06/08/21 MNPS Board of Education

001meeting in june 2021 for the metro national public schools board of education we are so excited to have you here i know we have a number of members of the community on our public participation list so we're excited to hear from you all and excited to hear from dr battle and her staff before we begin uh we've established a quorum we have just a few missing but i'm sure they'll be trickling in um we're going to begin with the pledge of allegiance it's budget season mr henson because you have all the good juju would you mind leading us in the pledge he was ducking down 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

002all thank you very much all right so members of the public you will be allowed to speak with us for three minutes you will hear a bell when your time is over and you can see it posted both here and yep just there so with that being said we'll begin with miss regina helms smith all right miss dorothy stevens all right uh melissa i'm sorry thank you say one more time i'm so sorry am ryan thank you good evening board members dr battle i'm melissa amron my address is 409 shackleford court and i want to let you know that i really appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight i've never done this before i'm looking forward to it as we return to to know as we return to a sense of normal requiring progressively less

003masking and fewer overall precautions i hope that you will be mindful that masking children based upon vaccination status is a form of segregation and is a violation of basic human rights i'm a healthcare professional with over 20 years of experience in tennessee and i can tell you that today in our health care system some places mass are being used as a means of punishment for those who decline the flu vaccine personal reasons are irrelevant whether they're religious or medical exemptions or other reasons your actual healthiness doesn't matter whether you had the flu last year whether you have the flu every year or whether you've never had the flu in your life if you don't take the drug you get the mask masks are used in a punitive way this is medical discrimination and i don't

004want to see it happen to our children in davidson county we pride ourselves on diversity we have many differences in race religion political affiliations and socioeconomic status that diversity is a blessing and it does require that we uphold the principles of inclusion and equality it requires diversity of thought we cannot force mask quarantine or contact trace one group and not another any more than we can relegate one group to the back of the bus the only important metric is who is sick and who is healthy healthy children belong in school in the absence of an emergency they belong in school unmasked please remember as we move forward that we the people of davidson county have elected you guys we were like we elected you to represent us we did not elect the cdc or the

005department of health you are in charge of education not health care and so i implore you to leave the medical decisions to the parents in cooperation with our chosen health care providers march through may of 2020 was an unusual time we are in a different place now with multiple vaccines many people with natural immunity and mass available to those who choose them it is time to return to parent choice medical decisions should be made within families seeking health care professionals who guide us but allow us to choose what is best for our kids weighing the risk benefit reward for every decision based on our personal medical histories and our values without coercion in closing i'd like to bring to your attention that legislation was recently passed just days ago signed into law by bill lee

006and i'm going to quote from that legislation which prohibits state and local authorities from forcing requiring or coercing a person to receive an immunization or a vaccination for coca 19. i thank you for your time and i appreciate the opportunity thank you sarah sagan segan sorry about that hello my name is sarah segend and i am the parent of two mnps high schoolers i'm here today urging you to drop the mask mandates for our students both in summer school and for the fall i am one of hundreds of parents who advocated for our schools to reopen because the science supported safely doing so we were willing to accept mask mandates at that time because we knew we had to do whatever it took to return our students in person our kids were in crisis so

007urgency was key since then however we've vaccinated 48 of our city and 13 of our city already have natural immunity after recovering from covid we are reaching herd immunity quickly transmission and hospitalization rates have fallen sharply after months of in-person learning we now have data to evaluate how it went however this data has not been presented in a way that provides context or is visually understandable and i brought a little visual aid of a couple of districts that are doing this really well one from manatonka and which is outside of minneapolis and one from wichita as you can see numbers and trends are displayed very clearly there is a timeline of students and staff infection rates and they can see where the data is trending why can't nashville provide this kind of data we can

008and we should and i will email you all copies of this so you can see an example and i am a graphic designer and do these sort of things for a living so i know it's very easy to do when i emailed mrs elrod about the need for masks her answer referred me to the cdc recommendation that unvaccinated people continue to mask and she also made a comment which i would like entered into the record she said most of our student population will not be vaccinated as vaccinations will not be available to them when school starts therefore i anticipate that masks will still be required until all populations can be protected end quote i would like to note that every district in america has those two same criteria they have the cdc recommendations to evaluate

009and they have students that are not old enough to receive vaccinations however district after district is going mask optional because they have tracked data that proved that their transmission rates were already incredibly low to begin with and further dropped with population immunity so i challenge you to submit our district's data to an independent external process of analysis so that your policies about masks can be data driven masks are not the most pressing issue for our students we all know that that's why we want to take it off the table and let our teachers teach without hindrance and without having to be the police of their classroom thank you thank you asia car asha thank you good afternoon my name is asha carr my address is 2305 crescent valley place hermitage my son is four years

010old and attends stanford montessori school i wanted to share your story my story that happened with him my son's doctor written a medical exemption for him in 2020 september i submitted this before the return from virtual school we were told mmps gave no accommodation no exemptions only accommodations we attempted to wear the shield but he was uncomfortable hot and was having trouble seeing mnps nursing team and staff felt they could override what his doctor said and therefore therefore was no longer in compliance with what his doctor's recommendations were recently on friday may 14th nashville revised their decision to no longer continue indoor mass mandates and i received an email at work from the metro health department that they would no longer require employees to wear masks and doors the following may monday may 17th my

011husband and i attempted to send our son to school without a face covering we were met at the door by his principal that physically blocked him from entering the school and shut the door in his face and proceeded to reiterate he was not allowed to enter without a face covering after the local city mandates were lifted there is no reason our children should be required to wear a mask i am aware businesses are able to make their own requirements regarding masks but metro nashville public schools is not a business my child is not a business the teachers that work there are civil servants just like myself mmps should not be attempting to put themselves in the same category as a business by maintaining that they have the right to require face coverings as payment into

012their schools medically fragile children who need the most help this year were told to stay home if you can't wear face covering these children deserve better my husband and i were told this year's mnps accommodations for medical exemptions were to stay virtual wear a mask face shield sorry face shield or isolate your child in school at one point did it become okay to isolate children what is the plan for next year next year's virtual school is no longer an option these medically fragile children that couldn't wear something last year are not going to be able to this fall we are going are we going to isolate them on the same note you may say these medically fragile children are the ones that need the protection however where are these children going in the city that

013are everybody is wearing masks at all time nowhere at this point is a choice if someone wears a mask or not these parents that's what they're asking for a choice adults have had that choice now for several months to get a vaccine children as young as 12 can go the same day and get an appointment at this point who are the masks protecting we were told the masks were to protect grandparents and you know compromise people that children may take the illness home to but that category of people plus a majority of the population can get the vaccine to protect themselves if they want it and so the children should no longer be able to carry that responsibility they should have never had to but certainly not now or in the fall they should never

014be required to wear a mask again to gain entry into your school skill the school building thank you so much for hearing my son's story thank you charlie friedman good evening good evening my name is charlie friedman i live at 1805 woodland street and i am the founder of nashville classical charter school about six weeks ago the board voted to deny our proposal to open a second campus on charlotte pike and we're grateful for your feedback and obviously respect that decision we proposed a second school because we believe that the past year has exposed inequities that are as old as our country and we know that these injustices play out every day in our city and our schools humbly we believe that high quality integrated open enrollment schools are more important to nashville than ever

015and i'm grateful to have the chance to speak to you directly about why we have been and can continue to be an effective partner to the district in the summer of 2012 mnps unanimously approved nashville classical we are an independent homegrown public charter school which is a polite way of saying that we started from nothing when we first opened i met personally face to face with families across the city and asked them to enroll in our school we met in libraries and churches in the basements of community centers and at crowded kitchen tables there was no building we could show them no teachers they could meet but together we built a community out of our promises and their dreams and that community looks a lot like mnps 73 of our scholars are black or hispanic

01612 percent have disabilities 60 live in poverty our students come from 26 unique zip codes and we have bus stops from antioch to madison more than two-thirds of our students live outside of east nashville and our most popular bus stop is in the james casey homes so while our school may look ordinary our results are anything but on the tn ready our students score in the state's top 10 percent our subgroups are particularly successful black hispanic economically disadvantaged and iep students are two times more likely to achieve proficiency than their peers across the state so this year as we approached full growth we reflected on where to go and we set our sights on finding a way to serve more children because every february hundreds of families apply to our school and they never get

017to attend among the 157 public schools in nashville we have received the most applications among any elementary school the only schools with more applications are academic magnet or magnet pathway schools schools like meigs hume fog and mlk however unlike these schools we have zero academic requirements for entry we offer open enrollment to families from any neighborhood in the city and we provide free transportation so we decided to propose a second campus and as we looked at census data school performance enrollment projections and talk to the community we believed it could be powerful to put nashville classical along charlotte pike at the nexus of multiple neighborhoods and footsteps from the interstate as nashville changes grows and works to overcome generational obstacles redlining and segregated schools we believe that accessible open enrollment schools are critical to this

018to a more equitable future and humbly we'd like to partner with you to build that future for our families and our children thank you thank you nicole origi all right uh elizabeth hines got elizabeth hines kevin walker here i was taking her spot tonight just speaking on behalf the pack i live in donaldson cloverwood drive i've had kids at uh hickman elementary donaldson middle mcgavock high school meigs and hume fog so a long time uh mnps parent glad to be here tonight just wanted to give you a quick update on some stuff going on with our parent advisory committee we have our first district pac meeting scheduled for august 31st we have been recruiting and finding additional pac members in our schools um and some of the topics that we are looking at having in

019the fall discussing as a pac and in communication with mnps would be retaining parents in our schools school safety nutrition etc i would emphasize though that at the district cluster level we still need leadership um so if you have antioch white's creek hunters lane stratford maplewood cane ridge or hillwood in your district please we need pack leaders or cluster leaders for those clusters feel free to reach out to myself reach out to bb heinz either one of us we would be glad to come speak to schools to community meetings you have anything we can do to get the word out about uh the parent advisory committee uh my email address is mnps packet vice chair or mnpspackvicechair gmail.com so two information tonight one um to the school board members you guys have been very gracious

020as we've gotten uh we're starting to use an old lean principle that says you have to go slow in order to go fast we're building infrastructure and building processes and procedures in place so that we can achieve the goal of being a conduit and a vessel to communicate with mnps and then then be able to communicate with parents so my first invitation is to to board members reach out to us let us know how we can help you particularly those areas where we don't second invitation to all the parents that are gathered here tonight i applaud you and your uh desire to come and speak out on behalf of your kids i would invite your participation as well in the parent advisory committee um if you don't know who your leaders are if you don't

021know who your leaders are in your schools in your district let me know i'll be glad to help you out any way i can the uh the pac is a great way to get involved to provide more than just three minutes once a month but an ongoing conversation so that we can build um a educational system that benefits every child in metro thank you thank you stephanie bowman here good evening board members my name is stephanie bowman and i live at 11 fox hall closed nashville tennessee i have two children in metro schools one that just barely scraped through the eighth grade at j.t moore and a freshman in high school at hillsborough i myself am a product of nashville public schools as a graduate of hillsborough high school a proud graduate i'm here today

022to talk about optional mask wearing immediately and certainly into the fall for the upcoming year former speakers have given a lot of data and facts and i implore this leadership group that has been voted by the members of davidson county to consider the data and science as you make protocol decisions for the coming year one of the things that i have seen personally in my own children is the psychological effects that not only has this horrific pandemic had on them and everyone around us but to top it off with having to force them to wear a mask day in and day out and the ramifications that come from that from a medical perspective afterwards i know that our administrators and you all and our teachers have worked extremely hard and i have many friends that

023actually worked in mnps and they have their own feelings as well wanting to be liberated wanting to be able to teach wanting to be able to psychologically counsel these kids in a manner that's appropriate you've spent a lot of time and energy this past year on social emotional learning i think we need to dig a little bit deeper in the year to come and i implore you to please consider optional mask only for the next school year thank you thank you diana aguilar good afternoon my name is diana aguilera and as a parent i would like to take a moment to thank dr barro and every member of the board for making the decisions necessary to support every mmps student family and staff members throughout these difficult times i have had the honor to serve

024mnps for the past 10 years as a parent outreach translator el kindergarten teacher at yuna and third grade teacher at lindell i am here today to express my support for the authorization of aventura community school as an educator and a mother of two young children i was thrilled when i first heard about aventura's intentionally diverse dual language model in the classroom i have witnessed how kids can learn so much from each other when they are provided an environment that fosters diversity and inclusion i strongly believe that aventura can be the place where where students will be able to bring their background languages and cultures to enrich their lives and their lives of those around them the combination of bilingual education purposeful academics and global competence make aventura unique however its commitment to being a resource

025for students and their families is what makes it stand out in particular with our immigrant community several local organizations such as the tennessee immigrant and refugee rights coalition connection americas and the hispanic family foundation among others have expressed their interest and enthusiasm for this creation as an immigrant myself and as someone who has worked with immigrant families through the years i have a greater appreciation for the type of support that these organizations can provide in a time of need i can already envision aventura being that bridge that connects families with our amazing community partners a bilingual school like aventura is overdue in nashville not only because of the city's growing and changing population but also because it constitutes best practice in education mmps serves a large number of el students and an immersion program like

026aventura will benefit them significantly being able to capitalize on the student's prior knowledge is invaluable imagine how much more confident students will be when they are able to show what they know in their first language also picture students with other language backgrounds having the opportunity to become multilingual by learning from their peers being bilingual is so rewarding and has opened so many doors for me personally my hope is that more children in our district can have the option to attend a free bilingual school with such a community focused like aventura because it is truly life-changing thank you for your time thank you alice nye okay ben voss mimi pullman judah sagan segan sorry about that okay hello my name is judith siegen and i'm an 11th grader at hume fog i'd like to make a

027comment on mass mandates for the upcoming school year when i was in fourth grade at granbury elementary i learned about the scientific method the main steps in the scientific method are observation research forming a hypothesis testing the hypothesis analyzing data and drawing conclusions from those early days we were taught to think critically about our world from my point of view and that of my high school friends it seems you have made an observation and a hypothesis about masks but skipped the step of analyzing the data to see if your hypothesis was correct about and before drawing conclusions where is the data you are basing your conclusions on about the success of and the need for masks in schools where the charts showing infection rates of in-person metro students over time you see the burden of

028proof falls on you to prove that mass significantly reduced transmission in our schools it's only a vote to you but it affects me and thousands of other students every single day for seven eight hours by the way have you even seen the kind of masks everyone wears to school and even elementary i'm thinking of elementary kids who who get their face gets hot and they can't keep it on because they just don't know they're not really you know old enough to understand the effects even dr fauci himself said in an email that was recent release the typical mass bought in a drug store is not really effective in keeping out the virus which is small enough to pass through the material in addition the vast majority of my classmates and teachers are already vaccinated our

029community transmission rates are at their lowest point since april 1 2020 and continue to drop the cdc recently said that fully vaccinated people are free to resume pre-pandemic activities without a mask or social distancing dr monica gandhi an infectious disease specialist wrote in the washington post last week the science tells us that on our current trajectory it's possible to get all children back to school in person by the fall free of masks free of regular testing social distancing or fear children who are not yet vaccinated have two very strong dynamic work dynamics working in their favor first as is well known children are at extremely low risk of serious illness from covid compared to adults secondly as case rates fall even lower children not yet eligible for vaccination will be protected as more in the

030community become immune with fewer people infected the likelihood of in of any unvaccinated people being exposed to the virus will become vanishingly small i'll end by saying that in less than a year i will turn 18 and i will be able to vote me and my friends will remember how you have handled these decisions before all of this we didn't realize how political our school board was and how few adults were standing up for us and listening to us now we do and we will vote accordingly thank you all right benvott all right good evening everybody my name is ben voss i live at 7101 preston run goodwinsville tennessee i wanted to begin by thanking each of you for your service to our community we are aware that your work is a labor of love

031and especially during this time and thank you for dealing with all of the varying opinions in our city we all want our kids to be successful but what are we aiming at we're preparing kids for a future that's uncertain and they're going to help shape that future so one definition of success that i found helpful comes from the late ucla basketball coach john wooden he taught his players something that he talked about called the pyramid of success a set of building blocks to achieve competitive greatness coach wooden said success is the peace of mind that comes as a direct result of self-satisfaction and knowing that you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable it's not measured by external results it's measured by developing the character skills grit perseverance and initiative

032to face challenges with a sense of teamwork friendship and enthusiasm i'm grateful to be working here in nashville with a number of world-class teammates that includes the talented 10th leadership development team a group of financial professionals focused on building wealth by working with families often ignored or even exploited by the traditional financial services industry this group is dedicated to a no family left behind mission and the team in nashville includes a number of folks who have been classroom teachers in metro schools we've also begun collaboration with financial empowerment center here in nashville and we provide no-cost financial reviews to families as part of our work one of my personal goals is to provide a financial roadmap to 100 families every month as we help families plan for college and career training we need to show

033people young people especially that their career aspirations are achievable and won't let leave them overwhelmed with high student debt we have to face the brutal facts and count the cost but without ever losing hope that we can prevail in the end i've also had an opportunity over the past year to serve as the partnership council chair for the freshman academy in metro schools and work closely with a number of business partners as well as the founding partners of the academies in nashville i can say that while many business partners have been trying to find ways to continue their work we've also seen a major shift to remote workplaces and it's been much harder as a result of that to rally community support and get business partners engaged in our classrooms there are some bright spots

034i'm particularly excited about a collaboration that's emerged with brian lowenthal brian worked as a change management consultant here in in nashville but worked with companies all around the world specializes in leadership development he's hoping to bring his talents into more schools here in nashville is improving the odds initiative is focused on developing the character and skills that will prepare young people to become thriving citizens of the world and he's actually using the john wooden pyramid of success to inspire a new generation of young people there are so many people here in our community who are willing and ready to help and i'm hopeful that we can bounce back from the challenges of the past year to reach even more nashville families thank you thank you my apologies for the confusion next todd bowman good evening

035metro board and metro chair my name is todd bowman i'm a parent of two children that go to metro schools my wife spoke a moment ago stephanie we both live at 11 fox hall clothes um thank you for having me in today um i want to thank judah that was an awesome talk did a great job so i will also be voicing my opinion not just here but at the polls when time comes as well last year was very taxing for everyone no one saw it coming no one had a plan going into this and that's one of my biggest frustrations was having to wait and hear wait and see and there was no plan while my children have friends that go to various different schools public and private they seem to have some sort

036of plan coming out of the fall springs of last year so i have two requests one have a plan and execute that plan but more importantly communicate it to the parents don't make us sit around and wait again it was ridiculous and then secondly no more the masks you can look around half the room has them on half the room doesn't this city is jam-packed every weekend full of people and i have to explain my children when you drive by places well they can but we can't or vice versa it's no different than segregation of any kind so enough's enough make a plan don't wait on the cdc don't wait on the government get together as a council put a plan together communicate that plan and execute on behalf of everyone in this room all

037the children that are going to metro schools thank you thank you lauren herring good evening thank you board for hearing us today my name is lauren herring i work i live at 6056 frontier lane i have students at granberry elementary and oliver middle schools i'm very thankful this tumultuous year is over and i'm very eager to know what the covid plans look like going forward i'm not a scientist nor do i care to copy and paste other researchers findings on masking children's in schools but as a parent a former educator actually taught mr henson's son in high school and as a current substitute teacher with mnps i want to share some of my own experiences this past year first if you were able to spend any time at all inside of school building this year

038which was difficult you saw problems with mask wearing in my experience as a substitute at two different elementary schools i witnessed very few students wearing them correctly i saw so many noses out masks on mass constantly pulled down to talk to other students and or the teacher and so many wet masks i do not doubt that masks are effective when worn correctly but there is no way the majority of students that interacted with me were protected or were offering any protection based on how they wore their masks masking is an unnecessary burden for students secondly i know parents who kept their students at home this year because of sensory issues when it came to wearing a mask all day my son who had no prior sensory issues began to chew through his masks as the

039year progressed he chewed holes in every one of his cloth masks to the point that they were unusable since he ruined all of his washable masks i started sending him in the disposable ones he continued to chew through those often going through two or three a day at school wearing a mask all day every day created a problem for him that he did not have before and now that he does not have to wear a mask he chews on his shirt all day long i know several family friends whose children have developed similar sensory problems after this year of masks at school what will happen to students with sensory issues if masks are mandatory again next year but perhaps the greatest challenge masking created was for our english learner population i spent most of my

040time subbing in an el class at granberry it was incredibly difficult for us to communicate with each other when when all of us were masks as we've all realized over the past year we read lips so often children learning english need to be able to see full faces of their teachers and peers if they have any hope of learning to communicate in english i would also extend this to any child who is receiving phonics instruction how much further behind will students fall who need to see and be seen in conclusion experienced coupled with science shows that masks should be optional for students going forward i hope that you will consider this when making decisions for the upcoming school year thank you for your time thank you jim claxton hello my name is jim claxton i

041live at 1236 mcgrace lane i have two children uh we'll be at jt moore next year i also work for the district um i serve as an occupational therapist i work in the overton and the hillsborough cluster um i don't have any data other than my observations and i just would ask the board to consider the burden on the staff and the students to wear a mask i work with all populations typical neuro atypical it is very very hard for children to wear a mask appropriately all day as an adult who is responsible for these children constant reminders constant masks masks on the ground masks in the desks in theory i see where a mask might be needed in certain situations i even had students who couldn't wear a mask for medical reasons they just

042couldn't they just didn't have the ability to wear it all day i think there's a there's a low load of emotional stress wearing a mask all day as someone who's done it also i'm not a fan of team meetings spending two to three hours a day on a team's meeting there is a load there for the adults participating especially if you have a translator it is very difficult to communicate what we need to communicate to parents through an interpreter through teams not a fan of teams would love for the district to consider zoom if we're going to continue on this virtual meeting pathway just as an end user um i i'm thankful for what all you do it is not easy um i'm advocating for my students um and my children it has been very

043difficult for my nine-year-old who's missed half a third grade half a fourth grade who will now be going to middle school as a 10 year old she turns 10 next year or excuse me next month i have serious reservations that she will not be ready for middle school but i'm committed for my children to being around all kinds of kids good kids bad kids every every kind of kid that's available in metro um and i thank you for your time take care thank you christy mayo billy savage short hello my name is billy savage short and i live at 2880 creek bend drive nashville tennessee 37207 i'm here today to talk about the concerns of critical race theory being taught in our schools this is damaging to children and i do know that the governor

044did ban it to be taught in the schools however there are ways around that it depends on your curriculum for instance williamson county they are using whit and wisdom you can go ahead and slide in critical race there if you want to with that curriculum however critical race theory is giving children and an identity based on color alone that is very damaging because no one's identity came from the color of their skin their identity came from christ and christ alone this should not be taught in her school system i have white friends and they are not oppressive they are not superior according to critical race theory i am black as we all see i am not a victim of the color of my skin so please be considerate please be thoughtful when you allow when

045there are loopholes and there are curriculums that are taught because honestly i don't know the curriculum for davidson county going forward last year i had to call the teacher and say what curriculum are we using it's a florida virtual curriculum don't know what we're going to be using next year however if it is wit and wisdom parents pay attention to the curriculums okay but please once again we the people have elected you guys and we've elected you because we expect you to give a free and appropriate education critical race theory not appropriate thank you nicole corey hi good evening i'm nicole corey i live at 925 watterswood drive nashville tennessee um i'm here tonight for two reasons the first i wanted to just thank mrs bush for her advocacy to return to in-person school i

046saw so many of you post beautiful graduation photos and prom photos and the happiness and joy in so many of those was palpable and i honestly do believe had it not been for fran's advocacy that none of those pictures would have taken place in person so fran just on behalf of so many parents and the 55 percent of people that wanted schools in person in august i just wanted to say thank you and that i hope that you have been thanked appropriately from everyone i'm also here to talk about masks masks at this point should be optional our local mask mandate has expired our county health department does not believe masking is now a requirement to effectively control this virus i can take my children to gymnastics to church to any restaurant and mask but

047if i choose to send them to school right now they are forced to mask as a medical professional i know there is zero scientific evidence proving that cloth masks on kids reduce cova 19 transmission or infection i believe a well-fitted n95 works but that is not what our kids are wearing as lauren mentioned um that thin piece of cloth that they pull down in the classroom to have snack to eat their lunch to to be able to talk to a friend or their teacher so they can hear each other is not working it is not effective to do anything to keep them safe or to keep them out of harm the studies recently reported on mitigation practice practices show there is zero correlation between masking students and kova 19 numbers in transmissions in schools we

048have spent millions of our own money on the maheri contract that has shown us the majority of parents do not want their children asymptomatically tested and that transmission between the children is extremely low several private schools in our county release their mass mandate at the end of the school year williamson county schools are in summer session right now and are not requiring masks i implore you to call around and see how these schools are doing this how are they performing and have you ever looked at a kid's mask at the end of a long day they are gross they have mucus and dirt and they are wet are you sure that that is not going to make a child sick or not if we are going to continue to require masks then we should have

049a choice thank you thank you katherine herring hi good evening chair members of the board my name is catherine herring i live at 600 mcfarron avenue in nashville tennessee i'm a nurse i've been a nurse for 14 years a nurse practitioner for 10 years and a nursing instructor but this is the first time i've been in front of people in a long time so forgive me yesterday i saw that you're potentially voting to require masks in hallways and buses for the summer and you will start honoring medical and religious mass exemptions as these children were previously not allowed in school while these are steps in the right direction i want to advocate for mass to be optional at all times not all children are capable of properly wearing masks at school the steps to put

050on and take off a mask are number one have the child wash their hands number two grab the mask only by the loopholes three do not touch or play with your mask four remove the mask only with the loopholes fold the mask in half and set inside a clean napkin five wash your hands again are we all doing that when we're masking no okay these steps are not feasible every time a child transitions in hallways or rides a bus is there a sink in every classroom i have watched all of you on tv at the last board meeting fiddling and playing with your mask masks just draw your attention to your face metro teachers reported masks get thrown in backpacks used as napkins used as purses for crayons used as a mouth wipe used as

051a tissue for snot worn over their eyes the masks have been swapped by students thrown up in and holes chewed through this is not sanitary teachers are not capable of policing all students mask use a 2015 study of the university of new south wales revealed that widespread cloth mask use by nurses increased the risk for respiratory illness the penetration of mass by particles was almost 97 scientists speculated that cloth mask moisture retention reuse and poor filtration explain the increased risk for infection through 2020 and 2021 more than double the number of children died from pneumonia alone than covin 750 to pneumonia without covet 309 coven mass mandates did not slow the spread of covid just look at new york california michigan it is a tiny airborne virus thinking cloth masks can stop this virus going

052in and out is like a chain-link fence stopping mosquitoes it's just that small the only time apparently dr fauci may have been telling the truth is in 2020 when he said there's no reason to be walking around with a mask wearing a mask might make you feel a little bit better it may even drop block a droplet but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think it is and often there is unintended consequences people keep fiddling with their mask they keep touching their face fortunately the data has shown that children are extremely low at risk of covid nearly 4 million children in this country have tested positive for covid and there is a 99.9 recovery rate hospitalization remains around 2 according to the cdc children are most commonly asymptomatic or have mild symptoms the

053use of mask is a risk management decision for the parents of of that child to decide parents should be instructed to monitor for the adverse effects including headaches respiratory infections impentigo which is rashes on their face reluctance to go to school drowsiness and impaired learning thank you thank you all right thank you to those who have spoken and those who listen we will move on now to governance issues with our consent agenda are there amendments to the consent agenda as listed miss tyler um i would like to pull um 1c33 okay that's the state board of education any other amendments all right uh do i have a motion to accept the consent agenda as amended so moved have a second second all right all in favor please raise your hand all right it is unanimously

054approved we'll move on to 1c33 state board of education miss tyler please make your motion um yes i make emotion that we have some discussion around this can i make that as a motion nope miss robert i think you would make a motion to either approve or deny the contract and then there would be discussion after a second okay i make a motion to approve contract okay all right we have a first and a second we'll begin with discussion thank you okay um i just i have some questions about the feasibility of hosting the students from the state board of education in our promising scholars and so i just wanted to get a little bit more clarity around um some of the financial aspects of it so one of the questions i had is now

055that we have students attending promising scholars we know exactly how many students are there how much per pupil are we spending and that's not how much we'll receive from the state but when you look at everything that is going out from um keeping the school's open air on all of that the hiring of teachers and paraprofessionals bus drivers food services having anybody there that we need for the students once we get all of that out how much is it per pupil thank you for your question ms tyler i'd like to invite um our executive officer carrie randolph to the podium to address your question thanks for the question it's a little hard to estimate but my best estimate is around twelve hundred and fifty dollars a student okay and then um following up on that

056based on the legislation the state passed and the amount that they set aside to fund the new law of requiring this how much is the state going to pay us per pupil to run summer school my best estimate because it's a little complicated because it's based on who actually attends and we seek reimbursement based on that is about 980 students and dollars per student 980 per student and just a point of clarification only for first through eighth rising first eighth graders and those the only students under this contract that are eligible okay okay that's helpful um so my concern is that there is clearly a discrepancy there between the amount that we're getting paid and the amount that we are paying to host these students all of our students our mnps all of them and

057i would just like to know if the contract addresses where this additional money that we're going to be spending on each of their students is going to come from so like with this charter school that the student comes from be responsible for paying the remaining balance or will we have to pay out of pocket for the students who are not mnps students it's a good question that's a slightly different question okay so you asked me about our students they actually have an allocation based on their students if they meet their threshold of ed percentage in the 50 students here as who they enrolled in our program then their estimated per people is higher and it's around 1400 dollars a student okay and then miss robert if you would like to address the second part of

058the question the way we have structured the contract is that all of the funding that is allocated to the state board from the state for summer school will come to us okay um and then i seemed like you said that there were 50 students is that what we anticipate yes okay and i they have already started is that correct yes promising scholars started yesterday okay and um did 50 students from that group show up i i tried to get that information in time for the board meeting i don't have it um but we assumed that they did okay okay um so i guess oh kind of following up on that um when we were hiring teachers and staff for our promising scholars and we promised our 13 to 1 ratio did we end up having

059to do any scrambling to hire more staff when we added these extra 50 students or could we absorb them without spending extra miss randolph we could absorb them without spending extra okay when when we had 15 000 in the grand scheme 50 was this minor yeah okay thank you very much um i just i want to say that i i understand that this is something that has been a long drawn-out process of negotiation um but i am i am extremely disappointed that we're not getting it until after the students have started in our summer school program what would happen to them if we didn't vote to pass this i mean does anybody know for real well i think we'll address your question in two ways mr roberge please prefer to come to the podium um

060the first thing i think we must acknowledge is the um timing of when this legislation was passed so there was very little time for us as a district to reorganize our summer learning experience for this summer and then there was a delay in getting all the updates from our charters and from the asd around what they were going to be doing but then i'll kick it over to ms roberts who led the contracting process around all the complexities around creating such a contract and the need for us we want to be very transparent around this this particular partnership and providing the promising scholars experience this summer to those 50 students as a practical matter if this contract wasn't approved the students would no longer be attending just like if they had not approached us for

061this contract they wouldn't be able to attend because of the complexities that dr battle referenced as well as the infrastructure of the state board they just were not in a position to offer this kind of opportunity to their students do we know if they tried i do believe that they tried they and they worked with their charter schools to see if they could offer it to their students and the infrastructure just wasn't available and dr battle's team had pulled together such a great program they really wanted to have their students to have the opportunity to attend promising scholars for this year and i think that's a very appropriate question because this was a huge lift for us as a district i think everyone will probably recall very early on we were already talking about our

062summer program we did have to pause that um get the details of the legislation in order to be in compliance with what the state law now requires of us but this was a huge undertaking in providing this experience for nearly 15 000 students and then having to hire the staff to make appropriate staff to make sure that we were prepared and all the training and resources that go along with it so i think it's a very appropriate question recognizing that the timing of this legislation and the expectations for execution in june were very challenging thank you for addressing that too um i guess another something i want to just kind of add to that is that we're all doing this because we care about students and their education and to have something the timing create

063a situation where students are already receiving services from us before we have the chance to vote on whether or not we want to provide those services puts us in a catch-22 that is really difficult because without having i mean even not not even knowing anything about the contract it already says if you don't approve this these kids are going to be pulled out which is different than never starting and that is frustrating and that and i understand that it's timing i know that you personally did not have control over that timing um but i i can i would be remiss if i did not address that aspect dr battle if i may miss tyler i appreciate that with the timing of the request and then the receiving information from tdoe on how they were going

064to do reimbursement the other position we would have been in is asking the board to approve a contract without any of the material terms defined at which point i would speculate that it likely would have been deferred until this meeting anyway it was a function of timing i certainly appreciate your concern and apologize for it thank you and then the last thing i want to say about this is that the reason that these schools are under the purview of the state board is because we looked at their event looked at their applications to become a charter school for mnps and we evaluated them and we found reason to turn them down not once but twice and i know for a fact that a large part of that concern was our financial ability to continue to

065support extra schools where they are required to get their full funding before we even start looking at how we can support our own students so for the state to come in and say i know that you think you can't do this we're going to open this up anyway and if they want to force us to have these charter schools in our district then i think that it is more than fair to ask them to be the ones to oversee it and if they are not capable of creating creating whatever it takes to meet the needs of these students then they should not be overriding our decisions if they are not capable of educating these kids in the way that we all want these children educated then they should not be overriding what we know is

066best for the students in metro thank you mrs uh masters sorry so just to be clear we um the state mandated that we do these summer programs and then the state was unable to provide those same programs to the children that live here in nashville i'll give us an opportunity to clarify mr burns if you want to respond first i do think it is easy to lump the state together but this is the legislature put forth this mandate the state board is a different entity i don't think they will mind me saying that they were frustrated by the mandate as well so i don't think lumping them together in this instance is fair i appreciate that i think it i think it's worth noting that the state board of education was unable to comply with

067the mandate made by the legislature um one more question so you know charter schools actively recruit within communities and i certainly have received a lot of materials as a parent um so i will we be providing information to these families of these 50 children about their zoned schools and and the fact that that is an option for them they may and probably will honestly from what i've heard have an amazing experience this summer and so i think we should certainly take advantage of this opportunity to be sure that they know about their zone schools and that they can make that switch in august yes and i'll take a quick second to respond our plans all along have been to provide a quality summer learning experience for all of our students and in this case if

068approved we would expect that to happen for the 50 students who've selected our mmps zoned schools all we've we have identified 71 of our zone schools of which students are attending promising scholars i fully expect that our students and families will have an enjoyable experience a quality experience that will also shed light on the opportunities that our zoned schools do offer to our students and families so again we want to be welcoming encouraging and supportive to all of our students and i think it is an opportunity for us to continue to showcase the greatness of all of our schools and mmps and particularly the 71 who are serving serving as promising scholar sites thank you i don't see anyone else in the queue so i'll say um oh sorry okay go ahead miss uh i

069came in your book clear pitters sorry um i'm going to support this contract but i do want to acknowledge miss tyler's um arguments and that there's validity to them but i think goes to a bigger discussion of of our relationship particularly the state legislature and the board of ed and the board of ed being like mrs roberts said being put in a tough situation of enforcing something where a body of legislatures did not fully understand the the unintended consequences of their legislation um from trying to truly educate children and and and deal with the pandemic and how the how education was affected by the pandemic um and i've and i kind of put this in a category of the emergency contract part of the unintended consequences we need to address unintended consequences unfortunately um this

070is part of a bigger discussion about how we engage with the state um with the conversation of charters and their fiduciary responsibility because i do agree with you if they're going to have their own board there's a fiduciary responsibility they have to partake but given into that i put this in exception rule just because at the end of the day we have children that need to reinforce what they learned from last year to maintain as you know dr chong was about to maintain what they learned over the years to make sure there isn't um a regression in that and so i'm making the exception for that just because it goes to a bigger conversation that we need to have through our organizational representatives whether it's class or cube or tsba or whatever coalition that we

071are part of that it's a longer conversation about their true responsibility because as we see in the budget the the charter allocation our allocation some of the requests that the community has made to that and that's a bigger different discussion but i i do understand and feel your validity and agreed to part of it um so i'm standing with it just because i think it's a good also kind of olive branch of how do we create some type of partnership in certain areas between charter students our charter schools our district and when we can work together we should work together and then let the conversation we need to have the state be at the state level but i think it's a longer discussion that as we need to note what's going on in some of

072the repercussions of that legislation and when you have non-educators making educational decisions without taking in the full expertise and sometimes we respect better i think here on the district level of our educational experts but i think um that just for the sake of children just because of the pandemic is extraordinary times that we just need to make the exception for this one next my courage to support that but honoring the ability of your comments all right mrs elrod and mrs masters thank you i was um i need i guess two points one point of clarification and then i had a question or wanted to make sure that we had something stated on the advocacy groups that we have in this masters our abbasi our advocacy committee i think it's a wise choice for us to

073add this within those discussions that we have with legislators you know to the point of decisions are made and then you can't even benefit to your own decision so i'd like for us to have some good talking points about that when session starts again i think that's wise for a point of clarification it's my understanding and i want i don't want to miscategorize these uh facts that a student on average costs 1 250 and that the state will pay us it seems to be a sliding scale based upon a classification of student of 980 to 1400 is that correct the state's payment is based on students that attend the number of economically disadvantaged students that attend and the allocation so that's why the numbers are different okay so we cannot say that we will be

074paid the full amount that that student will cost we hope that they will be we can't guarantee it right the actual allocation comes at the end the cost dr randolph was 1200 per student for mmps it is at least possible that the allocation that the state board gets will be higher per pupil than what it cost us possible okay thank you um yeah oh so i was i think i was next so you're next with me um i just i just want to sort of drive home this point that um it's it's all well and good to say it's about the children and we have to serve all of the children but but the we we aren't really being given a choice i mean the children in this case are sort of being used as

075pawns to force us to to step in and offer this service to these specific children and i think we can care deeply about every child that was in nashville and still feel that that this request is very inappropriate under the circumstances so um i will just have to say i i while i care about every child i am very torn about this i know that wasn't a question it's a statement but i just wanted to just say that i don't i know you're just making a statement i know um in conversations with the state board part of that has been really um being clear about what it would take in order for us to be able to serve these students during our promising scholars summer experience okay um vice can i ask one more question

076i guess my last question would be more of a kind of following the law to the letter kind of thing let's say that the board decides to vote against the contract is there another way that those students could still attend our summer school if they for example unenroll from their charter school and enroll in a metro school can we serve them the enrollment for promising scholars has closed at this point so i don't know that there would be a mechanism to force the student to resign from the charter school and then re-enroll in mmps for purposes of attending promises promising scholars i'm just trying to find every way we can to meet the needs for these kids because somebody's got to meet the needs for these kids and like like miss masters i am extremely

077torn on this i feel like i don't want to do anything that could negatively affect any child whether they are an mnps student a charter school student a private school student it doesn't matter our children should be what we look at first and for the for the state board to have gotten in the situation and i understand these are exceptional circumstances but for them to have gotten in a space where they are unable to provide the support that these students desperately need is troubling to me for them and also just it makes me wary about their ability to continue to support any anything else that they decide to override for us it makes me worried about who's going to end up picking up these children and and taking care of them at the end of

078the day because right now it looks like it's going to be us so i i'm very torn all right we have dr gentry and then mr little a question i'm asking a question of dr battle dr battle do we provide e exceptional education services to private school students are you specific to promising scholars no i said to private school students do we provide exceptional education services and supports to private school students no not ever not direct services to private school students mr burch depending on sort of some of the circumstances we may have an obligation to provide some related services to students that attend private schools under the idea okay related services excuse my vernacular my bigger point being are there services that are allowed and that we provide to our students that are sometimes

079made available to private school students yes okay so we don't expect them to unenroll from private school to take advantage of their services so i i i truly understand the concerns i just wish that we could separate the two things i believe as miss player peters has tried to get us there and so the students are here the students are public school students in davidson county whether the request came to us because if the statement that i heard was i wish there was a way we could provide what these students needed this is the way this contract right here is the way for us to provide the supports the students need during the summer do we like the way it came about of course not um do we like how you know the the back

080story and the end of it but i think if we if we cut off the how and the why if it was a charter school that we had approved and it ended up being an asd school for some other reason it would be a different conversation so i just wish we could separate the two the students are here the students need the summer supports we have the ability to provide the summer supports we have the capacity with the staffing that we've already allocated so there's no extra anything for us at this point am i correct and so i think the rest of the comment commentary is very fair separate conversation to i think to miss elrod's part part of it is advocacy but maybe it goes back to the kinds of questions we need to

081ask right in the charter approval process in the charter denial process write us you know us and and and when we make the decision right lesson learned for us when we make the decision to not be the loa once we've denied and they've been approved these are the kinds of things that we can find ourselves dealing with because it's not because we we denied them the charters because we chose to not be the loa so if we had become the loa this would be different discussion correct my misunderstanding dr battle if i may yes yes if we were the lea they would be entitled to attend promising scholars y'all could excuse my alphabet soup over here okay um so yes in the uh since we're not the lea so again let's be clear that it's

082not just because we denied the charter is because we chose to not be the lea okay so again lessons learned for us i think we get past this moment and then start to think more clearly about how we can be a little bit more strategic and a little bit more uh introspective and reflective about the impact of our decisions and what those kinds of conversations need to be on the front end from here to with our legislators and everybody else and their grandmother when it comes to finding ourselves because if it's not the pandemic it's going to be something else there's always going to be and we've learned that the asd is not doing i'm saying this publicly is a recorder on yeah the asd is not doing a great job this isn't the first

083indication that they're not doing the best for our students right and so i think it's a bigger conversation that we have i think we get past this moment and then start to think strategically about how we begin to to white paper how we begin to to what are those things you put in the newspaper there we go we're not so smart tonight oh my gosh how we operate how we start to elevate the conversation and can bring more transparency to this process that have led us to this table having this discussion tonight so i would like permission to call for the question um and then encourage us to get into committee and have bigger conversation about about i appreciate your request i'll go ahead and allow mr little because he was not able to speak

084and then i have some updates for us as it relates to this conversation dr gentry said it well i'll leave my comment okay thank you so i will say that i had the pleasure of meeting with the executive director sarah morrison of the state board and what i realized very quickly is that we just don't have relationships with the people that we need to have relationships with i think when i first got on this board five years ago i would hear us making public statements or saying things on the record and i thought there was a real record or i thought that there were i thought that the state board or the legislature actually watched what we did and just to be honest they don't and not to say that they should but they they're

085disconnected from us just like we're disconnected from them so in late july the state board will have their quarterly meeting in nashville i've asked for us to consider hosting a lunch for them just to engage them i mean just to have regular conversation and to say to them these are our issues because all they hear when we talk about charter conversations is the fiscal impact they i had to make it plain that you know my son is going to jones and how different that is for him than a child that's going to a jt war or a child that's going to ache and julia green and just what what having an increased number of schools will do to my son's education in the pearl home cluster and so and she was very receptive she was

086like wow thank you for that perspective and so i think we just need to have those kind of conversations i think to your point your point around advocacy and miss masters we need to not just have those the letter writing campaign to the state legislature but go ahead and consider doing what previous mayors have done and host the legislature for something i mean no we can't host them for dinner because so many of them but we could we need to be having conversations with those education subcommittee members because they just do not know i mean i had one state legislator compare pearl cohn to lachlan and i'm like those are two different not only are they in different sides of town different levels of affluence but different tiers and so it's like okay we just

087really need to offer the olive branch so i think us being more intentional with reaching out to the different types of state education players like the state board but also the charter review board because now the state board no longer reviews charter applications so we need to engage both of them we still need to engage the legislature but we also need to engage the governor i mean we just we have to be kind of not attacking but we have to be intentionally reaching out to and building those relationships because i'm telling you the conversations that i've had the past couple of weeks have been very helpful in understanding why we are we feel so dismissed as a district so and and to a larger point you know i taught amelie's been it's always going to

088be a sore spot for me because those babies are going to their zone school it was stripped from us it was taken from us but those babies those families do not know again it's not like these families are in a hillsborough area where they have knowledgeable loud advocates these parents are are typically just surviving so they're not even they don't know what's what thriving looks like so they don't know that that zone school is not being managed by the board of education that they elected so again i'll support this but i do want us to be thinking about how do we make sure that this doesn't happen in the future how do we better advocate how do we better explain what's going on so that we don't see this continually and so that we don't

089have any more any more schools taken from us because we know that they aren't there it's hard it is hard work to not just educate children but to educate children in zone schools when everyone feels like they can do it better so with that being said thank you dr gentry for calling the question thank you for the commentary we'll go ahead and take our but our vote mrs player peters will you restate your motion i make the motion to approve contract 33 state board of education all right we've had appropriate it's been properly appropriately seconded we've had discussion please raise your hand if you're in favor all right please raise your hand if you are opposed raise your hand if you are abstaining all right mrs bubble thank you so much all right we will

090now move on to the number two mass protocol thank you dr battle is this a youth thing what's the virtual school curriculum thing on here i'm sorry i was part of confession well that was pretty consent sorry yeah oh i'm sorry so two was not under consent the master protocol all right don't listen to me it's not under consent so who is leading this conversation around the mass protocol gotcha okay thank you for that all right so we need a motion around the mask protocol do i have a motion all right i'll move approval for the mask protocol so we can have some discussion we have a second all right we'll open discussion ms bush were you i'm the most i'm a little confused i haven't heard the mass protocol none of us have heard

091it so are we gonna state what the mass protocol it was sent to us and so we we reviewed it and then if we haven't restated for the public and the parents that are here sure okay do you don't have it with you and i think make it clear that it's promising scholars it's this is not about the fault bugs we're going to put it up here on the screen you have it in your packet yeah i know i i have it i looked at it but i got it this is for the the public and parents that are attending they have spoken tonight so do we have any discussion around the mass protocol it needs to be uh david do you want to um did you have a question ms bush it needs to

092be read ms bush would you mind reading it no david you can come up and read it okay we'll rephrase so as chair as share ms bush if you would not like to read it everyone can read it here is there anyone that would like to this is no because you okay if you're gonna do a pro a mass protocol it needs to be stated on the floor for the public to hear just like anything else we do it still needs to be read but you don't want to read it i got you okay dr gendry hey man chuck you make it big enough so we can move on please i'm old thank you so much this is the promising scholars mass protocol the district is recommending the following mnps mass protocol to begin on

093monday june 14th after adoption by the board of education all students participating in the promising scholars program are encouraged to wear face face masks throughout the day masks are required when students are riding the bus transitioning between locations in hallways and other common areas and in group situations when social distancing is not possible masks are not required at any other time masks are required for staff members when transitioning with students between locations in hallways and other common areas and in group situations when social distancing is not possible masks are encouraged for staff members at all other times but not required all prior medical or other exemptions to the mnps mask policy will continue masks are strongly encouraged for those with underlying health conditions the above recommendations are based on balancing the declining rate of covet

09419 transmission in our community the student teacher ratio for promising scholars and current cdc guidance this protocol is subject to change based upon new information and guidance thank you for reading that dr gentry you are so welcome so now i reopen the floor for discussion all right mr masters and then mrs elrod i just have a question so if they're they're um encouraged like when they're sitting in class or outdoors but not required i'm just wondering especially with littles what will be the protocol for you know how they hang on to their mask to then put it on out in the hallway and then take it back off i just have these visions in my head of them like wadding up their mask and carrying it in their hand and then slapping it back on

095in the halls i'm just kind of wondering maybe i've been around too many little kids but i don't know how are we going to manage all that and reflecting on the protocol with regards to the option to remove the mask and doors in most situations it will be because a student is stationary at their desk or working with a teacher so they're able to properly place their mask down same thing will go for protocols as far as outdoor mass wearing is concerned we also have our covet support that's continuing and our schools will be working closely with all of our promising scholar sites on protocols and observing additional supports around supporting students on removal and replacement of the mask i also want to point out that again that's optional so if a student or staff

096member chooses to continue with their mask on throughout the day they're definitely able to do so indoors and outdoors i just have visions of the playground littered with masks you know any other discussion i'm sorry this is all right thank you so um currently the cdc's guidance which we anticipate to change because it's based upon the majority of schools inside the country is that students are wearing their masks inside and of course promising scholars is an optional program where parents had to agree that their students would wear a mask so my follow up is do we have a process for parents to unenroll into promising scholars if they're uncomfortable with this because they agreed and thought that this was going to be an environment where everyone was masked can they unenroll if this is something

097that they're on and they're uncomfortable with because of this change promising scholars it's an optional summer school experience so there's no mandates requirements for enrollment okay so do they just stop showing up or do they need to call the family notification would be that would be preferred would be my suggestion to these parents okay um so if this is going to be our masking protocol it's my understanding that we're doing this in anticipation of likely changing cdc guidance because of the summer programs that will be happening and that it's currently based on the high head counts that we typically have inside of our classrooms my concern is of course when we get into the fall and when we no longer have the flexibility and i guess we'll say blessing of a 13 to one head

098count and we're back to the typical 21 to 20 4 or whatever it might be head count so i just want to make sure that we're clear is this for just promising scholars and how are we making that clear to parents besides just the title so this language is titled promising scholars masking protocol it should also be noted that the the administration or the board can make a recommendation to shift our masking protocol in the event that we see a spike or need for us to mandate them in our schools i think we should also acknowledge that we are seeing a decreased um transmission rate number of cases uh within our city as you've already i'm acknowledging acknowledged particularly in promising scholars we are averaging about a 13 to one ratio um in our in

099our schools which is significant and also as of next week students age 12 and older will be eligible to be fully considered fully vaccinated and our 16 and older student population has been eligible for vaccines for several weeks before that so those are a few um high points we've also i've been in conversation with our partners in mahara in particular dr hildreth regarding where we are as a city with our transmission with our mask protocol i mean this is definitely being supported and as we're making progress as a city making sure we have forward movement with our social distancing and all of our safety protocols that are in play again because promising scholars we do have the average student-to-teacher ratio this is appropriate for us to give the option at this point for students to

100remove their mass particularly when they're indoor and not transitioning or in large crowds i appreciate appreciate our flexibility i want to make sure that we are still informative to our parents i seriously do not suspect that there's any type of increase this summer i would find that quite shocking but i want to make sure that we have some type of protocol in place of if there is an increased need for some whatever reason that we have some type of plan for that during promising scholars and of course in the future um and that we communicate it and with an emphasis of that they're still strongly encouraged particularly for promising scholars because a lot of those families um are under the impression that it was already going to be done because that was part of the

101agreement but i am glad that we're being flexible and that we're paying attention and we're still talking with um our experts and of course following the correct guidance and yeah that's really all i got are you mrs bush yes i am um um i think parents um that are still here and parents that are watching are a little bit at ease to see this this protocol be an option for our students i think we have heard we have seen this whole city has transitioned in an upward direction when it comes to getting back to some sense of normalcy and our students should never ever be put in a situation again without parental involvement as you have heard tonight throughout this whole year that parents have felt very much so neglected and making decisions for their

102children and this board and the administration not listening to their parent concerns which is the reason why parents have been has become so disconnected to our district and want to see more transparency and want to see more involvement they want to see it at the table also and i think it's as a parent of mmps student i feel the same way so i am with them and i understand how this whole year has been a struggle for parents i'm saying that i just have a question when it comes to the i see hallways or are there any other situations um with social addiction scene not being a possibility that the students have to wear that mask um yes according to this press mass protocol mass will be required on buses um they will still be

103full um this summer hallways for transitions or any time they might be in a large crowd so if there's any one time we need to pull groups of students together in auditorium and we'll have safety measures in the cafeteria as well we will require a mask upon entry and then once students are in class and seated and they can remove their mass they have the option to remove their mask at that point in time and the teachers also teachers as well so our policy is consistent between students and staff good okay um and my last question so in between that time hallways large groups and things like that um they're just carry them in their pockets or would are they going to have them around their necks or how does that work because they will

104not be transitioning with them not on so the only time the only option they will have is either outdoors or when they're in their classrooms so they will not be transitioning without their mask on okay all right thank you for the question welcome mrs elrod thank you i i just wanted to ask about how we're currently tracking covid obviously we're not doing the massive amount of tracking as we have been but how are we going to continue to show that and what is our process through promising scholars and i guess when the school starts do we have an update on that um yes so we are fortunate that through our promising scholars experience for the month of june and the first of july we have continue on with our nurses um in our schools as

105well as our cova support so all of those supports are still in place um which we're able to collect our data and have the necessary conversations and make adjustments as needed so while we'll be shifting um in our mass protocol we'll still have the supports on the ground in schools and the data to inform our decisions as we move forward that's what i thought i just wanted to make sure okay all right mrs bush and i have one last comment so as we get closer to the school year we'll be able to continue to monitor the mass mandate and if cases are down and we are steady like we are now we will possibly enter back into the school year with possibly this protocol or lessen the protocol that's correct so we will continue to

106monitor it could be very similar if we see spikes we could adjust or if we see significant improvements we could see a very different protocol going into the fall but this again in the promising scholars experience over the next four weeks gives us some experience and some data to help better inform our decisions as we move forward thank you all right so we've had a motion to accept the mass protocol it's been seconded all in favor please raise your hand all right it is unanimous we will move on to director's report thank you all for the conversation thank you madam chair in a moment we'll be bringing up dr paul changus and michelle springer to give you some updates around the academic and seo focused outcome progress for our students over the last year this

107pandemic has been challenging it's challenged us as educators in many ways and we know that we'll have some learning progress to address as a result of it but we've also had some growth opportunities that we need to leverage going forward and so we'll be leveraging all of our data and information to help better inform our planning over the summer as we're responding to our students needs during promising scholars and as we kick off the 21-22 school year on monday nearly 15 000 students were anticipated to walk through the doors of 71 promising scholars locations throughout davidson county where teachers are going to engage them in rigorous but fun learning opportunities over the next four weeks additionally our high school students have the chance to catch up on any grades of courses where they may have

108fallen behind this year or prior so at this time i would like to welcome up dr paul changus to give us an overview on our map scores and how we can use that data to ensure the success of our students as we're moving forward dr changus thank you dr battle madam chair members of the board i'm going to be presenting an overview of our literacy and numeracy focused outcomes i this was the third map assessment of the year and the first one administered within our buildings in a secure setting and the testing occurred in may and i'll be going into some more detail in terms of those results in just a minute but let me point out first of all that this the map assessment is a key part of helping us support and monitor

109the rigorous and personalized learning experiences for all students one of our core tenants this disaggregated data is also critical to helping us identify the inequities among our students in addition map data is a key part of three of our focused outcomes the growth data in literacy and numeracy is our primary measure in terms of looking at the progress of our students over time this year we used the february 2020 data as our baseline so that we could see progress over the past year prior to the pandemic and what's occurred over that past year through may in addition the map data is a key component for our trip for our students transitioning from tier to tier and also looking beyond high school we have assessment data that helps us not only look at current achievement but

110project forward uh to other assessments such as the tcap assessments or ten ready assessments and our act scores map is also a key component in several of our signature initiatives last month i addressed the personalized student dashboard and as a reminder map data and other assessment data were recently added to the parent portal is phase one of that personalized student dashboard we also added behavior data academic plan data and to the previously existing attendance and course information that was in the dashboard and i'll add that we now have the may map assessment data as part of that student dashboard it is live so some of the key points from this assessment the the test was administered between may 3rd and may 21st so we went right up to the end of the school year as

111you're probably well aware this occurred immediately following our tcap testing window which was from mid april april 21st to may 6th and i should point out that historically we have seen a bit of a dip in our scores in the may assessment likely due to test fatigue for those students who are taking ten ready and following it up with map assessment however we felt it was especially critical this year uh to to assess at the end of the school year in our buildings to get some indication of the actual progress that's occurred in the past year and we know that tcap scores don't come back until typically late summer we wanted data that was actionable now and i'll point out that our principals at the summer landing are using that data as part of their

112action planning process right now that data also gives us baseline data for our promising scholars and will help us monitor the growth that they make over the summer we had over 45 000 students tested in language arts and math and participation of ninety percent in both subjects as i said this occurred right after tcap we also had high test participation for tcap and i can't give you an exact number right now but we feel pretty comfortable that we were above 80 percent the the number required by the state for us to be uh held harmless with state accountability uh however uh unless we get confirmation from the state before the end of next week when the participation waiver is due we will be filing a waiver just to be safe but i want to say

113that our families and our schools really stepped up and and participated heavily in testing we still see some score inflation for students that were tested virtually particularly in the early grades but as was the case in january for the vast majority of students we feel that these scores are a valid indicator of student achievement the academic growth that we saw from pre-pandemic february of 2020 to may was below the national average which that national average is based on norms established in a normal school year pre-pandemic we don't have data on what's happened nationally in the past year obviously uh the assessments varied across the country but despite uh all of the interruption we still had over a third of our students 41 in language arts 36 in mathematics that made growth that was equivalent to

114or or greater than what we would see in a normal school year and as observed in january there was a slight widening in the achievement gap for our economically disadvantaged students a few percentage points but not for our students with disabilities or english learners this was a case in both subjects and it was also the case when we removed scores that looked unlikely based on the growth data that we had those would be cases where there either was some inflation in scores potentially due to a virtual testing or a deflation in scores due to technical problems that occurred in a virtual setting so we'll dig deep more deeply into the individual subject area results these are language arts scores this first section looks at the achievement of our students in may you can see in

115the first column the number of students tested then the median national percentile and as a reminder that number is is telling how our typical student did compared to students nationally that number is the percent of students nationally that's in a normal year that scored lower than our our typical student did this year so if you look across grades k through 9 we had 37 our typical student outscored 37 percent of students nationally in a normal year 50 would be the national average but you also see at kindergarten we did have higher scores and and again we had a we had a higher percentage of students in those grades with with virtual testing that did have some some inflation the next set of data looks at growth from august the start of the year to may

116and this is how we would normally measure our academic growth in a typical year from from beginning of the school year and i'll just say as is as a reminder all of our students in august were tested in a virtual setting so we had those issues that we had some concerns about the baseline and that likely has impacted our growth scores when we had over 60 percent of our students in may testing in an in-school setting so we have a situation here particularly those early grades where where scores did appear inflated that the growth is very minimal a better indication of our growth over the past year and this is why we addressed it as our focused outcome is to look at the progress that occurred pre-pandemic february of 2020 to this past may now

117the number of students tested as you can see is going to vary greatly in those early grades as a reminder in 20 the 2020 2019-2020 school year we only mandated grades two through nine so those would be our current third graders and above if you look at the first column that's the current grade level so we're going to have fewer students who have multiple data points in those early grades those would be schools that chose to test in those grades but it wasn't a mandate but what you'll see is that our growth across those grades we across all grades we had 41 percent of our students that did meet or exceed their national percentile compared to where they were over a year ago that's over twelve thousand of our students that made growth equivalent to

118or greater than we would see in a normal school year in mathematics we see some similar trends scores in mathematics are a little bit lower than we saw in language arts that's been a trend that we've seen over multiple years again that's relative to the nation but you know we see about a third 34 percent of our students exceeding the typical uh our typical student exceeding about a third of the students nationally again we see inflated scores in those early grades particularly kindergarten but a little bit at first grade as well when we look at the growth from august again we see some what are likely deflated scores in those early grades in terms of growth because of the the virtual testing but again growth is is not where it's been in a typical year

119normally our median national percentile for growth is is around 50 or higher than the national average when we look at the data from february of 2020 we see that a little over a third 36 percent of our students across all grade levels in mathematics maintain their ranking to students nationally uh in terms of the growth that occurred in the normal school year that's over 10 600 students so we we the growth is not where it has been in most years but it's not dramatically different than what we've seen historically this is a different way of looking at the data we know that that when we have compared in prior years from spring to spring we also know that there's some in a normal year there's there's some learning loss that occurs over the summer this

120is obviously has been extended a bit uh in the past year a different view of the progress that's occurred in the past year is to look at how our tiers compare in terms of the median national percentiles these would be this year second through fourth graders compared to second through fourth graders in 2020 and the blue bars are the current year the the gold bars are the prior year and again we we see a little bit of a loss in terms of achievement particularly in elementary and middle school grades again those achievement scores are relative to a national norm that was established prior to 2020. the the difference in the high school grades is much smaller another way of looking at achievement is to look at the percent of students in those top two quintiles

121above the 61st percentile these are the students that are higher achieving that would typically expect to be expected to to have a good chance of obtaining proficiency on a state assessment and we see a little bit of a decline in elementary and middle and a slight decline in high school across grades about four and a half percentage point difference mathematics similar trends the only exception we actually had higher scores this year in ninth grade than we saw in ninth grade the prior year but elementary and middle achievement is a little bit lower same thing when we look at the quintiles we're lower in elementary and middle tiers however a little bit higher at the high school grades with regard to our student subgroups and this is looking at one-time measures of achievement as we've seen

122in past years that the differences across subgroups for one-time measures are quite significant large differences from subgroup to subgroup particularly our english our economically disadvantaged students with disabilities english learners falling well below their peers in terms of achievement we also see that our asian and white students are above the national average of 50 again that's in a normal year our black and hispanic students however are well below that 50th percentile mathematics similar trends in terms of wide achievement gap differences and again our math scores tend to be a little bit lower than our language arts scores relative to the nation but when we look at growth as is typically the case we see less variation in terms of performance growth scores tend to be more consistent there is one subgroup economically disadvantaged students that i

123mentioned earlier lost some ground relative to their peers 37.6 percent of economically disadvantaged students maintained or exceeded their national percentile ranking compared to a little over 43 percent of students who were not economically disadvantaged but if you look at our students with disabilities they actually scored higher than their classmates english learners not only scored higher but they exceeded the national average of 50 percent again as they're learning the language they are making we've historically seen our english learners make good growth over time in mathematics again less variation than we see for one-time measures again our economically disadvantaged students lost a little bit of ground compared to their peers in terms of growth but again our students with disabilities and our english learners had higher growth than than their classmates so where does this leave us

124in terms of supports and next steps already available on our mnps promising scholar website is our resources to support at home literacy and math learning for families we will be working in the next few months to identify ambitious but realistic targets and for map and tcap in terms of looking at growth targets for our students we want these targets to be not just maintaining our ranking but what is it going to take for lower achieving students to get on the right trajectory toward future success and we'll be we've been compiling longitudinal data on our students over multiple years to help us look at the patterns that have occurred we know there are students who have exceeded all expectations in terms of growth over time that we want to we want to find the right kind

125of measure that will be realistic for the majority of our students and again that's that's a target that we will set as a baseline but the conversations around goal setting need to include families need to include the educators as we set those short-term and long-term goals and then we'll provide families and staff training and support to access and interpret the map scores and other data that's available in our student dashboard we want those that dashboard to help facilitate the conversations between parents and teachers when they when they meet on a regular basis uh and we know that we have some interpret interpretive materials that are already in the dashboard but we anticipate rolling out some videos and other information soon as a reminder this visual is just and i know it's not easy to see

126but it's just a reminder that the map data is in the dashboard now and as i've mentioned we have the may data in there we provide scale scores that will allow us to look at growth over time national percentile rankings and growth measures did your child make growth that was below equivalent to or above what would be expected nationally but i also want to introduce a plan that we have to engage our stakeholders over the next few months in helping us develop the next phase of the student dashboard and we'll be starting soon to engage families students community members teachers we will do this through a series of meetings of formal groups but also focus groups that are representative of the population at large and also survey efforts including surveys linked to the the current

127dashboard for those families that go there we want feedback on the current dashboard what what enhancements would you like to see but we will also be developing some some mock-ups from the feedback we've received so far and will continue to receive we want to bounce those ideas off groups going forward we'll have more detailed information about about these opportunities soon but we're we're interested in starting to to build the next phase of the dashboard and finally how the board can support us continue to assist us in communicating the resources and opportunities available to family including the the the dashboard the student dashboard and as as always policy advocacy and funding are critical to monitor and address unfinished learning especially at this critical time and again as i've mentioned on more than one occasion we want

128to focus on growth and and state accountability policy that looks at growth rather than one-time measures of academic achievement and with that i will turn it over to dr springer questions from him let me ask questions on this portion or do we want to wait until we'll get through the presentation and we'll come back to the questions thank you dr changus thank you dr battle chair bugs and the members of the board like academics social emotional learning has and continues to be an emphasis for metro nashville public schools in fact it is one of our focused outcomes very much connected to academics as dr changus mentioned earlier with our focused outcomes core tenants and signature practices sel also is a focus it helps us to re-envision our central office as a support hub and empower

129and equip our leaders as well as well as our other core tenants and there are specific strategies aligned to sel that we'll speak to here in just a moment to get us started i we must celebrate we've had quite a year and our schools have done the best with what they have and they've done a great job they have met the mark in many instances especially around attendance and our navigator support and so this year we wanted to make sure that we gave special recognition through our blitz awards to schools who were thriving in the areas of attendance and navigators so we always want to thank our principals and our schools for the work that they do on a daily basis the key here is that the optimal conditions are required for learning right so

130that means academics i mean that means attendance and it also means behavioral outcomes and so for just a few moments we'll talk through those here what you see is that for our average daily attendance we want our students to achieve satisfactory attendance and we started the year off like many of our schools throughout the country working to keep our students engaged and we've made progress we started the year at 87.4 percent um of our students engaged and we ended the year with a four percent increase and for that we are thankful and we know it is due to our interventions that were in place in the work of our principals and our support hub staff to make it happen through our interventions such as our attendance assessment our collaborative referrals and our attendance plans as

131you can see over the course of the years the number of those interventions increased over time and that's what you want to see for our schools related to behavioral outcomes and the number of unique behavior incidents that you will see year over year um you'll see our first year we started in 2019 and then in 2020 and then this year you see we landed at unique incident that involved about less than a percentage of our students we want our students to be self sufficient have self-efficacy develop those advocacy skills and understand the concepts of community including personal and social uh responsibility and we know that we all have a role to play in that work and so we monitor these trends another trend i want to call out tonight are the percentage of incidents and

132suspensions by year and what you'll note here is that there has been a steady decline from 2018-19 to 1920 to 2021 when we think about incidents and suspensions by year same holds true for expulsions year over year you see a decline in expulsions and yes we know that we've had an extraordinary year and you'll expect to see differences in the data year over year and we anticipate being able to continue to provide supports so these numbers stay in a space where we have optimal learning experiences in our classrooms i want to shift now to transitions which is also part of our focused outcomes our data national data local data tells us that with an emphasis on transitions our students transitioning from elementary school to middle and middle to high and then from high to their

133post-secondary experiences is going to make sure that our students experience success so this year we've had a heavy emphasis on all of our students especially our seniors and we've been able to meet the mark and we're able to make some progress in some areas i want to call out a few of them now 81 of our students took steps towards college in the midst of it all enrollment fafsa tn promise you name it 75 percent of our students completed the teen promise application which is a no easy feat it took the support of our community support of our schools and our students drive to want to make take steps after their high school experience and then lastly 87 percent of our students submitted their fafsa applications all of that must work in tandem in order

134to make sure that our students have a quality after high school experience we want them to have lifelong success and we've got to make sure that we've set up the supports for transitions to be able to make that happen and that work doesn't stop now that the graduations have ended we're continuing the support for our seniors through promising scholars the credit recovery dual enrollment so we want to make sure our seniors land in a good space and now i'm transitioning to our signature initiatives because it all is coupled together to ensure that those optimal conditions are right and right for the academic to move forward so first speaking of navigators you all are familiar with that support that we've provided that one-on-one check-in with our students and i want to emphasize the fact that we've

135been keeping the pulse through our dashboard as dr chang has mentioned our personalized dashboard will continue in that trajectory identifying any needs that our students have and so that we can respond most immediate uh to those needs as they arise this year we've had over 350 000 actually more than 350 000 check-ins for our students and we look forward to enhancing the work for next year in addition it'll take the supports and interventions such as our signature initiatives such as the virtual health centers at the end of the year we served almost 17 000 families on their tech needs families came to those health centers for a variety of needs and we wanted to make sure that we met those needs and we can we'll continue to do just that so this summer for those

136of you that may not know we're continuing the virtual help center support monday through friday at the schools that are listed pearl maplewood glencliff and hillwood high school and our families can come and get the support that they need in addition to that in the fall we want to expand so that we will encompass our sel expanded supports and and partner with our enrollment centers and increase our community and parent outreach through our centers so great things are ahead what we also know is that we have a charge from dr adrian battle so that every student is known and it is up to us to set the right conditions in every school every day and in every classroom so here's how we think of this we think of this as coordinated efforts for collective impact

137we want transition plans for all of our students as they go from tear to tear we want them to include specific experiences for those students we want them to have goals and we want them to have specific plans to be able to support those transitions and many of you know that we are executing on our advocacy centers we believe though these two power moves will get us in the right space to ensure that every student is known and we thank you for your continued support and we will forge ahead to ensure that sel continues to remain a focus in metro nashville public schools thank you thank you dr springer and um with that madam chair we'll turn it back over to you thank you dr battle all right we have questions this up for discussion

138mrs pooper walker this is from mr changus what's it doctor mister doctor doctor you can just call me paul okay so i was curious about um so the last map assessment you had kids take it both virtually and in person did you see a difference in those scores so in terms of growth very minor differences slightly favoring our in-person learners by in the neighborhood of two or three percentage points there were differences uh self-selection in terms of achievement going in and going out the the students that were in virtual learning had higher test scores going at the beginning if you look if you go back to february of 2020 they had higher median national percentiles they also had higher media national percentiles at the end of the experience but the growth was was was virtually

139in a small difference this is consistent with the findings of the tennessee educational research alliance at vanderbilt that looked at results from six districts across the state they did not find significant differences in growth between virtual and in-person learners wow okay so i want to ask you quickly about the the language arts and mathematics results by grade level so overall 31 of our students were proficient would you say that's correct in may of 2021 in literacy overall that's page three i'll slide whatever that i don't know what the slide which slide without a game is five four five almost there okay so the average right is 31 of our kids we're in the fourth or fifth quartile yeah yeah yeah 31.8 percent of our students were in the in the top 40 percent nationally in

140a normal year uh 40 of students nationally would be in those top two quintiles no normal year nationally yes in a normal year nationally in normal year for us where are we on that we're typically more in the 35 range a little below the national average then um so would you classify that as losing ground i mean i would classify that as losing ground wouldn't you say if you're talking about losing ground compared to a normal year it's it is a little bit lower what we don't know is how this compared to what happened nationally in 2021 we we don't have data that's gonna all of the norms we actually with the map assessment went to news new norms last year that were established based on the 20 2018-2019 school year and all the analysis

141was was released in i don't know that any as any test company is going to try to norm this year now we will when we get tcap results we'll be able to see how our students did relative to students in tennessee but that'll be a little while is it possible to get a breakdown of the other three quartiles of how how where kids were on that i'm just curious how many were in the first and second versus like third fourth fifth and certainly provide that um okay i think for for me obviously i think for this board and actually uh i can i can give you some of that data i mean i do have a quintile breakdown i'll just take a second to tell you that when we look at english language arts uh

142we had across grade levels about uh 40 of students uh in language arts that were in the first quintile that's only slightly above the national average but again we do have a little bit of score inflation occurring at some grades so if you look at uh but if you look at elementary middle school grades we we got up to as high as 45 percent uh of students in that bottom quintile almost high a little bit higher students were in the bottom quintile yep yeah so that should be alarming to this group right half of our kids were almost half or in the bottom now i recognized that we had all kinds of challenges and but i will be curious to see how that compares to tan ready scores um if it's correlates you know if

143there's and just keeping in mind that it's a comparison to pre pandemic either way i just think obviously urgency is for me is real about these numbers um so just looking forward to seeing what goals we set and how we're going to meet those thanks all right dr gentry yeah so i'd like to go back to the this forward i think you had some strategy slides so now that we've seen this data there were some plans right so i'd like to go fast forward to that because i i i think we just need to be honest and we've had this conversation before we had this conversation in preparing for the director's evaluation that things were a little off right in this past a few rounds of testing but that's not and i've all you know

144i'm very adamant about this as well that's not a story you can tell to a parent and it matter a whole lot right you get about at the end of the day they're looking at numbers and so i just want to if you can just walk us again just one more time through just the strategies dr battle if you would and if you would rather point it back to dr chang because i don't really have passion but i think now if we would just re-listen to these through that ear right that we're looking at numbers and we're comparing them to pre-pandemic when things were for whatever normal meant then was normal right and then do we see these strategies as really addressing right so again the variables are so many now uh and the environment

145environments are not standard we don't have consistent environments for testing we don't have consistent methodologies really so in different environments they were tested in different right different ways um we know we had some parental um coaxing in some of the situations because parents just didn't know they had not been apart and been in the testing environment and they didn't view that any differently than any other assignment assignment potentially so you know we've got a lot of variables there but i just want to make sure that there's a comfort level that the strategies are to understand what the loss really and without me looking at this i'm just thinking right that we need to have strategies that give us some clarity of what the loss was um and not just in numbers but where where are

146we right so what areas were kids sliding but and regardless of whether it's because of inflated gray and then that's a whole nother conversation but where was the sliding taking place and and what strategies i would say including promising time during promising scholars is going to help us kind of get students back to base because the most we could hope for is to get us back to where we were right so we still may see no growth if we look back to we go back to compare the next set of scores to pre-pandemic we may just get kids back to where they were and then how do we get them pushed from there forward right so yeah a couple things um in response and i think dr chang has hit on three of those steps

147uh particularly thinking about um summer i think it is encouraging that we do have a promising scholars program so we're not leaving students at the finish line the the learning um and the support continues for us to intervene where students are which is why was so critically important for us to minister this third map so that we had the most up-to-date information to be responsive to there is a lag in getting the tn ready data back in our hand for us to plan around so that's one area i would also point out that actually this week our principals and our administrators are using map data to create action plans for their students because i would caution us to take lump everything together in percentages because this is really about every student being known so we're

148trying to drill down to the individual student level because when you do that we might have a very different picture here about where our students started and the progress that they have made even if they did not move quintiles over this past year so we're digging down as deep as we can go and the student level to respond to our student needs during promising scholars which i'll remind you even before the legislation we were planning to hold a summer experience for our students and planning for the upcoming school year i think to your question as well dr gentry it's important for us to point out our signature initiatives that are in play we anticipated um that we might have some learning progress challenges in some of these areas which is why we launched initiatives around

149individual tutoring for our students which will be kicking back up starting again this summer so we will continue to work with our students which is also why we've launched our supports around khan academy the supports there at home learning support as well as training for our staff and our literacy reimagined work so we were anticipating where we might have some challenges given that we've been progress monitoring across the entire year and so the good news is that we do have the month of june four weeks to continue to work with our students get additional data help them make additional progress and then being prepared for responding again under the umbrella of every student known once we kick off at the start of the school year and so i'll just pause for just a second dr

150changes is there anything you want to add dr bellamy did i forget something that should be noted in this moment the only and dr bellamy can can weigh it i'll just add that you know with with our multi-tiered systems of support we try to address all the specific skill deficits that we see that's that's a normal process there are other assessments that we have that that drill deeper into the specific skills that students are struggling with and one other thing i want to acknowledge why we wanted to leverage our time with our principals um this summer is that there are lots of nuances that go along with this data and we wanted to be side by side with them to help them understand those correlations and the alignment based upon where students were in correlation

151to their growth and achievement scores and so we wanted to make sure the right supports were in place so that we were interpreting the data accurately as well and responding accordingly we have mrs elrod and then um it's player peter it's the miss masters then mr little so gotcha thank you as finishing writing a note um so we are we have this information on the dashboard and we have all agreed that we think that that's wonderful and you know available to parents do we have or are we going to be able to have the ability to see the percentage of parents that access this information and then reach out to those parents that have not accessed it i mean i think it's important we i do agree with every student known but every student can

152only be known sometimes if their parent is also known and we only know that if we're able to track it so are we going to be doing that we we do have the capacity and i have not gotten a report from from our i.t department in the past few weeks but we were only only about a quarter of our parents were accessing this as of a couple of months ago we hope as we put more information in there and and do more of uh provide more resources to families in communication and we are working on a communication plan that as we go into the new year we will see those numbers go up but but your point is is a critical one we we need to get this into more hands and we also hope

153that through the engagement opportunities over the next few months as we gather inside input from our stakeholders about what will be useful to them and what they would like to see i'm in the dashboard they will also encourage parents to sign up knowing that this you know great resource is available to them i think there is or there are some parents definitely that are not aware that it exists because it was towards the end of the school year and all the other many reasons and factors that would pass into that so i'm glad to know that we have a communication plan with that to go along with that i appreciate um on slide 12 that we had the plan or the suggested kind of plan for the stakeholder engagement i think that's key to whatever

154our goals are and i'm glad to hear that we we're going to set our goals based upon not only what the scores are that we're seeing but also what our teacher input is and of course parent input i didn't notice anything in here about parent-teacher conferences or anything along those lines are we planning on going to that granular level um yeah so two separate things this is just the engagement sessions in building out phase two of the personalized student dashboard which this doesn't go as far as the parent teacher conferences dates but we are looking at structures and protocols that help better inform and prepare both our staff and our stakeholders our parents and students around the effective use of those parent-teacher conferences what data we should be looking at how to interpret those scores

155and how to align supports to help accelerate student outcomes okay because i know that we've had the discussion more than once of parent-teacher conferences in the future are going to be kind of side by side with this dashboard and so i think that that's great news so parents can be involved and informed but also that there's some guiding conversations in those conferences so i hope that that continues and i appreciate you providing this to us thank you mrs player peters how long would it take to get the test scores to our comparative districts or other school districts of how this how they test it throughout the school year so we i guess my initial like you want to isolate this year to a certain extent so how do we compare our test scores from this

156pandemic year to other school districts when we get the information to see a comparison prior pandemic during pandemic and then also post are you referring to map or tn ready or both oh sorry dr changes if you want to take a stab at it i'll i'll start with 10 ready uh we anticipate that probably sometime in mid late july we'll start to get some some statewide data into to compare our our test scores too as far as data on a national level i'm not as optimistic that we're going to have good comparison data i've been involved with the council of great city schools pretty much from from the start of the pandemic until now phone calls every other week with other researchers and assessment departments and because of the differences in the way schools were

157set up and the way they assessed it's going to be hard to to pull all that together into it's more apples to oranges i'm i'm afraid i think the the ten ready tcap data will probably get be the best data we have in terms of comparison data thank you all right mrs masters the mr little and then mrs tyler so my first question is just will we be um in school instructing children at every level how to access the dashboard themselves so we are building out structures we're trying to really leverage input of our staff and our other stakeholders around how to do this best let's be honest we've been between parent-teacher conferences and how we leveraged it in the past it's been a struggle for us in communicating and keeping everyone up to date

158with the information but that is something that we've been discussing on how we can build the structures out that everybody's empowered the staff has the necessary training and information and log on our parents and our students so we're definitely thinking about on that area and planning around how to move everyone forward and in that direction cool cool i just i know one of my kids had a little notebook in first grade where she tracked all her data herself and that was just very empowering for her um my second question is it's around the sel presentation actually i was just looking at these numbers i mean and yes the suspension rates have gone way down and the expulsion rates have gone way down because only about half of the kids were in in physically in school

159so i'm just wondering how are we going to balance to be sure that you know at the end of this next school year that we're able to sort of appropriately demonstrate that we're still headed in the right direction with those metrics even though i mean we know it's going to be higher next year because we're going to be in person all year great point i mean it's all within context and understanding the type of view we had having half of our students in person versus virtual so those are all areas that we've kept in mind some of the work that this board should be proud of is your priorities going into next year knowing that we will be increasing access around our advocacy centers and i know we're pending final approval from metro council but

160pending that that is approved that will be an additional support expanded support in our schools we've also through some of our essar funds already started to expand of our mental health supports in our schools you also saw many many strategies around how we're going to redesign planning to redesign our aocs i'm looking at our student-to-staff ratios in the area of counseling and with our psychologists and so pending where we are with our operating budget in a few weeks and our ongoing conversations around how we'll leverage esser smartly and strategically not to to avoid those funding cliffs that we are all aware of we'll continue to expand upon that but that is this board's number two priority is around the academic and the seo integration and so i'm very proud and very optimistic about being able

161to implement and execute upon those strategies as we move into next school year and then just one more i just want to make sure i heard you correctly so you've been principals have been meeting you've been meeting with principals to use map data to um create plans for children at the individual level something some might call it individualized plan of sorts for every child um i'm trying to make a difference thesaurus okay let me be clear the term is a student a personalized student dashboard so we are leveraging our student personalized dashboard to under the umbrella of every student known and that's what we've been putting before our principals and our school teams as our charge that we have to continue i'm digging deep around making sure that every student is known and this is

162not work that happens overnight and so we're building out our structures we're looking at our instructional practices we're looking at our systems we're looking at our leadership all across the district to ensure that we're moving in that direction as quickly as we can um to ensure we have those protocols um of our data assessment to answer every student is known and they were responding correctly so if i am dr demps at the magical and wonderful goodlettsville middle school i'm looking at this data in relationship to every child along with my team and creating individual plans for those to learn okay and we're establishing protocols and i i had an opportunity to speak with all principals today and we talked specifically about our charge of every student being known we've thought we've talked about that through

163the lens of our focused outcomes our signature initiatives and so they rolled up their sleeves immediately today and started to dig into our curriculum they will be doing some action planning we're really proud of some of the protocols that have been developed under dr mason and his team with the executive directors of what they will look like as as we move forward this will be ongoing training over the summer and we were we've got many many days weeks i guess i could say of planning with our principal teams in preparation for next school year at the same time we have a level of this planning and digging into our data happening with our promising scholars so we are asking a lot of our school teams but they are stepping up to the plate and doing

164what's necessary because we're in agreement that this is about every student being known and there's lots of excitement around where we're going with our personalized student dashboard thank you all right mrs tyler mister i'm so sorry so mr little mrs tyler mrs bush mrs pooper walker um so question as i look at the map data and we think about the new state laws around retention in third grade how do we as is there a process on how we explain the parents how we can recover their kids so they don't face the interventions for the new state law so how do we talk to parents around this map data because even you know before the board i just learned the difference in an 18 and a 21 which 21 makes you college ready so it's like

165a c plus so how do we help parents understand this data dr changus as a as dr battle indicated this is a process uh and will take some time to to get all of the information that you're talking about uh in to the right uh parties uh but i can tell you that when you talk about 21 on the act we have data from both ten ready and from map that is highly predictive of future success and there are i mentioned earlier setting aggressive ambitious targets that would move students on the right trajectory and one of the things that we've been looking at are what are the projections of students in third and fourth grade and and on up toward a 21 on the act we can actually get that information from from our value-added

166assessment system and what so what kind of growth over it may take multiple years to get students on that trajectory but what kind of aggressive growth plan can get us there uh but i just i want to manage expectations in terms of first we have to to help people understand some basic uh terms in terms of what these test scores provide then the next step is the goal setting and and and helping us jointly between families and educators talk about short-term and long-term goals for students but that's the goal to get to get to that successful outcome by the time students leave us at the end of high school indeed dr changes and just um as a reminder that particular piece of the legislation will go into effect a year from now all right mrs

167tyler um i just want to take a minute to go back and get a little bit of clarity on the norming so it's my understanding that when we have a standardized test it is you know rolled out to a representative group of students and then they put their scores on a bell curve they check to make sure that the results are valid and then they break it down is that correct or am i wrong that that's the basic process it's taking again a nationally representative sample they look at various student demographics at each grade level and we make comparisons to growth to achievement and growth that occurred in a fixed year it's not the current year but it may be last year in this case or two years ago or maybe in some cases five

168years ago nationally the trends don't move dramatically over time but they do move a little bit so most companies re re-establish norms every five or six years okay that was going to be my next question that's good um so when we break that bell curve up into quintiles what do we have names for those quintiles right like on grade level progressing have we named those quintiles or not well most companies will will refer to them uh as below i'm sorry low low average average high average and high it's again it's just a relative comparison on that bell curve and and nationally there would be 20 percent of students in each of those quintiles um so if the third quintile would be the average why are we only looking at the data from our fourth and

169fifth quintiles well that's what we've what we've been reporting we actually have the data on all five quintiles and i'll be happy to share that but the reason we go have focused on the fourth or fifth is because the the state of tennessee has set a very high bar on ten ready that's not just being on grade level so much as it is being college and career ready and we have found that uh being at the 50th percentile or that normal range your chances of being successful on on ten ready being on track or mastered are less than fifty percent it's when you get up into the q4 q5 the top two quintiles that you're likely to to to reach state's definition of proficiency so our state's definition of proficiency basically says 60 percent of

170the students are not going to pass if you look at it from a net compared to a national assessment yes again they're using the data that's fairly consistent with what we've seen in the national assessment of educational progress or nape which is telling us that the majority of students nationwide are not not reaching the high standards that would be equivalent to a 21 or higher on the act but yeah we as a state we move from some of the lowest to some of the highest standards in the country hey um just bell curves are very frustrating to me because by definition there must be people who fail there must be and i i would like for us to have a system that doesn't require failure um so i so if we are looking at our

171kids that are in that third quintile even though the idea is that they won't score well on the act moving forward but technically they are actually on grade level is that correct nationally they are on grade level they are i i've i've had i've had this conversation with with others at the state because uh there are a lot of different definitions of what it means to be on grade level at one time the standard definition was you're at the 50th percentile or higher and but but the state has moved in a direction of saying uh that may not be good enough to to guarantee future success so we you know we're we're shooting at a higher bar in tennessee when we talk about being on track or mastered when i but while we're focused on

172the percentage in key four and q5 when we look at trajectories of students we're looking at the students in the bottom quintile getting them to the second quintile yes you know in the following year maybe to the third quintile it's trying to make growth over time that will get us to those to those higher standards that will guarantee success getting getting from one quintile to the next may not be a one year process it may be multiple years we want to continue to see students relative standing improve and to your point the bell curve is shouldn't be the defining factor it's what is what does it take in terms of uh proficiency on this test to ensure success that you have the standards and the skills that are necessary and has anybody done any sort

173of study to that looks at that third quintile to find out what their outcomes in life are if they are failing in life or if they have jobs they paid their bills they have they don't go to jail they don't i mean are these people failing in life if they are on grade level uh that's a very broad question i will tell you that i don't think you'll find that the majority of our of our graduates are failing it depends on your definition but a lot of i can i can assure you i know of a lot of examples of people who are going to be just fine in the third quintile and maybe even the second clientele again we want to get students to the point where they have options uh going forward but

174uh no that students in the third quintile are going to look like the average american student at that grade level okay i just i really struggle with using these tests as a measurement of competency when they're designed to have people who will not meet the measurement and the way they are created is to have people who are failing and to me it should not be a designation of let's find who has failed but it should be a designation of where are we finding this grade level and then how are we moving like for example how wide is the bell curve is it is it a very wide where this the second quintile and the fourth quintiles are very spaced apart or is it a skinny bell curve where you know there might just be one

175question difference okay i'll just i'll just uh put it this way that there there are enough items on these tests that there's going to be some variation but uh i share a lot of the same concerns about using normative data i think the point for us is to drill deeper into the content what standards what skills are are lacking and address those if it happens to me we want students to to get to a point where they're doing well on these tests because they do correlate to act scores and other measures but it's not we shouldn't be thinking about it is how many items i got right it's it's what skills what standards uh i should address and that goes to the other point of with multi our multi-tiered systems of support we drill even

176deeper when we find a student who may be lacking in an area we can go more specifically into those into those specific skills and if i can add ms tyler i think you know to your point here one of the greatest benefits of the map assessment is the generation of the writ scores ready for instruction today is what that stands for so that our teachers can see you know after the assessment where relative to those skills and those standards where our students need the scaffolding are ready for their push or or that enrichment and i'm just you know speaking as a previous um instructional leader in a building that was so valuable to us to get that that data and really keying in and focusing on that instruction immediate adjustment and instruction in the classroom

177okay yeah no i agree that there needs to be longitudinal and you need to be able to see where you're going um i don't necessarily think we need to make our students feel like they're failures if they're in that third quintile because they're not and it is disingenuous to say that they are failing because they are not in the above average quintile and i feel like that is something that has been used as a scare tactic to make us feel like we have to teach even closer to the test so we can get more growth and i have a quote that comes from a researcher who says i have reviewed more than 300 studies of k-12 academic tests what i've discovered is startling most tests used to evaluate students teachers and school districts predict almost

178nothing except the likelihood of achieving similar scores on subsequent tests i have found virtually no research demonstrating a relationship between those tests and measures of thinking or life outcomes so when you hear people debate the use of tests in schools the talk usually assumes that the only alternative to the current approach is no testing at all but that's not true the problem is these tests have been put up as the only marker and the one that matters the one that lets a teacher get tenure or not the one that says whether a school district is failing or not and they're not correlating to life outcomes they are important information that we need to make sure we are moving our students along but they are not the end-all be-all of how well we are educating our

179students all right mrs bush mrs poopa walker mrs elrod mr little you're before me oh okay okay um thank you um i was just thinking about something and it's just a thought i know that now we have two of our student school board members that are coming aboard and i'm not sure dr battle that's something that we could look at as far as incentives for our students to be more involved with the process of this student dashboard because what i found during the process of the florida virtual learning is that a lot of our families and our parents they were so disconnected to the program because they didn't understand it and they were so confused on how to navigate through fvla what is it called foreign personal yeah and so um i actually told my

180student that he was responsible for giving me information and i did it on a weekly basis after i found that he was pretty much failing when they first started and so it was hard for me to also navigate because it was so many different folders there was a lot going on in internally with this with this um platform so my recommendation is that we have some type of incentive for our students especially el students because they depend on their those parents depend on their students to bring information because of lack of not knowing english they don't understand but but our students are so smart that they they know how to navigate through the system so my thought is is we even on a school level principal teachers that we take time out at least if

181it's not once a month or whatever the case may be and we train our students on how to get on this dashboard so that they can best go back and advise their parents to be more responsible because i do feel that students do take a lot of responsibility once we make them accountable and we need to start doing that especially where we are right now so this dashboard is going to be so important for us to be able to gauge and be able to move these students forward and be able to identify their weaknesses and their strengths so i really really do highly recommend that you know before we left for our virtual learning if we would have had the students in front of their teachers right before this before things spiked up and they

182had to be virtual they would have been taught how to go through the process of getting on the system and understanding it so that we wouldn't have been nine weeks into it before they understood it so i was just i would just make a recommendation that we train our students to get on the dashboard we have the two student board members that are coming aboard maybe they can also impress upon their peers on how to use it and encourage them and keep putting that forth an effort to make sure that all our students are trained from middle to high school i know it's a little bit harder for our elementary students but because we're going to be utilizing this dashboard moving forward this will be a great opportunity to get the students involved so they

183can learn they are so tech savvy that they know how to get on a system like this and be able to understand what their needs are and what the supports they need because they know how to go and ask questions and get help and also show their parents what's happening so i think that's a really good idea to also get the students involved so they can get their parents more involved and that's that's something i feel that helped me with my son so just a suggestion maybe we can have some incentives um to have our students to get more involved with the with the dashboard so that that way we can kind of help minimize the lack of use for this particular dashboard so that's my comment all right mrs pupa walker just a quick

184promising caller scholars question were um are students going to be pre and post assessed for promising scholars dr bo yes they will be is it what are you all using dr changes you want to come up and give the specifics we are administering a test that we're required to administer from the state it's a short ten item test for english language arts 10 item tests for mathematics seriously okay all right thanks and we'll get it in five years ten items mean ten questions and you have ten ten questions in each subject all right mrs elrod then mr little thank you i have a follow-up question to my colleagues just recent question um the 10 items for math and the 10 items for ela are we putting those on the dashboard or no are those being

185given to parents in any type of way i guess it's really maybe the better way of asking that way dr changus i'm sorry i'll just at this point we don't know what the results will look like i'll just i'll just give you my personal opinion i think we have better data already on where our students are than we're going to get from from this test i do not disagree okay and if i can just add this is also the danger of mandating one assessment one approach to all school districts so again going back to dr changus's presentation the continued advocacy for the lea to be able to make informed decisions around what's best for our students is always welcomed and appreciated thank you my next question is about the navigator dashboard so my question is

186um did we use these information and this these these data points on slide 26 do we use them to continue any type of services during the summer like particularly the food insecurity or anything like that did we do any follow-up to do a continuation of navigator services through the summer all right dr springer thank you for your question for the summer time for promising scholars what we have in place is a similar type of assessment for our students we are tracking their needs their their teachers will be informing the appropriate persons of whatever needs that may arise and we will meet the need accordingly any outstanding needs that took place and were identified during the school year should be addressed and we will continue to monitor those needs as well we do have food sites

187that have been set up throughout the city that will continue to provide those uh more basic needs um like food and the like on that note i should say that cole who y'all all met the lovely mr chad hat chad hatchpath hedgepath last week coal is one of those locations so i appreciate that um are we planning on still starting navigator next year and if so when would be our first touch point with parents great question we are planning with our planning to continue our signature initiative around our navigators for next year in addition to what dr springer has just shared around our continuing work around navigators schools are also adding additional layers of support into their school support system so schools have opted in based upon the needs of their students to have leaders

188working throughout the summer staying in contact with students and following up with their needs in various ways there's one contact there's teams of teachers working throughout the summer so i'm really excited about us being able to leverage some of our federal funds and in that space at the school level in addition to that we kicked off navigators last year in the middle of a pandemic so we did delay just a little bit as we focus on the seo initial needs when we rolled in but we will start at the beginning of the school year with our push around our navigator's support across all of our schools it will be an expectation and alignment to our focused outcomes okay and then lastly i wanted to say some appreciation for keeping the virtual help centers open uh

189during promising scholars personally our family visited uh one yesterday so i i appreciate it and i know it was helpful and it was actually busy when we went there so thank you mr little sorry in in so many thoughts i think the the first thing that that i just wanted to address it is it's becoming to nashville's and the questions i have is just to make sure when i talk to parents and talk to kids it's it's it's a difference somebody once told me there's always going to be a bottom five percent in our school system there if as long as we have the asd but when you realize and look at some of the trends there are some students who go to a bottom five percent elementary middle and a high school right here

190in nashville and then we also look at how the income is changing right now you know the price is going up the cost of living and so i think when i ask the questions around like explaining it to parents there's like a huge disconnect and i think we got to make a a huge effort to reach the the families and we got a lot of protocols in place and so every time i get ready to say something you guys have good response but i just want to continue to press upon like there are people in in nashville who are struggling and have been struggling for generations and as as i sit up here even as i listen to a lot of this information i mean as much as i'm trying to dig in it goes

191over my head and so i think in order to be successful we got to meet every person where they are and we realize that every person in nashville makes different amounts of money they live in different communities and as i remember atlanta after i graduated college it was two atlantas it was like the new atlanta that was booming and then it was the old atlanta which never had a chance to access the wealth that was being pumped into the city and so as we look at nashville we got to say how do we help the least of them and like how do we go all in and so it's on us too but i think you guys got to realize that as as you guys on the governance model as you're communicating you do first

192have to realize there is a problem and just to interject just a little bit one person told just in public comments said we shouldn't have critical race theory and i was like i love reading and i remember reading about hannibal in elementary school and they told me he was a caucasian man riding elephants in africa and it wasn't until i was at my grandmother's house and she had like the black calendar so i realized that hannibal was really a black man and so it's that's that's all over the place i just really wanted to address that because attending metro national schools i read about hannibal and it was a misrepresentation of them and so i i think we we have this opportunity with the resources with the new team like this is like the all-star

193team but we really gotta dig in deep to the people who are suffering the most that budweiser calendar cleared up a lot of things for me [Laughter] you all for the discussion i believe that was i'm sorry is there are there any other questions for dr battle and her team um i will say this is one of those times where we talk about data and unfortunately the community at large won't see this as like the room cleared out as soon as we started talking about data but i need parents i mean i'm actively trying to join parent groups right now like i'm like begging people to take me on like please teach me how to be a parent of a student in metro schools so um i i get it but i need the parents

194to also and community members at large to just see that this is a conversation they should be aware of i mean i was floored when i found out that thirty percent of our students come into first grade one grade level behind who knew that and so i just i i'm glad that we're continuing to have these hard conversations around data i get it that not everyone has done research or disaggregated data themselves but this is still a learning opportunity for everyone so thank you all for the discussion thank you dr battle and your team for presenting this and doing all your work to make it manageable for us to review with that i believe all of our governance issues are complete we will move on to announcements we'll start we'll switch things up now and

195start down here with miss tyler i have no announcements except to enjoy summer wonderful all right miss masters i would just like to announce um the definition of segregation um the act or policy of separating people of different races religions or sexes and treating them in a different way that's from the oxford american dictionary which is widely considered the most reliable of dictionaries many people refer to merriam-webster which refers to it as the separation or isolation of a race class or ethnic group by enforced or voluntary residents in a restricted area by barriers to social intercourse by separate educational facilities or by other discriminatory means just wanted to be sure we all understand where that word does and does not apply and that's the only announcement i have tonight you know what thank just thank

196you mrs masters because it was rough to sit here and not say anything back all right mrs player peterson yeah yeah i'm not trying to let my fist education pop up but anyway i'm going to my role as budget and finance chair um i would like to thank um chairwoman quante tombs she just released her substitute budget and we are gravery thankful in her substitute budget that she has um has proposed an allocation of three million one hundred and forty five thousand nine hundred dollars in additional funds to metro schools um to pay for seven unpaid professional days uh for parapros for advocacy centers for the remaining elementary schools and to reduce the student psychologist ratio i would like to thank um councilwoman porterfield and councilwoman sawara for being very strong advocates for those priorities

197and then also of course the perennial advocate cm cash for always be an advocate of metro schools i think this is really important to recognize the way we have transformed and more importantly dr battle has transformed of way we do budgeting in the process along with mr henson's leadership of the practical implementation of it um of the way we transform of really being more transparent particularly about the aspirational budget when we as a board articulate our priorities um which is guided with the leadership of dr battle and then articulate those priorities and then be very transparent to the council to the mayor but more importantly the community would it cost to truly educate our children to the full extent and giving the community a voice and a pathway and information to advocate for what they

198want and need as part of that democracy and part of that community conversation that it's not always linear but when the community speaks when council listens when we do our job there is a pathway forward of continuing to educate and give more resources to the school so i just really want to recognize this very moment of this has been a transformative historic year because the resourcing of metro schools i mean it was interesting to have a conversation with council members about um of being in this new space because we're always used to cutting and we're also used to doing reductions and the fact that we weren't doing reductions but then also having conversations about can you do this and like no because we've been cutting and cutting cutting cutting like i said before we can't

199cut any more and then to understand that and realize that have those thoughtful long thought conversations with council members i know um vice chair elrod really had conversat had engaged in two-way conversations with councilman druffle um and having an education committee that that work paid off and to thank you for being advocacy chair and being the constantly squeaky wheel into doing that and leading us in that i think this is the product all that hard work when we work on one accord and when we speak on one accord this is the result that it happened and the and and to really have the foundation start by mayor cooper of putting a historic investment into teacher's school and the teacher salaries and then to have this added on top of it really is transformative and really

200historic so i really just want to take a moment as we move forward to really thank the community thank dr battle thank her staff for really doing the hard work in the front end that made it easier in the back end and so as long as we continue to have these conversations continue to do for future fiscal years this is just the beginning not the end it makes everything so i just want to thank you so on that note at the next school board meeting be prepared to have some type of adjustment to our current fiscal year budgets just to settle up accounts and just typical accounting measures that we have to just reconcile everything and make sure that budget reflects what we what we did this year and then also for the future budget

201that there will probably most likely be an amendment to the budget that we pass for the fiscal year so we'll be making adjustments to the current fiscal year budget and then make an adjustment to the feature fiscal year budget so just putting your notice for that you'll get more information as we go but this to the public audience so thank you to the community for contacting your council members and continue to advocate and thank you to this the board as whole as it's the first time i've had to make some tough decisions have sleepless nights of not reduction i know dr battle you're probably more relieved than i am but i just want to thank everyone for that thank you all right mrs delrack thank you um yes first i would like to just say

202some appreciation to the council for their ongoing encouraging conversations that we've had about the budget that also goes to my colleagues i really appreciate you all support whether it's coming to the council meetings or just having dialogue or being open and available to dialogue about what those conversations should be and how we're going to go forward and kind of being available to strategy we are in a unique position this year one that i hope continues and i am exceptionally proud of us for getting there and i appreciate dr battle's leadership and helping this secure that lastly in response to public comments i i would be remissed if i did not make sure that we say that wearing a mask is not a civil rights issue nor a civil rights battle and equating masks to the

203deeply harmful unjust immoral practice a segregation and even so the incredible harmful comment that was made of equating it to the back of the bus is deeply deeply offensive and honestly unacceptable and for that reason it is not a reflection of mnps thank you well thank you ma'am this is uh mr little yup yup um kudos to you i'm rachel i think people have the right to to do what they want to do as we think about mask um but something that i wanted to address that was in a local news article i'll be addressing it after we finish tonight um thank you guys for having patience with me but i i wanted to bring the documentation okay mrs bush uh no no announcements this is pooper walker i want to just say that we

204have um selected two student school board members and they are awesome but we had uh you know over two dozen apply we had 12 finalists we interviewed we had an amazing committee a volunteers interview it was really hard we have two rock stars and so we were hoping to have them introduce them to the board at the next board meeting but our senior is going to the governor's school and so she won't be able to be here so what we'll do is instead so by the time she comes back it'll be august 10th meeting and so we'll introduce them there and their families which is the first day of school which is nice um but we will have a press release come out next week and have them available for media next week and so

205i will hold the reveal until then and they are amazing uh and so just really it was we are in good hands as a city we have such amazing students in this district so then another thing i wanted to do was our last board meeting was we were forced to adjourn because of a disruptive um crowd in the audience and so i wanted to say a few things that i didn't get to say then um which is number one um that was the end of school this last meeting and so i wanted to just say that this has been such a ride and some of us were here from the beginning of that ride some of us came on and joined us midway through that ride but this group of people here we really i

206think weathered this as best we could i remember sitting in this room with anna shepard chairing a meeting to approve dr battle like seconds before we shut down this district and so dr battle has been such a source of inspiration and steady leadership and wanted to thank you for always being a good listener and partner and leader and i think for me i'll speak for myself i felt like you were the right person at the right time for this city and so i'm i'm positive next year's gonna be a better year but boy have we been battle tested and some of you have really come out and and supported me when i've had potentially the most difficult district in terms of folks who were feeling a kind of way and i'm trying to you know

207do what i thought was best and so i appreciated the support and um anyway so thanks to everybody for just being great colleagues we did it joe all right um dr gentry yeah so all of that thank you uh rachel ann um was actually on my mind to make a response to that but i appreciate you um and i'll just simply say i you know i don't know that i speak for all people of color but it is offensive when we become allies unused and our story and our journey gets used to justify some of the most outlandish things and try to make alignment between an experience that most of the time the people who are trying to use it have no point of reference no point of reference for it no point of reference

208for it when it happened and no point of reference for the continuing residual effects of it that each person of color i don't care how much money you make i don't care where you live you're still experiencing we are still experiencing the impacts of that so thank you miss elrod for that and to miss pupil walker's comment since our meeting was so uh disrupted in the way that it was last week i do want to just highlight that two of the stem schools were in district one are in district one and so two amazing principals um at creswell uh and alex i've got to write yeah alex green always grandma do my directions and alex green who um has stayed the course for a long long time uh with those students and and have never

209never ever to my knowledge talked about wanting to be moved wanting to be placed someplace differently they have a passion for those students that is just palpable and and and you can feel it when you talk to them when you walk into their buildings and so i appreciate them being there i appreciate them taking the time because it is a painful application process to gather all of that information and so i appreciate their efforts in that space and i also want to send a thank you to our maintenance department who paid a visit to churchwell today to to reroute some air conditioning ducks um we had some very hot and uncomfortable kids and with one phone call they were there and i definitely appreciate that they received a a round of cheers and applause from

210the students when they walked into the classroom their picture was taken and they have been posted on social media with a big thank you to those three gentlemen who came to the rescue i i think that the students are poised for a very amazing experience this summer the the smaller and again i think that is going to be interesting to see the smaller teacher ratio teacher student ratio that we'll experience this summer and the impact that it can have in getting us closer to that ever every student known space that we're looking to find ourselves in so thanks to everyone who stood up and showed out this school year and throughout this summer and we're all ready for the rest of this ride dr battle thank you dr gentry um i will say that i'm

211first accepting requests for agenda items for our next voyage retreat i've already had a couple so we're looking at june i'm sorry probably late july but with that in mind july 22nd is a thursday that is when the state board of education will be meeting i've already talked to the executive director we're trying to work it out if you all are open to it i do want to broach the idea of hosting them for lunch having them maybe here at bransford avenue or even in the wellness center just build a relationship shake hands exchange you know contact information and just see what we can do about building better relationships and then begin to branch out and start our literal writing campaign so just let me know what your thoughts are on that dr severe mrs

212roberts i'll speak with you both just to make sure we've crossed all t's indicted eyes and that this is appropriate um i can't i'm gonna always say it at every meeting until i walk christopher into those doors i can't wait for him to be a pearl cone cluster student at jones but with that being said next next week we'll be having a conversation around the usage of buena vista so parents in the pro cone cluster please be looking for information on that please join the teams meeting if you have questions please prepare them mr walker i am going to reach out to you i have literally been begging to join parent organizations because i need to see how how can i really rally behind 37208 in that pearl cone cluster and i know we don't

213have pac representatives and so any parents watching if you're in the downtown area whether you're gentrified or not please join us because i really really really want other pe or other parents whether they are have typically been empowered or you know been at the table or not i want them at the table with me because we are about to lachland the pearl cone cluster i can't wait to really support it in a nice white pants kind of way but with that be there no further business i just want to um give the date for that meeting thank you the buena vista community meeting i didn't think i couldn't get connected earlier so um it is going to be on oh come on cameo oh there it is thursday june 17th at six o'clock p.m it

214is going to be a team's meeting and i think you can go to the home page if you scroll to the bottom of the home page the link at mnps.org if you go to the bottom of that homepage we'll see the link to that to that meeting thursday june 17th at six o'clock p.m to talk about how we will use buena vista elementary school and with that oh and i'm sorry last thing mrs player peters i would like to speak with you about the board retreat if we need some more time to discuss the budget but be there no for the 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

215visit nashville.gov you