupt you dr battle yeah you should

144be directed to your first response sorry i'm gonna do my best because i don't have the numbers in front of me um so we currently i'm gonna speak to um to our ul population first so our ill population is growing very rapidly we have right now about 16 500 students that are active english learners meaning they're not proficient in english yet services are provided at all schools based on their proficiency level i don't know the specific number but i bet i can go back and pull the specific language number for you but the majority of our students are spanish-speaking followed by arabic kurdish somali and some of those other languages as well so we at all of our schools have service models we have teachers in place we have training staff to support students to

145meet their el needs wherever they are enrolled at school and charter schools are held to those same expectations but i'm just do we know the percentage is what i keep looking for the language percentage and i'll have to go back and look at the specific number for you because i don't want to give you the wrong specific number of eos of mnps students that speak spanish and the only reason i ask when you look at what they're proposing do we already have that in place is it working when we look at the population again is growing and so we got to look at what's best for our kids and if we have it like great like let's discuss it but i'm just looking at the report now it says 30 percent but it's only two

146percent of hispanic or latino teachers got it that's what the chamber report it might be wrong right so when it speaks to their program we do not have another program like that one in mnps glendale is similar okay and the sense of the glendale is a spanish immersion school the definition of a spanish immersion school though is that it's it's a spanish program for english speakers as the data showed earlier the number of spanish speakers there at that school is small and the majority of our spanish speakers are in the southeast quadrant of davidson county we do not currently have that program in that area all right dr gentry so um everybody hold on to this you can take a second okay thank you hold on to your seats here um so i i have

147a different position and i come from a different perspective as i look at the aventura proposal um what they're looking to accomplish and this is going to sound a little dramatic but i want you to understand and i've said it from this board table before i grew up in a a bilingual household but that second language that was spoken which was my dad's primary language was never honored and so now if you do a little googling there's only about seven to ten thousand people who speak louisiana creole today and so that's lost for me um my dad being a two-time stroke victim so even the minimal conversations we were able to have are now currently challenged and i have no way of without a whole lot of work which i am currently working on um

148passing that on to my children and so if i understand the aventura model correctly it is not to get a spanish-speaking student to learn enough english so they can learn science it is to honor their language and help them learn science in their language so we keep using this term bilingual and i think the appropriate term would be biliterate so that i'm not teaching you requiring you to set aside who you are where you come from where your comfort zone is i'm not asking or taking you and putting in an environment that does not honor and uplift your culture and your background and your experience i'm not putting you in a position which happened to me where i literally felt superior to my dad growing up because he didn't speak good english and so i'm

149not sending a child home and putting them in a situation where there's now not this ability to connect around academics they're not able to connect with the challenges and the opportunities that this student is facing within their school because they can't talk to their parent because they're not learning what they know in their language so i can't even explain to my mother in my own language what's happening with me at school so for me this is personal um and i i just see this as an opportunity it's not a glendale it's not a spanish immersion it's not taking and you know some of our more affluent families and getting them an opportunity to learn a second language it is taking some of our most challenged families because of their background because they're not being appropriately

150accepted and indoctrinated and enculturated into our society it's getting them to say it's okay that you are who you are and you're from where you're from and you speak the way you speak and you look the way you look because you can learn science you can learn math you can learn history you can learn social studies you can learn civics you may can become a viable citizen in this community and still honor who you are and so for me this is just a different opportunity for students this is a different opportunity for a population of students that i don't think there's an uh that has a need that i don't believe we are capable of meeting i think it's an opportunity for us to have a model and this and for me you guys know

151i always say this you know i'm not necessarily anti-charter i'm anti-what charters have become to us in this district and this was supposed to be as a charter charters were supposed to be that model that's something different that we could learn from that we could partner that we could have strategies that we could bring into mnps and it's already been said here at the podium we don't have this model we don't have this approach we don't have the ability to honor students in this way in our district so i would love to see i don't know how we get past the partially meets i don't know how we support it i'm assuming that you're not looking to open the door with 930 students so you don't need 9 000 teachers you just need enough and

152have a growth plan to get us there so i would hope we would we could look at this as an opportunity to again to meet students where they are this is a population of students that we are not meeting there where they are we're meeting where they are but we're taking them to our side of the street and so for me it's it's it's personal it's an opportunity i wish i had um i wish that you know the beginnings of the relationship with my dad were not what they could have been had i i had he had it been allowed i won't even take all the blame for this had it been allowed had it been acceptable for him to use his native language use the language that he was comfortable in and he probably

153would have been viewed as a totally different individual versus someone who just couldn't speak english and so therefore had no value right outside of his community thank you mrs poopo walker i said a lot about how i feel about this application in the last go-round i will just say i want to say a couple of things one i'm concerned that we don't have the opportunity to ask questions of the review committee and understand where some of these these findings are what they're rooted in i remember very distinctly the rti conversation i was able to show what page where the itrti plan was that was resolved that was not part of the findings for this time however they're dinged on it again and so there's things where i'm just i also want to say i think

154it's not realistic for us to say in eight years from haven't planned for your your eighth grade high school course that's going to happen in eight years in the application now so these are the kind of things that i think right i mean sure we want to know that they have they're thinking about high school credits for eighth graders but i don't think that's enough in my opinion to um i don't know i i'm just i respect the process i've done this process i would love to have a conversation about what the el staff thinks about this right um i'm i think there's a i think there's going to be a real opportunity for elt i mean i think yale teachers will be drawn to teaching at a bilingual school i would have been i

155taught you know classes like this so anyway i'm not begrudging that partially meets it is what it is but i will say this is a group that has fundamentally worked hard to come up with a plan that i think is evidence-based research-based that honors students first language i think it's unfair to assume all those students come in as el learners they come in often speaking english when they walk in the door so they are but they also speak spanish at home and so i just think it's more complicated than it appears in terms of how we talk about dual language how we talk about language acquisition and i don't think that that has had a fair hearing here it's a very unusual application and i don't think we've had the opportunity to learn about what

156that process looks like um i think it i think it's i think i would love to see the school open i would love to see us have a place where families can have their children maintain and read and write in their first language and so i'll support the school thanks any new speakers before i allow second round all right mrs elrod thank you so um i mean frankly dr jeffrey that i that sounds frankly very difficult um i would like to say that that is the anticipation of the school but that is not what they put in their paperwork so they state that they want to deliver a bilingual education model with 30 to 50 english speakers and 30 to 50 percent spanish speakers with some space for trilingual students so i still think that

157they will honor spanish speaking students to your point but i don't think that that's their original model and what they're really wanting to do i think it is a bilingual model as they've they said it is a couple times my concern is again they're not going to have probably all their plans in place for what's going to happen in year six and seven because things change frankly quite quickly particularly in education but my concern is that they don't have a plan necessarily in place as they weren't able to articulate it for even that first or second or third year and those things i would expect them to have particularly with such a strong board and they do on the scheme and on the face of it do have a strong board so which is mentioned

158in the paperwork so with those benefits and still not being able to articulate clearly their standard standards their curriculums that they want to use their their supports how they're going to do their recruitment is is very concerning to me that it's a continued lack of seeming to understand the operation that they're getting into um it is a it is a need for us to of course honor not just spanish-speaking students but we have so many different languages discussed and spoken inside i mean overton which is one of my schools is the most diverse school in the whole state we have over 41 languages spoken at overton so we need to honor those schools in those languages including we have some that speak creole and pigeons at overton um and so i um i think that

159we do need to honor those i just don't believe this is the only way to do that and maybe instead it's that our reimagined work our other work where we focus on our current bilingual school that we're supposed to have and really manage what that looks like better to really honor the original intention of it maybe that's the better conversation but reintroducing a school that has potentially good intentions but not the operational experience or wherewithal to do it is a deep concern to me all right well i will say before we call for the question then that um i took my toddler so my three-year-old christopher to musician's corner to specifically meet with aventura the the board members and the founder and just ask some questions about the application kind of understand more what the

160school was looking to do who it was looking to serve and i am one of those people that has voted against every every new charter school because we have just so many schools we don't need new ones but it's also interesting because i love being able to sit at this table hear the different perspectives because we don't break protocol and we don't talk before we have the meetings i get to hear what your general feelings are in the moment and i'll just say that after my conversation with miss morosi i told her that you know barring any significant issues with their application that i was willing to vote for this because i do believe that this is one of those schools one of those charter schools that does exactly what we've asked charter schools to

161do it's not just a replication of something it's not it's not pulling resources it's not doing any of the things that we we know that some of our charter schools do but it is a new model that i it just was so interesting to hear dr gentry talk about that because these are my thoughts you know it's like this is something new that our students that because historically we have been underfunded we have we as a school system have not been given the grace and the funding and the bandwidth to be in the capacity to be able to recruit the teachers from diverse backgrounds or with diverse language or speakers of diverse languages we just haven't had that support typically and so i'm i'm i'm still open to be swayed but i am leaning towards

162voting for this school because my conversation with them that night the way she was able to explain who they've already spoken with the number of teachers they've already been able to not just commit to teaching at the school that are bilingual and that have the ell endorsement but that they um they already have a they have a laundry list of other recruitment strategies that they're already engaging in and so i think i did struggle with some of the application and some questions that i had because it was different from my conversation with them versus what i saw here but i also understand that there are many different people involved in the process and so i that's my two cents i want to give everyone who wants a chance to to mention their thoughts to share

163this is um masters so this is a question for dr battle if that's all right um would you say that we follow research-based best practices in educating our el learners throughout the district absolutely with confidence i can tell you that our team we have a team of experts we have great educators in our schools who are as molly mentioned continuing to build their capacity get their endorsements around how to best support our students and so without hesitation i can share with you that we do utilize best practices and strategies across our schools and that we have a team of experts who are equipped to meet the needs of our students that's great thank you and and would you also say that you know with our every student known um sort of mission statement um that

164we're giving deep consideration as well to those that special set of needs for those students who are english language learners i think it's a prime example of what we mean by every student known it is really about us making sure that we understand our students background we understand their needs we understand where they are and that we're aligning our resources our supports our instruction to meet the needs of our students and and that is just the core function of every student known it is everything about our students and what it's going to take to make sure they're on a path for success that's great thank you i just i'd ask those questions to sort of reiterate i am a very strong believer in public schools that's why i'm sitting here um and i believe that

165as much as we can do to strengthen the system that we have in place and to ensure that we can provide the best education possible for every child here in nashville within our public school system i feel like that is the best avenue for us to follow um and i would i would rather see the resources and the funding that is going to go towards another charter school go into our existing schools thank you any other thoughts before we call for the vote all right mrs elrod would you mind restating your motion and i know it's been properly seconded yes um i moved to deny the application for aventura community school based upon their continued lack of meeting the standards in academic program designing capacity due to an unclear or unknown curriculum supports and evidence

166of their programming additionally adventure community school continues to only partially meet standards for their operational plans and capacity with only vague startup timelines and a very underdeveloped teacher recruitment plan all right it's been moved and seconded all in favor please raise your hand all right all opposed all right motion fails which means that i will entertain a new motion once it is moved it must be segmented and then we'll we'll open to discussion if there's further discussion i move that we approve of into the uh uh is it community school uh what is it school all right do we have a second a second all right any discussion beginning with mrs poopa walker if you have any uh you know i will say i'm not gonna belabor this i think there's a lot of misconceptions

167about dual language in this district on this board because we don't have anything like it what glendale offers is something very different so i think it's a learning opportunity for us to understand yes we want every student known but we are not teaching our children their first in their first language um until they get to high school like at overton like a spanish heritage class but even then right it's a it's a fraction of kids and it is it is teaching them spanish after they've lost it right what we're talking about here is um an opportunity for students who choose to come and and learn just and to read and write in their native language and in english as well and so anyway i hope i hope it passes and i hope we can learn

168a lot about what it means to truly teach children in their first language in this way and um [Music] and also recognize and i always have celebrated the great work of our el shop and i'm a huge fan of molly hedwood and it's not to say that they aren't doing a great job i don't see this as an el school it's not an el school it is a dual language school it is a bilingual school right and that's a different thing to me anyway so that's it mrs masters uh and then mrs elrod i i just i have to reiterate that you know there are certain things i would love to see in specific schools um but this this is a public school district where we're trying to provide the best possible education to every

169child who lives here and i i feel like for us to be about to pass to approve a school application where they didn't even meet the standards that are supplied to us by the state in a way that basically makes it almost impossible for them to not meet the standards in the application and that we're going to approve that because it's a niche area that seems interesting and yes potentially replicable which is what charter schools are supposed to do is provide replicable exciting different ways of educating but um we are i'm just shocked that we're about to actually this is actually going to be approved when it didn't even meet the standards for the application process and i hope that we're not about to go down this road of approving the charter schools that seem

170really cool or that seem neat or the most interesting to us um well i appreciate the thoughtfulness that has gone into it because i i mean i i definitely appreciate that and i agonize over all of these applications i have yet to see one that i think warrants taking the resources away from our traditional schools so that's it thank you mrs elrod thank you um i too am very surprised as it goes against a lot of the conversations that were had in april about our strategic plan in the future for not just our current schools but reimagined and our charter schools not obviously just by myself but from the board as a whole at that time we had many discussions and we have had also in board retreats that though there are definitely concerns myself

171included having concerns with the review process um for several reasons that we were going to try to work within those and try to stay on the compliance driven process as we keep hearing as it being called so it continuing to be partially meets and there's not any new information being provided which is why it's continuing to be partially met is really alarming to me i don't know why we would agree to spend 32 million dollars on a good idea but with no actionable or operational plans we have tons of schools with incredible options and op you know thoughts and ideas but we miss those or we're not able to fund those or we don't have the capacity to do those for all kinds of reasons and we end up kicking ourselves by saying we only

172partially met with them we only did so much we could have done so much more and so it seems a bad idea to set ourselves up to do that again and once again a school that has a maybe a good idea but not the capacity to to bring it out um if they've had two opportunities to apply in a process that's already geared by the state to get a yes and they still can't get a yes and not just one but two areas it's it should be concerning to all of us particularly because the students that they're they're wanting to serve is again thirty to fifty percent english speakers thirty to fifty percent spanish speakers with some space for other languages once again the closest that we have to that is glendale and understandably that

173is not the same school because it's k through four instead of k through eight it's in a different district all of those things people send their kids to that school frankly because it's a pathway into jt moore not because it's a bilingual school the people that i know don't typically and that's shown through the data of how many spanish-speaking students they have and how many english-speaking students they have it shows that there's not a deep desire and so a follow-up concern i should have which i think we all should have is if we only have a school fan that we don't have many spanish or we don't have many english speaking students in does it just become the foreign language school is that a new form of some type of segregation is there a possible

174outcome to that those are my concerns that we're going to have a pinhole school that can't meet their requirements they don't have the plan for them even though very well-intentioned maybe and they can't meet the standards for it and we're going to agree to it because it sounds like it's going to be great but we don't have any proof that it's going to be great duly noted and so i'll say that when i met with aventura the few different times i spoke with them and then meeting with them at musician's corner to see their teaching in action and then the documents that they were able to provide me i and i've never been on a charter review team so i'm not going to say you know i certainly don't want to muddy the water in

175that way but i was under the impression that they were going to meet the standard because the documents that they gave me showed their recruitment it showed i mean it showed that a lot of this that seems to be not addressed in the one pager was addressed and so i was um i think that's the first thing now i certainly understand the fiscal impact i mean i i told you i'm going to be insufferable this year with my son going into school so i understand that we've got to be very protective of resources we've got to be thoughtful about the money that we spend where it goes how it's divided up but i also want to be mindful of the idea that often disenfranchised community members don't speak up so if they want to go

176to a school if they need if they feel like they need something they may not they may not know the pathway to get it it's not that mnps is saying no don't call me no don't email us no don't let us know it's that they literally don't know where to start or they don't have the language to put to their thoughts and their ideas and they don't know how to they maybe don't feel comfortable or don't have the capacity to advocate and so i'm trying to be mindful of that also that if you have span if you have citizens or you know you have community members who uh have a language barrier they don't know how to advocate for themselves they're not sure which way to go or who to go to i just think

177that presents a different issue that maybe mnps i mean we've done our best i mean we've we continue to put our best foot forward we continue to have a strong ell office we've asked for a decade to have more funding to for translators and for um training for our teachers but we have not been able to do it in this school again based on what i based on what we saw in the original uh plan based on what we saw here and then based on what they were able to provide me tangibly it it seemed like they met the standard it seemed like they were ready and not just the scene but i i reviewed and i'm like okay they're ready they i thought that when we got this amendment amended package back that it

178was going to say that it met out standards so that's my thoughts again i i've never voted for charter school so i have truly agonized and struggled with this one but yeah go ahead mr little yeah i think one we got to watch how we continue to reference if they partially meet the standard and then change the field goal post but i think what i've saw from adventure really is the love i saw the experience of people who have worked in the district who live in the district who really reference that community like i love that experience and i also love the fact of like the diverse people coming out to speak on behalf of the school and i think working at a school off murfreesboro road i realized that like populations need love like

179we need good run schools but we also need people who just really care and as i as i look at the application i was a little confused too and i had questions similar to what jenny said because there were a lot of questions that we didn't address last time and i just think we and and i know you guys say we can't try something shiny but i think we got to try things if we are in that field and it's not working for that population and when i look at the numbers like that's what i want to look at like i want to put the heart into it but i also want to look at the numbers and say what can i be against and if i'm against it what is the plan to correct

180it and if i don't have a plan sometime i gotta slow down i disagree because these are kids that we're talking about and just the last thing that i want to address we keep saying like we're losing money for the district and when i think about our budget that money doesn't go to me it doesn't go to anyone but the parents who send their kids to the school is where the money belongs and so if a parent as we listen to tons of parents for and against different schools like all parents have a right you know one parent tonight said i love my neighborhood schools but i send my kids to meg's and so we still gotta we gotta give parents the right to choose what's best for their kids because at the end of

181the day as one mother said her grandson is in the ninth grade what plan are we having for her like if she comes up here and pours her heart out she repeated herself 60 times but who went out and said hey i'm gonna help you she walked away from here with no one looking to give her support and we don't need that in our district um mrs pooper walker i'd like to call the question oh i'm sorry ms tyler hasn't been able to speak go ahead miss tyler thank you um like miss masters i'm also concerned with taking resources away from our schools um but i also see the very important work of honoring our students and their first language and where they come from um we should be honoring the primary language of all

182our el students in all of their classes in all of their zone schools always so so then my thought is how can we do that how can we honor the primary language of our el students in a location that is already the heart of their community that is already where they are zoned that already has transportation worked out for them that already has their parents just right around the corner why can't we help them where they are instead of forcing them to have to come somewhere else and so what i would love to see is a collaboration between the board of adventurer and mnps so that we can take what you want to do and find a way to work it in our existing schools does that mean more pd for our el teachers does

183that mean that you guys create something that we can add to what we're doing that to me is the ideal of finding a way to honor every kid not just the ones who have the ability to go somewhere else all of them all of our el kids need to be honored in their primary language they don't need to be embarrassed they don't need to feel like they're losing a part of themselves they need to be loved for who they are where they live so that's that's what i want i don't want to deny it because i don't want el students to get what they need i want to deny it so everybody can have it all right the question has been called uh mrs pouffel walker would you mind restating your motion and it has

184been properly saved you approve of community school for charter with mnps all right um it's been properly seconded all in favor please raise your hand alright all opposed any abstentions all right it has passed we will now move on to nashville classical charter school i'm sorry national chart nashville classical charter school two yes and now for our second applicant nashville classical school two i'll refer to it as nc2 they proposed an amended application for an existing operator in tennessee for a new school that replicates an existing model it's for the school year 2223 with a maximum enrollment of 600 students grades k through 8. as evidenced in the findings and determined by the review team nc2 was rated in the amended academic plan as meets the standard as evidenced by the review team in the

185report the applicant provided a description of the rationale a wait list and documentation of stakeholder engagement for selecting the community where the school will be located we provided for you board a one-pager that pulls a few specifics from the review team's amended report i'll cite a few evidence findings now from that report evidence one the review team reviewed the enrollment study that nc2 included in the application nc2 reported partnering with national demography experts to identify a location that they reported will support them in meeting enrollment targets as well as creating a level of racial and social economic diversity that will support their mission as evidenced by the review team and in the report on page eight of the amended application nct reports that by locating a k-8 school at 10-15 davidson drive nc2 could provide

186potential relief for overcrowding in the hillwood cluster however the application does not include metro schools reimagined planning that will address the enrollment in the hillwood cluster evidenced in the report finding three nc2 reported that they engaged with a variety of stakeholders to address the enrollment concerns and provided letters of support from stakeholders including council members business leaders and non-profit leaders to support their new location evidence in the review team's report over the past two years nashville classical reports they had a wait list of students so as evidenced in the findings and as determined by the review team nc2 was rated as a meets standards after a thorough review of the amended application and based on the state evaluation rubric the review team has determined the following for nc2 academics as a meet standard and the

187other three areas were not reviewed due to the meat standard from the original application i'll turn it over now to you chair board chair bugs for board consideration thank you dr griffin all right i will entertain a motion uh mr little yeah um so before i get started there's one thing that i want to read just around the conflict of interest it's just for the okay yeah conflict adventures go ahead yes so um tca 12-4-101 and i just want to be clear as i come before because conflict of interest is huge um melissa roberg's attorney roberge has been very helpful i mean it reads conflict of interest problems generally arise when a school board member has and you may need to help me with the pecuniary interest okay i got it all right um that

188would interfere with the member's ability to vote objectively on matters before the board tennessee code annotated 12-4-10 a 1 and b provided is unlawful for any official whose duty is to vote for any contract in which the county is concerned to be directly or indirectly financially interested in such contract and i and i start that i want to make a motion to approve natural class i'm sorry because of your abstention you can't make an emotion am i incorrect mrs roberge i don't know that i heard mr little say that he was recusing himself yes oh you're not recusing yourself right i i read the whole conflict of interest 12 dash four dash one on one okay okay mr virginity thoughts the sort of conflict of interest and recusal rules are self-policing and so it's up

189to each individual board member to act appropriately in this manner and mr little and i have had conversations about it and we've talked about it and if this is the decision that he has made um there isn't a mechanism to prevent him from voting yeah and i'll read the code one more time tca 12-4-101 conflict of interest between board members generally arise when a school board member has picnery i just want to make sure i'm getting that word right interest would you like financial interest correct the board policies also talk about when it may be appropriate to recuse yourself but that is what the statutes say yes the point information so so you're not refusing yourself from the from the vote i'm not based on tca 12-4-1 and i'ma tell you since this is an

190open conversation it's it's well known my son attends school but most board members on here have kids in metro schools and so just because my kid attends a school i shouldn't have to recuse myself if i have no financial interest if i don't seek to gain anything and so i think what we think may be a conflict of interest we have to look at the real rules and say would i be biased wouldn't anybody else be biased when it comes to their own community school that their kids attend and i and the first time i did recuse myself and i felt really bad even though it failed but i just think i have an obligation especially as you listen to parents of what they're dealing with to vote with your heart and not for people

191and i'm not saying people are but people may frown upon you i have no financial interest in the school okay cause i don't know why did you read that i was getting clarification of i wanted to be super duper clear because it's i don't want the greatness over my my head that's why i wanted to start off um reading the statue putting it out there that i have no financial interest in the school but it is a school i support that i send my kid to just like we're all metro school parents and we send our kids to metro schools and we advocate for our communities um in different schools that we may have an interest in not financially okay let's start with miss tyler has yeah can can i point out that we were

192voted in to represent our community schools and you were not voted in to represent a charter school so we are supposed to who said okay i'm sorry point of mr little if you would like to go down this road go ahead and begin with your motion and then once it's seconded we will open up for discussion go right ahead okay and and so i make a motion to approve national classical charter school too based on the academic achievements based on their tn ready scores based on the amount of diversity of parents who support the school lastly by the language of dr griffin said a highly quali which said a highly qualified charter review committee rated it all as meet standards and so that's why i was making a point of the last time because if

193we are if you don't mind i'll allow you to start the discussion once it's been seconded so we've heard the motion do we have a second i'll second it all right we have a second uh we'll begin discussion with mr little now that's so just as we listen to the review committee as we talked about the accolades as we look at the new director who all have meet standards i think it's a disservice as we look at the academics as we look at the culture of what they represent based on what other parents i think looking at the tn ready scores when you look online in comparison to not only mnps but also the state i think it would be a disservice not to approve something that has just shown everything that we want in

194the school that has shown diversity that has shown great culture that has opened its doors to people around the community and as a parent that's what i've seen in looking at the numbers um on the tn ready that's what i've seen and so that's why i move to approve it we got to support the schools that support us thank you mr little uh mrs tyler the mrs elrod the mrs masters okay so i have a couple of questions about the section of the amended charter that we're looking at the one that is the academic program design and capacity part of our job is to assess if the charter school can meet its capacity projections it doesn't matter how great your academics are if there are not enough students attending to feasibly stay open and benefit

195from them so one of the reasons you said you changed your rating was the wait list so i would like to ask a couple of questions about their wait list if that's possible chairwoman bugs mrs dr battle sure okay um how many per how many people are currently on the waiting list for nashville classical right now all right um if it's okay dr griffin um i'd like to invite mr ron latimer up to the podium to be able to respond to the wait list questions they currently have a 177 students on their wait list so nowhere close to the thousand they claimed okay that was applications um not not a wait list those are the number of kids that applied over the past two years how many of the people on that wait list are

196from district nine uh one how many people on that wait list are from the white's creek cluster 14. so since they will begin and slowly open starting with kindergarten how many kindergarten students are on their waitlist zero can we take a second look at the hillwood clusters kindergarten students um i want to know if there's any reason to think that the hillwood cluster students are leaving for other options or that they're looking for other options can you talk to us about the numbers for the hillwood clusters elementary students over the last several years including this upcoming one yeah so in general um there's been a little bit of a dip in the hillwood cluster over the past few years and then more so this year because of cobin right now the kindergarten enrollment is looking

197good going into the next year it's about 100 students over where we were at this point in time last year okay which is still a little bit lower enrollment wise than where we've been but is looking better than the coveted year we just went through yeah so it seems like the the claims on the application of the waitlist that are going to benefit nashville classical's location in district 9 where they are saying that they want to pull from white's creek and hillwood they would have 15 students total but they wouldn't be able to start immediately because they don't have none of them are in kindergarten so as of right now they would have absolutely no students coming to their school when they first opened as of right now and then as you said our students

198at the hillwood cluster have had a little dip but they have pretty much held steady so our students who are choosing public schools our zoned public schools are choosing to stay there um the numbers that that the enrollment has remained steady and that shows a commitment to our families to their zoned schools so i just got to say um in my outreach to find out everybody's i've heard and you heard councilman rosenberg talk and when he's came up he spoke first about how he represents the vast majority of the district nine school his uh his whole council is within his whole district is within district 9 school board um and he said he has received nobody telling him that they want nashville classical zero families have reached out to him and talked to him but

199he has heard from families who do not want it likewise i have heard overwhelmingly from families who do not want and would not attend nashville classical and there were a handful of people who did want it but of that small handful only two of them had children young enough to potentially attend nashville classical and only one of those two would actually consider sending them in elementary school because they are committed to their zoned elementary school um so in addition to that anecdotal evidence of just talking and hearing from people there is actually a precedent that the majority of families in district 9 will not send their children to a local charter school lead academy is a successful charter school network both here in nashville and nationally they currently have six schools open at mnps that

200are well attended they tried to open another school in the exact same location nashville classical wants to use they were not able to enroll enough students to stay open their financial stability their years of experience their solid great curriculum was not enough to entice local families to attend the school nowhere in nashville classical's application do they show proof of interest from the actual families who live in district 9. i also wanted to address the um the thing where they were talking about overcrowding in our district i just want to go ahead and state for the record that while they are well attended none of district 9's elementary schools are at or over capacity no relief is needed for our elementary schools there is room for our students to continue to go there without problem as

201for our two middle schools only one of them is currently over capacity and so i have a couple questions to address that do you anticipate that the actions of the mnps reimagined where we move our fifth grade back to elementary school would they have an impact on the hillwood cluster middle schools i mean it would decrease the enrollment there obviously taking fifth grade away and so we wouldn't have a capacity issue at hg hill okay that's the only time once that happens we would not have a capacity issue because we would have built out our elementary schools because three of our four elementary schools will need to have actual renovations added to them in order to house fifth grade one of them just needs to close some of their options optional applications so if we

202have um adding fifth grade back to elementary school and we have to do it by a renovation then that's not going to overcrowd those schools because we are literally building the space they need so elementary schools won't be overcrowded with the renovation and middle schools will have relief and there will be nobody overcrowded there so it's just it's it's clear that there is no need for relief um and also i just i just had another question about the the reimagine plan too so given the requirements about the next round of esser funding do we have the ability to look at speeding up our reimagined plan using esser funds not something i can answer with regards to allowability there are aspects of the esser um funds that would allow some options to expedite in some sizes

203yes okay so we don't have to wait for everybody in the capital needs thing if we're able to use these refunds to find a way to help jump start and move quickly in our reimagined plan so considering the fact that our elementary schools are not in need of relief for overcrowding and the mnps reimagine plan will alleviate the overcrowding of the middle school level it is clear that nashville classical won't be able to provide relief because none is needed now i have another question that's a little bit more personal and it's because i actually used to work as a first grade teacher at brooke mead at the location that they're hoping to open at and so that school is near and dear to me but i taught in the older not renovated section and it

204had issues with recurring mold for the second grade classrooms were they had typical older building issues in the office kindergarten and the first grade areas so like many people in the surrounding community i was under the impression that asbestos was a problem after the school closed and that left the older portion of the school only safe enough to use a storage none of us know for sure if that's even true or if it is if it was addressed by the new owners i have repeatedly asked about the physical condition of the building and whether or not it would be safe for students to use with no response so if the issues in the older section of the building have been fixed this has not been made clear to the board do we have any knowledge

205about the physical state of the proposed location asked david prophet to come up and help there chris would you like to defer to david prophet i can only speak to the condition of the school when it was sold at that point in time um and there was acms throughout the facility what are acms acoustical um acoustical uh as best as containing materials whether it be floor tile whether it be ceilings mastic pipe insulation things like that the latest report that i saw i think it was generated as late as 2018 just before we sold the school had it shown throughout excuse me throughout the entire facility in the new section there were some uh no not in the new section all in the old section primarily from the entry back over to the left hand

206side of the boat okay and but beyond that i can't tell you if anything's been done or anything like that since then since we sold it i hope that gives everybody else as much concern as it does me even if they only use the new portion of the building how are they making sure that asbestos is not are not going to affect the students at the school i would think if they had fixed that problem that they would be shouting it from the rooftops to let us know that that it wasn't an issue anymore but um their silence is a is an answer in itself to me i am just i'm really struggling to see how the things that were used to change the rating actually exist their wait list does not bear out for

207their location the stakeholder engagement does not include the actual families who would intend their i don't even know what their rationale is you just said they gave it to you so i'm just really i want to take a minute also to note that in nashville classical application one of their top priorities is to serve disadvantaged students the most current numbers available show that only 34.4 of their student population are actually economically disadvantaged and it's worth noting that in their application their original application for the school in east nashville back in based on the demographics in the area they predicted that they would have 89 percent of their students would be living in poverty they have never come close to that prediction they they got up to 72 in their second year and they've been under

20850 since the third year since their fourth year um and they have not been able to rise above that so if they're having trouble enrolling economically disadvantaged students in east nashville how will they serve more disadvantaged students in the district with the lowest economically disadvantaged percentage of all students in all of mnps where are these kids coming from now through all that i do want to say as you heard all clearly tonight from the public comment nashville classical has been a very good fit and has had a positive impact on east the east nashville community they're clearly doing good work there and they're clearly meeting the needs of the students that they serve there so i don't want to denigrate them that's not what i'm trying to do they're doing what they said they were

209going to do in that first one maybe with the exception of the not having disadvantaged students but for the most part they're helping those kids but as i focused on this whole time the demographics and the need in district 9 are very different from the demographics and need in east nashville if nashville classical wants to help families who are economically disadvantaged or at risk then district 9 should not be the location they choose if they want to help families who are unhappy with the performance of their zoned elementary school then district 9 should not be the location they choose if they want to help alleviate overcrowding they should not target schools that are already that are still not at capacity so i think we have to think about how will it help mmps students in

210overcrowded areas to open up in district nine how will it help mnps economically disadvantaged students to open up in district nine because right now the president that set is from the lead school that could not enroll enough people to stay open despite their national and local success otherwise i just have not seen anything that will show me that nashville classical will do anything different thank you mrs elrod mr mrs masters and then mr little thanks um it is interesting that the motion was to approve it based upon the uh findings from the board consideration when those were all just ignored from the past conversation so if we're gonna we're gonna play that game i have some questions so um the concern last time was that there were questions that wanted to be asked of the

211review team but so no questions were asked um and so i have some questions about national classical and they are the following the information between the original and the amended is frankly not that different um that's pointed out in the first one the bullet point list and of course the detailed application information that we received there's not a lot of new information that was provided in the amended application except for on page 13 it states that they quote provided letters of support from stakeholders including council members business leaders and non-profit leaders to support their new location letters of support do not equate to any type of enrollment nor even academic support so i am concerned that it's the only major change in the information that we were given and their rating was changed because the

212rating should not be changed based upon potential political or outside pressure to open a school that doesn't have a benefit again to enrollment or academics which is what the ratings were supposed to be on so what additional information can we highlight that we have maybe not noticed that caused that change in rating so board member elrod um due to tennessee code annotated i cannot inject my subjective feelings based on what the review team reported it is very evidenced i can tell you though that there was a reference of reports for nc2 and i can call your attention to those reports um and they were enrollment reports and there was a 21 22 district enrollment projection report it's on page four of the amended application um there's a transition team report in 2016 on page five

213of the amended application there is an mnpcs diversity management plan on page 6 and page 13 of the amended application and there is also a mcconnell jones lanier and murphy an outside auditor of mnps that was on page 10 and so the findings based on what the review team evidence was around enrollment and that evidence that's in section 1.2 of the rubric okay in our meet standards emitted application i think that's referred to as uh as the applicant articulated in the admitted application they're offering a seamless k-8 pathway which is same as before and opening the city's first k-8 school outside of east nashville which is again not new information and they provide a unique enrollment option because again it's a k-8 in the hillwood cluster and the neighboring committees or communities excuse me including

214the white's creek area then there's some more referral back to the original report findings that we received about how there are concerns from the review team that excuse me that the white's creek location really can't handle much more recruiting as it's already so underenrolled and that hillwood doesn't have a need for this type of enrollment because they have so much capacity already so um again with those two things being present i i don't understand how it would have been changed to suddenly partially meet to meets um and there not be a lot of information included about how they met that change to the standard i appreciate the list of all the data that was provided of course you know that we don't see all that data in a granular way so it would have been

215helpful to have that data because it appears that it is in essence the same application besides the increased letters that were received from stakeholders which again does not equate to enrollment or even academic supports uh again i i am i am irritated that we are saying that this meets standards with um again not a lack of a lack of evidence where we just had a lot of evidence and we said it doesn't meet standards and then we approved it that is exceptionally frustrating to me um lastly are we allowed to comment on our colleague not recruit not recusing himself tony roberge please i think that that's outside the question okay okay sorry outside the motion but thank you for asking that's why i asked thank you mrs masters and then i'll entertain anyone else who

216wants to speak on the first round before i allow mr little for a second round um i just want to say that i appreciate everything that board member tyler said because we are talking about a school potentially in her district and i also want to say that i was a resident of east nashville when nashville classical one opened and i i would just kind of like contrary to what ms tyler said about it serving a need there i think it mary will actually may have delayed the progress of some of our traditional zone schools in that area we we have some pretty spectacular schools in east nashville and and i believe that some of them that are very highly awarded at this point probably could have reached that point much sooner had we not had

217the competing factor of um charter schools moving into that area i don't live in east nashville anymore i live in goodlettsville but um that that is my take on that as someone who sort of watched it firsthand i mean y'all you can't beat public schools for what we are able to offer we we have the most highly qualified teachers we have the highest level of accountability for the schools we have the the longest track record record of being able to show the results that we get for our students good public schools are good and you know what there aren't any broken public schools in affluent communities which only goes to prove that if we just put the resources into the system as it currently exists we can take care of these kids so i'll be

218voting against this the fight to privatize public education is frustrating and it's not the purpose of a public board of education that's all that all right before we allow second round i'll say the first national classical is in my district in fact when i was pregnant with my three-year-old that was the first onesie i received i fought two years ago for them to have additional seats because i believe in the continuity of the school and i wanted students to be able to go from kindergarten to eighth grade and um they thought they would have more attrition and they didn't so students were staying versus leaving and so i i agree with that but i will continue to unfortunately not vote for this because i i just i strongly disagree with the idea that we force

219uh integration on communities i mean i think we continue to opt out of neighborhood schools and i mean i can't afford to move back to the white creek area i want in my heart of hearts to live in bordeaux but i can't maintain two homes i certainly can't move back there yet so i but when i do get a chance to move back there i would love to send my child to his neighborhood school that doesn't just because it's my choice though i acknowledge that that's not going to be everyone's choice i do just agree that we have to be very um thoughtful about how disenfranchised communities are affected by every single decision that sometimes we can sit because we all even though we all come from different socio economic backgrounds we all do sit

220in that place of privilege and it is hard to sometimes remember that there are families that cannot or just don't have the capacity to advocate for themselves i think nashville classical continues to do a great job in east nashville i don't know that i agree with it being in district 9. i also i mean it i appreciate that there is likely a very long wait list for nashville classical but i was i do have to note i was um intrigued to see that there was an there is a wait list for every single pre-k program that i applied to so there was a wait list at warner there was actually a wait list at buena vista jones where my son will be going there was a wait list at carter lawrence there's a way i

221mean there's literally a wait list at every single school so not to dismiss the wait list but i do think it's worth noting that that that does seem to be a bit of a common theme in choice schools if there are no more first to read or first thoughts we'll go to mr little um yeah so question because i know we talked about asbestos and we don't want our kids being unsafe and maybe this is a question for mr prophet but well i'm sorry ask me uh stop the battle she will do some stuff don't worry that's it but would the school have to pass code but i'm sorry lean into your mic just so that okay would the school have to pass codes before they opened up in the um proposed building that we're

222talking about because we don't want kids to be in unsafe schools uh dr battle would you like to uh yes dr prophet if you could approach the podium please and i know this seems odd to the community at large but this is just to make sure that we're following proper protocol and that we're sending everything through our directive schools yes thanks chairman bugs um mr little to answer your question specifically i i really can't answer that i don't know the condition of the current school i don't know if they've done any work to it i don't know if they've had the fire marshal come out and look at it my question before they were allowed to open would they have to pass codes i i as i said i don't know what they've done to

223the school i mean whoever bought it may have renovated it to the degree that it's already gone through that process and so you know if you move from one uh one body that used it as an educational facility into another one maybe not but again i don't know what they've done there to improve the physical condition of the building yeah thank you sir and and so my last thing i think someone said force integration and one of the documentaries that i just watched brought me to tears i think a couple of board members were there and when i think about decisions that we make i think about sympathy verse empathy you know sympathy i feel really bad for those kids who leave mnps and don't really have a chance i really hate that they have

224to live their life i hate that they grew up in the projects i hate that they got priced out of their homes i hate that let me donate some but the empathy part and this is what i implore amongst our board is understanding why people make the decisions they make and so as i looked at buena vesta at that documentary parents were standing outside of the school yelling at these families with little kids because they didn't want those kids in their neighborhood and as i watched somebody who was number 39 on the list go to number one on the list because he wanted to make sure everybody heard what he had to say that's the privilege that we don't need in our district and this is the same person and i won't name names but

225who has constantly attacked me behind the scenes sending pictures of text messages to me with pictures of me with the police pictures of me at the school board and so when i watch a person who is 39 on the list promote themselves the number one maybe because of privilege those are the people i want to listen to saying keep them out my neighborhood it just sounds like a whistle and i'm not making accusations i'm just going by what i continue to hear we don't want them in our neighborhood and when i say empathy i would like for anybody who who would not like specific communities in their neighborhood to actually visit those communities sit down have lunch walk the neighborhood but until you do like those communities don't need your sympathy again they kept saying

226forced integration when it came to mnps and they had a plan history repeats itself and here we are today saying those same words we don't want you in our neighborhood and again we just saw the documentary maybe two weeks ago and i think if we're gonna be against the school which that that's your prerogative i think you gotta understand that community and why we need more options thank you so i'll say because i was the person that said the forced integration um i saw so the the documentary he's referencing is one that national public education foundation put together it's called by design and it frankly talks about how mnps classism and more than anything racism has separated and segregated families and schools and how that it almost it feels like it's by design that black

227and brown and poor students have been harm has been done to them academically because of decisions that was made from the city and by privileged individuals in the city now i have a different vantage point i do see myself as more empathetic because i actually live in a community of color and i'm sending my child to school with his homeless peers i'm not opting to use my privilege in a way that i think might do harm to them i'm choosing to make sure that whatever it is that those children need if they're parents who are homeless who are working three jobs like i do who just don't have capacity to be at pto meetings because i've woven myself into the threat of mnps i'm choosing to send my son to literally the poorest school in

228nashville as soon as i have a couple more dollars to rub together i plan to move to the white creek area and all i think about is when i get when it was time for me to go to middle school my parents sent me to mlk years later i asked them you know why didn't you send me to white's creek and they said well you didn't realize this but you had been rezoned to hillwood and there was no way that we were going to allow you to be on a bus for 45 minutes to get out to hillwood from haynes manor and then we both my mom and my dad worked in the kind of downtown area there was no way we were going to be able to get there to go to pto meetings

229there was no way we're going to be able to get there to advocate for you there was no way we were going to be able to pick you up if you were sick i mean it just would have exacerbated our family issues already and so i think about not the families that don't want my black son in their school i'm thinking or in their neighborhood i'm thinking about what it feels like as a black child to leave your neighborhood and be bussed across the city because someone has told you or someone has made your family feel like that is the only option for you not that we should further wrap our arms around community members and parents and say hey let's increase parent engagement at our most disenfranchised schools because a school like white's creek

230a school like pearl cone a school like maplewood those are not bad schools those are not bad students it's that anyone with affluence influence or privilege has opted out i i and so i it's hard for me to sit here and say that that we should not consider that that we should not be mindful that there are students that no matter what they will never be able to tap into choice now i completely understand that we had a separate conversation with another charter school just minutes ago and i understand how that can be convoluted i i i really do i feel like this is a very different story because this is a replication of something that's already happening there are already so many schools that are high performing that are all elementary schools that parents

231can opt into if it's that they want to see a decrease in their their child's behavioral issues whatever the thing is that national classical hangs his hat on and we know that they do great great things but the idea that i should be made to feel like i should force black students who have someone who have someone that they know is knowledgeable about the system who can be swayed to send their child to a choice school that i should be okay with that versus at the very least having conversations about how to make their neighborhood school the school that is around the corner from them the school that is full of people who look like them in their own neighborhood that their parents have access to readily instead of making those schools better because i

232i'm a single parent and i think about tonight i'm going to get home at around 10 o'clock my three-year-old that means he's going to get to bed at about 10 30 maybe 11. what does that look like if i'm a three three job working single parent that has to drive across the city when my son gets sick when he has a doctor's appointment when he misses the bus what does that look like for his educational um trajectory or his journey and i and so it's interesting that we got two different things out of that by design movie because all i saw was someone made black people in nashville feel like we needed to go somewhere else to get a better education instead of black schools being better resourced it was like no just go to

233another part of the city north high school pearl high school isn't good cameron isn't good you need to go somewhere else we need to send you across the city and make make people feel like we have to force that integration on them versus the integration being better for you other thoughts before we call for the vote mrs tyler um yeah i just wanted to address that keep them out that you were saying their application says they want to pull from us we wouldn't be keeping anybody out they would be enrolling our own students that's what they want to do we're not saying keep anybody out we're saying our students aren't going to want to attend that school they've proven it by not going to lead they've proven it by staying in their zone schools year

234after year after year we're not keeping anybody out and even if they were there again they're pulling from us we would be the them so i don't know what you think about that um [Music] i i just that kind of rubbed me the wrong way just about that they because you know the white's creek cluster and district nine would be they and we're already there and we already serve these students and we already have them as part of of our web of support to take care of our community mrs bush um just for clarification um if this is denied tonight i know we went over you went over the next steps as far as what happens with the state so the state commission will take this over right is that what happens just for the

235viewing audience um just so they can understand what what happens next they will if if that happens if they're denied tonight they will go in front of the commission is that correct well i put it back on the screen first the applicant has to do an appeal they will have 10 days to appeal the decision to each state and then the state commission will have 75 days to respond to that appeal okay and so with that said being said there's a possibility because according to i know there was an academics that was the only thing that they didn't meet the last time right the other components which was the um the um money and the operations yeah finance and operations the only thing they did not me was the academics and this time around they

236did meet academics is that correct they did me they met okay they met according to the review team they met gotcha so then that means that all three have been met well it's actually four when you have a previous school you also look at past performance okay so past performance was met during the original application so the one section which was academics was a meet standard according to the review team findings okay and then pass history with these type of applications if they are denied and they go through the appeal process possibly they will get approved by the state with the history of having to meet all criteria it's when the board denies the application dr battle what's that um yes go ahead dr griffin if you could give the the two options for well

237history is not a part of the rubric remember tca 4913 108 guides the process when an application is denied so we got to stay within those areas and so they really look at the findings in their in the appeal that the sponsor or applicant submits to the state so we can't say just history because findings guide the decision based and it's based on what the application you know has it and the rubric has in it and the rubric and i guess what i was getting at i think from past applications that when we have denied these applications that do meet they normally do pass through the state review so i just kind of want to make sure that we know what we're up against that possibly district 9 may still get this particular charter in

238in the district so i just wanted to kind of make that comment okay thank you thank you all right mrs pupa walker i just want to say i i i this is a board that has absolutely ignored the meets meets what criteria like we consistently deny applications that meet on every criteria and so what i'm thinking is like we need to rethink this process because we're just going to send all these schools to the state board that meet our criteria yet we're denying them for other reasons that are not related to the criteria necessarily right and so i think as a board it behooves us to say is there an outsider is there a world in which we as a board say yes this is a charter we universally believe uh is is something that

239we want to open because of the criteria and the process we have laid out or do we just need a new process because we're not re it's it's not relevant to our decision making whether they meet it or not frankly all right uh attorney royal bergen and our doctor gentry the process and the rubric is driven by the state board of education and now the chartering commission so the board would not have the authority to alter that process and what is being considered and is required to be considered by the state board of education that's helpful i kind of forgot that part i got that i'm sorry so i think about what i actually do think it's worthy of a conversation a larger conversation about well to your point i will say then we'll go

240to you dr gentry that um next week we'll be having that conversation with the state board to build those relationships to humanize nashville after that i'll be meeting with a staff member from the chartering commission and i hope to present the same request to ask them to just meet with us to hear from us to understand either engage in some dialogue so that we can tell them why it is that we um we feel like we have so many choice schools that we don't want more i mean just to have those kind of humanizing conversations and then eventually to try to have that same conversation with the state legislature i don't think this board has ever engaged in relationship building with people that make decisions beyond us and then we get frustrated we write open

241letters but nothing happens because we haven't built a relationship dr gentry yeah so i mean thank you for you know acknowledging that miss pupo walker it really is in our process and so fundamentally as i said earlier in the previous vote it was a departure from my norm but it for me it was aligned to with what i've always stated but what i believe charters should be and i don't think and it's a multi-faceted deal for me but if this you know for my district i can't afford it i just i can't afford the additional drain um i've we've had i have had to support the decision for school closures because of low capacity and low enrollment we're on a path in district one through that consolidation to not only the consolidation of a school

242physically but the resources that are associated with those buildings and those students and so um contrary to what i would say again personally for me what i believe contrary to the arguments that were made earlier about aventura this is a need that we're capable of meeting right we've got a plan we've got a plan we've got the uh the mmps reimagine plan that's looking to address the challenges and the gaps i don't think we could ramp up to do what aventura is positioning itself to do but we've got a plan to ramp up and improve and strengthen and get stronger in pure academics in social and emotional supports in parent and family engagement that's all documented for us and that's all we are actively and currently working on unfortunately to miss pupil walker's point that's

243not part of the rubric right so we have to just take the decision that says what is the em what for me what need what void is this going to feel that i am not currently staffed resourced planned to address and that's the difference for me mrs elrod i mean you all should know that you're singing my my song about changing that rubric i have brought that up so many times i want to hear the two i've had that is that on the b side is that the b side it's on the a side even i have discussed it so many times uh so many people uh but if you remember from one of our last retreats where dr griffin came we had discussions then about what what was our ability or possibility to change

244it and frankly the answer was there's not because of the parameters that were put within uh by the state because again the state uh leans this rubric towards opening that is the the want and anticipation particularly currently um and so it is geared towards that and um i i you have my support on if we can have that discussion or we figure out a way i i don't think it exists but i'm there for us finding it um but to nashville classical again um it is concerning to me that the neighborhoods and the schools around it do not seem to need this space and it feels very much from either public participation or from historical context from past schools that have tried to open in that area to first-person encounter from public participation and of

245course other people that have reached out to us that there's just not the capacity for it not just act not just monetarily and taking away from the white's creek cluster which is necessary and important to pay attention to particularly through our prior priority of national reimagine but also from the hillwood cluster i don't think i said on that note the fiscal impact which again is not part of the rubric but it's something that i always ask about and so the fiscal impact is about 2.6 million a year at max enrollment and so considering their slow enrollment process it's 19.4 million over the span of their contract once again considering their five growth years again those are positions and people and money that we could use in our other schools which i know is an ongoing

246conversation and something that we have we belabored as well in april on kind of what is that conversation but specific to nashville classical it does appear that it is not needed or wanted or necessary in this area i know that they have a um push for growth and that they were up forthcoming with us in april about how they want to open not only this school but also a third school and so my suggestion would be that this is not a fit for this area and it is not fit within the needs of mnps all right any other discussion all right mr little would you restate your motion i make a motion to it i make a motion to approve natural classical ncs2 based on the academic achievements based on their t and ready scores

247about the amount of diverse diversity of parents who support the school lastly by the language as dr griffin said a highly qualified charter review committee as it relate as it rated it all is meet standards all right and it has been properly seconded all in favor please raise your hand we have two all right all opposed any abstaining we have one all right motion fails i'll entertain a new motion mrs tyler i move to deny nashville classical because they have not provided enough evidence that they can enroll enough students at their proposed location to stay open long term the charter review team maintains their previous concerns about enrollment and location nashville classical has not articulated how they would be different from the last successful charter network lead academy who opened in the same location and

248had to close due to low enrollment and despite support from businesses and non-profits they have not provided evidence of any meaningful support from the actual families in district 9 who have children old enough to attend all right it's been moved i have a second second it's a move in second any discussion all right before we call the vote i will just say we heard we did hear from a number of parents tonight but i want to make sure that those parents know that we're not looking to close the current location we're not looking to close nashville classical that they love in east nashville nashville classical that is down the street from them in east nashville nashville classical that um that they support or that they send their children to already in east nashville is that

249we're making an argument that we should not open a second location in a neighborhood that is far away from the students that are looking to be drawn to that school all right with that uh we've had the motion in the second if you agree please raise your hand all right all opposed any abstentions we have one all right uh the motion passes we'll now move on to director's report thank you dr griffith thank you dr battle and and dr chris from staff just have to say we will notify each school of the school board's decision on tomorrow july 14th thank you thank you and welcome to the new um director welcome welcome all right excited [Laughter] first night [Laughter] all right and um dr battle for directors report thank you thank you chair books and

250board members and good evening to everyone who is here with us tonight or who may be watching um tonight um before i jump into my director's report i just want to make a quick comment first to our students we just wrapped up our promising scholars just a few days ago just acknowledging you we we see you i adore you of course as you know i was one of you as an mnps student and please know that we are serious on our charge of every student being known because we know you deserve to be on a path to success and to your parents and guardians and your advocates all across the city we thank you for your commitment and collaborative spirit around their work as well as well as to our business leaders to our community

251leaders who advocate on behalf of public education on a daily basis because our students is why they're why we do what we do every single day but because our language matters i also want to take an opportunity to acknowledge our maps staff our team mmps ms master said earlier we have a district full of highly qualified staff members our teachers our support staff all across the district and i had an opportunity to be with our principals earlier today one thing i committed to them was that no matter what seat i was sitting in i would continue to be shoulder shoulder with them every day and reminding myself that i'm a teacher first and i think that's important to always recognize and align the work that we do every single day but our language matters so

252i want whether you're here or if you're watching for our team we see you as well we appreciate all that you have done you continue to do you continue to run through brick walls every day on behalf of our students and i personally don't question any day your passion your commitment for an advocacy for every mnps student students we cannot wait to see you on august 10th your school teams are working hard to prepare because they care about you and they want the best for every mnps student but just like our students i wanted to say to our staff we see you as well we value you and we appreciate the work that you do without any question about your commitment and your excellence in your expertise and the profession you've chosen to support our

253students across the city before i do anything else i want to give a quick recap of our promising scholars summer program which ran for four weeks and ended on july 2nd this was our largest summer program ever and it helped more than sixteen thousand students catch up on their learning work on credit recovery or just get comfortable in an in-person school setting before the new school year begins in a few weeks this was an academically enriching and fun experience for our students thank you once again i think this also represents an alliance to howard open to all of our members of team mmps who made promising scholars possible with your planning your creativity and all of your hard work and engaging with directors all across the state and all across the country it was a

254concern for us if our teachers would be up to it if they would you know remain committed that additional four weeks into the summer to do what's best for our students and our mmps staff did it um without question and so i appreciate um that and students and families i appreciate your commitment to our promising scholars um work as well now i'd like to give a few updates as we start moving toward the start of the new year on august 10th first i'd like to take a moment to recognize some of the key leaders we're bringing on in our school this coming year debbie booker is transitioning from her role as interim principal at the academy of all cockerel and will be the school's executive principal for the 21-22 school year prior to serving the

255past year at old cockrell ms booker was executive principal for the own learning center from 2012 to 2020. so again she will be transitioning from her interim role into the permanent executive principle of the academy of old cochrane congratulations to her dr marlin houston comes to mckissick middle school from the clarksville montgomery county school system where he served the past six years forgive me as principal of kenwood middle school and so we're really excited about him transitioning in and leading the mckissick community forward over the next current year for years to come ashley jackson comes to gateway from schwab elementary where she has been an assistant principal for the past two years prior to her work at schwab she was a dean of instruction in goodlettsville middle and previously served as a music teacher and

256an advanced academic resource teacher we would also like to welcome dr jeremiah or jeremy riggs who is returning to metro natural public schools as the new principal of john early museum magnus school dr riggs is a former mmps teacher who has spent the past several years as a teacher and administrator in chicago dr ashley thomas is a new principal of park avenue elementary dr thomas is not new to park avenue having served as a classroom teacher there from 2009 to 2014. she returned to park avenue from isaiah t creswell school of the arts where she was an assistant principal for the past five years dr rhiannon wilson is an mps graduate who brings 20 years of experience and extensive background in early childhood education as a classroom teacher instructional specialist pre-k instructional coach and pre-k

257program specialist for the district she will be joining avenetta h davis early learning center and most recently she served for the past three years as assistant principal of tom joy elementary and finally as many of you know at the end of the school year we said goodbye to steve ball our executive director of elementary school support who has been a great leader in our district for many years and set a great example as an executive director and principal coach we're excited though to welcome priscilla co to our district to fill this school support role most recently miss cole served as a principal at dunwoody high school in dekalb county georgia and has worked in a variety of roles in georgia public schools throughout her career we're glad to have a first set of eyes and

258new perspective joining this already great executive director team led by dr mason bellamy so congratulations and welcome to those new leaders coming in to lead our students forward now i want to go over some key updates and reminders as part of our metro schools we imagine work we are starting the alignment of fifth grade from middle school into elementary school starting first with the white's creek cluster maplewood and pearl cone clusters this year we'll be following that up with stratfor mcgavin and hunter's lane in a 22-23 school year we are still reviewing the final order for realignment in the remaining clusters in magnet schools looking at facility utilization our equity matrix and capital needs to make those determinations to onboard the south clusters as soon as feasible also this school year we'll be adjusting the

259start times at john early magnet middle and mckissick middle to align with the rest of the middle schools they'll be starting 20 minutes earlier at 8 55 a.m and dismissing at 3 55 pm as we did last year all student meals will be provided at no cost regardless of a school cep status or whether a family qualifies for free reduced lunch this option is available to us because the usda has extended the seamless summer options program and area eligibility waiver through june twenty twenty this is a great way to ensure that all students are able to get a nutritious meal regardless of their family's ability to pay or eligibility for the free and reduced lunch program as we start the school year we'll be implementing a new ela curriculum throughout the district and our teachers

260have been taking the time this summer to take advantage of professional development opportunities meant to increase their awareness and familiarity with the curriculum the feedback has been tremendous thus far from those training experiences this is in addition to the reading through 60 events going on and promoted by the state of tennessee to enhance teaching skills related to phonics so again we'll be rolling out the new ela curriculum and our teachers will continue to engage in professional learning and preparation for the start of the school year this year we're also planning to launch the school year right with a pencil-sponsored event called together for teachers you might remember this event from years past it will be an opportunity for our teachers to come together before the first day back and get those great pencil supplies in

261their bags while catching up with friends and colleagues from around the district so be on the lookout for more information i'm regarding that soon i wanted to remind the board and those watching at home about some of the great things we're going to be able to do this year thanks to the historic 84 million dollar investment made by mayor cooper and the metro council into metro national public schools again i was with our principals this morning and i i was so excited i kept saying to them i'm sure y'all can feel it you can hear it i'm really excited about what we will be able to accomplish together for this next academic year this year again we cannot stop celebrating this we'll have the best paid educators in the state at all years of service

262thanks to the compensation plan that was championed and funded by mayor cooper additionally all eligible employees have received a step increase this fiscal year our support staff and certificated administration received a two percent cost of living adjustment and instructional support staff are receiving seven additional paid days this summer before professional development the city's investment also means we'll be able to open advocacy centers in all our elementary schools and seven and adding seven new school psychologists these additions will play key roles in giving students the supports they need to process their emotions and learn to find nonviolent constructive ways to deal with their frustrations and challenges in school and in life we are all also now able to expand our advanced academics work we'll be expanding access around advanced placement around dual enrollment dual credit and

263for the first time work based learning experiences for all of our students finally we were able to send 24 million dollars directly to schools from our second round of esther funding now we're getting ready for essa 3.0 with a community engagement process ramping up to start in the next few weeks to create a greater understanding of how we'll leverage these funds to support academic growth of our students and receive meaningful input to guide our work as a district now as we head into the new year i want to give everyone a quick reminder of where we're headed and of our continued plans for mnps our north star is to establish metro national public schools as a premier large school district in tennessee and beyond in many ways we have demonstrated that mnps is a district

264on the move and the district to watch we led the way in how to support students during virtual learning through navigators a first of its kind program again we cannot minimize a collaborative effort to become a one-to-one district with one technology device per student this is a significant step towards equity that we will continue to push teaching and learning to greater heights and of course it's all the innovation that is happening across the district in response to this constant state of change all of this feeds into our work to ensure that every student is known and on the path towards success i'm confident that with our north side of goddess there is no limit to what we can do together for nashville students and families and then briefly i just want to remind us again

265because this is critical work around our plan of how we're responding to what we knew prior to the pandemic what we've learned during the pandemic and setting newer and higher expectations for our students our work is grounded in our y around our core tenants these are not unfamiliar to us we will continue our work around our core tenants and establishing our why every single day next slide please we know that those core tenants are aligned to what we expect for all of our students so we will continue with rigorous expectations for our students in the areas we'll be monitoring all things that related to our growth and achievement of our students but we will have focused outcomes continuing to be established around literacy numeracy social emotional learning and for transitions we have also created these

266one pagers that will be helpful and useful as we continue on into the new academic year that outlines explicitly our expectations for all students at every grade level remember this is about every student being known you see those on this slide again we've broken them down by grades pre-k through four grades five on the next slide you'll see grades six through eight grades nine and ten and on the final slide here of the one pages grades eleven through twelve um all of this information is easily accessible as well on our website we want everyone to be equipped with this information because it will be aligned to the work in our personalized student dashboard and then lastly you see those focus outcomes surrounded by our 14 signature initiatives which will be continuing into next school year

267we are wrapping up our final analysis of where we are with those focused outcomes and we'll be sharing that update with the board fairly soon we will be resetting some of the outcomes expected outcomes for these signature initiatives for example one of our signature initiatives was around high dosage tutoring last year's goal was to make sure that we touched about 500 students with our high doses tutoring and we are setting a very rigorous goal for this academic year to touch at least 5 000 or more students with our high doses tutoring model we were really focused on making it sure it was gold standard and that it would yield the results that we wanted to see for our students and so we've learned a lot we've seen some great gains from that and so we

268will be scaling that up across the district as we move through and into next school year now on the minds of a lot of staff families and students our covert policies going into the 21-22 school year after reviewing our experiences over the course of the last school year our promising scholars program the context around the state and davidson county i've worked with our team and additional health experts to develop what i hope are some common sense protocols to keep our students safe while also understanding that the situation has changed quite a bit since we adopted our policies this time last year i also would like to just recall to everyone that it was just a few days ago last friday as a matter of fact when we received updated guidance from the cdc and so

269we've been working hard since then making sure that all of our guidance would align to what those guidelines are and also align to our local context as we prepare for the start of the 21-22 school year so i'll go over some of the more frequently discussed topics and we'll be rolling out more complete guidance to principals and families later this week as we prepare for the start of school again on august 10th as we know social distancing is an important mitigation strategy we want but one that isn't always possible in our schools due to the higher student-to-teacher ratios and the design of the buildings our guidance to schools is similar to what is what it was last school year which is to create social distance inside and outside of classrooms to the greatest extent possible

270when feasible in classrooms if three feet of distance is possible that is a distance recommended by the cdc guidelines when not possible clustering students into groups can help with contact tracing when it comes to large events outdoors is usually the safest relative to cover 19 but schools should also consider their ability to social distance when planning indoor events or activities again grouping students to minimizing close contacts out of home rooms or pods is a best practice to support contact tracing in the event there is a positive case of profit 19. contact tracing we know that it is an important mitigation strategy to control potential outbreaks within schools our school nurses did a great job of this last school year and they will continue to offer this support in the upcoming school year one change in

271the fall is going to be who qualifies as a close contact based on cdc guidelines previously anyone within six feet for 15 minutes or more over a 24 hour period was deemed at close contact whether they were wearing a mask or not now under the new guidelines if a student is within three to six feet of another who is positive they won't be required to quarantine if both are wearing masks additionally those who are vaccinated are not required to quarantine unless they present symptoms of cloven 19. dr bellamy and our academics and schools team have been working on plans for continuity of learning in the event that a student has a self has self isolate a quarantine based on the new tdo tdoe guidelines so we will be prepared for that and our schools will

272be equipped with what they need in order to continue to support students instructionally if there is a quarantining situation as we start the school year our school nurses will be trained and equipped to provide coveted rapid tests to any students or staff who have provided consent forms and present symptoms of copenhagen these permission forms are included in the student parent handbook at this time we are not planning to do random testing similar to what we did with maher this this last school year but we can reassess as necessary if we do decide this is necessary and we have a significant level of buy-in from parents we would undergo an rfp process to determine an appropriate outside provider to support and assist in this effort in the interest of health and safety we're going to continue

273to limit visitors to our schools for now though we will be allowing more types of visitors than we did last spring these will include mentors tutors advisors and others offering direct classroom support we'll also allow our facilities to be used by outside groups when classes are not in session and we will continue to encourage everyone who comes into our buildings to wear masks which leads to my final update so finally we've reviewed the latest medical guidance from the cdc and other sources and still believe that masks are an important tool in the reduction of the spirit of kova 19. and our students and staff will be highly encouraged to continue wearing them at the start of the year but that will be the choice of the individual or their parents and masks will not be

274mandated or result in an infraction if not worn at the state and local levels mass requirements have been eliminated for several months current cdc guidance is that individuals who are vaccinated do not have to wear masks indoors or outdoors all students and staff ages 12 and older have been eligible to be fully vaccinated for several weeks or months through private and public vaccination clinics vexing trials are still ongoing for children 12 and under for any student or staff member who is not vaccinated we would strongly encourage them to wear their masks while indoors especially for those who have underlying health conditions or who are under the age of 12. also as mentioned previously the updated guidance from the cdc on who constitutes a close contact now takes into consideration whether the students were wearing masks

275consistently and correctly which is all the more reason why it is highly encouraged to be clear though we will continue to monitor community transmission rates and cases throughout our schools if we see the need to move to a mass requirement we may very well do so if the data indicates it is necessary to protect the health and well-being of our students our staff and their families so chair bugs that concludes my report thank you for your time and i'll turn it back over to you thank you um we don't have anything to vote on any discussion or questions for dr battle uh mrs player peters it's not a question but it's more of a comment masters and then mrs l right now you're fine go ahead i'm just more of a comment of um i

276know i want to say it last time but i think one of our memes got cut short but um really this kind of talked to just hell of a year it has been um and the fact that your team your staff had the foresight to do the promising scholar prior to the state i'm getting weird feedback um prior to the state um mandate to do it but the fact that what the seniors had to go through with their last year building on last year and then with the staff and particularly the teachers and parents this really as we go into the new year and we're kind of somewhat resetting to a weird normalcy or a new normalcy or how everyone discuss it um that we kind of begin to even reset how we think about

277our district and our schools i know there's a lot of comments made tonight um about the schools but given that we went through a whole lot we suffered to certainly let some type of institutional trauma of just tornadoes and pandemics and adaptations and realizing the effects that it's going to have on our children both emotionally and academically that um we just need to be thoughtful that things that we had in place had to be put on pause things we want to move the speed more importantly the speed of implementation we wanted to move we could not do that because we were trying to survive a pandemic and i think it's something as we move forward how do we pick up make up for what we can with lost time um if you can make up

278for lost time but really just be thoughtful of how we really engage with district schools even charters and things like that of how we kind of reset the conversation of that we are we're all trying to do something we're trying to reinforce our district schools we're trying to build our district schools we have um i think reset us as a as a board governmently with the mayor's office with the council our engagement how we interact with one another i think that um has totally reset the conversation of how we think of education and i just want us to think um as we come out of this pandemic and what we have suffered out of the pandemic that we were able to look through with new and fresh lenses that even our children our staff have

279suffered a lot they are resilient and i think we have to really mention the resilience of our children and ours and our adults and what they can do and what they can achieve once we kind of reset to the new normal whatever that looks like and so um there's still going to be a high level accountability i'm not trying to skirt that from any way but i think we also have to give everyone a little bit of grace as we go into the new thing about what the standards are how we achieve those standards how we judge those standards and more importantly how we grow i think we need to go to we're not going to achieve the proficiency levels we want overnight because they didn't happen overnight but are we growing to the place

280where we want to be where we need to be and as we think of the way we have reset the budget first time praise god we did not have to cut anything and the way we're investing in new things that we now come to a place of resilience and we cur encourage resilience build resilience and acknowledge resilience and knowledge our kids have been resilient through a hell of a year that started even the previous academic year and so as we talk to parents how we engage parents as we try to recover emotionally and get our energy levels back to where they need to be i think we need to really start thinking about how do we come from resilience to success and how we have those conversations i know parents have been very frustrated from

281past histories that we've had with districts but realizing there's literally new leadership as director of schools half of this board has really been reset i think we have a more cohesive board than we have in the past and how can we use that to really lead and change the culture the tone the tenor and that we really speak into success for our district thank you and i i would be remiss if i didn't say this dr battle um i told you earlier like i sometimes forget that you're human because you are just so professional i mean you just exude this professionalism this intelligence this wisdom this care for people this empathy that i sometimes have to remind myself that you have other titles that you wear wife mom person woman black woman mother i mean

282just and i will say my son is three i could have waited a year two maybe even three before i put him in mnps but i chose to put him in this year because i trust you and i trust your staff and we we had a we did a great job of having a more student-focused conversation around this table than we typically had had in the past but we don't do a good job of reminding you and your staff that we see you that you are fighting decades of underfunding of issues of um of being being made to feel like you know this profession is not one that that should be held the way that it should that is you know we just don't treat educators the way we should and so when you started

283your report saying that you know you are an educator i see that in you because i see the way you talk to your staff i see the way you treat them like professionals i see the way you move them up and you motivate them that you are trying to grow them and i i don't think we as a community and even sometimes frankly we as a board don't do a great job of reminding reminding ourselves and reminding you that we see you that we do appreciate you and your staff and we don't have a whole lot of educator first conversations but mnps would not be mnps without staff without educators without people who went to school to do a myriad of things to make sure they support students and families students are our number one

284focus but they would not have content knowledge they wouldn't have experts they wouldn't be safe they wouldn't have security if it weren't they wouldn't have clean buildings i mean they wouldn't have food if it were not for our staff and so i i think i don't know about anyone else but i felt the emotion coming from you and we just we haven't told you that in a while so just thank you thank you thank you mrs tyler mrs elrod and anyone else who has a i'm so sorry i meant mrs masters mrs elrod questions um do we know yet how many kids we were able to graduate this summer after the credit recovery though we are working um on those numbers what we do know we do have graduation summer graduations coming up soon so

285we're finalizing transcripts and we'll have that number to you soon what we do know is that we've nearly doubled the number of credits that were recovered this summer so that is great news which means more of our students are on track to graduate or back on track to graduate with their cohort of students so a celebration indeed that is fantastic thank you i was just curious um okay i have ques a couple more questions i'll go fast um i'm getting there so when we're talking about visitors being allowed in the school for educational purposes will that include parent volunteers classroom volunteers who are invited by the teachers to come and help in some capacity it will include anyone who is providing a direct support to students so if it's tutoring if it's side by side

286lesson delivery anything that has to do with or benefit our students instructionally with their supports that will be uh permitted and allowed in our schools it doesn't necessarily need to be through a through a vendor or it can be sort of just the more traditional individual volunteer type thing that is solicited by the individual school does that make sense yes are you saying that it doesn't have to be through pencil or through like i mean like i used to go to miss hickey's classroom when my kid was in kindergarten and um put things together i was allowed to use a laminator sometimes which was kind of exciting so would that type of a volunteer be allowed in classrooms again i think if you reference i never heard anyone with it so if you are referencing

287slide 18 again you know the examples include like a mentor a tutor classroom support for students to advance the purpose of the lesson advisors for our students again direct support we will encourage still mask wearing i'm in those scenarios because we won't be able to keep track of who's vaccinated or not so that we'll be encouraged but we want to make sure that our students have full access to direct instructional support as needed like they would receive in a normal school year cool okay and then the other one about facilities used by third parties when students are not in classes i'm assuming that means like school support organizations like ptos can resume having on-site meetings just not during the school day so not the sort of like i know i was at a school once

288where we used to drop our kids off and then go to the cafeteria and have the meeting that's a no-no but we could have an after-school meeting when they're not that's correct when students are not present the majority of the requests we receive typically come through our facility use process um in most scenarios they were already when school was out which was still equated when schools are not in their regular session yes ma'am that's correct cool okay and then the only other one the you know the strongly recommended math squaring for those who are not vaccinated and that essentially includes every child in elementary school at this point so i'm i'm just wondering at what and i'll admit when when the new cdc guidelines came out i kind of had this moment of like oh

289my gosh have y'all ever been in a school because it just didn't it just doesn't cover all the scenarios so i am wondering you know at what point would we feel you know if there's a rise in um in cases in the community at what point would we go from the very strongly recommended for everyone not vaccinated to hey elementary school you need to wear masks because we know you're not vaxxed yeah great question um here's the good news while our coven 19 city task force is not operating in the manner fully that they were prior we have continued our communications and our planning sessions with our local health experts including our health department and those individuals who are part of the task force so we're continuing those conversations both with our external partners and

290internally um to monitor where we are with our local contacts with our data if there's spikes um the number of cases per 100 residents the the data is not released exactly like it was um when we were seeing more of a spike in the number of cases or the number overall number of cases but we continue to have those conversations to monitor our progress and we'll we'll continue to work closely with our health experts to make a determination if we need to go a different direction great and and i think it's just really important i don't think we can say it enough that strongly encouraged and that the quarantining requirements around contact are much less stringent if masks have been worn and so that that's a message i know i will be sharing throughout district

2913 is that we can really reduce potential quarantines among especially those elementary school kids if they wear their masks when they are indoors and in close contact thank you friends for my questions yes ma'am thank you mrs elrod thank you i'm trying to go through my questions because i don't want to duplicate um the biggest question i think that we're going to receive about visitors is frankly the first day of school and what happens on that day i understand that that's a month away and so that decision is maybe still in flux how are we planning on messaging that to families to make sure that they're able to i guess best prepare particularly for kindergarten students as that was commonly the biggest population of people that were upset last year understandably i guess um but

292how are we going to be messaging that to them and how much advanced notice are we going to be providing um yeah thank you for your question so as a reminder this is our only board meeting in july so we want to be timely in our communication we have also communicated to our school teams that we will send out full communications with additional details for them by the end of this week we'll also be communicating to our families and stakeholders about where we are and to be on the lookout for the plans from their specific schools so this advanced notice gives our schools an opportunity to plan in a different way from last school year all right i mean last school year we actually opened it in a virtual setting and when we did open

293we were still in a critical space around our i'm coded numbers but it'll give our school teams equip them with the information they need so that they can plan engagement opportunities with their parents given the impact that it will have on the first day of school so we will start that communication loop now we'll start that this week and we'll be ramping up those communications up until the first day of school okay i want to make sure that i understand that correctly it's it's not going to be possible that some schools will allow first aid visitors and other schools will that's correct okay and then um for the contact tracing i want to make sure that i understand that phrasing correctly as well it's if you wear a mask consistently and correctly when deciding on

294a if you have to be affected by quarantine and that's no matter what grade even considering or all of our elementary age students are not vaccinated the only difference is if you're vaccinated you're clear mass or not you if you're vaccinated then you're clear from quarantining otherwise if you have on a mask it could mitigate the need for you to have to quarantine okay and are our teachers or the school nurse in charge of deciding if they consistently and correctly wear that mask that will be through our contact tracing with our school nurses who will go through their checklist of questions and expectations they might have to work collaboratively um with the classroom teacher for some checking and monitoring about where our students um were if they had all math if they were wearing it

295properly how many reminders but our nurses will lead the actual contact tracing efforts got it thank you you're welcome any other questions or thoughts all right we'll begin with dr gentry for announcements i'm sure i had like a thousand of them last time anyway um yeah so i i do want to also thank dr battle and i've said this to you before i i appreciate the thoughtfulness and the strategic way in which you approach the very tough decisions um that you got smacked in the face it started with a tornado in all your time here and again your your passion for what you do and the passion uh for the people with whom you get the honor of doing it with uh really does come across in in your presentation so i want you to

296know that we hurt with you when things are hurled towards this board table nobody's dodging well nobody's dodging any of that okay and we all get hit in the face together i'll say something about that too in just a minute so great shout out big shout out to all the teachers and their um time they had to spend extra time they got to spend with students over the summer i just want you to know that your commitment to helping our students start to regain and get back on that path to success and greatness that we know they're all capable of is greatly greatly appreciated i think i would be a little bit remiss i just want to share three numbers with you and 97. anybody want to take a brief guess at what those three

297numbers represent that was my heart rate during public participation literally i checked my my watch um so you know when i hear the sometimes insane rhetoric around critical race theory um i'm i'm i go from being befuddled to blatantly pissed to to just stunned and not into silence but just enraged around what's behind it all right just just what is behind it and it's so interesting having heard all of the topics all kind of do this right so you've we've got people who believe that we're talking about things that we shouldn't talk to talk about to students who are seeing it every day someone used the phrase dark and all first thing that popped into my mind was billy eilish i mean come on talk about suicidal ideation right there in a couple of her

298songs that our kids are are listening to i do have to say i do appreciate the quoting of apostle paul versus mlk and john lewis to justify um being against critical race theory that was a refreshing moment for me [Laughter] the the the thought that critical race theory somehow contributes to or there's something in written wisdom that glorifies out of marriage families was that the word of the phrase did i get that right i wrote it down out of marriage families i just want you know i'm a product of an out of marriage family and so i think we turn out okay what'd you say did you think well i i was born in wedlock but my kid wasn't so i mean i think we're good i think we're good i really do i really

299do think we're good and i i want people you know so then you have you know a bunch of parents yelling about what we're not doing for every individual student and you know i wrote down this phrase every me is not the same right so just like we know that every student is is getting this personalized every student known understanding starting with the data we have to start with the data before we can create a plan to address what the data is telling us and so we understand that those two things are directly connected and it come it's an outcropping of what will naturally happen when data coaches and principals and building level leaders sit down and look at that information they'll understand what the needs of that individual child actually is so i only

300have to keep thinking that first of all i really wish that all of these folks were here when we had the same kind of outrage when we heard about teachers teaching slavery by having students acted out and is always ironic which student got to be the slave um during their idea of how we're going to teach critical race theory i think it was their version of critical race theory so i know this sounds random and i can feel jane like girl get to the point um so you know again i was also irritated by you know you just made again people come in and they say a whole lot and then they run out for the press moment or the or the interview and we don't get to respond although i did i almost almost

301almost just jumped right in there but i told dr springer that i was going to say something and she's like well they're not in here and i said i'm gonna go out there and get them and dr billy's like i dare you and so i went just kidding he did not but i did go out there looking for them but they didn't they weren't interested in coming back um and so i have to wonder right everything that that this teaches us when you hear this kind of resistance to something so what you believe is just right and so logical right every other area of of of science and and everything we we want everybody wants to know why we applaud children when they're curious about the why and yet when we want to share the

302why behind how uh of what all the data tells us like this directly links to the data that we're seeing about black and brown kids in our classroom and so again when you're yelling at me about uh on the one hand being how shameful it is we've got third graders who can't read you don't want me to address the legislature and the the the laws and the the decisions that get made at state and federal levels that exacerbate that problem and continue to exacerbate those outcomes whether they're academic or social economic they we we have legislation that continues to hide behind the ignorance of not being transparent about the conversation and the causes and the historical contributions so again it just leads me to thinking there must be some fear associated with not wanting this

303story told right think about the things that i mean it's probably just me that did something they weren't supposed to do as a child and the fear of someone finding out how you contributed to something that was broken or something that was missing something that was lost something that was stolen and so to be transparent about that and not and to fear that transparency i'm just it leads me to think what are you afraid of are you afraid that this knowledge will embolden and empower a population of people who have been disenfranchised and minimalized and marginalized and just completely ignored for decades are you afraid that if we have conversations about fluidity and gender is that what's the other phrase i caught um and other types of families and other types of lifestyles that your

304children will become allies at an earlier age than trying to be allies as adults because they'll better understand that i don't care what you say about this student who sits across i mean she's just a really good double touch jumper that's all i know about her and so what hit me was this opportunity that we have as a board because the one other thing that stuck with me was the teacher that got up and asked us well what are you going to do to protect us because you think we should be talking about it we think we should be talking about it so how do we protect us and i remember when daca was the thing and this board passed a resolution it says in spite of what the federal government says about your ability

305and your right to continue your education after committing and dedicating yourself to studies and learning and exposure for 12 13 years we're going to deny you the ability to go beyond that and this board stepped up and says that we got you we support you we're going to do whatever it takes we're going to be a part of these conversations we're going to promote the legislation we're going to be against everything that's stopping you from this dream that you have and this dream that you're willing and have already demonstrated over 13 years that you're willing to put the time and the work in to pursue so i join in asking the question what are we going to do as a board are we willing to then defend and protect and stand behind the teacher who

306answers the question honestly about well why was ruby bridges denied the right to go to school why was there a need for a civil rights movement in nashville what's the big deal about reopening a woolworth here in nashville so again i think we have some work to do i don't know if it's a resolution you know i have my feelings about resolutions but hey if that's what it takes that's what it takes just do it anyway just do it anyway so i think that we need to really stay the course on this and understand that this is one of i don't know how many fights we've poked the bear about between us and the state department of education but we cannot continue to hunt our shoulders or pretend that we don't understand why the data

307academically socially and economically in a davidson county in a tennessee in this country looks the way it looks and how and why it so ironically aligns with people of color thank you this is pupa walker i want to start by saying congrats to hillsboro ib students 88 pass rate on all the ib stuff regard despite being home almost all year some of them all year really proud of that second i don't care what the tennessee department of health says vaccinate your children get your children vaccinated vaccinate if you haven't been vaccinated that's that's what we need to be doing so i will echo sharon's comments i have gotten some really alarming messages uh and texts from people who want us to put cameras in teachers classrooms want us to police teachers speech some of them

308not the people who reached out to me but there were people here tonight and so i am a hundred percent with sharon on um we have to protect our teachers our teachers are going to be the ones that are going to be attacked and questioned and judged and we have to figure out what the message is here to defend our curriculum our instruction our practices our staff i will take the hits i will take the you know whatever it is if we can carry the load so that they can do what they need to do because it's just not ending it's not going anywhere um and we have nothing to be ashamed of we have nothing to hide from we are proud of the we have evidence-based practices we have a process to select curriculum

309we have teachers that are well trained we have nothing to be ashamed of i i think we have to stand up and say we absolutely support our teachers um and and i am willing to be the on the front line i mean i just i'm really worried about the language the language is scary they're accusing our teachers of terrible things and so we just we just have to be on our game so you know i'm just my heart is with our staff my heart is with parents who actually think our teachers are up to no good like how did that how did we get there right um and of course all of the who gets to tell the story of america right who gets to tell the story of uh ruby bridges his book is

310her autobiography is a first-person narrative it is not like some interpretation it is her interpretation we have to be able to defend well like really well defend that the decisions to continue to teach those things and so i'm with you we have to be really smart about it and stay the course so thank you mrs bush oh yes uh maybe i can do some cheerleading everybody say july 31st can i hear you july 31st july 30th july 31st july 31st come on july 31st 31st july 31st i will be hosting along with stronger than my father it's a non-profit organization that supports our students in district 6 with before and after school care and academic support so we are going to have a back to school celebration yay for our students and it's going to

311be from 10 or 2 at the southeast community center we're going to have entertainment we have our very own antioch high school drum drum line and their cheerleaders that are going to be attending along with cane ridge football players we have various schools in the district that's going to be attending the event as vendors and we're going to be giving out the most important thing and that's a thousand plus backpacks and school supplies to send off make sure our kids are prepared for school on august 10th and i'm very very excited about that so i just wanted to make sure that i made that announcement and for the viewing audience if you need more information go to strongerthanmyfather.org you can volunteer you can still donate and we're really excited about this event so come on

312out and oh and we're going to have food and we're going to have vendors and we're also going to give out more prizes so that's my announcement thank you thank you mr little all right i want to bring attention and i'll put it on my page but the focus on features event sponsored by the tennessee department of education it'll be july 15th it'll be virtual i want to give a big shout out to all the staff members was that oh sorry um i want to give a big shout out child to staff members i'm in the mcgavin cluster as you look online as you hear from teachers everybody's going back this week for professional development as we get ready for august the 10th so sending all the good vibes that way i'm a great program

313that i just got light up from a congressional office around the child tax credit program which gives up the hundred dollars depending on the age for parents um depending on how they qualify so i wanna put that out hope we can put it out as a district um i know the p-e-b-t was a was a big hit amongst our families um one one announcement patrick dorsen who i had the opportunity to hear play at mcgavig just graduated this year he was just accepted into a renowned arts camp so i'll be putting that on my page as well but this guy's a wonderful music wonderful musician a little tired um and really served mcgavin well and then last but not least juvenile detention center they have their um graduation this thursday at 11 o'clock i'll invite

314our board members i'll send the invitation this is more non-traditional but as i look at its three kids who are graduating i think it'll put joy on their hearts if people had a chance to show up and cheer them on but i'll send it out to all the board members thank you thank you mrs elrod thank you um all right i first want to announce that mmps along with nashville health and nashville diaper connection are going to be hosting middle school immunization and coving va or covid vaccine events district two's mcmurray middle is on friday and it's from two to five all locations are from two to five pm but to make sure that i don't just focus on district 2 wednesday tomorrow is jerry baxter thursday is mckissick friday is mcmurray wednesday july 21st

315is madison middle thursday july 22nd is kennedy middle and friday july 23rd is thurgood middle school um it's important to know that your seventh graders you know can get the vaccines that they need for their school and then obviously the pfizer covid vaccine will be available if they so choose and we can also schedule in clinic sports physicals and regular physicals and many thanks to the national diaper connection to for providing free diapers and food um i want to echo my colleagues uh concern about not just uh the language but actions uh that we have that's increasing just rhetoric about what some people perceive to be critical race theory though it is not matching the actual true definition of what crt is um and so i want to make sure that we would you stay

316the course and pay attention to that and that we have some support the teacher that you're referring to from public speaking miss sun is from my district and i do hope that we have some protections in place some good conversations as a board whether it's in our upcoming retreat or just in general with dr battle about how they are to handle those so that we can support not only our students but also our teachers thanks thank you mrs player peters um and i want to add on to what my colleagues said but i went to a different perspective um i was thinking about the growth of nashville talking to another elected official today and saying how fast nashville has grown over the last decade and when i worked in the mayor's office we had a

317sherian we had amazon we had smile direct and the mayor cooper announced oracle those companies are expecting our children to be prepared not only of literacy not on with numeracy but also how to talk and manage with other ethnicities markets and cultures they are worldwide um worldwide companies their headquarters are going to be in our city the growth of nashville has grown just around 10 in the last 10 years the new census numbers of just what we are um and one of the reasons we've heard if you've been around education about businesses saying how are we preparing our children to do that and when i was on the board board ethics training held by metro government a couple weeks ago they say by 2040 nashville is going to be 30 white 30 black and basically

31830 latina or latino and then we also have our other cultures in there that's built in the other 10 percent that's that's almost in 20 years so when our kindergartens who start this year by the time they graduate nashville is no longer going to be 70 percent white and 30 you know 20 black temple team whatever the kind of numbers have been and those companies and this is from the pro union girl like we i'm always about standing with our parents but those companies make increase their profitability it's been steady their profitability is how they market to multicultural um customers clients and businesses and markets and you cannot we've seen it with the want to call the cancel culture when companies make a misstep the money and profits that are lost because we have not

319due due diligence of taste in the basic history how you process an animal is one thing but we have to teach the basics in the history and that's our job is to give a basic fundamental education of what the truth is like the bible says you should know the truth and the truth set you free and with that we have to teach our children the truth and how we analyze is a different thing how we present it but we have to protect our teachers of being a part of this academic our size of being in democracy that's why we're in democracy because you can teach with a certain level of freedom so we can be the best country and the best government in the world and so with the teachers i stand in solidarity with

320you as you know dr gendry said however how that protection looks like we'll figure that out but if we're going to be the first class city every student known when it comes to literacy numeracy to teach all of that you got to teach the whole picture and the truth and how we process that we are a multicultural city we're a growing city for a reason people come to nashville for a reason and if we're going to continue to recruit these top-notch world headquarters to our city and for our students to benefit from it as that workforce instead of bringing more people in we have to prepare them for that and so and that's part of teaching the true multicultural history of not only black and white but also latina the kurdish culture the middle eastern

321culture all the different as you know ms elrod said overton and then mike also my cluster we have a very diverse student population that comes from tens of scores of countries and so we have to be prepared for that and i think that's what makes us unique as a school system within our state but also within the world and in our country and so i stand in solidarity we will treat teach the history of race whatever that looks like that's age appropriate but our students aren't dumb they see it the experience they feel it they know it and we just have to do that in a proper and articulate way that's age-appropriate but we cannot run away from it thank you mrs masters this this is a good part about being less some of my

322stuff already got taken frank at fran's event on july 31st um i want to remind everyone that the parent advisory council will be there and they are still looking for representatives and so that would be a great chance to talk with them if anyone at home is still watching or maybe they're going to watch on youtube later great chance to talk to the the current pac reps and find out what that's all about it's just an amazing way for parents to get involved with what's going on in schools and then to echo what ms elrod said lots of opportunities to get kids vaccinated before the school year starts um i'm very fortunate we're all age 13 and up in my household so we are all vast and so when my guy heads to middle school

323for eighth grade in mmps on august 10th he um he is vaccine protected um and also planning to wear a mask in solidarity with any of his students the other students in in his school um who may not yet be vaccinated my daughter already graduated so we'll just move on from that okay the other thing is i want to congratulate educators cooperative on a really amazing event on july 10th called their collective conference um where they shared um some of the the successes around collaboration in schools this past year so i think that was that was very exciting that they were able to celebrate the successes because it was not a lost year a lot of great things still happened um and our own chair bugs and ashford hughes and dr ricky gibbs from the

324amazing warner elementary um which is a zone school in east nashville that you can go to and have a really great experience they participated in an anti-racist teaching learning and leading from the classroom presentation and i'm just very proud of the fact that that work is going on and um educators cooperative is doing really deep and meaningful work in that area and i'm very proud of the mmps representation that was at that event and the fact that we are thinking about that and being leaders in that area um and just get backst and stock up on cute masks for your elementary school kids and everybody have a great rest of the summer thank you mrs tyler i just wanted to highlight just a couple of reminders along with that reminder that our seventh graders need

325to submit their vaccination records per state law it would be a perfect time to get that covered vaccine if you haven't gotten it yet you're having to get it anyway you're having to get an extra vaccine anyway so do everything you can to protect your kids make sure you get those in they have to be in before the first day of school there's a little bit of a grace period but if you don't get them in after five days then you will not be allowed to continue to come so you must do what you can to get them in as soon as possible reminder if you have a rising kindergartner and you have not enrolled them yet make sure you get that done preschool is open for enrollment as well as you heard from chairwoman

326bugs who got her her son in his preschool right now and early college high school in district 9 is accepting applications students at early college will earn a high school diploma and a college associate degree by 12th grade at no cost to the families students will earn 60 college credits to support college readiness and career preparedness so you can head on over to mnps's page and look up early college to learn more about it figure out what if you have any questions about it and to apply if that's something you're interested in and then finally i just want to kind of end on the same note that many other people have said that we i mean we hire our teachers to be professionals who can do a job and part of that job is to

327teach the truth about what the world around us and so as a board we need to do everything we can to protect the people that we hired and put out in front of our students and told them you must do this job and it's our responsibility to have their backs and to protect them as they do the job that we're asking them to do so teachers you already know i love you so we're we're doing everything we can to support you thank you all right a couple of announcements first our next board retreat and last of i guess this school year will be this next thursday july 22nd we'll also be spending our lunch period with the state board of education to again build better political relationships again the first day of school is literally

328four weeks from today august 10th it'll be a half day for free pre-k students and a full day k through 12. um because it'll just make me cry for real so the um representative john lewis way a celebration in his honor uh will be held this friday and saturday if you have not heard about it please i think you can go to the nashville.gov website there are certainly a number of council members who are promoting it on their facebook pages and other other places so please feel free to register and to join saturday july 31st the national soccer club will be dedicating at napier elementary school a field of some sort i'm sorry i have some of the details murky but a national soccer club reached out to me earlier this week and i'm just

329looking forward to hear more details and i'll send that out via my mailchimp july 27th there will be two graduates two summer graduations one that i will be attending at 10 a.m and one day my vice chair mrs rachel and lry will be attending for our summer graduates uh we again want to make sure that we're not missing or losing not missing out on any students but we're making sure that we're celebrating students so yes mr little please please please send that so that we can all put that on our calendars if we're able to attend i am a member of the mayor's community safety partnership advisory fund if you go to hub nashville and you know of an organization that meets the criteria that is supporting students to disrupt violence in any way through

330mentoring or other other measures they can apply for a small amount of funding and then soon will be releasing a large amount of funding so again please go to hub nashville and lastly i have begged a parent advisory group or parent advocacy group in nashville to please let me join so that i can learn how to best support my child as a parent and i will say that the parent advisory council has taken me under their wing and they will be helping me to recruit students in the north nashville our families in the north nashville area so that we can better advocate for our children so i look forward to working with them thank you all so much and if any other parent advise or parent advocacy groups are willing to take me on to

331teach me how to be a good parent i would love hint wink wink i would love to join the fellowship so be there no further business this meeting is adjourned [Music] this has been a service of the metro nashville network if you would like to see this presentation again or for more information about this and other programs visit nashville.gov you