001you're getting better at it good evening everyone uh thank you all for joining us for this second board meeting of the month of june 2021. uh i call us now to order we've established a quorum uh we are eight of nine here uh so we'll begin with the pledge of allegiance uh mr chris tensing man of the hour you would lead us 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 right we will begin with some awards and recognitions dr battle good evening chairman bugs members of the board and dr battle my name is lindsey kimray and i'm the coordinator of library services mnps received a 500 000 grant for the previous school
002year to have gold level subscriptions to chess kid for all k through 4 students chess kid is an educational gaming app that provides tools to help kids learn and improve their chess skills and to engage with a game that reinforces critical thinking problem solving and strategy as a district we held two week of chess events one in november and one in february in which students were encouraged to engage in learning the game of chess and play against other students in their school honey they all made it the mnps chessbee was held may 20th with 42 schools and 119 students participating the top three winners in each grade level received a plaque and a chess set and our winners here received tuition for the nashville chess center camp this summer and the success of chess kid
003would not have been possible without our leaders in the schools running the clubs leading our chess and running the chess b and it would also not have been possible without our nashville chess center volunteers to one of which is here tonight chris prosser he's a former m p s teacher as well and together through their leadership seventeen thousand mnps elementary students logged into chess kid this year completed over sixty 66 500 lessons 114 000 puzzles and played over 320 000 games of chess so at this time i'd like to recognize the winners of our district-wide chessbee okay first up we have krashov karthik student at granberry he is our kindergarten winner kershaw chess kid coach is dr marla stright okay our next winner is syed hoja student at harpett valley elementary he's our first grade
004champion [Applause] his sponsor is librarian denise tabscott our second grade champion is arush katy from creve hall elementary um his his sponsor is fourth grade teacher kenneth knight and our third grade champion is alexander osen he is unable to be with us tonight um and he is a student at harvard valley and his sponsor is also miss denise tabscott our fourth grade champion is grayson raggio student at percy priest his sponsor is volunteer igor zizlin so at this time i invite our winners and any coaches volunteers or administrators present to join us for a photo thank you for your time you guys face that way good job guys congratulations ladies the school board reps soon yeah first volunteers we'll get you positive pictures i'll email everybody the candlestick makers there we go [Applause] great job
005guys great job congratulations again chess winners what a great way to begin our meeting we will move on to the consent agenda are there any amendments to the consent agenda is listed yes i'd like to pull 10 and 16. all right so that's b10 curriculum associates llc and b16 lexia learning systems anything else all right do i have a motion to accept the consent agenda as amended remove approval of the consent as amended there's second second all right it's been moved and seconded all in favor please raise your hand all right consent agenda approved we'll begin or i will accept a motion on b10 curriculum associates llc can i make my motion to do both 10 and 16. uh sure okay i move that we approve b 10 and b16 second all right open for
006discussion all right so my question is is both of these pro pro both of these programs are done currently online through our computers particularly now that we're a one-on-one district so my question is is are we going to continue to use them on a daily basis until 2023 thank you for your question ms elrod i'm going to invite david williams our executive officer of curriculum instruction to respond to your question thank you thanks great thanks chris thank you for the question these programs were selected for the district during the pandemic but both include or all of our intervention programs include per the state rti manual an online component and an in-person component so there's got to be some direct instruction this year the direct instruction was would have been provided by the teacher so it's
007a blended approach where there's a computer an online component and teacher direct instruction so all of our intervention programs must include both components so while we can intend to continue to use that this year there will be the online component and the teacher directed components just they will be in person now okay is the plan for students to still be taking their computers back and forth to school on a daily basis generally yes okay okay is there an opportunity for us to have students leave their computers at the school for these types of programs so that there's less damage to them and that kind of thing um we'll work out some of the details particularly with our blended learning plan about what that could look like we think that to leverage the technology the best
008way that students will need to transport so they can make use of them at home whether that home or in a other support environment right after school so they can make use of them generally speaking for the lower grades that's where they may not be every single day and it could be recommended certain days that uh they go home got it and then my last question which i receive from time to time are is this the only intervention that we're currently using or what other interventions are we using so this is the complete list of all the intervention programs that the board has approved starting in the rfp that we ran in 2018 the yellow that i have here just for my notes are the ones that are new that with the contract because once
009we identified this list in 2018 and the board began approving these uh programs in the spring of 2019 um once we had the list we know we have to refresh as programs roll off our programs roll on because this identifies the skill levels and intensity levels as well as the grade levels a program may for example go from being a 5 k5 program to a k8 program and if that happened after we ran the rfp we need a way to refresh that so we just actually concluded an rfp in the spring to make sure that this list is the most up-to-date and so the yellow that i have here includes the new programs but all of the programs that are available for schools got it okay and i'm happy to provide this list too to
010you miss alright or anyone else that would be helpful just so i can speak exactly to sometimes that question absolutely yes ma'am okay we'll get it we'll get it out to you um no later than end of the week yeah thank you dr williams and dr battle i have no further questions thank you thank you doctor all right uh miss elrod would you restate your motion yes my motion was to approve the consent agenda shown as b10 and b16 all right we've been moving second it's all in favor please raise your hand all right it unanimously passes we will now move on so the budget i believe i keep this to budget chair is for the player peters um we just had our budget and finance meeting prior this meeting um and we have passed
011and budget and finance committee unanimously the amended budget for um the amended operating budget for 2021 um and um well first i make a motion to approve uh the amended operating the revised operating budget for 2021 2022. second all right it's been first and seconded all right um and i would like to say um also just kind of reiterate some of the words um that i said earlier but just really thanking the council of the mayor's office for this historic budget first it started with mayor cooper really putting historic investment with teachers and really continue the conversation that we started last year recorded the pandemic of studying teachers pay and making sure teachers are the best paid teachers in the state to really help with recruitment we've had a long discussion about how to recruit
012teachers how to retain teachers and this is putting resources where our commitment is to do that and be able to really kind of even be more aggressive and more diligent to be able to keep the best and recruit the best teacher by being the best teachers in the state and so we want to thank mayor cooper for that effort and thank mr robert fisher who's in the audience for his work with mr clay and dr battle um in those conversations to make sure that we can really make this come to fruition so we like to thank you for your hard work to really make that happen um and then also to the council who really really continued the conversation as i said dr bowerbee transformed the budget conversation about what it looks like to have
013an aspirational budget the community asked for an aspirational budget and she followed through what it truly cost to educate children and we really saw that and really see the community come together and say this is what our priorities are this is our input in the democratic process to make that happen i know from personal experience i know the support staff employees had a long conversation over the years about having more um professional development days to be sure they can stand by their teachers and really help educate the children in the classroom if you've ever been in a classroom with the parapro you see their one-on-one with the students talking to the students assisting the teachers right beside each other to make sure students get the quality education that they had and this gives them more
014resources to do that as dr battle's mission to make every student known this is the second layer to making sure that happens and so really like to thank councilwoman porterfield for really pushing that effort her background and her experience as a classroom teacher understanding the role of a parapro and we understand they need reinforcement they need encouragement and they need professional support to help really educate children in the classroom on a regular basis and so and i just want to thank my colleagues with it as we said this is the first time in a long time we do not have to make a budget reduction and that is a very refreshing place to be that we're having a conversation of what does it take to do forward to be proactive and to put new programs
015in place for the first time in a long time about this is what we mean as community putting our children first so this really discontinued like the entire community being part of the the democratic process being part of the conversation supporting us as a board supporting dr battle and really seeing this is how we invest in our children and this is also invest in our employees who support our children and takes everyone to educate a child from a teacher to support staff to administration and as a board and so i just really want to thank that thank mr north for really going through the process the council process and going through all the budget and work sessions to understand what's going on and answer the questions from the council members that's sometimes not an easy
016task to field questions from 40 different council members at one time and being one person i know it could be from personal experience it could be an interesting task sometimes but he did it well so i just want to thank everyone with that and that's all i have thank you all right uh any other discussion all right it's been moved and seconded all in favor and this passes unanimously thank you again mrs player peters dr battle and staff all right we'll move on to our director's report thank you chair books vice chair elrod board members i'll just start by saying it was exciting to celebrate our youngest students today in person and i'm looking forward to doing much more of that in the weeks and months to come just as the 2020-21 school year looked
017a little a lot different for students and staff so too is this summer with our buildings staying alive throughout the month of june and the district teaming with energy and enthusiasm for learning and engagement more than 16 000 students signed up to be a part of the promise and scholars program or to take part in credit recovery through our high schools we've had unexpected bright spots from promising scholars experiences schools serving as promising scholar sites are bringing together students and teachers from across our district with some of them having students and teachers from as many as 10 or more different schools under one rule helping to build and strengthen our mnps community spirit we've heard from teachers who appreciate the opportunity to work in smaller classroom sizes so they can give students the personalized attention
018and support they need to accelerate learning growth one of our teacher leads at charlotte park elementary said that throughout the school students are laughing and smiling in the hallways and in classrooms so many are truly blossoming as they receive more individualized attention than the regular school year allows we've seen so many students engaged in fun activities and learning opportunities our teacher leads at thomas edison said that string and physical activities brings another level of excitement for our students through experiments building models dancing coding and competitive fun edison promising scholars are highlighted and awarded each day as a motivation to keep behavior managed and focused on learning it is also a great opportunity for teachers to take a stronger leadership role in their school and we've heard from at least one aspiring administrator at bellevue middle
019that this has been the most effective way to prepare them for stepping into an administrative position and they have learned more than ever it would have and they would have in a grad school or new leader academy i know that our team has discussed a great deal about the benefit of this program in helping us to identify and support candidates for our principal leadership pipeline in the years to come we're looking forward to closing out this experience strong on july 2nd and taking the feedback and lessons learned from this pioneering year to create an even better promising program in 2022 next slide please principal landing was the opportunity for principals to close out the year strong by reflecting on the lessons learned during this time principals and their network peers discussed the innovative systems and
020practices that emerged in response to what was required to meet the academic and seo needs for mnps students in a non-traditional year additionally executive directors joined in conversations with principals about the district's new leadership framework which you see on the slide purposeful community and action planning for the upcoming school year in collaboration with nashville public education foundation or mpef we have created a new leadership framework that is one of my signature initiatives which will be used across the district to ensure that leaders at all levels are leading from a shared sense of purpose and using common leadership practices principals were introduced to this new framework and given opportunities to reflect on how to strengthen and align their leadership practices to the framework regarding purposeful community principals focus on building relationships in their networks through identifying
021the four pillars of purposeful community which are common purpose assets agreed upon processes and collective efficacy because we recognize that this is going to take networks of principles to pursue the district's north star of becoming the premier large urban school district in tennessee and beyond we prioritize this time of team and relationship building during principal landing then we focus also on our action planning tool where principals are thinking about how to best prepare for the next year this is something that they always do and they now have been equipped with an action planning tool that will assist them in those preparations this tool will allow principals to look at their data and set goals on how to help students achieve their academic outcomes this year's principal landing was successful and it positioned school-based and support
022hub leaders to enter printable splash energized and excited about continuing to build relationships and planning for the district's next set of goals and their networks across the district now briefly i want to talk to you a little bit about our principles flash that followed our principal landing our principal splash retreat was hosted by alarm in nashville and allow for team building and planning to find common bonds and themes for where we are as a school district across tiers as well as where we want to be to offer the best possible experiences for students and families who choose mnps we're going to be further defining and refining these concepts in the coming weeks and months in consultation with our principals and our stakeholders but during this retreat we identified the following consistent themes opportunities and desired
023outcomes at the school and district levels for the guaranteed experience at the elementary level we heard from principals that the key to a great education starts with providing families with a safe welcoming environment where families will be comfortable entrusting their children to our care it means defining and offering experiential opportunity experiential learning opportunities to give students those hands-on experiences that take learning to the next level we do that by ensuring we have high quality effective teachers in our classrooms and connecting with community partners to support the work of our schools we also heard that we need great transition planning between grade levels and schools both in terms of transitioning to the next level and factoring in our high mobility rate of students and families in the district in our middle schools a personalized experience means
024that we increase the academic rigor to accelerate learning and ensure students have exposure to real-world learning opportunities that will help them take the theoretical into practical terms as to how their education will apply to their future this also means we develop cultures of belonging and truly ensure that every student is known by identifying and developing the identities interests and intellect of the kids we serve the applied experience in high school focuses on again those real world experiences through internships and opportunities for all students to engage outside the classroom in areas that interest them and excite their passion for learning it means emphasizing the development of critical thinking skills and empathy so students are prepared for life after high school and that means supporting students and identifying their preferred post-secondary pathways so they can launch right
025into that college or career opportunity we also took some time to meet with all principals to talk about the reimagined experience and how the metro schools reimagine initiative aligns to our clusters can be used to strengthen schools and student experiences this starts with building stronger meaningful relationships between principles across tears and the individual clusters increasing opportunities for students to engage in the arts and music and empowering parents to engage in their school community which will lead to stronger cluster outcomes coming out of the three days of principal meetings our support hub leadership team came away with important next steps for us to ensure our school success connecting with principals to further refined definitions for the guaranteed personalized and applied experiences creating more time and space for principals to meet in tears and clusters for the
026reimagined work train our support hub personnel on how to best support school-based leaders continue to create opportunities to listen and learn from principals to ensure continuous improvement all across the district what i love most about our principal splash event is that we were able to give space to principals to share their hopes dreams their frustrations their aspirations and desires for how they can best serve the students and how we and the support hub can best help them do that i'm grateful to all of our principal leaders who participated and look forward to continuing to work together to offer the best possible experience for all of our students finally i want to once again and i'm just going to echo the words of miss freda claire peters thank mayor john cooper the metro council especially our
027budget chair um kwanzai tombs as well as this board of education for the historic investment and vote of confidence in metro national public schools because of the additional funds that are being allocated towards our district our teachers will now be the best in state for educator pay helping us to retain and recruit great teachers who are the essential component of a great education further support our support staff through a step increase and two percent cola bringing our school-based support staff into the classrooms when teachers are working in service and building up this social emotional and mental health supports for students through advocacy centers at all of our elementary schools an additional school psychologist needed to help children cope with trauma's experience when at home or in school we are so fortunate to live in a
028city that has doubled down on the commitment to public education and i look forward to working with this board and our stakeholders to faithfully implement these new investments thank you and i'll turn it back over to you cheer books thank you so much for that dr battle do i have any questions i have a comment go ahead um is player peters and just to piggyback on what dr battle said really have to think and then i failed to do this earlier um council lady tombs of really just um introducing us early in her substitute budget and really investing early and taking the leadership but more but more importantly what she did prior to the budget process of really engaging us on a regular basis and asking the questions about the how we educate our children
029the programs that we have and really doing the deep digging what we're doing and how we're spending our money efficiently and understanding the whole process that we can get to the historic moment that prior budget chairs did not do and i just want to honor this councilwoman tombs for really just being very thoughtful of asking us the tough questions but us showing that we can answer the tough questions and that we're being transparent and be able to trust us with that funding and that she was able to put that in her substitute budget so i just want to thank you for acknowledging that and just put a finer point on it thank you anything else all right well thank you dr battle again and to your staff we'll move on to announcements we'll begin with
030dr gentry i don't think i have any all right they have but i've probably forgot them that's all right there's always the next time this is pooper walker i want to um thank all of the staff from uh across the district that are coming in and helping with promising scholars all the planning all of the details um making you know as i think it might have been hank told me you know it's basically pulling up one of our promising scholars was the size of like a mid-sized district in tennessee just promising scholars right and so putting that on after the year that we had um is a monumental lift and so i'm just really really grateful to everybody who who pulled that off and um anyway and the credit recovery too which i know is
031a big deal i also want to thank freda player peters for her leadership on getting this budget um to fruition and passage and masterfully done and thank the council and mayor i also want to say there's nine days left for senior graduated seniors to complete their eight hours of community service by july 1 to keep their eligibility for promising for tennessee promise if you know of some seniors make sure they've done their community service and finally very very excited about the announcement of ebenezer hale and anjali kimbo to be our new student board members so excited to have them join us really grateful to megan mangram for the thoughtful article about them and meeting with them and i just think they're going to bring so much to this uh to this board and really grateful
032for all the support on that that's it thank you mr little yep um just congratulate uh mr frederick burnett became the new head coach of football at mcgavig we had a vacancy for a while so that was good to really see and also congratulations to the grayson family again from percy priest for being the chess champion thank you mrs elrod thank you to echo miss jeannie pooper walker i am so appreciative to haywood cole and tusculum the schools in my district that have been putting on promising scholars of course are surrounding districts as well as i know norman binkley in particular has a lot of people within district 2 that have gone over to norman binkley to receive their promising scholars summer experience i'm not surprised by the information that we just received that we've
033got we're getting a lot of feedback that it's a great admin experience as it has been a huge amount of work i can tell not only by the support hub but also by our teachers particularly our lead teachers at those individual schools just organizing the school hookup line is a lot of work guys so i really appreciate all that work and it's coming to a close on that on july 2nd and i hope that we can continue to do this i think it's been a really good experience other than that i hope everyone has a continued safe summer and i congratulate both the creve hall and granberry chess winners that kindergartner y'all is so cute thank you mrs player peters um yes um i don't know if anyone heard the breaking news but the um
034the tax referendum will not be on the ballot come july and as budget and finance chair i want to take the personal privilege of really seeing the devastating impact that could have had on our schools we just had a discussion about the historic investment and one thing i did mention during the budget and finance meeting that july 1st we do not get a cash a fusion of a billion dollars to fund our school for the rest of the year that funding comes in installments becomes installments from the retailer to the state down to metro government than to us it's a process and just like your personal salary you don't get your salary january first of whatever your annual income is and then you pay your your bills and your you know everything from that one
035cash it's the same thing that happened and if this referendum would have passed the devastating effects that we just sat here and brought about there was a chance that that would have been adjustment we just made an adjustment during budget and finance about the adjustment we had to do for this current operating year because of the tax tax receipts that we've received coming out of the pandemic in a safe way and that could have easily happened if this referendum would have got to the ballot and passed the technical consequences that would have happened we might be having a totally different discussion literally nine months from now about reductions that we have to say we're just saying that it was a relief that we did not have to make the reductions in this one and so
036to really understand how we fund education has to be a community conversation with true facts and true understanding of the budgetary process and the impact that it has and that we would have to do that in a full um thoughtful long-term conversation and that we cannot make quick judgment decisions on how we fund our city and more fun how we fund our education and so as we talk about how we continue with our aspirational budget what it takes for the investment the conversations and the tasks is on the mayor's office the conversation and task that has to happen to metro council and then also with us is not an easy task if you have been following us the conversations we have had just through this operating budget year of what we had to do to
037make sure it's fun has not been easy until we got towards out of the pandemic and walking into it it was a complete partnership with the mayor's office and a complete partnership with the council as we're having conversations with the state with the bep formula with the vouchers and things like that it's a complicated process and when you take one stool one leg of that stool out of the process it makes it that much more difficult to fund schools so as we continue to have a conversation of how we fund schools how we engage with all levels of government from the federal state and local we as a community needs to have that conversation in a very thoughtful strategic way understanding the true impact of that and so as citizens as we go through this
038growth as a new city as more people come into the city as we educate new kids and new parents and people have families into the city we have to have a continued conversation as we grow as a city how do we grow our education funding streams and then also how those streams have an impact on our budget process so i always like to thank this judge perkins for having just being thoughtful in his legal aspects of it and then also just those in the community who continue to have that conversation about what it takes to educate our children and the role it has to do it and the governmental processes that it takes to educate our children i'm done thank you his player fears thank you thank you thank you mrs masters i'll just say
039happy pride month and that i am proud to be serving in a district that values all of our children and all of our employees and um i think that's my only announcement for today thank you and mrs tyler i also want to say happy pride month and um i want to reiterate the thanks to robert fisher and mayor cooper and everybody that's walked with us every step of the way to make sure that we can have the things that we need to educate our students properly and one last thing just a thanks to dr battle and her team because not i'm not sure how many people realize that our summer school plan was not what it is now originally and we spent a lot of time setting it up in one way and when the
040legislation changed they had to turn on a dime and change everything about the way that they um implemented and did the the promising scholars program so the the turnaround time was very tight it was asking a lot a super heavy lift of people throughout the district so thank you guys for all of the work that you did to make sure that things would get to where they are where i hear students saying i'm so excited i can't wait to go back next week and to hear the joy from teachers who are really enjoying that smaller class size to get to work with the students and um so i've been very pleased with what we've been able to do and it makes me so excited about next year's promising scholars because if we have this much
041more time to plan what else could we do so i'm very pleased thank you very much thank you my only announcement is that um on this past thursday we had a community meeting to discuss the use of the buena vista building we had a few technical issues but it was also not really well attended and so we want the we want to give the community another chance to offer their thoughts and their feedback so we'll be looking to host another potentially in potential in-person meeting dr gentry that's what i'm going to say though yep we're on the same wavelength so yes please be looking for updates there uh aside from that we have a retreat that will tend to tentatively be held on thursday july 22nd i told you that's the day that the tennessee
042state board meets and we're hoping to be able to host them for lunch but i'm going to ask mrs bobot or mrs mobile to send out a calendar invite just to hold it for now and i'll give you all details as we found as we develop them i want to add a couple of things so the meeting to discuss buena vista my request is that it is an in-person meeting not potentially we did have internet failure and some other challenges and so this is a very important piece of property that means a lot to the people in that community so i want to make sure that we do plan for that to be an in-person meeting we've got a couple of others scheduled already september 16th is the date for robert lillard and october 7th
043is the day for jolton and those are already planned to be in-person meetings that will take place and we still need to work on the schedule for old brick church middle school but we want to just ask for some help and whatever we need to do to get it better publicized um so that we can get the kind of attendance and input that we need i think the presentation that you guys pulled together was really good a lot of great uh exciting options for the building but we do want to give the community ample opportunity to wait so yeah we'll send out details around that next meeting oh and one more thing go right ahead the uh national museum of african american music and art had their formal dedication and grand opening this saturday juneteenth
044on june 19th it was absolutely amazing i don't know anybody else one else got a chance to be there there were a lot of individuals but i just want to congratulate henry hicks and his team for pulling that off if you've been here for at least 10 years you've been a part of that journey to get that facility opened and it is absolutely amazing i'm sure that it is already factored into potential field trips and other collaborations [Music] say yes somebody say yes i'm snapping okay i heard it i felt it yet um for our students um to tell the story that often gets squashed around the contributions of african americans to various aspects of american culture and so this is just a prime jewel even though it's focused on music and art they are
045definitely amenable to hosting conversations and educational opportunities um to broaden uh the perspective and understanding of of of what the history of african americans in this country has actually been critical race theory or not now uh you know what on that note be there no further business this meeting is adjourned thank you this has been a service of the metro nashville network if you would like to see this presentation again or for more information about this and other programs visit nashville.gov