02/23/21 MNPS Board of Education

001oh i believe we need to have our pledge of allegiance dr seville would you mind leading us i pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right uh first up we have governance uh our consent agenda is there anything are there any amendments to the consent agenda is listed i like to um remove one b6 off the agenda all right that's millsaps gal in government relations all right any other amendments i'd like to remove um 1d7 please all right nashville teacher residency any other amendments to the consent agenda as listed do i have a motion to accept move us i move that we accept the consent agenda with the said uh deletions all

002right that was dr gentry with a motion a second second this is pupa walker any discussion all right all in favor of accepting the consent agenda as amended raise your hand all right unanimous all right so we'll start with uh consent agenda 1v6 millsaps gowan government relations mrs player peters uh yes so during the last meeting or the meeting before last sorry i can't remember during the advocacy committee i expressed um just my issues with communication and i want to thank dr sevier and mr north for help um floyd continuing that with millsap gallon relations help getting information to us so i wanted to just thank them for that but i think there also needs to be a bigger discussion about as clients but then also as our role there's been a shift uh with

003the i guess coalitions that we've been a part of with cube nsba tspa the shift that's going on but kind of have a conversation of what do we need as clients with um with government relations given how special session went um that we have clear expectations of um with class with milsagn um and then with each other because you know one thing is so being in this profession making sure we're all singing from the same page as we advocate collectively between the four districts and get from ourselves that we're not doing um because the worst thing you can do sometimes is lobby is that you don't know your clients doing or you don't know what your lobbyists are doing so somehow we can just move that communication but also as a client what do we

004need we're in a different situation you know um the executive branch of the state has particularly focused on us in shelby county and how do we engage in how this conversation around that focus that we have how do we advocate for our district what does that look like how do you advocate amongst the other school board members and particularly since there's a shift between especially large school districts across the country what do we need what does that look like and make sure we're setting the proper expectations and proper communication channels as us as a board as a client and then also with um with class and so i just want to have that discussion to make sure we're all going on the same page going into session um so i i've been attending the class

005information we've been getting regular updates on the bills that are coming up um which is good because i know during special session i know i was reached out by the media i reached out to some other people and trying to figure out what what's our talking point what are we saying cause i came from a cautious standpoint our counterpart in shelby county came more of a forward facing message and so as we do that like what how do we communicate justice class i know miss walker is a class representative and it's like for her it's possible um to have that conversation to make sure we're on board just because the way the conversation's happening now particularly within the pandemic but then also the support facing the changes of education with the voucher bill with the

006bep funding with you know going on with our lawsuit what does that look like now because i think the approach as we ask our um our services to do needs to be on the same page as all four districts and particularly since shelby county and davidson county are lumped together differently from knox and from hamilton that what is that conversation looks like and so i just thought this would be a good time to just kind of have a little bit of a conversation around um that as we ask them to go into the services and as we you know reimburse them um with the fiscal agent in shelby county that we've kind of worked all together on the same page so does the fiscal agent um alternate is that how it works with the four

007different districts in class yes yep it does i don't know if this is maybe something for an advocacy committee conversation um what the next best step is i'm happy to think that through with you ms masters yeah i would be happy to have that conversation just to sort of clarify i know that at our um at our retreat it came out that we all um wanted to be invited to the front the class calls and then wanted to receive the written information afterwards sort of summarizing it and that wasn't something that was just automatically happen happening um and so i think maybe by diving just a little bit deeper on what all of us as board members would like to be receiving from this relationship we could increase the clarity with them about what we

008need how timely it needs to be even in the area of guidance about you know how we can be communicating with legislators um and trying to get ahead of things like a legislative special session that's completely focused on education um where the bills don't come out until you know right before they're being discussed uh yeah so i i don't know if you mentioned this um miss player peters but you know we're also getting pulled out of our relationship with nsba right so all the same four school districts are going to be prohibited from being members of nsba because tsba will not no longer be a member we cannot join as a board so i just my concern is that our avenues for advocacy and awareness of legislative impact need to be spot on they need

009to be tight and they need to be singularly focused on what it means and the impact on urban school districts and we're losing a big piece of that with the disconnect from nsba and so i don't know and i think we're i know we're in session now maybe there's a time to appoint that we just collectively as a part of governance and our advocacy just take a look at what this agreement is bringing to the table um and if there's something else we need if if if we believe just adhering to those um those uh whatever the the offerings are as currently stated is enough than so be it but i think we need to review it with the lens in mind that it is almost our single source uh if we're not intentional as

010individ as a board and and staying on top of some of these things would it be beneficial then to perhaps to convene just have a rep delegate from each of the districts that are sort of the pivot like i am the main point of contact with class the class what am i trying to say here the delegates from each district maybe we need to just have a quick circle up yeah just to hear if they have similar questions and yeah okay and i just want to clarify that i have found the information that class is offering um incredibly helpful because otherwise i think i i would have been without that information combined with with our own staff member mark north um it got a little bit crazy there for a little while so i was

011grateful for that information but yeah i'd like to go deeper with it and get more out of the relationship if possible all right so with next steps oh were there under are there no go right here oh i was just going to move for approval but well i guess i was going to say that are there any other next steps we need to make before we approve or we'll just follow up um i think we just need to have ms walker just convene with the other districts and just to say like what do we need now just given where we are in the state um do we need to have that conversation with class as we go into the next session um because it starts today um they didn't start last week because of the

012weather and then making sure they're just we're all on board and we're just collectively so there's not confusion with that and then i think after the session we have a bigger conversation of what do we need given that tspa is moving out nsba and what does that look like and making sure we're just getting the most out of our contract uh let's class and with other organizations that does advocacy all right if you feel good with that thank you thank you all for this all right well we have a motion to accept or to approve do i have a second a second all right that's mr little on second uh all in favor raise your hand all right unanimous uh we'll move on to or so millsaps gary government relations has passed we'll move on

013to 1v7 nashville teacher residency that's me miss masters so so i appreciate that the the first agenda that came out which i think i maybe have pulled up an old one um had no dollar amount attached to this but the most recent one oh you got the mysterious one um but um i just want to get some clarification around the purchase exception report the fact that the services have already been provided with no contract and we're now being asked to approve it retroactively so just what what's up [Laughter] no problem good question i'm going to ask dr barnes our chief of hr to come up and address the national teacher residency contract good evening board the national teacher residency is a recruitment tool which allows teachers to come in for a year as an instructional

014aide while they complete their teaching requirements with the university at the end of that first year we have the opportunity to hire them as teachers and then following a year of their excuse me a semester of their employment as a teacher the bill then comes due for the national teacher residency so the people that are on this uh this payment here actually started with us a year and a half ago during the previous administration i wasn't aware that there hadn't been an rfp done until we got this bill now so what we've done is i've looked forward we currently have a number of national teacher residents now who if we hire them at the close of this school year we will receive a bill a year from now and we've started the rfp process and

015done the scope of work to ensure that it doesn't happen again that's great i mean that's really it's not a question about oh no this process of bringing teachers or i mean let's get more teachers but um no just yeah really about the process and understanding why we were being asked to vote on something um that wasn't contracted so it sounds like since we're going to have an rfp process moving forward that that's been taken care of and i've also looked at all the other things that hr pays for to see if there's anything else that has gotten lost in the shuffle right i appreciate that i do want to also state that we do have the opportunity to choose to hire these folks at the end of their first year so being a part

016of the program we still get to vet them and determine that that you know we get the opportunity to see them for a whole year but we do have the option at the end of that to hire them or not so we only pay for the ones that we do hire so when i'm sorry when um you know in looking for these types of programs when we put out an rfp that i mean in theory this vendor might not we might not choose this vendor in the in the future we might choose some other vendor that can provide this type of service is it an open rfp but jeff geiss i'm referring to okay that is correct when we do an rfp it is an open competitive process you're looking at past performance that is

017one of the issues you're looking at i think with this contract we have in the past looked at multiple awardees so it's possible that we could even have more than one contract result from the rfp okay and we currently have two teacher residency programs we have the national teacher residency and mnutr as well and so there are several universities who appreciate the opportunity to work with us in this kind of fashion too and and our and i'm assuming we are tracking sort of the i'm sorry don't sit down i don't know why i left um so i'm assuming we are tracking sort of the effectiveness of the program and the retention of the teachers that come through that program because that we are moving forward totally rhetorical question i need i knew the answer is

018going to be my question about the retention of the teachers and making sure that it's a long-term solution instead of a short-term high turnover so that's important to me that we get people in place especially in high needs schools that are going to be solid and are going to stay right can i can i add something here so the state board of education uh produces every year a scorecard on every teacher preparation program in the state including residency programs any teach for america universities and they rate them on a whole range of indicators and ntr always ranks very highly on a whole range of metrics including a high rating on the number that stay in the profession as well as diversity one of the most diverse teacher prep programs in the state and also the

019teachers that then become going to the classroom have very high performance on tvas and growth so you know i think they have proven themselves over time they're small but i think they're you know they're focused on quality so but i totally get it we want to make sure we're getting the best bang for our buck there is benefit to growing up in the environment where you want them to be in so a whole year of work with the school helps embed you in the culture of that school the work that they do and that usually helps with it with the turnover rate as well and many of them serving in the schools where they are residents so that's enough that's also a positive of the program and this is just kind of for my knowledge

020is it treated like a student-teacher relationship yeah they're paid as an instructional aide which is sort of a little step below a paraprofessional so it they work with a co-teacher while they're doing their work okay and then do they have a teaching license they will at the end of it okay thank you we also have programs that help them with the practice and things like that so that they they can achieve their license all right any other questions thoughts all right do i have a motion i'll move that we approve i'm sorry thank you now sit down a contract with national teacher residency all right uh a second a second second oh it's okay all right all in favor raise your hand all right unanimous all right we'll move on to undergovernance issues um bullet

021two a proclamation recognizing the importance of arts education mrs masters oh oh i don't have enough hang on sorry y'all [Music] i just want to preface this by saying that um the arts have been um a huge influence in my life and um in in many different arenas and i had the opportunity as a public school student in tennessee to participate in a wide variety of arts programs and so i'm very happy that we as a board are choosing to recognize that importance collectively i think we hear a lot about athletics which is also amazing and wonderful we hear a lot about vocational education which is amazing and wonderful but i want to point out that we have some amazing arts programs here in our schools and we have nashville school the arts which i

022genuinely believe is contributing to children graduating from high school because they might not otherwise be i'm not going to cry and they might not otherwise be as motivated to continue with their education so it's very important and i appreciate being asked to be the one to read this a proclamation recognizing the importance of arts education whereas all students have the right to an arts education that includes dance media arts music theater and visual arts taught by certified arts educators in partnership with community providers and whereas arts education has the power to change students lives and whereas arts education is a key to reigniting students learning in a post covenanting world and whereas arts education helps nurture healthy inclusive communities where all points of view are respected and whereas arts education experiences help students understand their

023own cultural roots and appreciate others cultural roots and traditions and whereas arts education supports the social and emotional well-being of students and fosters a more positive safer school environment whereas arts education is part of the well-rounded education for every student as outlined in the every student succeeds act and in state law therefore be it proclaimed that we the metropolitan national board of education recognized the importance of arts education and pledged to our intent to maintain and grow our arts education programs in the 2021 22 school year and beyond do we have a motion to no we don't have to vote on this proclamation we do okay yeah we don't have a motion we do need a motion a resolution proclamation proclamation what are we voting what is what is that the resolution okay well i

024moved it's a proclamation proclamation you have the option to take uh action on anything that comes before you as a potential action item all right let's just because i think we agreed to um adopt the proclamation a second any discussion you're here all right all in favor raise your hand all right and that passes unanimously because we are arts lovers all right we'll move on to reports and we have one from um dr battle if you'll notice there's this this language that we are trying to have that's a shared language that we're looking to develop around our core tenants our signature initiatives and our focused outcomes with that in mind dr battle thank you for preparing this please take it away thank you madam chair good evening board members it's going to be good to

025be with you again and i've enjoyed seeing several of you during some of the virtual events i've done over the last few days i was really happy to hear the support for our schools coming from metro council members and community members when i spoke with vice mayor shulman for one of his community conversations saturday morning thank you to everyone who was able to attend that was great to hear as we head into budget season and i know we will all continue to advocate for the district's needs so we can better serve our students and our staff today was another milestone day in our reopening plan as fifth and ninth graders entered our middle and high schools for the first time and as i visited two of our middle schools head and mckissic i could see

026that we made the right decision to bring those new students before the older ones they'll have a chance to learn where everything is and move through the halls at their own pace for a few days before the 6th through 8th graders and 10th through 12th graders come back it was a thrill to see students principals teachers and staff coming into their buildings following protocols going into their classrooms and picking up in person where they had left off virtually last week and we expect to see more and more scenes like that over the next week or so next slide please i'm pleased to be able to say that our cover risk score has dropped all the way down to 4.1 an indication that our community continues to do a good job of reducing the spread of

027the virus although we do know that additional progress can be attributed to our community assessment centers being closed last week when we met two weeks ago the risk score was 5.7 which was already well below our threshold and that's not the only good news as far as fighting the pandemic is concerned on saturday vanderbilt health started vaccinating our educators our staff at 100 oaks i was happy to get my own left arm poke to help set an example and show that there is nothing to be afraid of the process was smooth the vanderbilt health staff was great and our teachers and staff left with smiles on their faces and relief on their minds after a very long year for anyone who hasn't scheduled an appointment yet i strongly encourage you to do so speaking of

028our teachers and staff this is the first time we've met since we announced our support employees teachers and principal of the year i've spoken to them in our virtual events but i want to say again how proud i am of them for their incredible work ethic dedication skill and care for our students and families that they show day after day congratulations and thank you to mr lee miss lyman miss finney mr farmer miss hicks miss kiss kisi ms gansky and dr stewart for everything you do you are leading the way amongst other great leaders all across our district and with that i'm going to turn it over to chief of human resources chris barnes again he's going to provide us an update um regarding where we are with our core tenant equipping and empowering our

029leaders at all levels dr barnes over to you evening again board it's a barnes kind of evening i guess for you um we're so proud of what the mmps hr department has done over the last year and i really appreciate the opportunity to spend some time and share that with you folks as you know to start with the school board dr battle and district leadership you guys have done a great job of creating a comprehensive road map for success for everyone back when i came to school from uh alternate pathway i worked in a wilderness program and we used to talk about destination is found if you have direction determination and it's so great to find real clear direction of work for us to move forward through the core tenants through our focused outcomes and

030through our north star i think as you can see oh sorry when you look at the core tenants you can see that human capital and human resources is embedded in all four of these areas i'm going to break that down for you in a little bit and show you a little more of what i mean with that i've listed for you the seven budget priorities for the upcoming school year and it's our feeling that the work in hr embeds itself in all seven of these areas i'd like to focus your attention and applaud you for the work you've done in placing employee compensation on the top of your list before we go further we've got to acknowledge there's been a lot of work done in the past year and a half on this as well

031we provided a three percent cost of living increase a year ago in january and since july one all mmps employees receive more than fifteen dollars an hour however there's a lot of research being done around the nation about teacher and employee retention and we can't ignore the need to address salaries deliberately and comprehensively to start with daniel pink wrote a book called drive and it says a lot of really interesting things about employee satisfaction one of the quotes that jumped out to me was for his to say that the best use of money as a motivator is to hire great people and pay them enough to take the issue of money off the table and when you do that obviously we know that salary is a key component in employee satisfaction but interestingly the data

032shows that when salary is not the focus of attention it turns to some of the things that mmps is working so hard on already which are three main components for employee satisfaction which is a mastery of subject matter self-direction and a unity of purpose and if we can continue to work to get the salary issue resolved we can focus our attention on those things that really help children nationally salary compensation remains one of the largest factors for teacher turnover and as the year ago as the years go by i'm going to show you how it's becoming harder and harder to attain and retain the best applicants and so we have to deliberately affect as many of these issues as we can and salaries is one of those key components i want to share with you

033that currently tennessee ranks 37th in the country in teacher salary and chris henson wanted me to make sure i pointed out that it's 46 in per per pupil spending as well but the next slide shows some significant challenges we have this latest report that we have shows funding for mmps teachers compared to the national average for teacher salaries you can see that we've done a lot of work in our in in year one and beginning teachers but after that each milestone that goes by you find us falling further behind so our salaries aren't staying competitive as teachers become more experienced so now we get to talk again about higher forward and i introduced this to you a year ago but at its core higher forward looks to the day when we have people waiting for

034jobs not jobs waiting for people and it's a deep abiding relationship with our universities with our principles and our and the idea that it's embedded in the research that there's no single factor for student achievement more important than having a certificated experienced teacher in a classroom and our goal is to reduce the amount of time that our teacher that our students go without a teacher in front of them you've seen this before higher forward has three main buckets to it obtain train and retain and it's so important we affect all three of these i'm going to briefly run through some of the work we've done in each of these areas over the over the past year for obtain i went ahead and put the core tenants that we think most directly relate to obtaining the

035best candidates in our school system but i want to begin by sharing with you some of the national research that's been done that highlights the concerns about teacher recruitment and hiring now the folks at the economic policy institute have done a series of reports called the perfect storm in the teacher labor market and it talks about how what's happening across the nation the teaching profession affects us in nashville as well and for us to be agile and aware of what's going on we need to look at that national research too excuse me this report shows that even 10 years ago what you had was a situation where there were more applicants than there were jobs over the last decade low enrollment in teacher enrollment and teacher education programs retirement and and flight from the profession

036has flipped that narrative over and as the years go on and as the years continue to go forward you see that gap widening and what's happening with that is we now find ourselves in fierce competition with other districts and other states to find the best candidates for our students why does it matter obtaining good teachers and teacher shortages permeates every bit of a teacher's life it works into the day-to-day workings of a school and it's cyclical so high turnover creates more turnover because the burden it's placing on the teachers in the building it also relates to resources that we could better spend in other areas because the cost of onboarding new teachers is expensive it also means a lot of times we replace an experienced educator with a new educator and what you lose in

037that is that embedded knowledge of that person in the classroom for all that time they've been there why it matters to us is if we can't have a certified experienced teacher in front of our students we won't be able to realize our focused outcomes and we have a goal to look at literacy math social emotional learning and successful student transitions and again when i spoke about research showing that a teacher is the greatest effects score on student achievement it's three times as large as any other indicator that we can find and if we can't train our staff well enough or we struggle to keep them it increases the burden of our teachers which affects our work environment thereby so let's move on to something i've been waiting to show you for a year what you're

038seeing here is the vacancy rate in mmps over the last three years now you can see these peaks here those are happen every june as the traditional turnout of teachers happens but as you can see over the past nine months or so we've consistently kept the vacancy rate of our employees very very low lower than it's been in years i don't know if you remember but 363 days ago i came in front of you guys to give my first report on hr and those moments of terror sort of you know solidified my mind but a year ago i showed you the slide on the left that was our number of teacher vacancies a year ago on the right is today even in hard to staff areas you'll see a significant decline in vacancy rates and

039it's even affected areas like paraprofessionals i think we need to recognize the hard work that the hr team and the principals have done to affect this vacancy rate the first step to licking this problem permanently is to start the the tradition of this not happening every year so obviously we've come a great long way in a year but let's look this one actually is my favorite slide we currently have 107 schools who don't have teacher vacancies and we only have four schools that have what i would consider a significant number so that work has been done systemically across the district and sharon wanted me to make sure that i how many vacancies do we have in soi three one i think it's three but but traditionally our hard to staff schools have seen that improvement

040as well it hasn't just been in one area it's been systemically across the board i don't know if you remember last summer we sent out an initiative to ask our principals to tweet out when they have 100 fully vacants fully fully vacant excuse me police staff and as you can see here i'm proud to report that most of these schools have remained fully staffed throughout the entire school year and that's of course something you're going to see again this summer obviously one of our other core tenants is to have an eye on eliminating uh inequities i did a i did a search and did some research on how our what our diversity looks like across three different groupings our support employees our certificated admin and our and our teaching staff as you can see there's

041one area which we want to affect significantly i do want to mention however that the latest tdoe report shows a statewide diversity sits at approximately 13 for teachers and 20 for certificated admin so while we are better than than that we want to continue our goal to work until our school staff is mirrored by our student demographic so one of the ways we're going to do that is you can say here most of our recruiting and most of our work should be done in the local metro area around us we have a lot of universities we have a lot of opportunities regionally we're going to go to those fairs as well because they're close enough for us to go to in a way that's cost effective we really need to focus our national attention on

042places like hbcus and hsis those that are hispanic serving institutions and historically black colleges and universities and if we're going to go out of our region we need to be making that money work for us to help us eliminate our inequities and our in our teaching staff moving on to training we've got a lot of great stuff going on in in this and i obviously embedded that core tenant as well one of our signature initiatives is a new leadership framework and that leadership framework want to be clear is not just for principals but for all of our district leadership and it's a great way to help move the whole ball down the field forward not just for schools but for our district as well we worked in coordination with the nashville public education foundation and

043the new leadership framework really embeds itself in three areas instruction operations and people it's my favorite part people right so it really works on developing our staff inspiring a vision and creating a culture that's healthy at every school in our district obviously best practice and research shows that when you have an effective principle in a building it affects every area of the building it affects student attendance it affects your climate and it affects teacher turnover we've also been working to develop a comprehensive roadmap for new teachers over the course of their first five years with us so we can embed those critical areas that we want them to learn and help them be successful as teachers we know that primarily our turnover happens in the first five years and that's our area to zero in

044on and help those teachers become as effective as possible looking on at retaining i couldn't really pick one core tenant so i picked them all retaining good employees is part of everything that we do research shows academically that students perform better in schools with low turnover than with high turnover it also shows that if we have a stable workforce our student outcomes improve and our teachers become more collaborative with each other because they have more opportunity if you needed another reason than that there's also a financial impact of turnover the cost of reteaching onboarding retraining staff and hiring them costs money too now these two different reports i looked very widely on the cost but it still comes down to millions of dollars that we're using that we could spend other ways if we could

045work on retaining our workforce more effectively now we want to show you the next slide which shows our turnover rate for the first year and five you've seen a significant decline in turnover in three of the four areas that we looked at our teachers our support employees and our other certificated staff which includes counselors academic coaches media coordinators is the lowest that has been in five years the next move is how do we keep this moving forward i think that's the next step i want to reflect again that everything hr does embeds itself in our core tenants and our focused outcomes that our work in hr is systemic and critical in making these other things a reality our leadership framework is part of our signature initiatives and our future challenges for hr we want to

046provide greater supports to our new teachers we want to improve our ability to hire earlier and hire better we want to shift ourselves from a reactive to a predictive state which means and actually mr little you one of your questions uh earlier uh yesterday responds to this specifically we need to be planning ahead not just for august but for years from august building programs and plans that will affect this district in years to come until we can stop dealing with the day-to-day and move forward that's where we want to go with hr how can you help as a board obviously communicate about opportunities and advantages to working with mmps funnel questions and concerns to the department of hr so we can resolve them and move forward and of course as you're already doing advocating for

047the budget priorities for the district and i will leave you with that thank you mr barnes dr battle cheer oh sure can i say something great um well first i just i i've got to tell you how excited i was to see all that information about teacher retention about making sure that our um we're filling our vacancies it's so important so first of all just congratulations keep doing it um and then secondly i just i have a couple things i want to say first you gave some stats about how we are compared um to this to the rest of the country as far as how we fund our pupils and how we fund our teachers and i wanted to just add one more to that that in tennessee if you look just in tennessee alone

048teachers make 21.4 less than other comparable college educated workers so when you're comparing college-educated workers in tennessee teachers make 21.4 percent less than the same level and right now senator heidi campbell has brought a bill before the tennessee senate that will provide a 500 hazard pay bonus for every part-time school district employee and a 1 000 bonus for every full-time employee and this for the state um so i just wanted to encourage everybody listening and and those of us on the board to contact your state senator and ask them to pass this it is bill [Music] sb1358 so i that i think is important for us to recognize that and then to kind of piggyback off of that i really wanted to ask dr battle have we considered using some of our sr 2.0 funds

049to provide a one-time bonus for our staff um yes we have we will soon be sharing with the board um the final requests that have gone in with our esser application um so yes we have we're also looking at ways to leverage um our increase in our bep um and structural component of our bep um to help supplement better thank you so that's that's a really good point you brought up because turnover happens in two areas people who leave the profession and people who move around within the profession and it really breaks about eight percent of peace so we have to affect that eight percent who leave us to teach somewhere else and also how can we address the eight percent and leave the profession entirely so i think that's a great point so yeah

050i can't tell you how many people i know that i've personally been friends with who have left teaching for a higher paying job not because they didn't want to teach and not because they didn't love the kids but because they could not survive without more than one job and so they they did um so yeah i just that's really important i was really excited to hear about it and and just that advocacy is important to me um and then i i had a question you shared uh pictures about the vaccines dr battle and i was so excited um i'm not gonna lie i teared up a little bit when i first saw the pictures of teachers receiving vaccines it just the idea that we're providing protection to them in in a meaningful way that proves

051that we care about them and that we want their safety to be at the forefront to me just it touches something deep inside so i was very pleased to see those um and educators please keep sharing those pictures they're very very exciting um and i just wanted to ask do we have a plan to support teachers that choose to receive their shots that that can only get an appointment during the school day um are they going to be allowed to to you know leave without having to take a sick day or having and especially after that second shot my husband is a hospital employee and he's had his second shot and oh boy it is a this is really a rough acclamation so um i just wanted to ask about what our plan was to

052support our teachers as they receive their shots yeah so first thing we've had already close to 5 700 of our staff members who have made appointments and started to be vaccinated which that is something to celebrate that's not including many of our staff members employees who we know have traveled to already get the vaccine so again we're encouraging everyone respond to your email set up your appointment go in it's a pretty efficient process that has been established we proactively worked closely with vanderbilt on scheduling times for employees that would be flexible and really meet their schedules and so as we mentioned before seven days a week early hours late hours for our staff to be there but we've also encouraged our school principals and school leadership teams to work closely with their school staff in

053getting their first and second dose of the vaccine so of course we encourage you know speaking weekends before after school if you can if you can't we've encouraged our teams to work closely with everyone to be accommodating because we want all of our employees who are interested in getting vaccinated to do so and so your the guidance has been not to penalize them by making them take a day out of their own sick leave or their own personal leave i just really want to make sure that so they're not penalizing them for doing something that's going to keep them safe so the guidance for our employees is to work with their school leadership team on making arrangements if they need to go during the school day for the vaccine wonderful thank you question for you

054i want you to help me alone because i may miss talk about just what someone brought to my attention so tell me about the student teachers that we had that had to go elsewhere um i think at the last minute they were told i think these teachers are interns they come from different universities um that will shadow our teachers and hopefully because i know we talked about this national teacher residency so tell me and you can you may have to just kind of help me through what so what happened so was it that there were student teachers and they had to go to different they were told at the last minute because of covet um that they had to go and do their internships other places like different counties or something like that are you

055aware of that not aware that we have student teachers in the district right now and we actually have worked to get them schoology access so they can interact with their kids i'm not aware of any that were told to go somewhere else do you know of a specific university or group yeah so what else yeah it was it was talked about you know a lot you know on social media about how these students had to um you know scramble to find elsewhere to go um to different counties do their student teaching or something like that but i can get more information for you from uh for you because i wanted some clarification around that i know that it was talked about i just didn't know you know what was what was happening yeah i'd like

056to know more i'll do my own research too i know that we're actually starting to go out and visit with student teachers now to talk to them about you know staying in mmps afterwards so i know that we have a good right number now but i'll find out if there's anything that one university or a specific group is is that a process that we take you know as far as these universities that are student teachers that go into of course teaching and then they transition to shadowing our teachers and then eventually become a part of i mean mnps if they you know go through the process and that kind of thing is that some is that a process we're taking even to the extent last year i was actually got in front of all of

057the seniors who were in the education class and got to go talk with them about mnps so there's a process of working them through that we even want um i don't remember the name of university i'm sorry but 30 of their student teachers actually signed up to become subs uh during this time as well so i'll research that and i'll i'll certainly get back to you if i find out anything okay thank you and i'll echo please share that information um with us because we've worked very diligently to get access to our student teachers um these are individuals who are training in our classrooms and that we want to keep here in mnps so if there's any specific individual scenario we would love to know because we've tried to retain everyone during this time and

058that's why i was making mention of it because i knew that that was something that we and congratulations to a good job of of you know making sure that we are looking so much better as far as retention so congratulations to that's the hr team that did that i just uh i just stand around looking for [Laughter] mrs player peters uh yes um back to your diversity slide how do you define diversity when you say 50 diversity 54 diversity 29 diversity how how are we as hr defining diversity to make sure we're all seeing from the same page i i use white for the majority and then everything that was not either two or more races hispanic black as diversity okay and are we also keeping track of gender also with the diversity also i

059did i didn't prepare that slide um but i do have that transition by by group as well by gender mrs masters i just i was thinking about all that all that's being done here in mnps to help us re recruit and retain teachers and would it be helpful to you if our city government were to work diligently toward providing incentive programs housing vouchers focused transportation resources for teachers would that be something that would be helpful to mnps if we could forge that kind of citywide initiative i think our primary attention needs to be devoted to those brand new teachers who are just coming into the profession if you were to ask me as as the hr chief where where do i need to focus my attention most it's retaining those newest educators and when they

060come out of school they're just over inundated with information anything we do to help stem that tide would be wonderful so yes we wouldn't we would embrace any and all of those yes well in sp you know talking about national level recruiting um that you know i feel i mean nashville's an it city y'all right so it seems like sharon's smirking [Laughter] in spite of you know some of these numbers that we see and so uh yeah i'm yeah i just well and that is nashville is a destination right so there is you know at my age all i want is a peace and quiet and a good night's sleep but you know people graduating college want a nightlife and one excitement and things to do and nashville certainly has that in spades so the

061you know a city-wide initiative to offer affordable housing to teachers could potentially be something useful and something that the advocacy committee could consider is something to talk with our leaders about well you know based on that book study we've got to use those committee structures effectively so i appreciate the thought that's right miss people walker mr barnes research you know shows that in the last recession teachers stayed because there were no other jobs or people didn't retire and so forth i'm sure that's happening here as well it's happening across the country where people are deferring retirement or staying in the profession so how so i think you're totally right to emphasize when the economy picks back up assuming it does that we can keep all of these folks and so anything we can do to

062help with that i think all of these incentive ideas are fabulous and so nashville is an expensive place to live and so how do we keep our teachers uh from our first our new teachers to our most seasoned teachers right how do we keep them in the profession what would that take so we're all ears on how to make that happen and not to bring it back to the core tenants but the way we treat people matters and i think that's what's so powerful about what we're doing is because it's clear and it's focused on the schools and the teachers and the staff in the schools so do we have partnerships that are specific to our colleges with for student teachers that come to us that are and then did those programs also include like

063not really internships but opportunities to volunteer beforehand for those same students before they student teach they do encourage that and most school programs the amount of time you spend in school levels up as you go towards student teaching but we have opportunities i've talked to them about bus driving i've talked to them about uh you know coming in and subbing because some of their schedules would provide for that and typically those programs require practicum observations volunteer hours and we definitely support our local universities in those efforts yeah i know that this the teacher prep programs that wait to put their students in a classroom until their student teaching don't tend to have the best results so i think just as frequently as we can get kids that want i say kids like i'm saying as

064frequently as we can get future teachers in the classroom to get them acclimated to this is what it's really like this is how you can you know cope with what's going on and be successful um that's important and and i think that takes a very close relationship with teacher prep programs and i mean we're the athens of the south and we've got all these colleges around us and we should be utilizing the talent that's coming out of them when i talk to students too i talk about the benefit of them coming into schools either subbing or volunteering or something because it lets them figure out what school they would feel best at but also lets us you know it's it's a year-long job interview it's two year long you know and most of those people

065who are dedicated in that way will find that job before they graduate so with that in mind doctor i mean uh mr barnes your stu the student teacher supports how can we better help i mean i know you all typically are used to those students being able to come into the classroom you can recruit them face to face things have been changed with covid what supports do you need from us to be able to to really out you know reach out engage them at high levels so that they do stay i think the the advocacy you're doing and the and the budget priorities that you're doing help us recruit those people so the the things that you put your attention on dovetail nicely into what we talk about when we go to teachers you know

066you can get a uh a signing bonus to go to another district but you can't get the resources and support you get here so i think that you guys are focused right in where you need to be okay well as ideas flesh out as you need help you know as covet has shifted everything just let us know please and then for hbcu and hsi outreach what does that recruitment look like again because you can't go to or you couldn't go in the fall to recruitment fairs in person how has that impaired you all could you just kind of tell us the story i want to paint the picture for the rest of the community also about how it is difficult it's difficult to assess an employee when you're interviewing them online so there oops excuse

067me there has been a lot of challenges most every career fair right now that we know of has been online so we've been working through that process the best we can okay and then kind of in that same vein of hbcu hsi recruitment planning what about for male teachers i know you said you didn't have really the desegregated data right now but could you give me a give us a pulse what is it like to recruit male teachers and how has has it been effective throughout this pandemic i haven't focused my attention on that specifically um i know that that's something that we always look at you find that diversity in gender becoming more equitable in high schools uh than they are in elementary that's traditionally the the biggest area they're actually not as bad

068in high school as they are in in elementary but um i think it's it's systemic to making sure that kids have all different size of role models in a building so you know again as you develop a need or a way that we can kind of help you all with that just let us know it's ma'am dr gentry so i literally in my personal as i said earlier my personal opinion me myself my personal opinion um [Music] uh look i have the best job ever right and i'm not talking about school board this is like the second best job ever um so i part of my responsibility is helping hca healthcare build relationships with hbcus and hsis so i get to do that all day long and so my first question would be do we

069have relationships beyond showing up at recruitment fairs not to this point no i haven't been able to develop those to the extent that i want that's sort of our future state yeah so i would say that to miss player peter's comment about diversity and if we're intentional about that diversity of gender that diversity of race and ethnicity we need to start with the relationship piece um and so you know i use this phrase at work it's going from relationship to partnership and so how do we how do we form a relationship that that starts to acclimate people to the fact that mnps is a possibility i'm not here to give you a job i'm not here saying i'm going to hire you but i we want to we want to start making mnps part of

070the vernacular in the teacher education programs at these schools um you know i'll tell you that people of color tend to stay close to home if they don't have the comfort or the confidence that they know at least sixty percent of what they need to know about the environment um and the other thing that that i that i see happening is that for those institutions that i've been able to create the relationship with i get looped into the email you know bucket so that we get invited to speak on interviewing in a virtual environment so then it looks like i really want you to be successful so let me give you some tips so when you come back to interview with me right so again it's more seating that mnps is about people to your

071point and we want to start that support of you whether you choose us or not we're here to support the development of quality teachers right so the last thing i ever talk about is giving somebody a job but i can give you some pointers i can give you some connections i can give you some opportunities to improve the experience that your students are having in whatever the area that we could potentially have a partnership in so i would i would suggest that we we kind of kind of fast forward i know that you have nothing else to do dr barnes and so um so i'm not you know i'm not putting a date or timeline on this but the the quicker we can get to the relationship building with these institutions um the better it

072will be right so there's the history with these schools there's the and i know the hsi space is very fluid right so it's based on a threshold of the number of um latinx students that graduate or enroll or graduate and that number fluctuates but i have focused on students on schools that maintain a 50 or greater enrollment so just kind of narrowing that down um has been helpful for me so i would just say that the sooner we can start the relationship building with the hbcus and hs the hbcu and hsi community the better if we want to really get them hooked into mnps and that mirrors in my in my last couple of districts i worked with fayetteville state university and what they would do is the students would see me when they were

073sophomores they'd see me again when they were juniors and they see me again when they were seniors and by that time it was okay now you already have a relationship you're already coming to work with us and so that's something we're building as we go forward and let me just add i just want to be um clear about a couple things and kind of bracing the board for our upcoming budget conversations as well uh first again commanding the board for the top priority being around employee compensation i mean that that we have to address that um sooner than later to retain and attract the quality educators and employees that we want in mmps and so you will see strategies around that space as we present and share information to to the board another area that

074is part of your board priorities is around our hr efforts and in order to get into the proactive space and being able to build those lasting relationships we have to invest in this space so that we have the leadership and the individuals who can dedicate their time to space and it's needed it shows up in all of our data points it shows up in the conversations we're having with our employees including exit survey data as we're working with employees that we've been able to on board and so you know i think this conversation aligns directly to your budget priorities and the conversations we'll be having in the upcoming weeks folks thank you for your support thanks for your advocacy prayer peter's name is tyler oh i'm sorry [Music] no i didn't i just think dr

075ralph because i was thinking about employees that we do have you know before in the past that i don't have the data so excuse me but like there's always been a cliff and then goes back to people leaving a lot of people why teachers are leaving and how we do that and hopefully with the mayor's office committing to teachers compensation and revamping that that we we address that that compression that usually happens in pay and stay so i think that's very important so i'm glad to hear as we move forward into the budget season that we're starting to address that not only looking long-term uh new people recruit but the people we do have particularly in that critical i guess one to five years that we maintain them so we don't have a lag in

076that middle that middle age um experience of teachers and then also i think also too we have to be mindful of we also have parapros and support staff that we also have to think of too when we talk about employee compensation i know our natural defaults always talk about teachers and their crucial part but also making we have teachers that are supported by the staff and that support staff are also compensating well that they're not doing the same struggles too that it's a partnership between support staff and teachers i also make sure that we just bring that to light as we talk about employees employee conversation and as even recruit as those you know some people who graduate from college you may not know what you want to do right away or like me you

077thought you were going to law school and then the lsat had different plans for me and are we capturing talented people like that where it's just like oh law school is not for me um and so to also being creative also in that way that if you may not be a teacher and going through the certification process how are we gauging pair pros how are engaging support staff to also bring into our our family and to have that conversation as part of compensation also so just as we continue our conversations data throughout the months and years forth going that we keep that also in our forefront too we had about 30 we did an office hours and opening for parapros to come and talk with about or grow your own programs we had you know

078about 30 people come and just tell me more you know and some that's so we grow some of our best employees that way yes and make sure we also fund it i mean that's been issues i've had in the past where we've had some programs or to transfer support staff into teachers but then it's only for a handful of students a handful of employees and you can't upscale it into a substantial level just because you haven't found the funding so hopefully as we go into the budget season we advocate with the state and with the mayor's office of the council that also we're looking at when we grow our own that we're putting substantial money that we're not just doing tens of employees but we're doing hundreds of employees that we um we employ ten

079thousand employees tens employees is not putting a dent and we're investing about growing our own also one of the best teachers i had my last district was a cafeteria manager and one of our best new teachers he came over from a totally different area was great so anybody who's interested who's listening as well you know please contact us we've seen an increase in so no go ahead go ahead go ahead i was just going to ask a little bit about principles you have a slide about effective principles and i think anybody who's ever been in a school understands how important the principle is to set the tone for the entire school and i have seen i have worked in schools where there's been a change of leadership and you can i mean just almost immediately

080from year to year you can sense a difference in the morale of the staff and and the wants to stay there or um the the loyalty towards the group that you're working with um so i know that you guys have done a couple new things as far as allow allowing the principals to have um time specifically to share ideas with one another about what's working and what isn't working and we spend a lot of time talking about teacher development professional development and i just want to ask a little bit about principal professional development yes do i see mason no there he is mason bellamy our chief of academics and schools he leads a lot of his team leads all of our printable professional development and learning so ac might want to share a little insight

081around some of his current work absolutely so we actually had a division of schools retreat today to do just that and plan our landing and our launch that has been traditionally used here in mmps to really um you know the landing to solidify the end of the year and what needs to happen during the summer in planning and then the launch to get ready for next year but in our partnership work that chris mentioned within pef the framework that you saw there'll be a great deal of training rolled out through that signature initiative both at the school level so chris referred to its leadership for everywhere wherever you sit in the organization but specifically we'll be using that particular framework to leverage those behaviors that we all see in our most effective and the principles

082that you worked with that you remember fondly and to replicate that my executive directors will be creating intentional time with them to work in networks to do the sharing that you're talking about um our pln meetings that have happened that happen monthly we have i won't say the word overhaul because our agenda has been very refined over the years even when i came in there were very specific parts of it in voice and choice sessions where they got to opt to what they wanted to go get their professional development for but they have told us loud and clear that they want more time with one another within their network to share and so the last two or three agendas for the pln going back to december you've seen dedicated time where the networks have done

083just that with topics related to our focused outcomes whether they were the attendance measures you saw dr springer report on last week and those numbers going in the positive direction whether it was map percentages and just as simple as trying to get our percent of students successfully testing in map from in the low 70s where we were in the fall to the low 90s where we were this time so that was a december topic and so monthly we're creating time for them to commit to that to share with one another best practices and then we're using this spring to springboard into next year through a variety of our signature initiatives but um they will get lots of opportunities for exactly what you just described in the in the months ahead as we close out the

084year and then all summer long and i'll i'll bring our attention back to core tenant number one which is us re-envisioning the way um our central office supports we're transforming into a support hub and we're serious about this work and so we're transforming being responsive to the needs of our principals our teachers our staff members and so as mason mentioned we're continuing to adapt agendas when those planning times happen opportunities to share best practices so this is a real thing including one thing that dr barnes didn't get to hit on with our exit survey we've heard lots of feedback around that being an email generated survey and a lot of times your email was cut off before you had an opportunity to complete the exit survey until he's now created a website where employees can

085go in and fill the data out not to rely on just the email system and he always expresses his doors open we want to try to avoid any of those conversations prior to any of our employees making a decision to exit that is within our control as opposed to out of our control so we're really serious about re-envisioning central office as a support hub that includes thinking about how we support our principals and their professional learning and building their capacity as well and then i know for teachers it's really important those first five years and you touched on that dr barnes about making sure that our teachers have that support right off the bat do you see that that's something that the principals also need when they first switch from maybe assistant principal to principal

086is that do you have a mentorship program that works with them anything to help support them maybe more than a typical principal who's really a veteran and knows what they're doing so again as part of our work with mpef that'll be part of the the model is layering supports based on the need of the principle right and part of that is making sure that our newly appointed principals one have had the experiences they need in the assistant principal role the right role models there but also that they're fit for the school and rather than saying this happens to be the school that's open so we're gonna put you there i'm really taking a model where you're building a bunch of folks that are selected for the school based on the school's need and based on

087that candidate's perceived or not perceived strengths but actual measured strengths right so rather than saying here's the person who's next in line for whatever job comes up it's here's this candidates the qualities that they've exhibited the leadership that they've exhibited and then hear the school's needs and and making those matches appropriately and then of course once they're there the professional development i'll continue to pursue for my division of schools my executive directors as the principal leaders is just that so how do you coach your principles a little bit differently depending on their need we want to select connect them to cut to principles that already exist as a support just like you would as a teacher right your teacher across the hall from you probably did for you what mine did for me carol beavers

088if you're listening shout out to helping me survive my first year in the classroom um but we've also got principals that do that as well and so um i can't even name them all but if they're out there listening tonight beth unfree and emily vaughn shout out to helping me survive my first year in the principalship so we're going to connect principals that way and then of course their ed is going to spend a little bit more time with them additional school visits um and in a kind of a tiered-based system just like we would our students right yeah and we'll need to continue to protect and expand our ed networking model that is a strength to our structure i'm here in the district pairing our principles based upon their tier and location of the

089district to one coach or supervisor so we do want to continue those efforts and we're currently piloting right now a group of principal mentors as success coaches to go in and be thought partners side by side with principal principals particularly dennis thomas as we're navigating the pandemic but we see it as a promising strategy as we're moving forward thank you dr gentry just curious between he left he's gone [Laughter] and i don't know either one of you may be able to answer do we ever uh do we do um multi-level professional development together where there's principals teachers others co-mingled in the room together or is it usually just focused on principles a lot of times it will be differentiated um our mtss meetings for example we will schools will bring their entire teams which will

090have teachers they'll have interventionists that will have principles our pln meetings are principal specific when we have ap and dean meetings we're often times deans of instruction deans of the various different dean roles will come with the assistant principal and we definitely put our principles in networks as well where you'll have elementary middle and high principles together but the opportunities to bring teachers and principals at the same time are often difficult to do obviously during the year right because you need the amount of subs you need to pull teachers out of the classroom to do that makes it difficult however i think with for example lots of lots of information will be coming out about our literacy implementation soon you'll see training guides that are meant just for that and that school best practices will

091be that a school comes together with their entire leadership team which will be made up of teachers special special area teachers included where their role fits in librarians or media media specialists as well as the instructional leaders so we definitely want to empower our schools to use their leadership team and plc models for that it can certainly be difficult to do during the school year though so the best time we're going to have to do that is going to be during the summer to get bigger groups and then during the school year focus groups like your mtss meetings or a content area where in high school if i'm the science lead for admin i might go with my science teachers there's certainly opportunities there and that's a best practice that we would we would seek

092to support our schools and as much as we can it definitely depends on the content but we hear loud and clear from principals aps and deans that they want their own protected time a lot of the times so they can be vulnerable and you know ask the questions that they really do need to ask but there definitely is a point in time where we have to have a mixed grouping of leaders from schools to come together hear the same information at the same time to implement with fidelity yeah we'll talk offline because all right i have different thunk just questions okay other questions ms bush um yeah i just have a question um so we have teachers the biggest concerns that i hear from teachers is being able to move up being able to um

093you know we have teachers that go and get their doctorates and they're wanting to stay within mnps but they feel like they are not able to move up is there any type of training for these these individuals because that's those are some of the concerns i'm hearing and so they feel like they stay stuck and that they cannot move up and they reach out to hr to feel to to get that guidance on what they can do in order to be considered in higher positions so how does that work for those teachers i mean for those look at those individuals i'll let dr barnes speak from the hr perspective from the instruction perspective again i'll go back to our model from mpef that we're getting close to finalizing and being able to push the work

094out that will really delineate pathways for any employee in the district from where they currently are to where they envision themselves being it is a competency-based program though so rather than saying these are boxes i check i go get this degree or i take this course and i'm gonna get the next job it's really more competency based in the sense that i take these opportunities i demonstrate my competencies in these areas and then we match to the fits that that might be coming up afterwards but ultimately we would want every teacher coach um or anybody that may be in a um you know an assistant role right now to see that pathway for them that here are my opportunities these are the supports i can get to pursue those things and then this is how

095the process works we want to be as transparent as possible in the division of schools as to how that process works and how you could pursue that and then i'll let chris chan i believe the rest of it's hr i think some of it is a series of supply and demand you know sometimes there are a few positions and there are a lot of applicants i always encourage people who do come to me to look for ways to lead within their own building and look for things you know traditionally assistant principal come and say hey i want to be principal what do i need to do and i'll encourage them to find something in their building that they can have complete ownership of from beginning to end that shows its data and shows what they've

096done and usually there's more success when they can speak to something that they've owned and and led one way or the other and have actionable data coming out of that that's what that leadership framework speaks directly to i will add that we do have um aspiring administrators academy that will be kicking off again soon this spring that's application based and the cohort goes through and again competency-based to demonstrate the competencies they're learning through the program and part of our our leadership model is also putting the burden on building leaders and empowering those that work for you and if you look at the team administrator rubric that my executive directors use to evaluate principles to go from a three to five in almost every category specifically says builds capacities in others and then lists the different

097behaviors and so your principals really do have the burden of leadership and that they should be building their assistant principles and their leadership team and their teachers that way and so our framework is going to be designed or is designed to give attention in those areas so that as a principal you can't do everything yourself and you'll certainly drive yourself crazy trying so you have to empower others and build capacity and our framework will demonstrate our commitment to that um in the future what was the name of the program this summer you said you're rolling out something firing administrators academy i believe i could be confusing that with a different acronym but i'll get it for you specifically but it's essentially for folks that are currently in the classroom that want to aspire to be

098an administrator and then assistant principals that will aspire to be principal thank you dr jin okay she's going to say you know dr battle is a great example of someone who's who came up you know from the beginning to where she is now i'm a great example of someone who lateraled in halfway through um so there's there's benefit on from both tracks i think obviously there is compensation differences as people go up in degrees um but we encourage those people to keep trying because sometimes there are a limited number of options for for for those opportunities you know within the central office or in other places right dr gentry yeah so this is one of those examples where multi-tier professional development comes in handy and so you and i've had this conversation dr battle this

099particular book of work i was sharing with dr battle that i'm engaged in in another space not necessarily relevant here but we encourage multi-level engagement in that in that training course so it's not about math it's not about science it's about leadership it's a leadership development course not leadership in literacy leadership and math it's about the individual and so one of the things that we do in that course is it allows someone who may be a manager or director to sit in a room with a vp and hear the kinds of decisions that vp has to make and hear the inputs that go into that decision and understand and we call it creating intelligent followership right so now you understand why things happen the way they happen i will tell you as a hiring manager

100as a manager of people that is probably the most difficult conversation to have is the one that miss bush has has teed up right when am i going to get promoted when am i going to get to the next level and there's so many things that go into that right and so even when we say things like we're going to give it that name what'd you call it aspiring that's the one that's it that's it it's what's called now is in the minutes the aspiring administrators academy triple a look at that we want to stay away from so handy so the aaa right even with that so in my organization we have an executive development program and the desire is to prepare you for the next level not to ensure that you get the job

101because you still got to interview and there's 52 other people interviewing for that same position so it's challenging it's a difficult conversation i mean i just don't know how to you know is there a way to kind of map out that pipeline right or what those interventions are the triple a's you know what do you do how do you prepare yourself to be considered not to prepare yourself to be guaranteed a position right and so again hard conversation to have most people they just get it's frustrating it's frustrating when you've been in a role 15 20 years and you you you see others and we always think that we would have been better right we would have been a better choice for that position so maybe i'm just curious is there some place that someone

102can go to say to see what is that pipeline what does that path what look like what are the interventions that's what our work with npef will outline okay um and it may be um a committee meeting along the way or it may be a presentation at a board meeting uh once that work is finalized but that is almost exactly what that that building the bench and that pipeline will do um it'll outline expectations for every role you're in if you're a principal this is your duty to groom the people that that seek those jobs under you this is the support you have for doing that this is my role as a district administrator chris's role as an hr um and so it will outline all of those things and do exactly that so that

103anybody in the organization that wants to move ahead can have a place to start and say these these are my next moves and this is what i see for myself and these are the supports that are available to me to do that and remember that every individual has their own strengths and weaknesses and schools have different needs and so sometimes that means we need to tailor the need of the school with the strength of the individual and that may not be a situation of how long they've been in the district and maybe just situational skill set this is a great conversation this is exactly what the leadership framework is all about we want to be clear about the skills the competencies we want in our leaders and knowing what it takes to be ineffective leader

104no matter which seat our employees are sitting in but also articulating those pathways towards success and just like our students first staff those pathways may look a little bit different based upon the strengths and aspirations of the employee and you know one example personally that i had just moving through our district one of my my greatest success has been student achievement and growth but my next one is being able to prepare many executive principals that are serving their schools well right now and one specific example with our student-based budgeting process that's not something that other school team members get to see the entire budget because of all the privacy that's in there with employees and everything but i remember with one of my academy principals many years ago i brought her along because i knew

105she was aspiring to be a principal she sat with me during the budget process she went with me to my presentation of my budget to the central office support team and just a couple weeks later she was appointed an executive principalship we didn't know that that was coming right then but goodness that was a great experience for her to hear my thinking and to know what that process looks like and we want to start that early and we want to have those kinds of supports often for those who aspire to be in these leadership roles and there's so many complexities so many roles you almost can't even cover them all most administrators will tell you that they never thought they knew enough the first time they walked into it because there's so many different moving

106pieces but back to the other point about pipelines we've had lots of conversations about the term pipeline and getting to your point dr gentry that what we're trying to what we're trying to communicate there is not just wait your turn eventually if you stay long enough you'll get there but the understanding that as you're developing your skills we're going to be matching your skill sets to places where you can be successful and that is something we should be very cognizant about we want to set our employees up for success when they move into these leadership roles and sometimes um if we if we're not intentional about that we're getting our employees in spaces and situations where um they're they're just not going to be successful they're already starting behind the a-ball if you will and

107in getting done or accomplishing what they need to so we're taking very seriously that as we're shifting and appointing and supporting our employees in these leadership roles that we're connecting their skill sets their needs to the needs of the community or the department that they're serving membership is not position dependent that it that it's embedded in all the work that everyone does and it's sort of like blooming where you're playing it this is player peters yeah that's one cooking that's also just taking a step further that since you it's also a numbers game you know there's so many principles so many but also if they have to leave the district they're also a promoter of the district where then you're also recruiting as a new leadership roles that they come to us as teaching because

108then you show there's a leadership path and we're also a place to incubator too so hopefully when we do that nurturing that it also use that as cheerleaders to recruit more teachers to come back to the district if they have to leave the district to get those leadership opportunities just because the sheer numbers that you're going to have to engage in so yeah i'm excited to hear all this and the better we get at this vacancy thing the more tension that that will create because sometimes a good principle pushes you to become a good school board member so you know i'm looking at you dr springer i appreciate you uh i do have one question about substitutes have we really seen an increase in substitutes uh yes actually i wrote down every question i thought

109you guys might ask [Laughter] not a challenge don't worry um this week we actually have 17 applicants who've been cleared uh they're coming to this thursday's orientation we have on-boarded 111 substitute employees this school year and we now are up to 829 substitute employees on our active roster wonderful just again the community supporting us i just appreciate it it's been a rocky road but i'm glad we're continuing to forge ahead so thank you for this any other thoughts or questions all right we'll move on uh we just have again report yes thank you for all of this thank you everyone involved all of you but we have one report from our governance committee that's been the only committee to meet recently if you do have a committee that you would like if you have a

110committee meeting you would like to put on the agenda please make sure you're looping in dr sevier cameo and myself so we can get those scheduled we can talk through what the expectations are for those meetings all right mrs pooperwalker so for those of you who don't know the school board is con is um kind of halfway through a book study on the book essential the essential school board book and so we spent some time tonight talking about chapter three which is really around how do we become much more focused on student achievement embedding data and structuring meetings and retreats and so forth around data and achievement and really centering student progress um and so one of the i thought the best takeaways maybe so far out of this was the sort of collective decision

111to maybe do some data literacy training so we can hear and learn the same language school personnel are using to talk about student progress and benchmarking and on a whole host of things so that was really really promising and then the other thing i'll just say as an aside as we talked about the retreat now i can't remember maybe it was here about a student school board member that is moving forward we're going to have a meeting next week anybody on this board is invited to come it's virtual and i will send you ahead of time sort of a packet of information and so really it's meant to be let's go through make some decisions a or b c or d start date profile selection all those good things get the wheels rolling lots of

112interest in the community about this and so i know our high school students well i'm afraid actually about how many applications we're going to get and so um very excited to see a student sitting up here with us next year next school year and um and so stay tuned on that thank you so much thank you all right we'll slide right into announcements mrs tyler would you mind beginning um well first of all i just want to go back again and circle back around to what i said earlier contact your state senator ask them to support that bill sb1 the one-time hazard bonus pay for school district employees it's sb1358 and again on the advocacy side our council will be voting on the capital needs budget for mnps during their march 2nd meeting and first

113i want to thank the mayor for the largest investment in our school infrastructure in my history and i'm really excited about the new high school coming out to my district especially but knowing that we're going to have the money for maintenance and hvac repairs and the things that we need to do to keep our schools safe is exciting so i want to encourage everybody to advocate to your city council member and all five at-large members to approve the mayor's capital needs budget for mnps thank you mrs tyler mrs masters ditto ditto no i do i want to just take a moment because it we were watching the whole director's report and we did not stop and uh show a whole lot of expressive excitement for our teachers principal and support staff of the year and

114on the night that we did the proclamation about the arts dr gregory stewart the executive principal of the nashville school of the arts as you will know that's how you say it if you have a child that goes to school there because that's how he says it on his callouts it's principal of the year and jeremy lee one of the support staff along anyway i just feel like we should stand up and clap for everyone that got that honor okay thank you i feel better now um and then i also want to mention that the good work of pencil is ongoing they're such an amazing partner um to metro national public schools they are hot on the trail of a space where they could open a satellite lp pencil box in southeast nashville um they're

115in look of us a space that can be generously donated by some benefactor who would like to do that for us so that we can have that space there um so just putting that call out to the community as well um i think that's oh and i also wanted to mention that we had a lovely meeting on february 18th about the new goodlettsville elementary school that's being built built and the fact that they will be housed in the what the former graemer building for two years while that construction is taking place we had really good turnout at that meeting i learned that i used to teach dance to the architects stepdaughter so that was exciting nashville continues to be a small town and and so just a lot of excitement in the community around what's

116going on with that school and then the um parent advisory council meeting was postponed because of snow and so that will take place on march 2nd and what that means is if parents are still interested in serving in that capacity speak to your school principal and elections will be held on march 2nd for that group that's all i got all right thank you miss masters mrs player peters um yes edel thank you the mayor for for the capital um improvement budget and investing in our schools um particularly with deferred maintenance also so i want to echo that and then also echo what miss master said about um it's about to the employees of the year particularly support staff i know in the past they have felt um excluded not being recognized for being employees of

117the year so the fact that we're doing that and we recognize them and particularly by depart by uh department distinct dr battle and her staff for recognized support staff that they're also included as employees and as part of the family also there will be a budget meeting march 9th at 3 30. so we'll begin our budget process on march 9th so let's click on everyone's radar you'll get more information about how we're going to go through the meeting and committee process but that will be our first kind of full discussion on the operating budget for fiscal year 21 22. so i want to put that on everybody's radars that's coming up in the next couple of weeks and then last um not least i just wanted us to take a moment just to recognize that

118yesterday a half a million people have passed away because of covid um this pandemic has not been easy on any of us particularly as we navigate something that we as the country has never navigated before and particularly us as a school district of doctor battle and her team i know it's been a difficult process for students for teachers for parents just exercising our ways in our lives through a pandemic and trying to change to properly change how we learn going into a different environment how we learn and continue learning and having discussions that has been very unprecedented and untreated time so just um out of this half a million people that passed away 200 were children i think that's also getting gets caught up and um in the discussion so this condolences i know i've

119been personally affected by acquaintances that have passed away i had friend friends who parents passed away um and so i know we've all been touched by a death and so just marking that moment of where we are and the fact that almost a year later from the pandemic we are finally getting phasing in getting back to a new normal whatever that looks like and hopefully we can surpass it with the vaccines and all the progress we made in science but this one as a board and just personally i think dr battle just i know isn't difficult particularly this is your first year you have not reached a one-year anniversary yet and it has been difficult and we had half the board turn over in the midst of this so it was a lot for new

120leaders coming on and governing in this time and so we used to be my system mark the moment of where we are and that a year later that hopefully by next year we have a normal school year we're in a normal setting everyone's vaccinated so as we go on through the process that we just continue just to be thoughtful and mindful as um as is where we've been through so that's what i have thank you mrs player peter it's mr little um yes wanted to announce the pre-k application process opens up on march 1st i know a lot of parents in my district have been ready for that the optional schools the selections are happening on march 8th i wanted to thank the the elevate leadership in district 4 for inviting me to speak but

121also allowing dr battle to present um it seemed like there was a lot of excitement also the hermitage rotary got a chance to circle around there and introduce myself thank you to the executive principal miss covey of mcgave elementary we had a really awesome conversation as we talked about just academics and just community driven projects and then thank you to the elementary school teacher of the year miss crystal hicks um she invited me her and the staff at robert churchwells for um readme week so i was looking i was like oh i was like that's miss hicks so thank you to those guys pretty excited about that and just two things what i'm hearing from the community um you guys probably heard but some parents want to make those one-time decisions in reference to in-person

122and virtual um i know you know some things are just set in stone and then stand for montessori in the fifth grade realignment those are just um messages and phone calls that i've gotten myself thank you mr little miss bush uh yes thank you um we have congratulated our teachers our principals our students we're so excited about them being phased back in and tonight i want to recognize one of our very own she's one of ours this is black history month and i want to congratulate miss cameo bobo miss cameo bobo for not only pursuing her dreams and her skills in her brains cameo has done three things within one year that she's accomplished she's accomplished and and here it is look at there yes she did she wrote her own book she just launched

123it or she did her soft launch yes her soft launch and she also have her own single out called 2020 is my year 2020 huh 21 21 now right now right and she also has her own clothing line that i am so proud to wear on weekends because i like to sport i don't even wear like hoodies and stuff like that but i look good in your stuff girl so i just want to tell you congratulations to miss cameo bobo for her accomplishment and if we can stand up and give her a round of applause listen up guys we're all here right [Applause] love you cam all right uh i'll start with the uh some announcements for dishes what's up it's like i don't know i got you guys i did i got excited at

1246 40. okay go write a hit no i'm sorry about that mrs poopoo all right all right i'm dead i also want to just um slowly i also yeah really i just want to take a few minutes tonight i'm just kidding um really excited for fifth and ninth graders to come back and and and i want to say that there are lots of things we'll learn through this pandemic and some things will be different forever and for the better and you have to wonder if it's not a great idea to bring fifth and ninth back a little bit earlier before everybody else and make that a tradition and allow them to come in and build community and i just think that is an important thing and i want to just thank dr battle for her

125thoughtful approach to this entire entry reentry closing coming back snow all of the things and keeping keeping all of this moving forward in such a calm sense i'm just very grateful for that congrats to janelle ganske who's the hillsborough high school teacher of the year voice teacher i want to thank julia green for inviting me to be part of their accreditation process so i got to be part of the team that spoke to the accreditation committee or whatever the group that does the accreditation to just talk about the good work at julia green i was excited about that um i want to encourage everybody to participate in read me week so i've been invited to read at waverley belmont next week virtually and so excited about that and then the other person i want to

126thank tonight is ashford hughes who has fielded requests this is the hardest time of the year for people in that spot this school choice option time lots of questions and anyway totally graceful under pressure and always responsive and appreciate all you do every day ashford hughes thank you [Applause] all right dr gentry so crystal hicks robert churchwell district one teacher of the year congratulations as has already been shared read me week it's already been shared but please if you have not signed up for one of your schools to read virtually it's probably harder to get people to sign up now than it has been when you were able to be there in person so please reach out to a school uh if you haven't and then cr uh miss bugs are you going to talk

127about the book brothers i am but you can okay no you got it and then i just want to share that i know we've been talking about the property utilization conversation we were going to do it last week and then so we're going to bump it we want to do it today so we're going to bump it for two two weeks from so the next board meeting prior to so i don't know if it'll be three or four o'clock depending on what else goes on but prior to the board meeting the next board meeting will convene around the property utilization because i think a couple of us have some properties that need to be discussed now it's my turn so sorry about that didn't mean to cut you all off uh i'll start with uh

128district four um rachel and elrod she and i you know decided early on that we really wanted to have conversations with the council and she's been spearheading a lot of these conversations with councilman the education committee chair of the council uh council member tom druffle and the vice chair council lady aaron evans we were scheduled to have a meeting this past week but of course because of the snow we decided to push it to next thursday march 4th you all will be getting the invitation because it's coming from the council so the council staff will be sending that to us if if any other mmps staff want to want to be there as a participant instead of an attendee please just let us know we'll make sure that you all get you know i guess

129this is more to you dr battle if you know anyone that needs to be we'll be sure that everyone gets the invitation uh to participate so thank you to uh mrs elrod for that i'm a member of the nashville shakespeare festival board and the tennessee department yeah the tennessee day on the hill is march 10th so this was a perfect time for us to be talking or first to be proclaiming our support of arts education because it's a big big focus of the shakespeare festival so it's virtual if anyone wants to log on please do it's happening on that date from ten to one um again i want to highlight that this is the first year for support staff of the year you know we do appreciate all of our staff but i think we've

130done a good job the last few years of making sure that everyone that's in a building with or anyone that is a staff member of mnps that they know that they are an educator we do sometimes lump them in that teacher under that teacher category but because they are teachers so just thank you to all staff members but a special shout out to the excuse me to those who have won uh staff of the year recognition thank you again to dr battle you've not only continued to make thoughtful decisions but being able to manage conversations and relationships in the community you did a phenomenal job this past weekend with vice mayor shulman just was really really proud really thoughtful uh questions and answers so just thank you for continuing to be graceful under pressure i'm

131really really excited i always talk about the way that the community has really wrapped their hands around mnps and around our babies books brothers if you have not heard about it i promise you will it is a consortium of different organizations around the city including but not limited to the national public library um united way of greater nashville my brother's keeper the nashville chapter which is spearheaded by mr lionel matthews our juvenile court clerk and ashford hughes our director of diversity it's a long direct diversity equity and inclusion and the school choice office i just know you have a lot of stuff so um so just think it's men of color reading books you know and ingram has partnered with the with us to be able to to be able to give these books to

132free to just men of color in the community have them be recorded reading their books and then this is just another way of this is another opportunity for volunteerism so if you know someone who wants to be a books brother we're going to start extending that offer to our high school students you know we've spoken with mr amato at maplewood to see how we can work with project lit to make sure those young people are able to read books to their elementary school peers so just if you know anyone please send them my way send them our way or send them to the blueprint nashville.org website or just google books brothers and you can sign up so just thank you to those men you'll be seeing those on youtube you'll be seeing them a little

133bit of everywhere once this fully launched um i also want to highlight in that same vein book them and 50 forward have a similar program where they have volunteers reading books so if you are just someone in the community that wants to please look please reach out to either book em or fifty forward um oh i do have to say this uh a couple of my neighbors and i are trying to commit to sending our kids to our zone school we are looking at uh supporting jones that merging between buena vista and jones with a bit more fidelity from the community you know my community is uh gentrifying and so we've had a lot of opting out so we have a lot of people who opt out of schools and then wonder why their neighborhood

134schools are not really thriving and so if you're someone that lives in that 37203 37208 zip code and you'd like to talk to me about this this is just this kind of as a separate as a parent i'm looking to enroll my child and i have a couple of neighbors who are willing to do do the same so that we can show the world that zone schools are phenomenal we just have to make sure we support them lastly oh my gosh and i wasn't going to cry but the reason that i brought that up is warner arts magnet if you've heard the story of warner if you listen to the podcast the promise if you listen to the podcast nice white parents then you look at warner arts magnet and you want them to continue

135to thrive because they are doing such great work didn't get a chance last year they were on the priority list but they were about to roll right off as soon as tea and ready came and then the pandemic changed everything but they are being recognized as a beacon school for blue ribbon schools of excellence this is by that national blue ribbon academy that nonprofit organization that deems schools worthy of you to uh to receive this honor and i just i could not i know dr gibbs he wants to prop up all of his staff but i could not help but to thank him his staff the msap team which has been incredibly impactful and powerful and turning our schools around and making sure that the community is supporting them just i know we've been clapping

136a lot but warner arts magnet i mean they they were they were a priority school they were one that its reputation is just now beginning to catch up to what the good work that's been happening please give them a round of applause where their senior hearts are out loud the power of zone schools and offering resources it's just so so powerful so on that note thank you all for staying with us it's 6 48 you have a good night be to know for the 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