04/27/21 MNPS Board of Education

001things so i believe we have a quorum we're all in attendance we'll begin with the pledge of allegiance by our chief financial officer mr christopher hanson i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all it's been another rough couple of weeks since we last spoke but there are a number of things to celebrate as well with that we'll move on to director's report we're going a bit out of order because we have students we have parents here who who we'll hear discussion from so dr battle thank you so much chair bugs and board members today we wanted to continue our conversation we started at our launch this afternoon of the central office as

002a support hub one of our core tenants of the district and one of our 14 signature initiatives we have put into place that will help us to achieve focused outcomes for our students and help us truly reach our north star of being the premier large school district in tennessee and beyond before dr barnes starts his presentation on the support hub initiative i do want to first thank give a shout out to our promising scholars team for the incredible work that is being done to put together a comprehensive summer learning program for all of our students at no cost to families we have had such a great response so far from families and staff who want to participate with nearly 9 700 students already signed up i want to recognize that the united states department of

003education is so impressed with this effort that they highlighted it in their newsletter that went out to educators all across the nation as a reminder for families watching and who may be here tonight the deadline to apply for the promising scholars summer program is may 5th and we want everyone who is interested to visit summer.mnps.org to learn more and sign up today now i'd like to kick it over to dr barnes who will share more about our efforts to re-envision central office as a phrase i will try not to say ever again but as a school support hub dr barnes good evening dr battle board chair board members and guests we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you about the launch of our new signature initiative designed to re-envision the central office as a support

004hub for schools and stakeholders in all my work in education i've often seen people talk about the importance of the central office serving the schools but this is a whole new level of commitment and dedication to the reality of the work that's done here in this office next slide please to highlight the importance of this event or this initiative it's also become one of our core tenants as well because it speaks clearly to who we are and what we want next slide please there you go one more oh i can do this myself can i excuse me in 1543 nicholas copernicus detailed his theory that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around in the same fashion changing the name of our central office to a support hub changes our focus

005because the center of our world and our attention should be students and schools this change comes in several ways there are physical changes that you may have already seen today and there are also changes in our perception and our conception of what our purpose in our job is and this will help lead us to practical and procedural changes that will accelerate our work in schools you can see some of the rebranding that's been done in the physical sense outdoors in front of our building as well as some of the way finding signage that you'll see down by the road and other places to help direct people to the right place here in our support hub we have other rebranding inside our family information center as well and dr battle has shared our mission to ensure

006that every student is known to help us in that effort we're unveiling an exciting new initiative to display student artwork on a rotating basis in our support hub if you have not had the chance to do a gallery walk we encourage you to spend some time like i have marveling at the amazing paintings drawings and artistry that our students have produced far in excess of what i am able to produce myself dr battle has also instituted several director cabinets and the core of this transformation is to make sure we're listening to all of our stakeholders so we can change our practices and modify procedures our director cabinets are comprised of representatives from several different areas students teachers the support hub here school staff and principals and we meet regularly to make sure that we can

007better realize our north star we have several representatives here tonight who would like to speak to you as well and i'm going to first introduce dk hayes who is a stratford high school student [Applause] good evening since middle school i've been given a chance to show my leadership abilities and for the last couple of years i have had the opportunity to be a student voice for all across mnps even during the early stages of covet 19. with this opportunity i have attended a great number of virtual meetings with my peers mnps leaders and partners during those meetings mnps wanted to hear from students and know how they can better support students and their families also during this time of covet i've asked about my senior year my big question was what would graduation and prom

008look like within those discussions and emails they said due to covet 19 prom would be social distance and there would be no food or dancing and graduation was still a question here's an example of how my voice has been heard since then dr springer and her team and mnps partners have worked hard to answer my questions and many more and i am thankful to say that even though we still have to follow safety guidelines due to covet 19 prom will be may 1st hosted on our school's football field and pictured to be a night under the stars and graduation will be may 21st held in person downtown this has shown me that mnps has taken a new turn on making decisions and gaining insight with the certain with a certainty that they care at the

009end of almost every meeting that i have had the pleasure of being in dr springer has said one thing that made myself feel important and assured me that students will always be in the picture she said somewhere along the words we don't do this to you but with you and for you and we definitely cannot do it without you and so i would like to leave you with this please continue to have students weighing in on board level decisions and discussions never stop giving them the opportunity to step up and lead and continue to hear the student voices thank you we would next like to introduce natalie boyd a math teacher at hume fog high school good afternoon my name is natalie boyd and i am a math teacher at hume funk i've been teaching

010in mnps for 12 years and this past year i had the opportunity to be a part of the director's teacher cabinet which was a fantastic experience if i had to summarize it briefly i would say that the director's teacher cabinet gave teachers an opportunity to be informed and also heard and so those two things together if you know teachers that's that's all we want we want to know what's going on so that we can make decisions that are best for our students we also want to be heard and know that people at the district level understand what we're going through and it was such a wonderful experience to get to sit down with teachers across the district on zoom and um and meet so the district leaders and dr battle were there which number one

011was just like you know we're here getting to sit with district leaders and then also they ask us questions what's working well what's not working well uh what do you need for support what do you need what ideas do you have and all of those kind of came together we could see that they were actually being addressed because in future meetings we would actually talk about what had we had already talked about um and we could see things in district emails and know that we were making a difference that people were listening to us and it was just just such a massive relief especially in a hard year to know that we were being heard so i think the director's teacher cabinet really was important for engaging with teachers for morale but also when we

012get to be informed and heard we feel respected and valued and that ultimately was um was just an incredible experience so i'm glad that i got to be a part of it this year thank you next we'd like to invite takado jackson price good evening my name is takaka price and i'm a member of the director support hub cabinet this is my 24th year in metro national public schools i don't look like it i know all right and i currently serve as the classroom management specialist or what some of you all may call comp classroom organization and management program specialists as well as an sel specialist my experience on the cabinet has been one that i felt like my voice was actually heard as a classroom teacher and former encore teacher i often felt the

013central office was a separate entity and when they came into the building oh you knew something was going on okay but being a part of this cabinet and the in the works of the re-envisioning of central office as a support hub it's the beginning of changing that narrative or that imaginative thought that i had as a teacher see it begins the thought that it's not the us versus them but that we are one unit and are here to help support all the stakeholders that being our students our families our teachers and our community thank you so much for the opportunity for me to be a part of the cabinet thank you like to invite nina stroud an exceptional ed paraprofessional from harris helmand good evening metro board members and dr battle my name is nina

014stroud and i am a paraprofessional at harris hillman special day school in my 11 years of working with metro have i never felt like my opinion mattered not until i was asked to be a part of the director staff cabinet it has been such an honor and a privilege to work alongside with dr battle she communicated with us her plans for a central office and the new support hub dr battle even asked us support staff what we needed to assist her in reaching the north star when we expressed our needs such as having laptops for paraprofessionals dr battle she pro she listened and she delivered our input was appreciated and validated because of her willingness to listen to all within mnps from admin to the students this year for me has been a success i

015hope dr battle will continue the cabinet in the future and that i too can assist her in making our district the best in tennessee thank you we'd like to invite shavon davis lewis principal at jfk middle school greetings to the board and to dr battle i'm siobhan davis lewis executive principal at john f kennedy middle school and first i want to thank you for the opportunity to share my experience not only with the pag but as you've heard all of the previous people talk about they've been a part of metro for a decade or more well i'm the newbie i've only been here a couple of years and the supporting and warm feeling that i immediately got as the newbie on the block has just been outstanding but today i'm here specifically to talk to

016you about my experience with the principles advisory group dr battle uses the principal advisory group for the purpose of obtaining advice and counsel from principals all across the district she also has other supervisory personnel and we're all there in a collaborative matter to use all of our talents our strengths and our intellect to help dr battle and the rest of the support hub govern and make best decisions for students teachers principals all the way to the top we are truly a link between the support hub in each and every school while not every school is represented there is a representative for every school and we are reaching out there's this two-way two-way street that's a through line from from doctor battle to the schools and back again one specific example of this is the critical

017issues update it's one of my favorite parts of each of our pac meetings because not only does the support hub share their concerns and the critical issues and seek our feedback and our input and our knowledge but we also have the opportunity to do the same thing to share our critical issues at the ground level and what's refreshing i've been well i've only been with metro for two years i've been an educator for 22 years and it's nice and refreshing to not be afraid to share what your critical concerns are and to know that your voice is going to be heard and just as as many of the previous speakers have said we get a response we get feedback we get updates on those critical issues and we are invited to the table to be

018a part of the solution and to be a part of the decision making i can stand here for hours and talk about the amazing support i've received as a new principal um in metro i've been successful here so quickly because of all of the warmth and support from the support hub but i'll end by just saying um i'm grateful i'm grateful to be here i'm grateful for a leader who understands the importance of making everyone feel respected and valued and rounding us out jennifer reicher principal of donaldson middle school thanks mr walker hi there i'm jennifer reiniker that's one of my fantastic parents in the back there i am the executive principal at donaldson middle school and i've been at donelson middle school for nine years now and this year i've also gotten the privilege

019of representing our middle school colleagues at the principal advisory group and dr davis lewis already talked about some of the things i was going to talk about tonight so i'm going to adjust my direction a little bit and talk about the fact that at the support hub we have a great group of departments this year that have worked really hard to develop plans to help us in this year that we've had to take apart and reinvent every little piece of how school works and then put it back together and when you do that for 150 something schools there is no possible way to remember every little piece of every little lens for the needs of every single type of school the principal advisory group has given us an opportunity to preview a lot of those

020plans to ask our critical questions to give feedback to bring up issues to let some of those concerns come to the forefront so that we are ready to address them as a district so that we are ready to address them as a school it's helped us streamline some things so we aren't having to build every piece of every plan individually at our school level we have frameworks to work around with a lot of things a lot more things than we have ever had before now none of us want another school year where we have to take every single piece of every part of our school day apart and put it back together you know there are certain aspects of school like going through a lunch line that we have never had to put a whole

021lot of hours of planning into how is the lunch line gonna work but this year we've had to do that for every piece of our day for both in person and for virtual students we don't want to do that again but what this has done is created a structure and a format that allows us to look at our district policies and practices moving forward identify those things that do need to be evaluated and adjusted and changed provide feedback and make those adjustments moving forward because continuing to do things just because that's the way it's always been done is also not going to move us as a district so i appreciate the opportunity to ask all of my questions and dr battle will tell you i ask lots of them [Music] so that we can make

022a better product for our students for our families for our staff and for our schools to run better and that's really the goal so thank you to close this out uh william glasser created something called reality therapy is now called choice theory and what he said was if you want to change how you feel you change what you think and you change what you do and so that was our mission behind the support hub is obviously as dr ronicker said this is a year like any other and we realized to come back to school in person would take significant lift from the central office as well and as you remember in january we began sending out central support hub members to schools one day a week and that's been happening since january until now and

023employees have done a great job supporting schools and building relationships i'll just breeze through these these are several different comments and emails that we got from principals talking about the impact that the the support hub and then the school support initiative has done for them we also want to highlight humor the human resources department is highlighting a customer service training um to help accelerate how we work with schools and how we can provide the school's exemplary customer service as well as including things like our tech centers and the work that's been done there and certain uh office hours that we've created to help teachers every week we have a licensure office hours we've had office hours for employment and things of that nature just to help teachers stay connected to us and support members find

024the support that they need i want to just briefly close with this being one of our signature initiatives and our core tenants and before i kick it over dr battle i want to say to everyone welcome to the support hub dr battle over to you well thank you i'm dr barnes and to all of um our speakers this evening i'm y'all kind of caught me off guard a little bit not knowing what everyone was going to share but the intent here was to exemplify not only a name not only in cosmetic changes but in behaviors and actions we are transforming ourselves into the support hub that we want to be and that we need to be to ensure every mnps student is known so thank you all for your great work for your partnership and

025for your collaboration as we move mmps forward towards our north star of becoming the premier large school district in tennessee and beyond so thank you all for that also tonight in the spirit of celebrations and working well together and in a collaborative manner i like to honor a group of people who truly saved the day and saved a student's life last week last thursday we had an emergency at john overton high school which is my alma mater it was a difficult situation for everyone but the team at overton reacted quickly calmly decisively and effectively physical education teacher christina carlson saw the young man needing help history teacher and track coach deshawn buchanan and p teacher and basketball coach john hopson isolated the situation meanwhile health science teacher beth wilson who is a nurse rendered first

026aid to the student and directed her co-workers and caring for him now as miss carlson miss wilson mr buchanan and mr hopson were working with a student school resource officer steve snitzer was methodically coordinating the medical response and he is unable to be here tonight but today it's his birthday so happy birthday to you and behind the scenes executive principal jill pittman and her administrative team were coordinating outreach to the students parents and staff and managing the daily operations of the school now as a previous teacher and principal i will tell you that this is the kind of situation schools never want schools never want to face we go into this line of work to teach to educate to help young people grow into adults and the leaders we know that they deserve to be

027and that they will be and can be but sometimes we have to step up to deal with emergencies and these teachers and this officer and this principal stepped up with poise and purpose as officer schneisser wrote in an email he sent to me he stated i want you to know from my heart that dr pittman and the staff here at overton high school did an amazing job in helping during this time of need the swift support and fast thinking was key in this positive outcome officer schneiser couldn't be with us tonight as i mentioned because today is his birthday but the rest of these quick thinking overton staff members are here for us to recognize them mr buchanan ms carlson mr hopson dr pittman and miss wilson we cannot thank you enough for your heroic

028actions on thursday april 22 2001. you represent the very best of metro nashville public schools and we thank you we would like to present certificates to each of you in recognition of your exemplary service to our schools and if everybody would stand with me and thank them for their heroic and dr pittman and team if anybody would like to share any words pl please feel free to do so i just want to say that while we're shining a spotlight on truly extraordinary efforts by teachers to keep a single student from going under which meant everything to his family and to our school family it also gives us an opportunity to think about the many ordinary things that teachers and schools and their staff members do to keep families and students from going under in ways

029that are not always as dramatic as this but nonetheless the work that we all love so thank you thank you all i'm sorry before you all go i this has been a horrific month i mean i you all know i'm a crier but i that was a rough day and i mean as soon as we started getting the calls and the emails and the text messages if you have a child that is your worst fear but to know that we have educators that frankly you were probably in danger yourselves and you saved the baby i just that's not lost on me it's not lost on us i you all don't get the things that you need as regularly as you deserve it but just thank you and to all of those teachers that weren't in

030this situation that could have been as well just know that you are supported you are loved our our national community has not been as thoughtful around our educators as as we should be but thank you i'm just thank you i cannot say that enough and i would i would be remiss if i missed this opportunity because it is it just me it is a rough month so many children have passed so many children have been murdered and and you allowed nashville to save one so just do what you do i appreciate you i got something i'm not looking at i am sorry to have gotten so emotional but i i i enrolled my son in pre-k this week this week i i went on the mnps website i went through all the tedious but necessary

031steps and it became very real for me as a parent that literally anything can happen to your child when they leave your your home when they leave your womb you know and so to know that we had educators that stepped in for a child is just that is going to be a highlight that i'll hold on to for a while but with that we do have other business other mnps decisions to make so we will move on to our consent agenda are there any requests to amend the agenda the uh consent agenda as listed yes i'd like to pull um b8 please orion building corporation all right so that's b8 any other amendments all right is there a motion on the floor to accept the consent agenda as amended remove approval second second all right

032uh we have a motion and a second any discussion all right all in favor please raise your hand unanimous all right we will move on to b8 miss bush yes i wanted to um make a motion to vote on this line item as a separate vote and i guess i'll start i'm going to be abstaining from this particular line item um i have made all of my concerns necessary before um regarding orion building building corporations so i won't get i won't go back into it so i just basically wanted to make this a separate um line item as a vote okay so there's no motion is there a motion on the floor move approval of the item ba to ryan building corporation contract all right we have a motion to approve is there a second

033okay all right we have a motion and a second all in favor please raise your hand all right all opposed and three abstaining all right we'll now move on to uh the motion pass yes the motion passes i'm sorry all right a resolution regarding the addition of fifth grade to purpose preparatory academy mr little huh this was just uh okay great this was a resolution that was um tons of parents reached out um had an opportunity to talk to the school principal i've worked in the pearl cone cluster and as we're doing fifth grade realignment that cluster is changing and so the addition for purpose prep is just to have that fifth grade realign with the fifth grade um in the pearl cone cluster so i'm moving for approval for that okay we have a

034motion on the floor is there a second oh i'm sorry you got to read the resolution sorry about that do we have to move in we have to read the whole thing yeah we're asking you just for process sake for process sake it would be best if if nothing else if he at least read the resolving clause okay okay could you if you don't mind i'm sorry to put you on the spot dr severe we'll let him no never mind i'm sorry go ahead mr little do we do we have another copy because i'm is it in the board package it is in the board packet but i have one here would you mind passing it thank you all righty so it says whereas beginning in 2020 the director of schools presented the mnps reimagine

035ed framework to the board of education for consideration and whereas the board of education has endorsed the mnps reimagine ed initiative whereas that framework included the realignment of grade level in particular school clusters to cater five for elementary schools and six to eight for middle schools whereas the board of education approved the gray realignment in pearl cone which is at cluster maplewood and white's creek clusters beginning with the upcoming 2021-2022 school year and whereas purpose prep academy is a charter school approved by the mnps board of education and whereas purpose prep academy primarily draws enrollment from students in the maplewood and pearl cone clusters whereas purpose prep academy currently enrolls students in grades k through four whereas purpose prep preparatory academy leadership and families have appeared before the board of education to request their purpose

036preparatory academy and enrollment be expanded for the 2021-2022 school year to include fifth grade so that it aligns with the neighboring district-run schools and whereas there is no prohibition on a public charter school authorizer entering into a voluntary amendment of the chartering agreement and whereas mnp has resolved to enter into chartering agreement negotiations for the sole purpose of adding fifth grade to purpose preparatory academy and whereas both mnps and purpose preparatory academy will look favorably upon an agreement that included an addition of fifth grade but did not raise the total enrollment capacity of 380 students whereas purpose preparatory academy would consistent with their current chartering agreement be required to offer its newly included fifth grade to all currently enrolled purpose preparatory academy fourth grade students and could not counsel students away from this option and

037whereas both mnps and purpose preparatory academy agree that this amendment does not extend the duration of the current agreement in any way therefore be it resolved that the mnps administration is directed to begin contract negotiations with purpose preparatory academy consistent with the language hearing man thank you can i get that back though okay you want that all right uh we have a motion is there a second okay for the purpose of discussion i will second this go ahead mr little yeah and and i would um ask that the board support this amendment one just knowing anything about purpose prep and where they're located in the city um they're connected to pearl cone which has been a um it has a number of priority schools in the district and if you have ever visited that school

038if you ever talk to parents have you ever seen their school leader legra newman you know she goes all out for her kids not just academically but culturally and i think morally as we hear from parents who have not chosen to send their kids to school in that in that cluster shouldn't have shouldn't have to send their kids back to the same schools that they chose to not send their kids to where they were zoned and so i would ask that you guys give this a chance so we can come for a vote because at the end of the day it is about the kids and the school has been a reward school two or three times and it has been regarded across the the state if not the country and some of the things

039that they're doing inside and outside the classroom thank you thank you any other dr gentry yeah so um i was uh kind of surprised by this um to see that it was on behalf of purpose prep i thought it was going to be one of our district schools i think there's a stanford montessori in district four that's been asking for the same consideration for to be included in this wave of realignment of fifth grade back to the elementary tier so i also had a chance to speak with ms levers she did call i think she called several board members i also spoke with mr little and shared that conversation with him so i will go through some of the points from that conversation here on the board floor so one of the comments that was

040made in both conversations was the concern that purpose prep was unaware that we were realigning uh fifth grade back to the elementary tier and it has been associated with mnps reimagine ed but it was a topic under mnps next if i'm not mistaken which was several years ago would you mind bringing your message that we have always had the intention to realign fifth grade to the elementary tier so this isn't news it didn't just come up as a part of reimagine ed the other thing here that says is that the grade so it aligns with neighboring district-run schools so another comment that i made and this is sharon speaking was that you know we have not had the opportunity to really have alignment with our charter schools even though that was the original intent for

041charters to come into the district to be creative and imaginative and innovative come up with strategy that we can then deploy throughout our district-run schools it has not been a consistent practice we've not been able to have the conversations to talk about where we needed charter support to talk about the extent to which we needed charter support for how long we needed charter support to make adjustments and then be able to improve the offerings that we make for our students our priority schools are our priority schools and they are our priority they are not something for us to shun parents away from i am almost offended that we would actually say that that we would not force a parent to um to put their child in a school i have always been an advocate for

042providing those options and i've said that as a candidate i've said that as a board member but we have made adjustments we are actually focused and the reason we are realigning fifth grade back to the elementary tier is to bring our parents back to our district-run schools that we are putting the resources we recognize that parents are leaving mnps after fourth grade because of the challenges of having a fifth grade student in a middle school environment we know and i have said this repeatedly that having had a child go from fifth grade to sixth grade they get from fourth to fifth the gap especially in math is amazing to me i don't even know how they pick up from where they pick up in this in middle school because there's nowhere near where they ended

043in fourth grade and so we're addressing that with our numeracy uh initiatives as well so we are doing the work to improve the outcomes in our currently labeled priority schools we are doing the work to close that gap in this child's experience from fourth grade to fifth grade we are doing the work and we are putting in the resources to improve the outcomes for all of our fifth grade students we are starting where we're starting so those students who should have by now already made a choice about where they're going to be in fifth grade i should point that out but they are now will have better options in the clusters of white's creek and pearl cone to have a different experience than the one they would have had a couple of years ago so

044that that alignment with neighboring district-run schools again is almost offensive because we don't get the chance to align on initiatives we don't get a chance to align on outcomes we don't get a chance to align on goals when the charter schools decide it wants to exist within mnps they present to us we approve or we deny we deny they go to the state they get approved and they're here and they're here so there is it is not a good feeling that we seem to be in an adversarial type competitive relationship with charters it was never our goal but it is what has happened it is what we have evolved to and so i ran to be a board member of this board and so my goal and my job and my responsibility is to protect

045the resources protect the outcomes and protect the goals i've set forth for my director so i continue through this to say that this be it resolved that i would direct my one employee to make a decision that is totally contradicts what i've asked her to do i have charged her we have charged her with making fifth grade experience better for all students across mnps and it's not to bail on her now when i've asked her to do it when i've approved a plan that she has put forth for doing that i'm not going to bail on her now so my vote is against this resolution for the reasons i've stated thank you dr gentry any other thoughts and i'll make one more comment then i'll i'll let it go i i also and and thank

046you dr gentry like i wrote like unaware of realignment didn't have the time it's not forcing a parent to go back to their school but one thing i think that we missed out on is when we think about the parental is my phone drops as we think about the parental support as a parent on this board i've exercised choice as most parents on this board we have all exercised choice and when i think about giving parents another option and not forcing them really giving them an option to choose a school that they best see fit for their kid and i want to take all of the i guess for my rhetoric it's just do i give parents the opportunity to make the best decision for their kid when they have already shown they have made

047choices outside of their own school and that's why i wanted to bring this before not because it's charter or traditional only because it's about a parent's choice and they have kids in the district because as we as a board those charter schools although they're agreements they're part of mnps we authorize them we hold them accountable and we make sure they fulfill that capacity and as i look at that school particularly and i look at reward school reward school is mostly around academic achievement and that school has been a reward school at least two or three times and so that that'll be my my closing statement but i really hope i can get some support not for the type of school but for the parents who choose to send their kids to that school who have

048graduated from mnps who still have other kids in mnps schools but just choose different on this one all right mrs pupa walker so i i have tremendous respect for allegra newman and for the work at purpose prep i've been to fundraising breakfasts for purpose prep i i i just know that they are doing remarkable work there my concern with this is twofold one is i believe they're over enrolled currently is that correct mr little um based on ms newman they are they are still within their grace they're in their grace and so what happened would you mind explaining about being in there daughter is for 380 students the grace enrollment is for 25 they're actually at capacity they're at today okay so in order to add a new grade they would have to accept less

049students in lower grades is that what would happen to happen here or it could be a for a small number of kids who didn't have options to get into the zone schools they applied for through the lottery again i have respect for the founder director of the school but i cannot imagine having to hire math science language arts i don't know who else for a new grade for a handful of children again that is a choice if that if so be it if that's what we choose that's their charge to create a new grade for four kids five kids and hire a bunch of st it's a losing proposition financially last year it would have been three kids that so my thing is is is this actually what the purpose prep community wants to do

050next year and so that's i'm just it's a rhetorical question and then my second thing is we can just start bringing a resolution every time we want to change a chart or any old time if this is the if this is the sort of the process that we're going to undertake here that we're going to say well you know what i kind of want my this particular charter school to have more kids or more grades or more this or more that instead of following the process and so i am a believer that we have one of the best charter authorizer processes in the country and we need to stick to that and this is not a slight on purpose prep this is simply a matter of due diligence and good governance that we remain sort

051of in compliance with a process that is transparent that everyone else is expected to follow and um truly hope that they will submit a you know a proposal for an amendment to add fifth grade in the future so that's my my thoughts of dr gendry i'm sorry did anyone dr ginger sorry go ahead um i still have a question for dr battle or the staff so i'm sorry to interrupt you i don't think that our staff was involved in this i think this was just a doctor uh i mean uh mr little clearly look at them i have a clarifying question yes so you have to be in a lottery to go to your zone school so someone moves in you said that they weren't lottery into their zone school so they can't go to

052the school so question is there's no fifth grade if whether we pass or fail this what be the next step because i don't think you need a lottery to get into your zone school so i want a clarification of that yeah so let me clarify you don't need a lottery to get into your zone school you need to access the lottery if you want to do school choice and so most of those families that were at purpose prep who are transitioning out of the fourth grade have exercise choice and it's a few students who had other choices but did not get it and and and i'll go into it it's one thing to want to do right by all kids but it's also another thing that i hear from parents a lot where you don't

053want to play with your child's education and we have a we have a rating system and in the pearl cone cluster some of the schools are doing really well and some of the schools academically are not and i think those parents have just made a choice not to send their kids back to the zone school because of that because of those academic um choices and successes so priority school rewards school and yeah so the to the kids that so the kids do have a place to go but the parents are choosing not to put them into the zone school is that correct yes for clarification they have a they have a place to go if it's the zone school i think in that cluster the pearl cone cluster i think the feeder middle schools are

054john early mckissick and maybe those are the only two um maybe haynes i don't know um but a lot of those parents don't want to send their kids to the school okay i want to clarify that because i was going to be concerned if they could if there was a lottery to get into his own schools because that's part of there's a place for every child who's a resident of davison county to go to a zone school and i think there's there's a lottery to go into his own school when a lottery exists for choice options and that there's a place for a child to go just from a technical educational perspective so that's why i just want to clarify his own school they weren't lottery they get the lottery going to his own school

055right okay so for me it's and to echo ms walker said it's not about the quality of purpose prep for me this is a governance issue when a charter operator decides to to issue to apply for a charter for some reason whether it's philosophical whether it's educational philosophy whether you do not agree of how we the district is running school you choose to to apply for a charter because you want to educate the children to a certain extent because you believe the district is not doing a job that you feel is right you disagree the educational philosophy of the district or you feel you want to try a new academic method to educate children and once you once a charter operator applies for the charter part of that a sense of independence you take on

056the responsibility of independence part of independence is governorship that the purpose press board their job is to govern the school their responsibilities fiduciary fiduciary about when they apply for the school their responsibility for the strategic plan of that school where that school wants to go how that school is operated the philosophy that school works in and how they choose to operate the school this is a discussion that's been going on for several years that the district was going to move fifth graders back into elementary that was not done in secret it is job of purpose prep to to monitor what we do as a district and to do strategic planning accordingly just like we do at the state and just like we do with the federal government when that decision made is the purview of

057our governing system purpose prep just renewed their charter several months ago my job is that it was part of the door's duty that when they renewed their charter to think strategically about where they want their school to go for the next 10 years and how that looks we have a very specific very rigid defined process we spent at least an hour at our board retreat led by dr griffin explaining what state laws and regulations that we have to provide and that we would have to bind with fidelity of how we approve charters how we amend charters and how that operates that show that we are not really liable for those decisions and for me it's an issue of when it comes to governance it's the responsibility of the purpose prep board to usually think how

058they want to expand when they want to expand and how they apply for that expansion the fact that we move independently is that we govern independently when you go to about alignment with metro schools that alignment did not occur when we had to consolidate four schools there was not a partnership leeched out as we are part of this cluster how do we work in alignment to the neighboring schools next to us and that wasn't part of that we as a board do not have the luxury of governing just one school we have to govern 162 schools and that's the advantage of being a part of a charter you have the luxury of governing one school and in governed at one school you're taking advantage of bringing forth this resolution to do it as we talked

059about earlier the book thing when it comes to governing my concern is now we're setting a precedent this precedent has economic repercussions to this first we have the economic governing precedence i was just at the overton pack meeting last night there is pressure advocacy for rachel ann and i sorry miss elrod and myself for croft for bringing the fifth grader not not because croft is not a bad school we love dr lewis that's not an issue the issue is the parents do not want to wait just like purpose prep wants to wait but i this board has additional responsibility to do it and the thing that's fair that aligns with our economic resources but also what's strategic when dr battle and her staff came with the plan of how we're going to roll out it

060was strategic part of it was facility usage what is capacity what is resources that we have to expend to do it it wasn't all about academics it was about do we have the financial resources to physically put fifth graders back into a middle school how do we change the flow of enrollment because you're affecting several schools there are ripple effects and if we do this what accepting another croft parent advocating mr elrod or myself saying i want you to put a resolution forward we don't even know the budget number yet we haven't got our budget allocation yet so if we do this between now and june 30th how many board meets can we come another charter school comes and then we have to totally reconcile our budget because the money follows the child if it

061follows the child we have a zero sum budget the budget resources have to come from and we cannot plan for that because at any given time we start this president we cannot budget when a transfer of dollars is going to happen and as we plan and allocate for the entire district then one by one by one then that's going to change what we do and that affects cuts for other areas we have to make the tough decisions we had to make a very tough decision of consolidating four schools we took the political repercussions of that we took the accountability of that that's our job but the luxury of one school to say changing because they did not do the strategic planning to do so in several months they can apply for a amendment i encourage

062them to do so it's not about the quality of performance it's not a quality of school it's setting a precedent of what about our fellow district schools whether you're julia greene whether you're um glencliff elementary whether it's lachlan whether whatever district you know gower elementary we have schools in this district that parents want this to happen tomorrow we understand the urgency but we do not have the financial resources to do it but we also don't set a precedent of because you because you missed something to fix to turn around and fix it not realizing you just have a luxury of governing one school and so i know that parents want this i feel for those parents but there's a governing process we are governing a system and with that system comes precedence and becomes responsibility

063that this this is not a ripple effect where it's just an isolated incident this is an incident and this is the part of a charter if you choose to act and operate independently you have to govern accordingly and take the responsibility of that governance and that's the responsibility of their award to strategically plan when to ask whether it was to ask several months ago when they changed the when they asked for renewal for the next 10 years or to do it because my next question was if we did choose not to expand or not to do the alteration of fifth grade to elementary then when would purpose prep ask for this ass to be expanded would you have waited until we done it or would you would have the foresight to do it because you

064feel that's the best thing for your students and that's responsibility of them they're bored i'm not criticizing what the board's done that's the choice that they made but as a board member here there's a governing precedence that given that we have what at least i'm assuming 80 elementary schools that we cannot do this but also sets a precedent for other entities that's saying we don't like the decision that's made so i'm going to demand you to go and into negotiations with your administration for something that you don't like because i can tell you this other government groups entities employee groups that would do the exact same thing and i think that sets a very bad precedent that we're making this decision for that so i think there's a very clear process the charter amendment process

065the charter application process is a very rigid process it's a very um prescribed process that we have to follow and to go to that also sets us up for liability because then we're going outside that process that's set by a state that we cannot change and i think that's a critical part of it's about government it's not about the quality of schools it's not about parents advocating because parents advocate for a lot of different things and we have to unfortunately say no when we don't want to because of limitations of governance legal limitation and financial invitations so i wish very much that we can do this but there's a presence that i am very very hesitant to set to do to do this that then we're asking any other charter school to come and subvert

066the process that we prescribed and that we worked on dr gentry so i don't know if uh ms roberts is aware how many students are we talking about and is this resolution because it's open-ended on the number there is no so is it even to miss player peter's point there's even not even a way as it's written to even project what the fiscal impact would be so it's open-ended so how many students are we talking are we talking about trying to accommodate every student who didn't get the school of their choice mr little yeah i think in that question i would it make a difference in the decision of this board if you knew the number no but i'm i have a bigger point so you don't even have to answer it my point is

067if we're not trying to accommodate every student then you're trying to create a lottery system that we've been criticized for that kind of helps to justify the creation of the charters in the first place so i don't know what i i mean it's almost hypocritical um to even take that approach if we're going to actually lottery off a handful of seats to those four rising fifth graders who didn't get the school of their choice so i i i'm struggling with many aspects of this resolution as written and the way the lottery system works as as we all know if you have more applications in seats whether it's purpose prep mlk glendale it goes into a blind lottery i think that's the route they were looking if they had more applications and seats available based on

068their chartering agreement could you say that last part one more time i'm sorry which part which part did you hear just repeat the whole thing i said it the way it works it's it's a blind lottery if if purpose prep had more applications then they had seats so let's say it was it was 20 students but they only had 19 seats and so they would have to do a blind lottery as is mlk glendale lockland east any any metro school that has more applications in seats that we prescribe goes into a lottery and so in my opinion that's that was their intention if they had more applications in seats okay so the answer is yes okay yes to what that there would be a lottery yes ma'am okay thanks well i'll say as the lone

069pearl cone cluster parent like i said earlier i was so excited to sign my son up for pre-k and i know that purpose prep is an option i'm not sure if they have a pre-k but i know it's an option for elementary school for sure right but to a larger point and this isn't as much ideology but advocacy something to keep keep in mind i appreciate that we want to keep parents supported that we want to make sure that those parents that are choosing with their feet that we support them in their children wherever they go then i think about i always go back to lachlan and warner that's always my good comparison because so many parents choose with their feet from a school that is great i mean warner is a blue ribbon school

070right but as uh but people are choosing with their feet for many different reasons that i will come back to that a different time but they choose with their feet that doesn't mean that i don't still advocate for warner i hear exponentially more from lachlan parents than i do from warner parents that's just a disenfranchisement issue that's just a the nature of being in america where you are disenfranchised maybe you are even poverty stricken based on your socioeconomic status or your family makeup whatever the reason you may not know who to come to who to advocate to or what to ask for so i i always pause when i when i think about well parents are asking for it well how many parents don't even know that they can ask for something how many parents

071just aren't even engaged or you know just haven't haven't felt empowered and i'm hoping and this is and i'm not trying to i'm not trying to bully you dr battle but i'm hoping that my son gets into jones for the three-year-old pre-k it's okay if he doesn't we'll just reapply next year but i make to make a larger point really i think about that all the time if i'm going to choose jones and choose mckissick and choose pearl comb because they're my school system they're my my district they're my schools then i've got to be mindful of the historic disenfranchisement of my neighbors that never will come to a school board meeting not because they not because they shouldn't because i would love for them too but they just don't even you know what i'm

072saying they don't know that they can and so i don't want to continue to ignore the students who don't have knowledgeable savvy advocates for to make way for parents and families who are the loudest in the room it's great that we have parents speak up i want you to speak up but there are so many who don't that i've got to keep them in mind also but we always go through that circle we always talk about the school that are doing well the parents that are asking for something and we completely ignore the babies who are just left out of that conversation there's also the idea that even though i'm in the pearl cone cluster that means that i have our two academic magnet high schools that means that i consistently have parents asking for

073a third or even a fourth academic magnet high school and i have to consistently tell them no that that's philosophically i don't support that and strategically we are trying to make sure that every school is competitive with our magnets that every school has the ap classes the resources the advocacy that a human fog and mlk have i also had a single a single sixth grade parent ask if we could add sixth grade to mlk and to be frank it didn't dawn on me to bring a resolution because i know what that would do to mckissick i know what it would do to any other school if that child lives outside of that cluster and i've got to be mindful of all those things so i love lego i'm sorry i love mrs newman i appreciate

074the hard work she does it this again this is not a slight against her and it doesn't matter the name of the school because i just told you that i'm not going to do it for the magnets either but for me it's all about the children who are the most disenfranchised and yes there are other there have been other points made that are very compelling around process and around the fiscal impact but for now oh and i do have to say this when you when you asked when dr gentry asked about the number of students that would be accommodated for me it was important it for me it would have mattered because i needed to know if it were that there were three students that felt like they didn't have somewhere to go it's different

075from accommodating them versus just accommodating and developing an entirely new process for the sake of ideology i mean if we're going to be a student-focused district or a student-focused board then for me it's important to talk through how the students are impacted but talk about how all students are impacted i mean and again i appreciate and love the hard work that purpose prep does and i appreciate even that they are willing to partner with schools and that they want to have conversations with families but it's just so much bigger because i am the pearl cone parent i i know i know what my neighbors face and i know that i am in a very privileged position not just being a board member but all the different resources that i have access to to call the

076question okay well we have a motion on the floor we've had a second all in favor please raise your hand all opposed all abstaining all right we have two extensions all right motion fails we will now move on to a resolution regarding physical mental and emotional support for all mnps students staff parents and other stakeholders regardless of gender identity gender expression or sexual orientation mrs masters thank you i'm taking a drink of water because it's long and i won't i won't give much of an introduction because i i think i hope it's all in the resolution and uh please know this masters that you certainly can read it all you can also start it therefore the the resolving so it's totally up to you erin i'm gonna i'll i'll go fast i promise i really

077like it and then do i make the motion after i read it okay i'll go fast okay i won't even read the intro because because christian already said that part um whereas it is the right of every child regardless of gender identity gender expression or sexual orientation to access a free public k-12 education and the district welcomes and supports all students and whereas the district has a responsibility to ensure that all students who reside within its boundaries regardless of gender identity gender expression or sexual orientation can safely access a free public k-12 education and whereas the district recognizes that there are employees and educators who are gay lesbian and transgender and that all employees are valued members of the school community regardless of their gender identity gender expression or sexual orientation and whereas the district

078recognizes that there are families in our community of diverse background and the district values all our families regardless of the family members gender identity gender expression or sexual orientation and whereas metropolitan government of nashville and davidson county title vi prohibits discrimination including discrimination based on gender gender expression gender identity and sexual orientation and whereas u.s department of education has upheld the interpretation of title ix to protect students from discrimination on the basis of their gender identity and whereas on june 15 2020 the united states supreme court ruled in the case of bostic versus clayton county that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is necessarily also discrimination because of sex as prohibited by title vii of the civil rights act of 1964. and whereas we recognize creating lgbtqia plus inclusivity in metro

079nashville public schools is not about any single action and it will not happen with just the passage of a resolution or the change of a policy but it is about effectuating a paradigm shift through facilitating deeper understanding of sexual and gender diversity and this requires appropriate communication professional development and a commitment from the board the district and all schools of all grade levels to support this shift and commit to moving forward with the resolve to learn and further best practices into the future and whereas systemic transphobia biphobia and homophobia push lbtqia plus youth out of school and those same systems of oppression may cause long-lasting negative mental health outcomes and whereas lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer questioning lgbtq students experience high rates of bullying victimization and harassment at school on the basis of their actual

080or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity and whereas this bullying victimization and harassment has led to negative educational outcomes for lgbtq students including higher rates of dropping out higher absence rates and lower post-secondary school aspirations and whereas affirming gender identity and gender expression for youth of all ages is proven to be one of the most effective mental health interventions for supporting transgender youth gender expansive youth and gender non-conforming youth and whereas mnps board policy 5.500 prohibits employee harassment based upon sexual orientation gender identity gender expression or appearance or sex including sexual harassment and whereas mnps board policy 6.304 qualifies sex sexual orientation and gender identity expression among protected classes in the prohibition of bullying discrimination harassment intimidation and victimization of students therefore be it resolved that the metropolitan national board of education resolves to provide

081access to resources that are specifically responsive to gender identity gender expression and sexual orientation furthermore the district shall allow students and staff to use requested names and pronouns without requiring a legal name change or medical diagnosis furthermore the district shall provide equal access to all resources and programs and advocate for access to district facilities that align with the students and staff members gender expression furthermore the district shall ensure that all administrators at all grade levels are aware of and capable of implementing all existing policies and tools such as the mmps gender support plan process in support of staff and students furthermore the district shall continue to advocate for lgbtq people and issues in school curricula and instructional materials including in health and sex education inclusive of materials that portray lgbtq figures in a positive light

082the district shall ensure that the curricula include diverse perspectives especially lgbtq people of color and issues specific to communities of color furthermore the district shall distribute this resolution to district staff students and parents using usual means of communication and the resolution will be translated into multiple languages spoken by students at home furthermore district affiliated contractors having contact with mnps students shall be notified of this resolution i move that we accept this resolution to be approved as policy within mmps thereby showing our full and complete support of every student and every staff member and truly standing by our policy for every student to be known in mmps second oh i've called for a point of order thanks i just asked you to clarify so you put resolution and policy in the same sentence it's not a

083policy the resolution okay so just that we're approving the resolution as written okay all right discussion i just have a question is there anything that changes in policy or is there any kind of fiscal update that we need to be aware of it's a it much of what is in the resolution is a restatement of existing policy to my knowledge this will be the first time that we as a board have actually voted on a resolution that states our support for lgbtqia plus students and staff and faculty members so it's very much a um a statement of our support of all students and staff okay any other questions uh this is player peters oh it's not a question it's just it's not a question it's a statement this i think it's very important as i

084said that we we make sure that um as a personal value and hope the value of the board is that you know there's dignity respect for all parts of the mmps family and that we're just affirming that dignity respect that we create a safe place for learning and that i see this resolution is creating a safe space so children have an environment where they can receive education that is a place that's hopefully free from bullying and judgment and i just want to thank you for bringing this and to affirm that this is another aspect of diversity and that we need to be diverse in all levels and all measurements and this is just one aspect of many types of diversity and that we affirm that mrs pupa walker i just want to say to all

085of our students and staff um whether they are they are lgbtq or not that we see you we support you we believe in you we see value and what you hear the slate of hate that is moving through our legislature right now does not represent my values i don't think it represents the majority of tennesseans and i want to say it's not based on evidence it's not based on data it's not based on problems that exist they are designed to satisfy a very fringe movement that is unfortunately happening making as influential across the country not just in tennessee but this board will not sit by and just and we want we want our students and staff to know we stand with you and i want to read a quote from harvey milk who's a famous

086gay advocate in san francisco that died please try to remember that what they believe as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to to their inhumanity so we are here to see you as full humans and part of our mnps family this is elrod thank you i um of course want to thank ms masters for her heavy work on creating the language and being very thoughtful with that language um and i also really appreciate the community uh the community advocacy that we've had it has been really heartwarming and great to hear and see particularly um because of that slate of hate as ms poopo walker discussed you are important to us and you will continue to be important to us and that is also known

087and i want to make sure that we're aware that this also aligns with our every student known and so this is a i'm very thankful that you've done this and i i um thank you i just want to say all to that as well and i promise i'll talk i'll stop talking share it i'm sorry i'm just so excited to see you in that rainbow girl just here um i just the um the outreach a lot of which i know has has been spearheaded by mnea i'm so appreciative of that i'm so appreciative of just all of the parents who have emailed to say yay we love this resolution let's do this i have not received one single email um or correspondence from anyone that um saying anything negative about us taking this action and

088it just means so much to me as a parent um oh shoot i've got my tissues to know that um this is where my children are going to school and um and it just means a lot that everyone's wearing your rainbow mask that i kind of forced on you um i didn't force that i didn't they wanted them um so as a mom and as a board member i am i'm very proud of mnps right now even though i know we haven't voted yet all right with that we have a motion and a second all in favor please raise your hand resolution passes unanimously thank you mrs all right now we will move on on our agenda item number four charter school applications for aventura community school in nashville classical schools too we welcome the

089ever prepared dr griffin good evening to chair bugs to board members director battle thank you for the opportunity to present the charter school review team findings for the new charter school applications for school year 22 23. just an overview of our our department know i was with you a couple of weeks ago we monitored charter school compliance with laws policies and contractual obligations we report charter school performance in academics operations and finance based on the spf or school performance framework but our primary responsibility is to facilitate the authorization process by presenting the review team's evidenced findings to you the board as it relates to new applications what we'll talk about tonight renewal applications and amendments to existing applications currently for the 2021 school year there are 27 charter schools operating in mnps so let's talk

090a little bit about new applications remember we are a compliance driven department and tca-49-13116 is a state law that regulates and requires the tennessee department of ed you'll hear me say tdoe throughout the presentation to provide a standard application format and a scoring criteria to address the elements in a charter school application so our objective for this evening is for the metropolitan nashville board of public education to consider the review team findings on the two applications for new charter schools and whether each should be approved or denied state law requires each charter application must be considered and voted on separately so our two 22 23 applicants for this year are a ventura community school a new school application and nashville classical charter school to a new school that is replicating an existing model a little

091bit of an overview from our retreat as well all applications are evaluated by the review team according to the overall capacity of the applicant in the following areas the quality of the academic plan the quality of the financial management or business plan and the quality of the operational plan there are also three rating characteristics required by tca and they are meets the standard this means that a response reflects a thorough understanding of the key issues and it aligned with the mission and vision a partially meets standard that's a response where in the criteria it hits some aspects but it may have lacked some details in others and the third rating characteristic is does not meet standard that standard means that the response in that section had substantial gaps in several areas now just an example

092of our support hub our new application review team for the school year 2223 consisted of 15 reviewers you can see all of the areas of expert expertise listed here but we had 13 mnps internal reviewers and two external reviewers that rounded out our 15. this review team reviewed both applications in the areas of their expertise listed as we move forward on tonight if the application is approved mnps and the applicant will enter into a chartering agreement if the application is denied the sponsor or applicant will have 30 days to resubmit an amended application to mnps office of charter schools so let's talk about our first school our new start applicant aventura community school for the school year 2223 they proposed a maximum enrollment of 930 students grades k through 8. i'll ask for it that

093you refer back to the one pager as i'm speaking about the rating characteristics that i share with you on last thursday as well as the findings report if we look at aventura community school grades k-8 the academic plan and as determined by the review team evidence findings the rating is a partially meets standard the evidence findings included there was a lack of thorough current research that supports the curriculum and instructional strategies the application also lacked detailed plans for meeting all student needs including remediation special education and english language learners i'm going to refer to your one pager for some additional evidence findings as it relates to the bullets that's on the slide there was no data or research points provided that confirms that curriculum translated to spanish improves outcomes for students there was a lack

094of evidence in the application around the support of students who have a language background that is not english or spanish speaking the applicant did not address disproportionality and would need to hire their own school psychologist and not rely only on menps to identify students with disabilities and finally there was a lack of a plan for students who cannot be properly served by the inclusion model in the application to receive the appropriate adaptations and modifications again these are evidence findings by the review team where aventura community school received in the academic plan section a rating of partially meets standard as we move to the next section i'll just call a ventura community school acs k-8 for short moving forward the review team determined with the evidence findings that the operations plans had a rating of partially

095meet standard the applicant according to the evidence in the application did not include a sound and reasonable plan for staffing that is likely to recruit dual certified teachers needed to staff the school the applicant did not present a thorough and reasonable plan for start-up operations with specific details and exact time frames the applicant identified a potential facility but does not currently have a proposed lease or a contract on a building and finally the applicant lacked an outline solid transportation plan that is equitable to attract a diverse group of students going back to your one pager in the operations section i'll just call out a few detailed evidence findings as the review team reported them to us the applicant described the timeline for startup task that is very vague and lacks specific details more exact time

096frames are needed a robust recruitment plan that supports the mission to recruit bilingual students was not found in the application the applicant does not currently have a proposed lease or a contract on a building the recruitment and professional development plan to find the number of dual certified teachers needed to run this charter successfully lacks detail and enough evidence that the plan will be successful and finally the applicant did not identify a transportation provider so there is no way to confirm if their assumptions around bus transportation are accurate there was no plan to address the need of families who opt to walk drive or drop off students again this was determined by the review team in the evidence findings that the operations plan for acs grades k-8 had a rating of partially meet standard as we

097moved to acs k-8 in the financial plan the rating was a meet standard so there was evidence found by the review team that the applicant identified spending priorities that align with the school's mission supports the academic plan and supports the management structure and the applicant also demonstrated financial planning and management capacity now this slide is not part of the standard application but for your information board we wanted to provide the net fiscal impact at a maximum enrollment of 930 students of course our finance team has confirmed this information so i wanted to share with you that at a maximum enrollment of 930 students it would be about a 4.6 million dollar per year net fiscal impact if you look on your one pager that we share with you thursday you can actually see the number

098of students that will be enrolled each year until it reaches maximum enrollment so at this time findings for the board consideration after a thorough review of the application and based on the state evaluation rubric the review team has determined the following for aventural community school academics a partially meets operations partially meets finances meets and of course this is a new start applicant so there was no data for past performance and that's why you see ena so madam chair i'll now turn it over to you for the board's consideration thank you so much for that explanation dr griffin and again for the viewing audience for the community during a recent board retreat we had a great presentation from the charter office that is a whole three people deep that means all three people have worked diligently

099very intentionally to make sure that we have as much information as possible to make the best decision for our students so thank you for that overview it really was helpful and informative now before we begin discussion and motions i want to remind everyone that there are students watching that there are parents watching that there are teachers watching from all of our schools it is completely reasonable for us to ask questions for us to try to convince one another to vote one way or the other but please be mindful of the people that make up the schools that's all i ask with that in mind uh go ahead if we have a motion this is elrod thank you i move that we deny the approval of a venture community school based upon them not meeting the

100academic or operational plans based upon a lack of evidence and thorough current research to support their curriculum about translating spanish improves outcomes for all students especially students that do not speak spanish or english additionally and provide they do not provide appropriate rti supports or accountability along with assessing their global competence there was additional lacked detail plans for meeting all student needs including remediation additionally the applicant did not include the staffing plan that would be required to appropriately find as legally required sped in el students and does not currently have a secured facility nor an equitable transportation plan additionally they have a vague teacher recruitment plan though they will need dual certified teachers do we have a motion i mean i'm sorry we have a second a second all right mrs tyler seconds any discussion mrs

101poopo walker thank you and to the team that did this review so i'll just open by saying that i was a child who grew up in a household where spanish was spoken but i didn't learn to read and write it till i got to college and then i taught native speakers of spanish in metro schools who had to learn to read and write their first language and so i believe in the mission and the purpose and the value that a school like aventura would bring to nashville so i just have some questions for you or for your committee members i don't know if they're here or not to answer questions so it's not very common in fact unheard of for a charter applicant to have a contract on a facility before they're approved would you

102say that's true um it's unusual for them to have a facility identified before they're approved um i would not say it's unusual because it takes time to really prepare the school um to be ready for the opening and that's in 2223 and it's just a year away yeah i just think it's it's unrealistic for us to expect them to have a contract if they haven't even been approved so i think that's an unfair okay i also really take um [Music] uh issue with the the language used here that um curriculum translated into spanish that there's no evidence that that improves outcomes for students first of all they're not translating they're teaching in spanish they're not translating anything they're teaching just like glendale does if there's no evidence that bilingual instruction works why is glendale one

103of the highest performing schools in our district i mean really in most countries around the world children learn two languages or more when they grow up we're one of those few countries that does not value second language acquisition in the early grades and so i take issue with the idea that you can't and that there's no evidence there's decades of research around teaching children in two languages from the earliest ages so i think that's a flawed uh sort of criticism of this application i also don't understand why this school requires dual certified teachers when glendale does not and so i'd like to know what those two certifications would be in can anybody tell me what the dual certifications would be in well because we had e-l people are part of the review team i will

104follow up on that because again i am reporting the findings from the review team and so it is not fair for me to interject any of what they found as reference in the document so i cannot fairly yeah i just think the idea that they need to be dual certified teaching in a bilingual school is not grounded in what we currently do so that should not be held against them absolutely um and then the other thing i'll say is that you all said that that there were no details on how they would monitor global competence when on page 37 there's four different performance indicators with 14 unique measurable goals on global competence so i urge these committees to come with accurate criticism of these applications because we don't typically take the time to go back

105and fact check we are assuming that what we're getting is correct so um i'll just leave it there but that's just i would love to know that what the dual certification requirement and why they're being dinged on that um because i don't think you have to have el endorsement to be a bilingual teacher thanks thank you for that i'll let the review team respond since we don't interject absolutely the findings of the application on top of what the review team has already found so i'll let the ruby team respond yes mri thank you so i agree that there is research for sure of the benefits of having dual language my my concern is that they were not able in the application to bring that evidence for themselves along with bringing the evidence that they understood

106how to identify legally as required uh special ed students and english language students though they are going to be a dual language school so those my concerns are that there's um a lack of understanding of what they're how to get to their goal and that glendale of course obviously is a well-respected school of doing the dual language and already meets this need though it is a great need and has lots of evidence as suggested i just say something real quick so glendale meets a need for white families in my district glendale doesn't meet a need for families whose children speak spanish at home and i think there's a really important distinction to be had there um and i will also say the foot that the application has a ton of references to research and evidence

107on the value of dual uh language instruction i'm i guess my argument back to that would be the implication there isn't that the our individual public neighborhood schools are then not doing that job either if glendale is the only one that's able to meet our el students needs then we are saying that none of our other schools are able to meet them whether they're elementary school middle school or high school and that's obviously not true we have lots of schools that meet those needs and not just spanish speaking but over 140 languages so that is a i understand the population at glendale and how that is skewed um this school um claims to be filling a need that is wanted in the overton cluster i'm not going to speak up half the glencliff cluster as

108i'm not tapped into that but the overton cluster is my cluster and there is not a big request for this type of school nor is there a request for any additional k-8 school in general there is and has been a want for an additional elementary school which is being prioritized in next year's capital needs budget and ideally would be built in the next two to three years and that again would be one of these k-5 schools which are what people are really looking for and we're not looking for a few extra seats in this district we would need and in my cluster we would need a lot of extra seats not a piecemeal solution to this so there's not a huge need or advocacy for this school or this type of school again i find

109it really alarming that they did not understand their legal requirements for the special needs students and the el students and that they miss that particularly considering what their mission is and operationally i understand that they don't have a lease but they don't have backup plans for their two current locations and then also kind of speaks to not having a transportation plan and other operational needs that you would need to have in line for ideally kicking off in the next two years i think it's worthwhile mentioning that this contract is for a k through 8 school and they have on their board todd dickinson who's a co-creator founder excuse me a valor and well-known and respected and valor also originally started with a k-8 contract as well but they only serve middle school and now high

110school as we've added extra seats what could potentially keep this school from doing the same thing of not providing the elementary seats that are considered needed though once again we don't really want them piece milled but what would keep them from only what would keep them from not doing the same thing of only doing middle school and not the full k through eight i don't think legally i mean i'm at liberty to answer that question i'm gonna defer to attorney okay i promise not to send you to jail i don't want to do that either so i haven't seen the valor contract and how that was structured so i don't know that i can comment and sort of comparing the two contracts the way the contracts are typically written is that it talks it lays

111out the progression for the schools they will start in year one with x grade start in year two so i don't know what happened with valor but i would suspect that this contract for this particular school would be structured in that way okay i mean my hope of course would be that it would be a k-8 school as in their contract but of course we understand elementary schools are more expensive and it's a concern as we um in response to the lack of elementary seats after that experience already significantly built up norman binkley though it's not in my district it's in miss um frida's district i also want to make sure though i understand that it is not considered important by the state of tennessee to talk about our fiscal impact of our schools it

112is a responsibility and role of myself as a board member and so i am not voting to deny this based upon the fiscal impact as i have shared there's a lot of other reasons that are within this compliance driven process i want to make sure i use your terms that are good reasons and of good value reasons but fiscally it does not make sense for us either and so i want to make sure that we once again talk about and i appreciate that being provided that it's the uh sorry i have so many notes it is the 4.6 million a year and as that is increased with enrollment i averaged that out to it'd really be 32 million dollars over the 10-year time um so you're aware if it's 4.2 million a year our current

113budget currently has paid family leave for our staff at 4 million and the remaining full adoption of ela materials science social studies tech books cte and all these other things at 3.7 million so there's a lot of ways that we could use this fiscal money in other ways but again within this compliance driven process that is frankly leaned towards charter schools that's created by the state and through nazca they're still only meeting one of the three criteria and the other two are partially meets for this plethora of reasons and so that is why my motion and why i will choose to deny is tyler um i just yeah i'd like a little bit of clarification if it's possible um the first thing is why don't you pull your mic just a little bit closer um

114i just little bit of clarification if possible what is their four-point grading scale um that you guys said it's that there was concern that it was not aligned to the tennessee state board of education policy or practice so i just i didn't know what they were going to do how they were going to grade their students well again these are evidence findings from the review team we can follow up with that because we have to really be factual about what the review team findings were so we would actually follow up with that with that four-point scale okay and with the review team evidence so um and then i wanted to ask and this might be a legal question for melissa but if for some reason both of the the areas that they're hoping to place

115their school fall through and they are not able to open at the 22 23 right school year what does what does that mean with our contract with them the standard contract then it could revoke the charter okay and so if they do procure one of the spots but they don't have it ready in time because it took a while is that similar language are different i don't have the exact language in front of me but usually there's a dialogue that occurs once the application is approved there they do work closely with the charter office okay um i have a point of order and this may be for attorney robert uh just trying to clarify timing for us because there seems to be a lot of questions um and so where are we in that window

116before they default to something so if no action is taken tonight i believe that we would then exceed the window for considering it on the first pass if the board votes to not approve tonight they do have 30 days to address these partially meets categories and then it will come back before the board actually okay oh mr little yeah and just adding on to what dr gentry said are are we voting on it although we're still asking the review team clarifying questions you do need to have a vote tonight yes okay but we'll if we don't have the clarifying questions answered by the review team that is independent and like how can we know the best way to vote if we still have outstanding questions that were raised on the board floor so if there

117are outstanding questions again you can vote no tonight allow it to go back and have those 30 days for the charter school to submit additional information on partially meets and dr griffin and her team can provide the board with the requested information last question what if there are additional questions on the next vote will the review team be here to answer any questions that way we don't have to vote on something that we still have clarifying questions i can answer this one actually mr roberge if you don't mind that so what i would ask us to do is when we get those on that thursday before the meeting submit questions to dr sevilla that way and and he can send the responses to the entire board so we try we have to have that five-day

118um the the release of information at least five days before the board meeting and that's to give us ample time to ask the questions and to reach out to staff to clarify so if at that next time if by the way if within the 30 days if aventura does not or if we still have questions around the findings go ahead and submit those questions to our to dr severe he'll funnel those to dr griffin and to the team and then be able to come back and not only respond to you but be able to respond to all of us and that's for anyone that has a question but has a question we'll be able to do it that way is that how we've always done this because it seems to me that i mean i

119didn't submit questions because i thought they would be answered tonight to be honest i think this is the first time that i've had that we've had questions from the about the review team's findings i haven't seen this before either no it's not true we've i've asked questions before pretty sure yeah there's always been a lot of discussion i think the difference has been that the team has been available to support whoever is presenting the findings and so where she um dr griffin just does not have that support tonight and so i think just procedurally if i'm understanding correctly and i notice i know i think it gives people some discomfort to to right to not approve it because it says something but it's it's not approving to give to allow the process to go forward

120the process of we can't defer it okay we have to take action and so the action that we would take to get the additional information and allow the charters to close any gaps that were identified by the review team is to deny them so that they go back to the drawing board fill in the gaps and represent in the meantime as chair bucks has stated any additional questions let's get them documented to dr severe so we'll have those answers plus the gaps filled in by the time it's presented again and we can officially ask that they're here to support dr griffin so that if there are questions again to your point that night they'll be here that's all i have to say thank you for your expertise any other questions all right well with that

121we will vote uh could you restate your motion oh you will you know just um restate the first portion if you don't mind it's already been documented okay my motion is to deny a venture community school all right and it was properly seconded all in favor all opposed no extensions okay so again dr griffin to clarify that means that aventura will get notification that they have 30 days to resubmit to recently um and it sounds like we are requesting dr battle and dr griffin that the the entire team be here to be able to answer questions around any clarification misgivings so it go ahead miss dr gentry yeah i can see it all on her face it's a pretty big team right 15 people yeah so they may not all be here but i think

122if dr sevier can share the questions if we can't get the answer back in writing to have as many people as possible for those areas because if i understand i was at the retreat and i remember you said that there are people for each of those sections so it's not everybody we just need people for those sections where we need clarifying questions yeah and and one last question does the operator does the applicant send in any responses to their application before you guys present like did they send you anything that's clarifying or we just need to wait till they reapply if they were denied according to tennessee cold annotated the law states the only way that changes or amendments can be made is during the 30-day window so we can't change amend consider we have

123to follow the process and that is 30 days after the vote we receive amendments to the contracts yes ma'am so and so we can't ask questions of the operator in this process beyond the interview thing that you'll do okay just in case my head shaking wasn't caught um no that's not part of the process there is a capacity interview that dr griffin had talked about and that's their time to provide information for the board's consideration all right and with that we will move on to nashville classical school 2. okay and now to talk about our second application nashville classical school 2 which is an existing operator in tennessee and they applied for a new school that replicates an existing model oh i thought she voted you did not vote no we did vote we did

124vote we're done we voted yeah yeah okay okay new application for a school that replicates an existing model for the school year 2223 nashville classical school 2 and i'll just call it ncs2 for short has proposed a maximum of 600 students enrolled with grades k through 8. as determined by the review team and evidence in the findings ncs2 k-8 academic plan with the evidence findings received a rating of partially meets standard the evidence findings detailed that the curriculum and instructional strategies align with the mission target population and state standards however the review team expressed concerns about the description of the rationale for selecting the community where the school will be located as well as the applicant student recruitment plan at this time i'm going to ask the board to refer to your one pager one

125more time and i'll call out some specific examples as it relates to the partially meets standard rating there was no detailed recruitment strategy for families already choosing other options in the proposed school area so the review team was not confident that the enrollment trend in the current location would transfer to the new location the review team was concerned that the applicant proposed and anticipated that the majority of families for the proposed school will come from clusters who are already experiencing enrollment challenges the review team does acknowledge that the current nashville classical school reported that it has a wait list of students however no identified wait list was submitted in the application or during the capacity interview the review team cannot ensure that the reported wait list will translate into enrolled seats at the proposed location

126since the wait list is for students which are in another cluster as evidenced by the fan findings the review team deemed the academic plan as a partially meets standard if we move to the operations plan for ncs2 the rating according to the review team was a meet standard the review of the 2014 to 2019 operational framework found that nashville classical school one exceeded all organizational standards each year the applicant articulated clear roles and appropriate responsibilities for governance and management the review team deemed the operations plan for ncs2 as a rating of meets standard the financial plan ncs2 k-8 financial plan according to the review team and evidence findings received a rating of meets standard the applicant did identify financial procedures policy systems and processes for accounting payroll and independent annual audits and the applicant's budget

127narrative clearly explained and supported all revenue and cost assumptions so the review team according to evidence findings rated ncs2 k8 financial plan as a meets standard if we move to past performance remember this is a replication model so they have past performance the review team determined that ncs2 k-8 past performance was a rating of meet standard the organization is currently in good standing and there have been no revocations non-renewals or financial organization or academic deficiencies again the review team as evidence findings reveal rated ncs2 as a meet standard in past performance again this is not part of the standard application we wanted to provide this to you the board the net fiscal impact at maximum enrollment which is 600 students the net fiscal impact at maximum enrollment would be 2.6 million dollars if you turn

128on the back of that one pager that we provided for you on last week you will see the actual number of students proposed per year as it relates to their enrollment in nashville classical ii and now the findings for board consideration after a thorough review of the application and based on the state evaluation rubric the review team has determined the following for nashville classical charter school two academics as partially meets operations as meets finances as meets and past performance as meets madam chair i'll now turn it over to you for the board's consideration all right thank you we have a motion miss tyler yes um you have to bear with me it's kind of long because we have to say everything all right i moved to deny nashville classical's application for several reasons first their

129application does not describe a sound rationale for selecting the community where the school will locate nashville public schools is interested in charter charter applicants who demonstrate the capacity to educate the most at risk students in highly diverse and personalized settings and according to tennessee code annotated law 4913-106 public charter schools may be formed to provide quality educational options for students the prospective student population shall be students who are assigned to or were previously enrolled in a school failing to make adequate yearly progress as defined by the state's accountability system giving priority to at-risk students also i kind of jump over one and then students who in the previous school year failed to test proficient on the end of course assessments in language arts reading or mathematics students who are eligible for free or reduced price

130lunch and who are enrolled in lease that have an average daily membership of 14 000 students or more and three or more schools that have missed the same benchmark for adequate yearly progress for two or more consecutive years resulting in such schools being designated as high priority schools so that's part of the code i just kind of picked those pieces out there there are more designations within there so nashville classical would like to open another school in district nine in my district but the district does not fit much of the criteria for prospective charter school students well it's well known that families move into district nine specifically for their i'm sorry ms tyler is that still part of the motion oh yeah man it's going in so can we just get your emotion and then

131that's still part of her motion i mean we have to have all the reasons in the motion these are my reasons yeah i told you you have to bear with me [Laughter] okay um district 9 [Music] families move to district 9 to attend the zoned elementary public schools specifically these families are not going to choose to go to a charter school when they've moved for their public school in addition to not having demand for a charter school there is not a need for one in district nine not only do we not have not only do we have the second smallest student population in all the districts we also have the lowest number of economically disadvantaged students in the entire system none of our schools have ever been on the priority school list in fact since

132the 2017-2018 school year all of district 9 elementary schools have been designated reward schools at least once if not more than once all the tivas scores for the elementary schools in district 9 meet or exceed nashville classical scores with three of our five schools receiving the highest marks of five opening another school in district 9 would not put nashville classical in the community of students that they are bound to serve by state law additionally the charter review team noted that the hillwood cluster is currently serving 21 private schools that has an estimated six thousand elementary and middle school students because there is not a robust detailed recruit recruitment strategy for families already choosing private schools in the area the review team is not confident that the enrollment trend in the current location will transfer over

133to the new location and i just want to note that when a charter school creates recruitment strategies for families already choosing private schools they're not looking to recruit the most at risk students they are looking to recreate a private school using public dollars nashville classical has suggested they plan to pull from not only district 9 but from the white street cluster as well and white's creek has suffered from low student enrollment for many years resulting in two school closures within the cluster pulling from white's creek may not be feasible due to the low numbers finally i have concerns about their ability to finance and complete any necessary renovations in the old brook mead elementary school before they plan to open the school is over 60 years old and the majority of it has not been

134renovated since its opening and they've only added one edition a couple decades ago i taught there right before it closed and when i taught there over a decade ago several rooms had recurring problems with molds because of the air conditioning system i am hesitant to agree that the amount nashville classical has budgeted for four facilities is appropriate without seeing an appraisal of what the old brook mead would need to ensure a safe and healthy environment we have a motion now do we have a second a second all right we have a second any any discussion all right mr little so one um my son is in the sixth grade and he attends national classical in east nashville so just going back and forth with melissa since this is a different school if i'd be voting

135but i did want to give comment i think for everything when i listen to us talk about adventure and then change the the goal post on highlighting that they partially meet academics and it was around the waitlist highlighting that they meet operations highlighting it they meet finances highlighting that they meet past performance and then move the goal post because we may not agree with the school coming to our community for one i think we have to look at academic achievement when we look at the district as a whole a lot of schools are not performing academically and i think we talked about like there's been no real partnership but this gives us the ability to have partnership and i personally know since my son is at the school that national classical has opened their doors

136to many of the schools in the area who have low performance so much the doors so wide open that they have done dual pd's and so i think we got to take a step back and say are we against every type of school because of its brand are we looking at how they treat our kids academically and culturally and i would say in the motion that sounded it was a lot from an old state law that's not as caring as the one you were reading and that was for miss tyler all right dr gentry and then miss tyler so what i would just like to point out a couple of things and i said this in the response to the resolution that was uh presented earlier this process for approving and as even as ms

137player peters pointed out that it was rigid it's very outlined it's very detailed it's very clear on the the boxes that need to be checked this can become a very black and white process that does not relieve us of the responsibility of being strategic about approving charters and so it can also be argued that you know we that that you it's like um you tell me i'm racist and so anything i say you're going to categorize it as racist you can't tell us that we're cho you know we can't make the statement that we're against charter schools because we're trying to be strategic about the ones we approve and so there that if there just as the uh as part of ms elrad's comment there was not a demand for the school as far as

138she was aware the people who are pushing for nashville classical are currently have children enrolled in east nashville where there are priority schools where there is a demand for an alternative educational option for their schools ms tyler is telling us that that doesn't exist so i don't think she's honing in on the brand i think she's honing in on is it a need and again if we we are attempting i believe to go back to the original intent of charters to fill a void that the district at the present time is not capable of meeting that void according to the data does not exist in the current district where they're proposing to establish the school now let's go to the point that they want to pull students from the white's creek cluster here comes sharon

139we got enough problems again we've already pointed out that we've had to make some very hard decisions because of low capacity we've also pointed out that we are making changes we have we can't we sit here as a board and approve plans to improve our schools and then support and then have discussions or consider supporting decisions that undermine those plans that we've approved and i just i struggle to say i've charged my one employee for moving mountains in district one from moving mountains and pearl cone this is what i've asked her to do this is what has we've been approved this is what we're going to evaluate this is what her we talked about livelihood earlier her livelihood is dependent upon her ability to be successful in moving the district schools forward and her ability

140to do that is directly contingent upon the number of resources ie dollars that she has available to do that and i i struggle with being you know and it's almost like a we're trying to be shamed because people want to throw up i've gotten texts even sitting here you didn't talk about the students again i got one employee and her she is charged with making a difference for the students in this district the school's the student and she can only do that directly before the students that are in the district schools and she needs resources and our support to do that so my vote and i i am not going to accept being accused of being anti-charter or anti-anything what i am is pro-mnps district schools because that's the board i serve on what i

141am is for supporting and providing the resources necessary for our one employee to be to have a snowmobile chance in hell to have a chance to be successful and again i i i applaud we have and to say again we already got 27 charter schools so to even suggest that there is an anti-charter mentality in this district is crazy there isn't we have charter schools here we we we we we collaborate when it's possible i i don't i'm not going to accept that that that dialogue to be a part of the narrative that goes forward about this board but what i want us to understand is that we we we can't talk out of both sides of our neck we can't say we want all these things done for mnps district schools and then make

142decisions that make it difficult for those things to be accomplished and that's just where i struggle it's not about whether it's if if if if dr battle came and said we're going to open up a whole new school in district 9. why why tell me why we wouldn't do it because there's not a need for a new school in district nine and again she says well i mean other than the kabillion dollar one we've already approved that one that's an infrastructure thing um and so i i just i just struggle with sometimes our lens being a bit skewed um when we're when we're making decisions and so i you know i don't know yeah all of that all right mrs tyler then mrs elrod um well i want to second everything that dr gentry just

143said i'm fully on board with that and i also want to point out that the academic program design and capacity rating includes capacity so where it is located is part of the reason why you would approve or deny and i have shown and i can give you more numbers if you want them district 9 does not want a charter school they will not attend and so capacity will be a problem and that's part of the academic program designing capacity and that has nothing to do with whether or not your school is good because i hear that it's just knocking it out of the park where it's located in district 9 it would not be serving the same group of students with the same needs and i love that they open the doors to the priority

144schools around them to do pd with the with our zone schools i think that's wonderful um but we don't have any priority schools in district nine we have reward schools in district nine so i just it's not about as dr gentry said it's it's not about being anti-all chartered this is about looking at what it is supposed to do and recognizing when it is not going to meet that standard mrs elrod thank you i wanted to um to reiterate some points as was said it's not needed in that district and um that's particularly confusing as they have no detailed recruitment strategy but claim that the majority of their students are going to be from within that district and so if they don't have a way of figuring out how to recruit from private schools um

145which kudos to them if they can figure that out um then that's concerning because i don't know how they're planning on filling the seats that are needed and to that point i know that we've discussed in some detail a bunch of us have discussed the importance of doing things for all of our students and though the push that we give to dr battle and the team and to each other to do what's best for most and doing what's best for most in the strategic vision is one thing doing what might be easier or feel better for 600 students is another story um again because you know i'm going to talk about the fiscal impact though i understand that that is not within our compliance driven structure it is 19.4 million dollars over 10 years when

146you annualize it among all their enrollment and again that does not meet our strategic vision or our role and responsibilities as a board of figuring out how we're supposed to be best supporting our students that we currently have and once again not a not a small group of students that don't currently need to be served as they are already well more than well supported mr little mr little yeah this is a good conversation and i'm well versed in in grassroots and my tenure on the board i'm i'm learning grass tops and and i would say in grassroots when i talk to parents all around all around the city you know antioch bellevue east nashville north nashville it's not about the location of the school and so even when we look at district 9 and the

147private schools i think we're challenging their ability to recruit private schools but we're also not thinking about parents who are willing to drive from antioch to mlk every day and so the location of the school for me doesn't matter and maybe that's where we philosophically disagree i think the academic achievement when i think about when when a student leaves the third grade not reading on the third grade level and then you reassess a kid in the eighth grade and not only have they they have not remained the same but they have gotten a little bit worse i think those are the conversations i'm willing to have and i and i understand as a board and you know i i listen to you guys i take note but for me my direction is not about what's

148good for a system but what is good for our students and and i think we're going to continue to disagree i think rachel elrod does a really good job of breaking things down on like what she feels is right and what's wrong and so as i was listening to her i just i was saying oh like now we're moving the goal post um because from our reviewers who have gone through this whole process have come back with favorable results and now that they'll come back with favorable results we say that's that's that's not enough and i just think as dr gentry said well she didn't say but she talked about black and white we can do this process in black and white but at the end of the day her job is to support the

149school board i think we got to support our families and so why do we need antioch parents driving to mlk but when we created mlk it was a structure to bring back the white flight that had left our schools and so when you look at megs when you look at mlk and when you look at um human fog all of those were african-american schools and so we created a strategy to bring it back and so we got to think about what is our strategy to really educate kids because i'm gonna tell you right now and there's no disrespect and so i'm gonna just say this and i'm gonna be quiet i wholeheartedly support dr battle this is not gonna be like us first then this is i look at her staff i look at how

150she moves i look at this process here and it is a plus my my allegiance is not to people it's to the kids and as my pastor would always say at the end i only came for one you know i didn't you know he didn't give his sermon to make sure everybody got baptized in the church he just came for that one that one parishioner who listened to the sermon who felt convicted in their heart to get baptized and as we think about education in nashville as someone who grew up in the system i think we got to think deeply about it i think we got to lay it out on the line i think the equity road map is an opportunity but as we look at these schools and we look at national classical

151i think they have been a good partner and they deserve the respect outside of the budget talk i think they deserve the respect because they have taken the least of them and educated those kids as referenced in everywhere that they do on their wait list which they actually go through the district and their wait list is very robust and as they have consistently partnered with many of us up here to talk about the great things that they're doing and that'll be my aunt i'm so i'm sorry oh so i'm speaking in miss elrod and then mrs bush so that was a great segue because i was actually going to offer some historical context in 1963 metro nashville public schools became or metro became a metropolitan government mnps became or began to become integrated and that's

152when at that point i think we had 90 000 students we have not recovered from integration everyone i've been called a race vader before but i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge that the public education system is still a public system that was steeped in racism classism so yes in 1963 we experienced some white flight we built magnet schools i say all that to say that there is a certainly an argument to make sure that we elevate our thinking that we better support families that we you know we began offering options to try to recruit white families back to nashville public schools to ask them to integrate with their neighbors and actually care about black people and then that became well can you care about brown people and then that became well can

153you care about differently abled people and so slowly but surely we've been trying to become a public system that is way more diverse not just in the students that we serve but in the way that we serve them i offer all of this context to say that is why i cannot and will not vote for this because when i was speaking to the the charter leader who i have a lot of respect for and who i appreciate we went back and forth quite a bit today with some healthy debate i do not appreciate that african-american students are asked to move from their neighborhoods to be bussed across the city to force diversity on other neighborhoods i don't like that when i was in high school i went to mlk and i remember my little sister

154was about to she was entering into middle school and my parents were having to decide whether she was going to go to white's creek or just what school she was going to attend and that's when we were rezoned to hillwood now if you know where my parents live it's in bordeaux like kind of deep in bordeaux so the idea that my little sister would have had to be on a bus for 45 minutes to get to hillwood to help force diversity on them because she was a black girl and they needed black people in their schools was frustrating it's even more frustrating now and i i certainly don't believe that nashville classical means to be um to fluster in that way or to they mean to be a good actor they are trying to help

155diversity but i frankly do not believe that if we bus black kids out of their neighborhoods that that will recruit private school parents who have already decided that they don't want their kids with our kids and you can take that how you like with the us and the the day and the hour but it's just it's a fact if that is going to be the recruitment strategy we won't recruit private school families back to mnps we won't recruit them back to that hillwood cluster it'll just further exacerbate race relations because now my baby has to feel like their neighborhood their school is not where the best can happen they need to go somewhere else to get it they have to be around white neighbors to get something to get resources and that i need to

156remove my emotion but it just frustrates me because it is so representative of larger issues but that's what i take issue with it's it's not that i am anti-charter or that i don't like nashville classical shoot last year i fought i fought at this table to increase their enrollment i fought for that because i did appreciate what they were doing i do see them as partners and collaborators but what i will not do is try to force even more families who have the means to to drive across the city and i won't force students who don't have the means to be bussed across the city they're they're i'm sorry i'm i'm a bit flustered and i'm trying to bring myself back but it just we can never focus on the students in the most under-resourced

157neighborhoods and the most under-resourced communities and schools we cannot resource them if we always always always do what nashville does and nashville keeps trying to support the most affluent families in our community we ignore those who will never speak up we ignore those who don't have a pathway to us we ignore those who don't know who their elected officials are to reach out and advocate to them why do we do that heaven forbid we pour our resources our time and our energy into a buena vista into a mckissick into a pearl cone why why do we have to continue to i i i'm not articulating it well but to continue to ask our most disenfranchised families to bear the burden of diversifying communities in schools is infuriating again i separate that from nashville classical because

158i know that's not what they're trying to do they are trying to offer an option i just at this time don't believe that that is what we need to do we already have limited dollars and i i say that not to to ring the money bail but to suggest the idea that we will never have enough resources to appropriately provide education for students at warner again warner is a blue ribbon school that everyone is is choosing with their feet not to attend we'll never have the resources to make sure that a pearl cone has the teachers the training the fields that they need the other things that other schools already have with pto dollars or with parent advocacy if we continue to only care about those families who know how to approach us and advocate

159to us all of our kids will never benefit it will continue to separate us further we'll separate the haves from the have-nots mrs elrod okay um so i want to respond to mr little's consideration that families will drive from antioch and other clusters it's important to state that within these conversations we're having about strategy and where they partially meet their academics is because they themselves don't believe that and they should know i mean they're the operator and not only the operator of one school that's considered good they're they have an aggressive growth plan and they themselves say if you read the paperwork that they expect them to come from the hillwood cluster as a majority and then come from white's creek clusters which we have heard and we should know that that's not a place

160to recruit students from as we have had to make the very difficult decision to close schools in that area and then from there they might go to pearl conan glencliff so they're not uh that's not their goal is to have a bunch of students drive in and so they should know what their their market is and it appears that they don't and that's part of the reason why they got to partially meet and so to that other point of i'm moving the goal post is is that they have to meet the requirements of in this application um we are a compliance driven group of people um now i have made my points pretty clear in the past that i think the application is not as robust as it should be by the state um but

161that would if you are not able to meet the criteria of a rubric that is already leaned in your favor that is very concerning and if you still don't know where your students are going to come from and we're saying that it's not needed in that district just like it was said about the other school though that's not what we're discussing now um then i'm gonna i'm gonna probably agree that it's not needed in that area um i mean to this point we say that they've met their operational needs but within this notes if we read them it talks about operationally about how they're planning on tripling their school and student population in two years and how that's concerning now that is a concern we want to make sure that they're able to do that

162so that they are not languishing um and the only way that they're going to be able to do that is once again if they understand and know their market and they have an appropriate passage to it and so i think that this is a valuable conversation not only for our strategic conversations about what they're wanting to do but also about what our goals are and of course the continuation and the support both with our current resources and hopefully additional financial resources for our other schools that we currently already have and christian is gone and so i think friend you are next i just have a question melissa i i okay so i'm going to vote to deny um to let y'all know i'm going to do that up front and i've listened to everyone and

163y'all know how i am when it comes to being very i listen a lot and i do my research and i'm too a little concerned about how and i think nashville classical does a great job i'm not saying that it's just the way they're pulling the population of our students to be able to meet those the demographic that they're looking for to be to make this school successful and i've heard um miss tyler's concerns and in her district and i've looked at her district i've been able to analyze what's in her district and she at this time the district doesn't have a need they are doing really well over in her district but my concern is with the state because it looks upon that if we are going to deny because partially or partly because

164of location how does it look on a state level does it look like okay well yeah we know that her district may not or based on the information that's been presented how does that look upon the state so i'd always hate to try to predict elected officials minds or any decision maker's mind but that being said i would want to wait until next board meeting to see what the rationale is for either approving or denying before making a comment on what the state may or may not do okay so in other words so in 30 days they have an opportunity to come back and because they've heard our discussion will that be an opportunity or will they consider and i can't say what's in their heads to consider a different district to look upon going

165to to satisfy what we're or what are asked or what we're stating as a board or i just kind of want to i mean i've not seen this before so i just kind of want to get some feedback that would be an entirely new application for a school in a different place their application here would address the recruitment concerns that are found under the partially meet standard okay okay that's what i worry about i just worry about kind of how that's going to work out if they're going to be looking at a different location but like you said it's a different application right okay thank you this is player peters and then miss tyler i was like suggest as a board at our next retreat we have a more thoughtful and full authority conversations about

166the charter because i think a lot of things that happen is separate from this specific charter application some of the things that dr gentry said i think needs to be discussed because this is before your time on the board mr little but there was a a foundation set amongst board members of how we would consider and think about um charter schools and charter applications unfortunately like me you came through an appointment process and so you missed some of those conversations just by the virtue of you know of a vacancy but i think we need to have that discussion because i think that's a different discussion because um you said about not being good for the system but by default this national charter school is creating their own system it's a mini system because their goals

167is to um to have one school they're asking for another and they plan to ask for a third so by default of what they're doing they're creating a system so we can't use the parent um desires as a mean of motivation for this for this because they are creating a system also and by default we are system i mean it's one of the things that we have to govern like a system and even though there's grassroots and grass tops like you said but we're here to govern we have a mission a role is to provide oversight of what public school needs and what the community wants that's literally in our mission and that's the difficult part of this job is to do that um i am not anti-charter i voted for the expansion of charters

168against some of my um supporters that thought that i should not do that um but that's the role that i took in the position that i took so i think we have to be very careful of the narrative that we set because we're educating kids and educating kids i wish as you know as budget and finance chair we have unlimited money and we can print money and pull money i mean that would have been an issue but we do have finite resources but that's a different discussion that's nothing to do with this but we have to be thoughtful and strategic and that's a different conversation of how charters fit within the entire msps system and how we interact with one another and i think we can't confuse that relationship or goal with individual charter applications

169so i just hope that the next time we have a retreat that we make space to have this conversation because i think we're conflating what we do as a district in us and and we're having discussions during individual school application and i think they're two different discussions so i would love to have that discussion with you i hope we have that discussion we did not have the last board retreat when we're going over this i think that was probably an appropriate time to really have that discussion but hopefully as a board floor i'm asking my fellow colleagues at the next board retreat that we have this discussion of the role of charters their place and how they fit in mnp system and how that relationship works because this is a different conversation it's not fair

170to dr griffin it's not fair to review board they have that overarching conversation in the middle of individual conversation and it's not fair to that charter application it's not fair to them to talk about branding and things like that when for me i don't care well i don't care about brand it's about governing it's about a system what resource can provide and how we can provide it and i think that's a different discussion and i do not want to confuse that with an individual aspect i'm sorry hold on um i appreciate you calling that out and i do a nashville classical uh an apology my my passion was not geared toward you all for the students or towards the school i i feel like i was triggered by this whole idea of we're not focusing

171on students when we talk about all students in the system and that just that bothers me so i did not mean it just it it's something that i wish as a community as just as people that we would be more mindful of how all students are impacted how their sel needs are not met by certain assumptions that we force on them and and to your point mr player peters i refuse to vote to add another magnet school to our portfolio i refuse i'm i have hume fog and mlk and nsa all in my district i'm asked at least monthly about adding another school or turning a school into a magnet and no no why would we we have so many other students so many other schools that need that attention that reimagined ed that focus

172um that that type of work and so it's for me it's not at all about the name of the school it's that we have we already are tasked with meeting the needs of students that come into first grade all 30 percent of students coming into first grade already one grade level behind we can't even have high-level conversations about how to best support families before they get to us or how to resource them once they do get there you know because we spend a lot of time talking about other kind of tangential issues but all right miss tyler and then mr little um thank you yes i just i was going to kind of echo say similar things actually to what you said miss player peters so i don't want to repeat you too much but

173i do want to um kind of reiterate that idea that you know you're not on the board of nashville classical you're on the board of mnps and so we need to think about mnps students and not just the specific kids whose families advocate for them not the kids who have the transportation not the kids whose parents are willing to put their baby kindergartner on a school bus to i mean on a city bus to drive them across town to get to a spot but every single kid the ones whose parents are not involved the ones whose parents do not want them to go somewhere else because it is too inconvenient for the three jobs that they're working and they have to keep them there that we have to make sure that we are funding and

174supporting the schools that support every single student in metro period and not opening up avenues for only certain groups to leave i'm sorry mr little abigail tyler i love you for that know where i come from and my background in my understanding of systems in this community that i'm not advocating for nashville classical i'm on this board and and we should have a conversation about all the conversations i have in the mcabet cluster about helping all students because i think sometimes you can push a narrative and don't understand the background on everything that we do when we say all students when we talk about academic achievement and when you look at something i looked at i think it's charlotte park it's 10 ela so out of 100 students if we're talking about students jason sandy

175jeanette we're talking about real people only 10 percent of those students are reading well 10.9 so let's say 11 when we look at the school to prison pipeline when we look at nashville when we look at 37208 we have had an issue for for generations for generations um and it's been very intentional and so my fight is not for school it's it's to break a system that we have been educated in for us to rethink and reimagine how we do school for our kids because right now when i do step into different communities and i know district one i can be in district one i can be in mcgavin i mean i love people like i love you and so i'm going to continue to fight not for systems but for people because that's the

176only way we win so we have had a school system all across the country just not nashville whether it's oakland memphis new orleans like we have had a problem with education maybe it's because of charter schools maybe just because we haven't done it right because public education has been around for generations and i'm just i'm not going to get a chance to vote i'm going to take the advice of the attorney but i do want to say we got to support kids and we got to take our blinders off about what the budget looks like because at the end of the day i can bring a bunch of people here who have gone through our public education system who can't read like still to this day so they can't read their kids can't read and

177i'm and i'm talking to these parents every single day and if you guys want to i guess check my resume like i can set you up with these interviews we had an interview yesterday with anna thorson and so many parents were on there this makes sense they had an eye-opening moment and so when i talk about going into the community to do these district meetings it's because we need to see the people we serve it's going to be very inconvenient it may even cost a little money but if we're talking about budget when they when they see you and they know that you care they work harder when they don't think you care it's just uh they graduate high school not knowing how to read and and that's what we've been dealing with and i

178i can't vote and i said i don't want to make us go along so i'm i'm going to go give me some water but i do want to listen if someone has specific responses for me we have uh mrs pooper walker mrs player peters dr gentry oh wow go get a snack is this specifically for me you should stay just okay okay for the moment for the entirety of this experience so my first question is is a technical question for um mr robert so the law that is cited in the motion is not the current law the current law is we are an open enrollment state and so if we're saying that we're making an argument based on that they're not meeting this kind of set of criteria of why we would approve i just

179think we have to be thoughtful about that's not going to hold water right at the state board because we're an open enrollment we haven't it doesn't they can open whatever they want any charter can open wherever they want they don't have to serve any particular population so i'm just saying on for purposes of the motion it might not serve us well if this were to pass that that is the basis of the motion okay i want to start there um and then i will say i'll speak to this like history of thoughtful deliberation about charters on this board and prior to my coming on i served as some of you know and heard me say this i served as a charter review lead i did the job of leading a group of 13 14 people

180through this process including valor we turned down two thirds we approved a third that's why we have a strong charter sector here and there were times where we said okay we're going to make a rule and so we're only going to prove charters that are going to open in crowded neighborhoods where there's crowded schools well we didn't stick to that maybe for a year i mean we let a school open in the mcat cluster right so we we have not got a track record of saying we're going to oh we're going to set some criteria and we're going to approve schools based on this criteria because we have people let's be really honest who will never vote to approve a charter school right no matter what the criteria and so i think we have to

181it's disingenuous to say we're going to have a set of criteria that if we don't actually believe we're going to follow through on that because then what happens is charters apply based on our criteria and we still turn them down and so i just think we have to be really thoughtful about and when i ran for the seat i you know obviously we all ran and the big question is how do you feel about charter schools right and so my thing is our job is to be good stewards of this district and a good governance and including the money but also to say are students excelling are students succeeding are we meeting benchmarks on all of these things and we are not right for many many majority of kids in this district we are not

182and so until we are we're going to continue to get charter schools they're going to come here and outperform us and so i don't know whether national classical can convince 600 people or whatever it is to come to that school maybe they can um but until we can get our performance where we want want it to be where even where they are we're going to continue to get these applications so we have to be really thoughtful about what are we going to do about that are we going to actually increase achievement for students i mean that's on every single one of us that's the big rock we are carrying in our backpack every day and so i just think we have to be really honest if we're going to set out a statement of principles

183about which charters and how charters are approved then let's be really honest about that right and so um anyway i think that's all i'm going to say i will say this has been a really good discussion i've been very i'm very i respect everybody here and your position and your thoughtfulness and your i have to tell you that's a hard call for me because i know i know i've done parent engagement at charlotte park elementary latino parents are not being served well at charlotte park elementary school fact okay and so we have kids languishing in el over there for too long right we have that we see that at old cockrell we see that at park avenue we see it and let's be honest those families are going to shop and if it's not to

184a national classical it's probably going to be somewhere else so we have to be honest are we actually doing what we need to be doing yeah the gower families are not going to go to nashville classical probably or westmead families but i don't know about folks over there on charlotte avenue i just don't and so when i have latino families come to me and say should i go here or go here and i'm apples to apples it's a hard call and so i mean john and i have been in this work sort of at different you know different points on the continuum but it's a hard one when you have a school that is put in front of a family that is way outperforming your neighborhood school and so i just i'm just going to

185leave that there this has been a hard one for me i actually don't know the second helmet to vote that's where i am so okay mrs player peters and then dr gentry yeah and i guess because i wasn't trying to say we set criteria i know that was a discussion of a passport but just about the philosophy i think a lot of assumptions have made where we are as a board about the philosophy of charters and i think that discussion is to be fleshed out amongst us outside of a specific charter application so that's the point i really want to get to because i don't want assumptions to be made um of how we view charters when as an individual takes one application at a time but then also how it works within our system

186and i think that's an overarching conversation that's not specific about how we approve or not approve charters the other part is going back to the system part sorry that's my thing you know but when you break a system there's repercussions to that and what do you rebuild if you go to the civil rights movement they were breaking a system that did not serve to the voting rights so you broke the system but then you repair a system with this piece of legislation that reinforce the system that you want and so i agree like we should not be doing the things the same way but if you break a system you have to replace it with some type of infrastructure or you will have chaos and that's the part of we do have financial repercussions because

187there was a charter transfer we had to transfer and make budget cuts among ourselves that's a holistic conversation that's separate and apart from this application so we can't say financial aspects as a matter we can't say that for specific specific applications but there has to least be a discussion that there are effects of to what we do what we do an effect of a system that's part of the system you do one thing to another there is an equal and opposite reflect somewhere else and so should financial impact should be the sole aspect absolutely not but there still has to be discussion of what are we building for what are we transforming for that's even if you go to basic my view of philosophy of charters they want to break a system to create another

188system so a system has been created there's a system of 27 charters that's outside of r so there's still a system aspect that has to be part of a general conversation and so that's the part i just wanted to do that we need to save for retreat conversation and not this conversation all right dr gingery million of the things i could say but i'd like to call for a point of order to get us back to the vote yeah i want i need to amend don't i yeah so my point of order is to end the discussion that's not directly related to the application that's before us and then to call the question um can i can i make a motion to amend i think maybe with where we are because it's emotion to amend

189i think you would have to restate your entire motion and then amend it so can we try let's maybe let's maybe stick with your current motion and take a vote on that and then see where we are if the charter school is denied we will have 30 days come back and then we will talk about uh how to formulate the next motion information because she would draw the the motion and we re and we stated that without saying it you can withdraw the motion okay um i withdraw my motion and then you just need to get the inappropriate language often yes yes so i withdraw and now i need to make a new motion and restate everything without it right i'll let david so for this motion again because we have this 30 days it

190could be motion to deny based on it being partially meets and we will reevaluate in 30 days so just much more condensed and that doesn't limit the board at the next meeting for the reasoning but it does streamline this process tonight okay at the next minute she can say all that other stuff that's what she she's in the same position yeah we can talk about it yes okay well then i moved to deny nashville classical's application because they doesn't it does not describe a sound rationale for selecting the community where the school will locate it only has partially meets for the academics and i have concerns about their ability to finance and complete necessary renovations on the old brook mead elementary school before they plan to open all right do i have a second so

191kind of a question so we're voting on because of that criteria because of that motion yes we must guess it's because we have we agree with that is that what i'm doing yes so we have emotion but do we let me go through the whole thing again i can't i can make it point by point i can com you know you just tell me [Music] do we have a second second all right it's been moved and seconded all in favor please raise your hand all opposed all right one abstention we'll go to announcements uh the immediate i mean the motion has failed to dr griffin and charter school office if you all don't mind please just let us know next steps within the next 30 days and i'm sure you'll be following up with mr

192friedman nashville classical family absolutely our next steps is to notify each of the board's uh decision on april 28th which is tomorrow we'll make sure we do that thank you so much for that uh thank you to the aventura community school family and to the nashville classical family for submitting your applications since you all have both been denied you'll have a 30-day time period to amend your application with that in mind we'll move on to announcements dr gentry this is pupa walker okay i want to say congratulations to valedictorian rose tidwell and salutatorian charlie eichman from hillsboro for their hard work to get to this point congratulations uh we need more students applying for student board member of the board we have five applications uh one is from a traditional zoned high school fyi um

193thanks to council member angie henderson and the nashville tree foundation for spearheading a tree planting of 35 trees on april 10th at julia green at the walking path and playground and then big thank you to district 8 retiring teachers beverly bryant from jt moore francis mazur from julia greene and lisa trujillo from percy priest elementary all right mrs bush yes real quick i just want to acknowledge all of our teachers who are retiring and want to thank them for investing in our students and i pray pray pray to get some rest and and have many many blessings and just thank you for your service in our district thank you mr little i'll echo what everyone said about the retirement also we just had our community meeting in district 4 this past saturday talked about some

194really good issues working with the mcgavig pto in the near future to work on some initiatives that they deem important it's teacher appreciation week coming up and i've been reached out by the staff at two rivers to help show some appreciation to teachers and students who have had just a tumultuous year this is elrad thank you first the school of science and math at vanderbilt which partners with us at mmps has had a record-breaking number of applications and they've emailed everyone that applied and they will announce the next class mid-may after our seniors celebrate their graduation which by our seniors it's the seniors of that group and if you've never taken the time as a board member to go and visit that though of course they've not allowed that during our coveted procedures but when

195they reopen i highly suggest you go over there it's really very interesting and it's a very unique program that we should be very proud of to offer here at mmps and have students involved in it's exceptional and lastly i just want to thank the staff at overton dr battle did a wonderful job of acknowledging the tremendous work that was done there and they are an incredible school filled with very passionate and dedicated teachers incredible families and that was really shown by their quick ability to react and support each other and support their students particularly in such a time of crisis and i really appreciate not only the response of overton but the response of the overton cluster it has been so nice to hear from our cluster groups and community members that have been so

196appreciative of knowing what the supports were that were there whether they came from the support hub i use the right terms or whether it came from within overton themselves um many thanks of course those individual teachers and of course dr pittman i appreciated speaking to her on uh saturday about the experience and just checking in and making sure everyone was okay and getting some rest but again i appreciate everyone's help and support there if you want to help or support additionally there are some neighborhood groups that i'm working with that are thinking about providing breakfast and some additional snacks over there to help support not only the exceptional year they've had but of course also last week and on that note i want to thank the predators who are providing a pizza lunch to this

197week for the same reason this is pupa walker the other [Laughter] y'all look so much alike [Laughter] right here soul sisters right here so i'd like to congratulate um mr baskin mres miss foreman miss maximilitz miss mitchell and miss sanders for their retirements thank you for your service um and thank you for serving our children um i like like the knowledge the um the event that happened today with dr battle with the um and her staff if you get a chance to if you can go see the artwork it's phenomenal i wish i could buy copies of the prints um of the artwork that i can't believe these are high school students doing this level of work and then also just um even our own conference room you know it's a beauty what a can

198of paint could do so um you know we didn't spend a whole lot of money on the renovations but you know we're very efficient and can a paint can go a long way and thank you so much um with that and that where we are re-imagining what we're doing with metro schools and what you've done in a short year has been amazing and phenomenal that you'll be able to turn this around in the middle of a pandemic in the middle of economic crisis in the middle of governing of what we have governed the fact that you'd be able to do something proactive and positive is reassuring and thank you to the team i know you didn't do it by yourself that who executed that vision to say thank you to that so i greatly um

199appreciate that and just thank you for our colleagues for a spirit discussion today and hope we can continue this into the future thank you mrs masters thank you i just i want to once again congratulate maple woods maplewood air force junior rotc so they won the 1920 um air force jrotc distinguished unit award it only went to 387 units um nationwide so it's a huge honor and the reason i'm bringing it up again is because our wonderful district 8 council person nancy van reece presented them with a proclamation that was written this past may um uh just was that yesterday or the day before it was yesterday today's tuesday and all the days are running together and i was really honored to be there as she read that and just to be able to experience

200that and see those really outstanding students and they they escorted me from my car it was so fancy it was i loved it i also want to give a little shout out to the faculty advisory council at dan mills elementary school one of the communities there that's zoned for dan mills berkeley hills there's some virtual students there they were concerned they weren't getting enough books and so i'm going to put this on my instagram because they built this beautiful um little library and filled it with books for them so so that the students would have plenty of access to books um so i thought that was pretty exciting i also want to give a shout out to kevin walker who is our vice chair of our pack who is stayed for the entire meeting again

201today i mean and and i just i love that because as we're doing this work with the parent advisory council it's as important that we understand where the parents are coming from as as that they then are able to to sort of represent and speak to what's happening at board meetings so i really appreciate you you being here and sticking it out with us and then last but not least once again i want to the student board member applications i've been sending them to principals i've been putting them on my instagram i've had a couple questions from teens about them via direct message on instagram hopefully those are those are coming your way god love for us to just get a ton of applications for that and be able to pick two really wonderful student

202colleagues to be on the board with us and i'm just really excited i think it was a good night that's all i have to say mrs tyler um i want to take a moment and congratulate our retiring teachers as well i actually have taught with several of them in my district and i'm just we'll we will be sad to see you go and thank you for your years of experience and time and love and then i also want to take a moment and recognize that miss denise holland who was a bus driver for the hillwood cluster unexpectedly passed away last week and i just want to take a moment to recognize her she was so well loved i watched as the news came across on social media where families were saying we loved her that's

203miss denise how what are we going to do and she was very well loved and very well respected and we will miss her a lot thank you one last thing for miss elrod thank you i forgot to mention and i think it's maybe nice to state um on the note of people that are no longer with us it's so nice to see the support hub and all the additional artwork and i just want to make sure that we just i just wanted to throw it out there that uh our past chair anna shepard would have so loved it and so it is really nice and it helps me remember her as well so thank you so much for everyone's additional work and we really appreciate it on a bit of a somber note our condolences

204our hearts go out to the harper family as we recently lost pioneer politician grassroots grass tops activists senator thelma harper i think she was the first african-american female politician i ever knew and she was certainly the first female african-american uh senator in in tennessee she i'm not gonna cry because i'm already just flustered emotionally but she was she was just amazing she was amazing and she will be missed her family has already lost a lot and so we just we send our thoughts and our prayers to her daughter and niece's nephews and extended family i want to reiterate that if you have not heard warner steem elementary school is a blue ribbon school so much i could say about warner and the hard work but i will just say this one thing when passionate leadership

205when intentional education and training and when increased dollars all meet student outcomes increase that inflection of msap dollars from a few years ago that what million dollars a year that went into not only renovating the spaces but allowing warner to reimagine how they supported the their diverse population of students has certainly helped we could not have done this without the parents and families and certainly the educators at warner so congratulations to them um very recently unfortunately the same day as another um something else happening in mnps a prolific prophet uh percy miller and his son who will soon be attending tennessee state university visited mckissick middle school um if you're not familiar with percy miller aka master p he is partnering with tennessee state university and by default we'll be partnering with mckissick and it

206has not really gotten the recognition in the community that it deserved but he was there to speak to the to mckissick middle school students i was so impressed i was outside there with my my own son because i had to get a picture but um the the questions from those young people mckissick is off is a school that in the community is often overlooked but those those babies reinspired me i was able to see middle school students that i had not you know i haven't seen students in at least a year and being able to be out there with them and and hear and understand what their questions and what their thoughts were and how they were motivated in some way was really nice uh again student board members we cannot wait to have you

207up here to have your your voice the mayor's state of metro will be this thursday it is it will be at 10 30 a.m at the music city center we'll hear just an update about all things nashville all things metropolitan government so if you can't be there please just tune in it's really important we're really excited to continue to partner with mayor cooper we thank him for the way that he has continued to support us so looking forward to hearing what happens there and then looking at you mrs player peters about what that means for our budget advocacy ten ready i know this has been um a bit of a source of frustration or even confusion in some families or uh with our students but thank you educators for continuing to work through this in

208this international pandemic to make sure that students have been educated but also have been assessed so that we can give them appropriate feedback thank you students and families for tapping in in whatever way that you did i have to give a special shout out to stratford high school that had 90 percent of its freshman class come in to get tested that's another school that has been underenrolled under-resourced parents have unfortunately chosen with their feet not to attend even though great things are happening so we'll continue to appreciate stratfor and elevate them and schools like them but be there no further business this meeting is adjourned this has been a service of the metro nashville network if you would like to see this presentation again or for more information about this and other programs visit nashville.gov

209[Music]