001[Music] good evening everyone thank you for joining us tonight this is our last school board meeting of the current school board before we swear in our new members on thursday and we are holding this meeting in accordance with the governor's executive order that allows for online meetings uh dr sevier could you go ahead and call the role for us now dr gentry president dr gentry's president michelle rod president sarah's present ms spearing president experienced president dr dabon mckinney present dr obama king's president miss buggs present mrs buggs is present miss bush presents suspicious present miss player peters i think i've seen she had not joined yet miss poopa walker president mr walker's present miss frog thank you madam chair you have eight members present okay thank you very much um we're going to start tonight
002with the special recognition of dr eric hooth and i'm going to turn uh it over right now to jill spearing who is a trustee on the mnps insurance trust thank you miss frog as a lifelong member of metro nashville education association it is my pleasure to honor dr eric host tonight eric recently retired and he has been a leader in metro schools for decades eric has served in the following capacities president and vice president of mnea trustee for the insurance trust sick leave bank and administrative retirement uh and excuse me the administration administrative retirement committee and the tennessee consolidated retirement system eric has proven to be analytical and professional with his work in the district when teachers have conflict or other difficulties at the building level mnea offers them a place to go to voice
003their complaints and seek solutions eric served as liaison between teachers and administrators he's worked diligently as a mediator an arbitrator a negotiator between administration and teachers his remarkable ability to keep all parties calm during negotiations and arbitrations have been his trademark eric set a record for the longest standing mnea president to date he served 10 years as president and those years extended from 1997 to 2019 and among those years he served as vice president from 2011 to 2015. prior to becoming the president of mnea in 1997 eric served as chair of the mdea building committee he saw the project through from planning the funding to the completion of the construction of the current headquarters that we all know is at fairgrounds court it was a long project 15 to 20 years in completion eric served
004as the insurance on the insurance trust for 13 years while he was chair of the trust members pushed on-site for on-site health clinics and now we have excellent health care clinics across the district for our employees and their families i'm going to share three quotes with you from people you know the first one is amanda kale current president of mnea and she says dr eric hooth has served expertly for many years on the insurance trust advocating on behalf of teachers his many years of service make him an integral part of mnea's institutional memory that will be difficult difficult to replace we are all grateful for eric's tremendous important legacy david hines who's the executor director of benefits says it has been my privilege to work with eric for 13 years on matters that improve teacher
005benefits and health from evaluating vendors and benefits to educating and advocating for his members eric always judged fairly and worked diligently to enhance our programs i sincerely appreciate the partnership we have had over the years chris henson chief operating officer says this about eric eric and i have worked together for the past 18 years in addition to his contributions to metro schools via his position at mnea and the insurance trust eric served as a trustee for the sick leave bank and the administrative retirement committee in all his duties eric was always deliberate and thoughtful striving to understand the complexity of the subject matter and balancing it with the human context i'm grateful for his leadership over the many years eric hooth you are loved and appreciated this board is grateful to you for the many
006contributions that you have made to our students and teachers across nashville now i'm going to turn it over to david hines eric just on behalf of the trust i just want to thank you uh very much we do have i bring it up into focus here a plaque that once we're past virtual we want to go ahead and share with you just to express our gratitude for the work you've done and you have done a great work for all of us uh you've been a friend and as i mentioned a partner and uh i can't thank you enough for everything you've done and you will be and already are very much missed but thank you dave thank you miss frog would it be okay if uh if we allow any contributions or comments from the
007board members absolutely thank you or if mr hooth would like to make any remarks we welcome those can we get a comment real quick so um doc mr heath can you have the last word um um again this is freda player peters um i'm sorry i missed the roll call um no dr huth um i got to know dr who's hooth back in 2011 had to think about it sorry it's been a while as my capacity as the political director of sciu and um dr huth was really instrumental of passing down some information historically just about mnea seiu our relationship as organizations but also just as a person advocating for um workers and education particularly teachers and and just really admire his leadership over the years particularly through some tough times particularly at the state
008level with the attack on teachers that happen through the legislature dr huth had been a strong advocate for the teachers here in davidson county and being a president of the organization it's not an easy job and he did it with grace and with humor and i had a pleasure of working side by side as an ally with him and um this is a well-deserved recognition for all this hard work um through good times and bad times um in this environment in this state um particularly against teachers and the um the the the plight in the journey of workers and teachers getting the respect and thinking that they deserve doing the um the very heroic job of educating our children year in and year out um and understanding the weight and the burden teachers have to
009deal with trying to be everything to everyone with expectations of the public that they're expected to achieve beyond above and beyond and um dr huth was a great advocate for his fellow workers and his fellow teachers with that and a great ally and so i just want to thank him for all the work and that he has a well deserved retirement and i know a lot of us are jealous of him um that he'll be able to enjoy his fruits of his labor and his time um and so we i personally wish him the best and just thank you for the work we did together um on the other side of the board level um and and the fights that we had together and the victories we had and we celebrated to make sure that
010workers are digging are treated with dignity and respect and ongoing part and he's an integral part of um of the worker movement um in his time at nmea so congratulations dr huth and i wish you the very best okay thank you miss player peters any other remarks or dr house i don't i i don't see you on here but if you'd like to make any remarks this is christian i just wanted to thank you dr houth i met him in 2016 and we got to know each other very quickly i just appreciate you know all the things that have already been said about you i appreciate that that is the person you are um the strong advocate the engager um i've appreciated working with you with some of the um the noaa initiatives i mean
011just being truly you know grassroots and involved in the community at the community level in many different ways just thank you for being you uh if we don't have any other comments um thank you very much dr hooth for your service um and we wish you a happy retirement thank you very much i appreciate it okay um so we're going to turn now to the governance issues and our consent agenda does anyone have any items to pull off the consent before i entertain a motion this is christian bugs i would like to pull the belmont facility okay for a discussion all right so we're going to pull uh consent agenda item one uh c and i'll entertain a motion on the remaining items madam chair i move that we approve the consent agenda as written
012with that exception this is sharon i second okay um dr sevier if you could take a roll call vote please dr gentry aye regentry votes aye ms elrod aye salvador miss spearing i miss bearing vote side dr nabal mckinney aye dr dr bob mckinney vote sign miss bugs aye spug's vote sign miss bush aye ms bush roadside miss player peters aye let's play your peter's votes time miss pippa walker hi it's people walker vote sign miss frog aye ms broke website madam chair you have nine eyes okay thank you uh now we will turn to consent agenda item 1c recommendat recommended revision to the previously approved memorandum of understanding between mnps and belmont university ms buggs thank you madam chair so yes i wanted to pull this again this week just because i think um
013i know we still had questions at the last meeting two weeks ago and many if not all of those questions were answered but we've of course still been getting an influx of calls emails texts from community members on both sides of the agreement just asking for either language recommendations or considerations or just voicing their opinion around whether or not the batting facility should be built and i just want to remind the community if you haven't been engaged around this issue uh belmont is looking to build a um a multi-million dollar batting facility on rose park property which is m p s property uh and there have just been community members in the edge hill community that that it would be in the center of that either oppose it or that either i strongly oppose it
014or really love the idea and so i wanted to give my colleagues a chance to ask any other questions of central office and of metro legal if you have any and then i i think we will be ready for a vote tonight thank you okay um so i guess we need to have emotion on the table and uh i'd like to make a motion okay thank you miss barry thank you uh i move that we approve the memorandum of understanding between mnps and the belmont university do we have a second second second okay i'm not sure i think that was miss gentry that spoke first so um okay we have emotion and second and discussion uh miss frog this is genie yeah um would it be possible to have i don't know if miss roberts
015is here or if we could just get some highlights to the modifications that were made since our last meeting or updates or answers to questions miss google walker i am here due to ongoing tech issues i only get to appear telephonically but i'm happy to run through some of the changes that have been made since the last board meeting the agreement has been updated to make it clear that belmont cannot sublet the facilities additionally scheduling was addressed there was a concern at the last board meeting that mnps was bound to a six-month requirement for scheduling its use while that is a preference that we advance schedule it the lease agreement now makes clear that the parties can work together if they're inside that six six month window another concern that was raised was if belmont
016could exclude people on the basis of religion i don't believe as previously written the lease agreement would have allowed that but now it explicitly states that it does not allow that another kind of talking point from last meeting was about the type of lease flash grant agreement and we have clarified this language and i believe it was dr gentry raised a concern about this type of agreement where the money just does not go into our general fund and this agreement does mirror the agreement that the metropolitan government made through its parks department with belmont based on the substantial improvements that belmont is doing to rose park so this is an unusual type of lease agreement from that perspective [Music] there was a question about if this constituted an impermissible entanglement with a religious organization based
017on the sixth circuit case smith the jefferson county board of school commissioners i believe that a court would find that it is not an impermissive entanglement with religion i think those were sort of the highlights of the issues that i wrote down from last board meeting but i'm happy to answer any additional questions that you all may have thank you for all the homework i appreciate that okay do we have any other questions or comments before we take a vote uh i just have a comment that's frog yeah i thank ms roberge for uh sending a detailed response to the questions that were posed at the last meeting that was very helpful to be able to study that before we came to the board floor and i think it's a good idea that um thank
018you miss pupa walker for bringing that up so that the public could be made aware of all those provisions thank you okay thank you okay dr severe i believe we are ready to take a question oh okay miss elrod is that sorry i don't think you saw my my camera turn on i'm sorry okay um i have my question is for miss roberge as well so a concern that we've had is that the agreement uh allows or potentially could allow discrimination against uh it doesn't okay hold on let me make sure this correct does not explicitly include protections based on orientation and gender identities i know in in paragraph five it refers to sexual orientation but i want to make sure that gender identity is included within those protections in paragraph five it would be
019included the supreme court recently interpreted the term sex discrimination to include gender identity lgbtq and so it would be our position and belmont would agree with us that we could not discriminate on that basis or any basis thank you that's my only question okay thank you i have a question real quick uh mr baird does that also include sexual orientation under the definition of sex yes ma'am okay thank you okay thank you anyone else okay dr severe if you could take a roll call vote please dr gentry hi dr gentry votes i miss elrod aye sarah advertise spearing aye the spearing vote side doctor nabamakini aye doctor obama kinney about simon spuggs aye the spurs vote side miss bush aye ms bush foot science player peters aye let's play your peter fed side miss pippa
020walker hi scooper walker votes i'm mr frog aye what's high madam chair nine eyes all right thank you dr spear um we just have yes i'm sorry this is christian bugs can i just uh clarify one thing about next steps for the community yes so since we voted unanimously from the you know at this meeting it is my understanding that this now goes on to the city council where it has to have three readings if community members would like to continue to voice their their support or their opposition to what's happened to this partnership or to this the this building please reach out to council members uh and know that they meet on tuesday the first and third tuesdays of each month thank you all right thank you um we next have a resolution of
021the board of education for our metro nashville metropolitan nashville public schools in support of focusing on children's social emotional learning and academics during the covid19 pandemic and this is a resolution that i have brought i considered reading the entire thing which we don't typically do lately simply because i think it's a very important resolution but i will shorten the reading just to the final paragraph because i think it's important just to share some of the language in this resolution our final paragraph says that we unanimously resolve that the board supports and respectfully requests that for the 2020 2021 school year that the moratorium on state standardized testing continues that students teachers administrators schools and lease continue to be held harmless on student achievement student performance or student growth data generated from the tennessee comprehensive assessment
022program tests administered in the school year these measures are necessary to focus on recruitment of students academic and social emotional skills lost during the extended school closure and to allow teachers and administrators to focus on the students needs during this unprecedented time so i would like to make a motion that we approve the resolution as written second okay thank you miss spearing and i'm gonna open up with discussion just by saying i think it is vitally important that this year in particular we do not engage in high stakes testing that will be used punitively against our students teachers and schools um you know just as a parent myself speaking from my personal experience i know we're just having a lot of trouble getting on the internet so i can't imagine us trying to take tests
023that would be reliable in my household and then i know there are all sorts of other um challenges and obstacles this year and uh the the testing is would not be reliable it would be superfluous and i think it would take us away from our focus and mission this year which should be ensuring that the students in our schools have their basic needs met like meals and um support and uh that we are doing the best we can to focus on their needs where they are a lot of children did lose some time over the summer and spring um and and also that we're meeting their social emotional needs and so i think it's really important that we raise our voices along with um members of other school boards across the state which who are
024asking that we not have state standardized testing this year uh so what anyone else like make a comment before we vote um i'd like to make a comment yes um so are you calling for no assessments or just no accountability um we already have the map testing in place and so that's how we're measuring um the growth in the district i mean and that you know where children stand um i do think it's important that we have some measure that helps teachers uh that helps drive instruction for teachers and helps teachers understand where the students are and we have that but we're not using that as high stakes testing to rate school systems or to evaluate teachers or anything like that i i think any sort of state testing on top of the map testing
025is not useful this year so that's that's what i'm calling for so i'd like to speak on that then um so i want to start by recognizing that i know teachers and staff and principals are working double time this is not um what i'm going to say is not not in support of them but i do want to speak to um my you know sort of my thoughts on this resolution i do think that assessments play an important role including the map test we've received so many emails i'll speak for myself a lot of emails from parents about returning to school in person the vast majority of these have been framed from a a perspective of a loss of instructional time and a serious concern about equity and about students losing instructional time and so
026i agree that we have to um acknowledge that students have faced a difficult time being out of school but i also think the most important work our district does is not feeding students and not comforting students it is teaching students and if we are not going to talk about and assess and look at the loss of instructional time um i think it's it's it's bad practice i think it's malpractice actually i think we can concentrate on seo and we can also teach and measure student progress we can walk and shoot them at the same time i also think that we have a responsibility as a board to use evidence including state assessments to make decisions about dr battle's evaluation about resource alignment about a whole range of things from title one title to allocations and
027so forth going into the next year but i also want to say that i i don't think they should be tied to accountability they shouldn't be tied to teacher evaluations this year they shouldn't be tied to students grades i actually think we could push them to the very end of the school year merely because i think this information will not inform the work and will distract from that last month of school but i want to reiterate that to continue to sort of have language that is um continuing to so doubt in in state assessments i think is not good i think many many parents rely on that information to make a whole range of decisions we know they expose gaps publicly in a way that was not done before we had state assessments and we
028have so many students that were worried about i think this is a time to use that information to make decisions for the 2021 i'm sorry 20 20 21 22 school year and so for that reason i i won't be able to support the resolution okay thank you miss pupa walker would anyone else like to make any comments this is christian bugs i would yes as a middle school math teacher and as a young parent or a parent of a young child who will be entering school soon i completely understand all sides of the conversation um i think what i would encourage the community to the language i would encourage us to use is that we stop weaponizing assessments assessments are supposed to be used to really guide instruction any teacher will tell you it's great
029for them to do pre-assessments and post assessments to understand you know if standards have been learned if proficiency has been gay or mastery has been gained if proficiency has been met and just what other supports we can offer to students i mean i when i think about just little things that i do with my son to assess how well he's potty trained or to understand you know if he's learned the color blue or the letter a you know these are all assessments but in this country unfortunately we've weaponized them and for sure in tennessee we we use those assessments to hold teachers accountable for things that are often out of their control and to make students feel bad and so i i understand the need to assess students and to use that to really drive
030instruction and i would just beg our you know federal leave leaders and our state leaders to understand that we've got to stop weaponizing them i mean i'm i'm trying to support the the uh the resolution i do think that we just need to engage in in more specific conversations around what we mean by um high stakes testing and just making sure that the community really understands that we want to let you know where your child is in his or her professional journey but sometimes the assessments have been used in a way that's really consequential thank you okay thank you any other comments madam chair this is rachel and elrod may i speak yes thank you um i would i guess i'm piggybacking somewhat on what miss bugs just said free and post assessments um are
031i would say not the argument or not the the fight there as most of our educators do pre and post assessments of all kinds um whether documented or just based upon their own professional abilities and best practices that they know through their continued training that they go through that is the accountability that we should be standing by is that the grades that our students earn in partnership with the educators that help help them through their learning that is maybe the best assessment sometimes of what a student really knows as that teacher has gone through the process with our students and so i am absolutely against us doing any type of assessments at the end of the school year particularly that are supposed to reflect what a student has been able to do through this school
032year particularly that's not fair to our teachers it's not fair to our staff and it's not fair to our parents or our children i think i'm the only school board member that's probably gone through the map process this week as i have two first graders and though the map is not a high-stakes test and it is a pre-post assessment and it's a great way for us to kind of dot what that process is particularly since our students haven't been inside of our classroom since march it is still difficult to give in this virtual setting and it is still not a great example of what it would be inside the classroom so holding students or teachers or us as a school system accountable in such a high-stakes way would be potentially damaging and overly stressful for
033all of our communities so i am in favor of it okay thank you miss all right anyone else uh miss frog man yeah i could comment um yes i uh support the resolution and i don't see that we are weaponizing assessments the achievement test is directly correlated with socioeconomics and that has been proven over and over again it does not drive instruction it's a few days in the year whereas as um as rachel ann was saying uh what teachers are doing with a pre-test and a post-test that measures growth trusting our teachers is something we have not been doing in the past as much as i believe we will do with uh with dr battle and uh and are doing with dr battle so um i i just wanted to share that i am in
034full support of your of your resolutions frog thank you okay thank you um i did have a response and if anyone else wants to say anything else um i will open the floor again um i wrote something about standardized testing in general back in 2016 and to my knowledge all of this information is still true in tennessee and i think it shows the absurdity of the standardized testing that we are doing um so let me just kind of go through a few points and i'll give you the brief version first of all the average school in nashville loses six to eight weeks of valuable instructional time to standardize testing per year my nine-year-old third grader back into 2016 spent more time taking standardized tests than i spent taking the lsat to get into law school
035children in grades three through five are expected to sit still for two and a half hours on one day alone to fill in bubble tests third graders are expected to type multi-paragraph responses to essay questions and perform sophisticated manipulations on the computer screen in order to even complete the tests the results of the standardized tests are not available usually until the next school year when the students who took the test have moved along to the next teacher the next grade level and sometimes the next school and so um it's not really the testing is not driving a instruction or helping the students which is really the point i think of this standardized testing or should be uh test and question test questions and responses are not available for review by teachers parents or students in
036other words the standardized test upon which we based everything our teacher evaluations rating our school districts rating our schools they are like a black box we don't know if the tests are even correct or appropriate when only the testing company has access to the information contained in them and so i have uh questions about the reliability of these state standardized tests when profit is driving a lot of the movement toward more testing uh next about 70 of our tennessee teachers are evaluated using test scores of children they have never taught this is on a regular school year we are evaluating teachers on classes they've never taught and then finally there is a lot of research questioning the validity of using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers research demonstrates that test scores are primarily influenced by
037out of school factors and only 7 to 13 percent of variance and test scores is due to teachers i have major concerns about our standardized testing in general i mean i saw a post yesterday which was a an x-ray of a child's hand showing the growth in the child's hand between kindergarten and second grade and the point that was made in the post is that children's hands are not developed enough to manipulate um writing you know pencils or um to fill in bubbles on these standardized tests and certainly not to type information on computers and so it i just feel the testing has gotten completely out of control in general and and this year we have another layer of challenge uh because we have so many of the children you know we are struggling with
038internet connectivity um on a good year we've had the testing platform completely fail for the entire state um they've had problems getting the scoring done in time i mean that there it's just been our state testing has been a repeated disaster year after year and it's i can't imagine that it will get any better this year with all of the challenges that we have and so that's why i brought this um resolution i feel very strongly that on this particular school year we really shouldn't be doing any more standardized testing than we already are um and certainly would support accountability measures but i think that's a larger debate to be had you know i think we do need to have some measure but the way we're doing it right now is really not effective so
039that's all i have to say i don't know if anyone else wants to make any comments thank you spring thank you hi thank you amy can you hear me yes sorry miss bush yes um thank you for your comments um i will tell you and i think i've definitely made it very um i made it uh clear that i am in the trenches of virtual learning right now because i do have a classroom that is set aside for kids that are in k through 3 right now and i have dedicated one teacher to work with these students and um one thing i would say i definitely agree you know we do need some testing to be able to to be able to measure growth but i will tell you the map test is a disaster
040uh it is to see the type of um ask of these questions to a second grader and today i got a chance to see kindergartners uh test on their math and these kids didn't know nothing i mean literally um i i they it was just the hardest problems they could not they couldn't read they could not read a graph i mean it was just it was a train wreck um and so that you know parents are saying i'm not taking this test these kids can't do it they want them to do it and that it is impossible for um for these students to be able to participate in this in this pretest so i just want to make a comment about the map test and i'm not sure why it's not on grade level it
041is absolutely extremely rigor to a point that the teacher had sat down and you know even questioned some of the you know answers because she was like i haven't done this in a while but i mean i need to get out pencil and paper and this was this is crazy this was like second grader this is the second grade math test and then today was the kindergarten math test and it was just i mean parents are saying they're not doing it so we're not going to have any a lot of measures with this math test because it's supposed to be designed where they can at least read it or be able to understand um the language and um and again they've never seen this before they have never been taught this before so they are
042definitely not engaged with this test because they have not been given this instructional time so i just want to kind of make that point about the map testing because it's probably going to be a very very low scoring um test and it kind of sets us up to look like we our kids really don't know anything so just want to make that comment about the map testing thank you okay thank you does anyone else uh like any of us like to make a comment i would um yeah so so initially i i initially thought this was this was through the testing but not ask for um it to be count against our teachers um [Music] for and for students for you know for their progress going into the grade um i am probably anyone supporting
043this just just because of the uncertainty of kovid we do not know what the winter is going to look like we'll hear i guess the update in a few minutes from a director of schools about the status and where we're going from here i would encourage our director of schools to continue with doing some type of assessment with map and other methods and continue to communicate that to the parents and children i think it's important that especially through this unique time that we're in given the cove pandemic that we are assessing and testing our children to make sure we are tracking what they're doing um with map and then the other tools and assessment and this is where i am not a um a formerly trained acquisition to really kind of to speak um as
044expert on this but i think it's important just because as we go through life as adults you are assessed in some shape form or fashion we just did an assessment on our director of schools in the previous um committee meeting and so assessment is important and knowing that our children have to be compared to other children across the state why that we continue to do assessments to continue to track given this unprecedented time but given that it's also unprecedented time and that transitions are going to be happening throughout the entire school year we do not know how that transition is going to look like we you know seeing how parents may shift from in person to virtual virtual to in person and vice versa and as we go through that um it makes it much
045difficult to to assess on a standardized level just because of health conditions of families of students of parents of grandparents um that are caretaking but um i think this is such an unprecedented time and things are going to be shifting and changing and we do not know what the future holds i wish we did um and i think that's a separate conversation then testing as a whole um and that testing as we do as academics a whole different conversation but given this particular moment in time given the fact that we're in a pandemic given that we don't know how it shifts god forbid there's another outbreak coming this fall with the flu coming on i just think with the unpredictability it'll be unfair right now to put that on our children and our employees um
046to have their um their progress be so heavily entangled with this um with with an assessment given just the changes that we that's going on um with it but um i think there's a bigger conversation that we can have in the future about assessment testing where they should where they should be and the role in education i think um you know miss walker made some uh good points and miss bug's missing great points um that goes to a larger conversation but i just want to keep this kind of conversation focused on the pandemic itself because i think this is a unique moment in time thank you okay thank you miss player peters if there are another comments dr severe i do i'm sorry who is that uh berthina obama hi hey dr mckinney hi so
047um i agree with miss player peters regarding where we are in the pandemic related to testing i do think it's critically important that we have some type of assessments for students to identify where they are so that we begin to create learning plans to be able to support students along this journey and so the larger conversation around high stakes testing i think deserves a later platform to be able to to have that discussion um but i do want to say that that it is critically important that we identify where students are so that we can support learning um throughout this um throughout this learning environment right now especially during the pandemic and as we really look at in an equitable way on how we're meeting students needs across this district i think it's it's important
048for our teachers and our administrators as well as the district to know where students are so that we can begin to create that learning uh environment and and create a plan to support all learners in our district thank you all right thank you dr nava mckinney madame's here yes yeah i'm sorry i'm trying to jump in let's talk yes so um yeah so all of that plus um i just think we just need to and i remind us that these uh any assessment that you you we give has already been proven whether it's the map whether it's the state assessment whether it's the act whether it's the ap exams these standardized tests have always proven um that they're uh there's some what has resulted in highlighting the inequities among students of color and um students
049who are living in low socioeconomic um situations and so that's that's uh it's not a moot argument but it's it's part of the the dna and the makeup of what we're what we're dealing with and so sometimes i worry that if we don't give our students the assessments they don't even get the practice right so there is the part about i get this this point in time and i understand the ground i'm gonna have to make up and we've always known once the you know after the tornado when we stopped classroom instruction we've always known that there was there's going to be this widening um of inequities there's going to be widening of of learning and this increased amount of loss and so that's again also a given um but when things get back to
050normal we want to know we want to know uh where we need to start with our students and what i will always be in agreement with is that when we use these assessments and not always because the state assessment system just doesn't work um it's not helpful it's not helpful to a teacher to believe that his or her job is on the line um because of a student's performance on a standardized test it it leads to a lot of the behaviors that we've seen where you know teachers are now focused on teaching to the test versus preparing that student to be the lifelong learners that we say we want to produce out of our district um so i i'm halfway in favor of the resolution that it should not be used again for teacher evaluations
051and things of that nature but we need this baseline and our students particularly need the experience because the standardized test is not going to go away anytime soon in their academic career so whether that's as an elementary school student middle school high school to get into college to get into law school to get into med school we need to give our students this exposure um to to the process and to that kind of of an environment so um i would just say again finally what everyone else has said this is a bigger conversation so these test scores again these are just symptoms of bigger problems uh that we need to um hopefully in this coming year we can rally around as a board to get focused on what we need to be focused on to
052move the needle for our students okay thank you dr gentry um i'll just say i do want to reiterate that um we are not this resolution is not to cut out all testing this year it would just be to stop the state testing and we do have map adjustment the map assessments go ongoing right now so we are going to have a measure um and i you know i guess i disagree with some some of the comments made only because i i do not trust the validity of the state testing there have been just too many problems year after year um but you know you all i'm this is my last meeting tonight you all can take up that discussion at a later time about the role of assessments um i think we have too
053many i think they're not reliable i think we're wasting a lot of instructional time on tests that aren't used and aren't good measures of students growth or achievement but but tonight this resolution is just about cutting out state testing so that we can focus on the needs of students and still have assessments locally that we can use um not for high stakes purposes but just to ensure that we're measuring where children are and hopefully that will help the teachers so any other comments if not i will call for a vote okay dr severe could you take a roll call vote please dr gentry no doctor gender vote snow ms selrod aye sir [Music] dr mckinney we'll look back to her uh miss bugs aye ms bugs vote side miss bush hi it's bushford's time miss
054player peters all right let's play your paper's upside miss pippa walker no super walker vote side uh dr nabon mckinney i didn't vote i voted no i apologize i record you as a no uh dr nabom mckinney aye dr obama keaney votes psy uh miss frog aye stroke vote side madam chair it's seven eyes two nose okay thank you uh the motions i mean the resolution has passed um all right now we're going to turn to the director's report with the covid 19 status update which is the hot topic of the week and so i'm going to turn it over to dr battle to give us a report on the update and reopening of schools thank you madam chair good evening board members and thank you for this opportunity to talk about recommendations for our
055next steps as a district as we approach labor day in a world that continues to be defined by coven 19. um as a reminder the last time we had in-person instruction in the district was on march 11 before closing for the end of the school year and starting virtually on august 4th and as you'll remember the board approved the nashville planned framework as a guiding policy document for mnps during the duration of the coving 19 pandemic which charged me with also planning for a safe efficient and equitable plan based on available health data our covenant 19 context in nashville shows movement in the right direction but we're still not nearly where we should be as a city our transmission rates are lower than they were when we first made the announcement to go virtual and
056the spike of new cases has leveled off however our positive test rates and new cases per 100 000 residents are higher than we want to see and they indicate continued community spread guidance and information from the public health officials have been evolving as we've learned more about this virus we heard from dr hilder the other week that it appears the virus might be airborne since our late last announcement the new metric of cases per 100 000 residents has been created to more accurately assess community spread and we're seeing guidance updated and changed from the state level to the school district level as more schools operate in the in-person environment and see cases that are causing them to close or quarantine large numbers of staff and students even with schools not being in session we've tracked
057several cases throughout our district that have called staff members to be quarantined now we haven't seen any serious cases resulting from this as of yet but anytime multiple people are interacting in an environment there is potential for anyone to be a close contact remember a close contact is someone who is within six feet of another person for 10 minutes or longer whether you have on a mask or not we can social distance to a large extent while students aren't in the building but it isn't feasible once we return to classes currently davidson county has the most reported cases of children infected in the state over the last few weeks even though mmps is all virtual currently you can see here the number of staff and students that have been reported to the district many of
058those student cases involve student athletes who reported positive cases or were currently quarantined those cases listed here are where the employees created an exposure event at one of our schools and required quarantine procedures to go into effect you can see here some of the groups we have engaged throughout the process and will continue to engage going forward it matters that we hear from them and they truly help to shape the outcome of the plan at the very at the top of every list in this very list is you as the board of education please know that i'm very thankful for your ongoing leadership to help navigate through these unique circumstances given the continued high rate of spread i think it is prudent for us to take a measured phase in approach to returning to schools
059and remain in the virtual setting through at least the end of the first quarter on october 1st just before fall break this is the safest course and will allow us to track the spread and hopefully see greater declines in the rate per 100 thousand residents and the positivity rate we know that with this many people in nashville still contract and covet it is just a short matter of time before we have students or staff coming back with a positive case exposing others to the virus and causing a disruption that results in closing classrooms entire schools or possibly the whole district if it gets bad enough having said that we still need to be making progress through an equity-centered approach for special populations of students and in supporting our families who rely on schools to care
060for their children while at work students with exceptional needs can be the most challenging to serve in the virtual environment we have produced clips for most students and are offering virtual therapy services however we know that for many students that hands-on experience hand over hand even is critical to being able to learn and grow so as we're considering expanding our in-person services we should focus first on those students with exceptional needs and i'm recommending that we do this in phases starting with those students in the most restrictive environment and expanding it out to our traditional schools so what you have here is a recommendation that over a few weeks that we begin to offer an in-person learning option to a small population of our most vulnerable students in k-12 across the various types of schools
061again just being very equity centered and making sure we're being responsive to all the needs of our students to ensure that they all can continue to grow and learn we also know that some parents especially those in pre-k elementary are struggling to balance their work life and supporting their students education so in order to support those families i am proposing to partner with the ymca to provide daycare programs of small groups of children being supervised and given support for virtual learning at seven schools and camp widgeon these programs will be offered at no cost to families through the ymca and service students in grades k-5 or ages 5-12 respectfully again this is a partnership that will be expanded upon i'm very thankful for this opportunity with the ymca to expand this option to our mnps
062families once we can offer in-person learning to students at our schools we should prioritize in order of the youngest students first this might mean pre-k k 2 or all elementary to start followed by middle schools and then high schools last as those students are most likely to transmit cover 19 to others this phase-in approach could last through the beginning of the second semester based on the continued level spread in our community and in the best interests of our high school students who will spend most of december preparing for and taking exams we don't want to disrupt their learning by having them transition during that time high school students also tend to be the most comfortable with virtual learning finally i believe we should keep the option of virtual learning open for all families throughout the
063school year because it is unlikely that covey 19 will go away by the start of the second semester and we want to give students who are working well in this environment the ability to continue in developing our plans we reviewed them with dr alex hunger chairman of the metro coronavirus task force nobody knows the city's context better than he does and he agrees that a measured and cautious approach is the best one and as you may recall at a recent press briefing dr james hildreth of o'hare medical college said that it is now beyond dispute that children can be infected and will be infected from this virus and that we should take this into consideration and be very cautious when discussing plans for going back to brick and mortar school buildings now for the moment
064we are postponing all competitions and performances until further notice but i'll be meeting with leaders my team will be meeting with leaders at both the district and school levels to see what we can still do because we know how important athletics and the arts are for so many of our students i take all this in consideration as a previous meps multiple sports student athlete performer and division one athlete today the metro health department issued guidance to schools calling for a suspension of athletic events for schools that are going to remain all virtual we have also been working to secure pixie light recording and streaming devices for all of our high school football fields and gymnasiums to be able to allow families and friends to watch games if fans are not permitted once we're able to
065resume the agreement with nfhs network at a cost of 15 thousand dollars will be funded out of money that would have otherwise gone towards security for grant games and works out about five hundred dollars per camera a minimal cost compared to the price of the equipment and allows schools to keep a portion of revenue from advertising and subscription sales not only would this allow for significant social distancing during covet 19 but would also boost family and fan attendance at games in the future for those who can't make it in person we definitely could not manage any of this alone we are so fortunate to have great community partners working with us to meet the needs of our students families and staff so i'm happy to give a shout out to each of the partners you
066see on the screen here which represents some not all of the many contributors to our success as a district now on another path here it has been been a goal of our district to have one nurse per school but a lack of funding has prevented that from happening in the past i'm currently our contract with metro health provides for about 77 nurses with a number of them earmarked for our highest need schools such as harris hillman corahal merle and the rest spread out covering multiple schools each those nurses provide care in a procedure driven format that means that they go to schools with students whose doctors have prescribed individualized care as we start to consider opening schools for students we need this health care expertise in all of our schools without requiring them to shuffle
067from one place to the next the mayor's office has expressed interest in using metro portion of the cares act funding to pay for additional nurses through the end of the year subject to metro council approval additional funding to continue this program could come from our portion of care's act funds or through the use of our fund balance or other general fund appropriations if we wanted to make this a recurring program we would need metro to allocate funds sufficient to cover the cost going forward which is approximately five million dollars teaching and learning in the virtual environment doesn't happen i think we can all agree unless our students have access to technology and the internet all students who have requested a device through their schools have received a computer with more been deployed at our el
068centers for students and families with language barriers who need further assistance so to date we have deployed 44 800 devices which equates to 65 of our students who have requested and received a device that is 13 000 more devices than the initial needs that were identified we have an additional set of devices that are imaged and ready to go as needs are identified we've also deployed more than 20 12 700 t-mobile hotspots to families and students which offer unlimited high-speed wi-fi access for our students and in another update we're fortunate now to be in a place where we provided to schools all of the laptops they've requested again with more in stock to meet new needs as they arrive from new enrollments or from students who may need them going forward however i've heard from
069a lot of our teachers who are struggling to use their district provided laptops you have as well in this enhanced virtual environment with so many teleconferencing calls and other tasks although this was tested back in the spring during remote learning we're just quite frankly working in a more robust with a more robust robust plan that requires and demands more of our teachers to make sure our students have access to those quality experiences every day we were already planning on a third replacement of laptops with new devices for a third of our teachers every year but it has become clear we need to accelerate that to meet the needs of all teachers to provide an uninterrupted education for their students so by using existing contracts capital funding already approved for technology by metro and potentially funding
070from leftover mayor's cares ag money we will be able to provide for a new device for every teacher by the end of next month that will meet their needs we will then assess and redeploy the best teacher devices to our instructional support employees who need them and we've heard that ask as well and so that is very exciting news that we'll be able to accelerate that timeline to make sure our teachers have the devices and tools that they need to be successful in this current virtual environment so those are the recommendations for our next steps as a district but before i close this director's update director's report i want to take a moment to thank our chair amy frog and jill spearing for eight wonderful years of service to metro nashville public schools you have
071been strong advocates for public schools for our teachers and for our students and as a new director i have greatly appreciated the experience and wisdom and passion you brought to the board room whether in person or now virtual every other tuesday your presence will be greatly missed if we were meeting tonight in person we'd be handing these awards to you right now but in lieu of that please accept this virtual presentation and we'll be sure you have these sewn as a small token of our appreciation for your service to team mnps thank you for everything you've done for this school district thank you thank you and sorry amy and jill for getting that in at the end of my presentation i want to make sure i had an opportunity to recognize you and to thank
072you for your many many years of service so with that um chair frog i will turn it back over to you thank you so much dr battle i really appreciate it we'll be uh i think we'll be collecting these probably on thursday when we swear in our replacements on the board but i think i also am speaking for pretty much the entire district to say thank you for your leadership we are really grateful that you're at the helm during this difficult time and we really appreciate your leadership and service as well um so i know we're going to have a lot of questions about dr battle's presentation and so i will open up the floor for questions or comments this is christian bugs i have questions a few questions and comments bugs so dr battle
073i told you when you within our one-on-one last week that i loved this plan i love that you listen to our parents and our community um resoundingly i think we've heard the most from families that have a student with any kind of exceptional need and those who are supporting elementary students like i said i always say i have a toddler so i tip my hat off to those uh you know parents of kindergarten first second third fourth grade students who are you know just learning they're learning the digital age and so i i just i this is so inclusive and the idea that when we're allowed to or when we're able to open up for el to start phasing in elementary students that you know this partnership with the y really supports essential workers and
074that you've thought through having staff trained so that they understand how to work with students on the different platforms with clever with schoology with teams um i there doesn't seem to be a hole at all all i would ask is when you talk about being able to phase in those elementary school students when would that begin or what what do conditions around the city need to be uh to start that phase in um yes so the data metrics the signs will be following along with the guidance from our health officials and our local context i mean really paying attention to what's happening um before us we'll use all those measures so we're continuing to follow all the metrics all the science behind helping us navigate this very difficult and challenging um situation um our our
075goal is is that you know in our announcement prior to fall break we will be able to update everyone with the hopes of starting to phase our elementary our earliest learners back in um after the first quarter so that will be our goal if conditions allow for us to do that and i'll take this opportunity to say it again we're prepared and ready our staff is eager to welcome our students back as long as conditions allow so we'll be ready we'll be prepared to do that if conditions allow us to welcome those students back at the beginning of the second quarter uh which they will they would get that update before the end of first quarter prior to fall break and i'm sorry i want to make sure that i clarified i don't think i
076was clear with my question i'm talking about with the partnership with the ymca when would that begin that will begin um right after labor day okay okay so no matter what we feel comfortable with labor day being absolutely i love it um the other thing uh what i know this is free of charge for families and i'm assuming that of course children will be fed will busses continue to run with the same amount of food how do we how do we account for food distribution so currently we continue to operate all of our school site cafeterias and we're running nearly all of our bus routes to make sure we're meeting the needs of our families with meals so if a family is choosing the ymca partnership their meals will be deployed through the ymca and
077they are um in early conversations they're looking to partner with us to provide those meals um to all of the students who will be so we will attending with our school sites we will continue with our bus routes uh we'll continue to monitor numbers um but just um as of yesterday i got a couple communications from parents just wanted even more information they want access and so they were asking for clarification about how they can pick up meals both breakfast and lunch perfect and then um i hope i'm not jumping the gun but i we've had of course unfortunately a few families reach out that are experiencing homelessness that may be living in different parts of the city and they've either not been able to log on at all or haven't been able to log
078on consistently and i know i couldn't remember the young woman you said is over um the is connecting students to the heat map and to the resources what would you suggest for families if they need to be con contacted uh or if you know until when would you be able to announce when what the heat map looks like and what areas of the city have been hit hardest with uh disconnectivity issues yes so that contact is catherine knowles and she leads our hero program so catherine can be reached directly or always always if you're in doubt reach out to our family information center 615 we are in the early phases of getting all of our enrollment um settled and it's a process we go through every year with our no-show students and making sure everyone
079is settled in so as soon as we do that we'll be able to provide updated information but we're also not waiting for that under the leadership of dr michelle springer and her team they continue daily efforts to make sure that our students in need have the supports um that are um that we that we have available and that we can get to them and so between um catherine knowles and our hero program and our student services department they're linking arms and making sure that we're being responsive to our homeless students um those in need or if there's just another need that has come up since we've been in this pandemic perfect thank you so much you're welcome adam here gentry yes thank you thank you for the update dr battle um and i'm going to
080ask you to repeat uh something a portion of your report uh intentionally i've gotten um some questions from uh in the athletic space uh you know coaches are concerned about i guess the way they're currently practicing like for football there's been no contact but they're still going out there um one of the questions asked are we actually having a season are we just going to call the season and then you know just concerns about no after after quote unquote after school um activities and involvement so if you can just kind of just recap again the the plan for ac for athletics and is there um some thinking around whether a go-no-go decision needs to be made about sports in general or is going to be made yes um thank you for that question so um
081the practice that we've been utilizing for updates with regards to athletics our coaches and principals athletic directors have been receiving weekly updates um with our status and what their next week's conditioning or practices practice activities can look like and just to be clear up until to date we have not authorized any contact for students so they've been able to practice rehearse do drills all non-contact activities outside not inside the building to continue to condition and prepare for their upcoming seasons over the next days and weeks we will continue that dialogue given our current covet 19 context to put several strategies options in front of our principles they're going to be discussing if based upon the timing if conditions allow our options to completing seasons or if the final decision will be any level of cancellation
082but we've got to be very mindful and strategic in that space because we often when we're thinking of athletics during this time of year we often focus on football but there's volleyball there's soccer there's so many other sports that are happening as well as other performances there's band there's the arts that's also happening and so those are the conversations that will be happening over the next days and weeks for us to make an informed decision to give our students the best possible scenario as we move forward but as a reminder we faced something very similar back in the spring when all spring sports were also canceled so we'll we'll continue those conversations and have some updates in the next few days but as of now they'll they're postponed um until further notice keeping everyone in
083the current status that they're in so they can continue to practice and condition no contact um and no competitions at this time hope that answered your question dr gentry thank you ms bush oh you missed thank you uh madam chair uh dr battle just i'm gonna kind of have two sections to my questions for you and again i always come and i always wear my hats as a parent and also bringing concerns from other parents in the district on you know this announcement so my first i want to just kind of focus on the early learners i did see in your presentation about of course the ymca so let's talk about that really quick um the ymca i know we had a discussion in length about you know the number of students that we're gonna
084we're gonna um um house right now for the the child care and the virtual learning so of course we have over 80 000 kids and of course when we roll this out of course in the beginning it was you know we didn't really have a lot of supports in place for our families um so i just want you to kind of talk a little bit about you know we had talked about maybe open up more because this is going to kind of close in real quickly as far as i guess the application process so how does that look as far as how these parents apply or you know um consider what the ymca is as a support for them yes so this option um will be immediately available for families to start identifying their desire
085to participate in the ymca partnership we are currently set to offer expand into seven of our school facilities after labor day and so we'll start initially with seven different um options across the district um all elementary schools to support and serve our students um in those seven seven um facilities we have the capacity we want to keep the the the group small and so the capacity is 60 on each of those sites but we've also already identified kind of phase two schools if the demand is there and i want to just kind of keep in mind that prior to this expansion the ymca has previously for months now been offering their own supervised daycare options so they have other sites that are also still available that if they're convenient for families they can also choose
086we wanted to partner with them to do something specific in metro schools to continue to serve our students and families and so they have the capacity to continue to add spaces as needed and we'll also be using our extended learning day program to support them in training in the virtual learning platform and to ensure success of our students who will be supervised under their care and in the virtual space i'm assuming i think you had cleared that up when i asked the question were they going to be using our classrooms just so they can have the social distancing and also you know have that space for virtual learning yeah great question so um the schools that have been selected and those that are kind of the kind of the next phase if the demand is
087there for us to expand upon already have partnerships with ymca so that was a very strategic decision which means they already have designated spaces in our school facilities in order for them to utilize so we're not necessarily having to identify new space they might spread out a bit but they have very strict safety requirements and guards around how far apart the students will be and keeping the students grouped together based upon their age um and grade level while they're on site so let me ask you just just of course this is just a million dollar question and this is just from a parent who's listening to this um tonight what would you say to the parents it says okay so we're gonna do this just you know provide space and place for the ymca to
088be in one of our buildings or seven of our buildings um and as you already stated that you know our younger learners will hopefully transition back in uh after um labor day right was it labor day after a fall break okay after fall break and so of course if that doesn't happen which of course you know numbers kind of because you know of course you heard about the twin with covet which is the flu so we know that there's you know things start to spike at that time but what would you say to those families that say well if we can do it now for the y why can't we uh do this now for the early learners that really really need that support and those uh those parents who are really really they're really
089upset right now because of course they're trying to work they're trying to pay for tutors uh they have their parents they have grandparents that are trying to help support them through this virtual learning of course we've had a lot of little hiccups with it you know of course with the wi-fi all these other different uh things that we've been trying to um uh uh work through and so i just wanna what would you say to those families because that's what's gonna happen next after this conversation is that why is it that it's best for you know this scenario but it's not best for the snare or right before break yes so as i mentioned early on as we've been following the data and the metrics as we've been looking at our own internal data as
090well what you will see is of course we have a number of cases and we're not we're still in virtual right now what's not feasible is to bring and convene large groups of students and staff in the same building and so when we're talking about a phase-in approach we're focused on safety but we're also focused on efficiency we want to make sure that as we begin to phase in that we can have provide the continuity of learning for everyone so for instance in the ymca partnership we're talking about having a 1 to 10 1 to 12 ratio of student to teacher i mean that's very low compared to what we're able to offer in the face-to-face traditional environment and so we're talking about um again being responsive to the feedback that we've received for parents
091and providing some options but they but able to do so in a very manageable way to help continue to mitigate the spread of the virus and so it's all about scale of phasing in and implementation to make sure that we can keep everyone safe as we do our part as a school district to make sure our city's numbers remain on the decrease and remain improving so that we can phase everyone back in eventually okay um so i'm sure you heard me you know of course tell you about the cares and the frustration of parents with early learners and you know of course you know i have been a part of that equation now with the virtual learnings in my own center um and i i tell you from experience it is extremely hard for the
092kids to learn and i do and parents and also i can say now i do worry about the learning and the academics loss for these students and i know the teachers are doing everything they possibly can to teach through the computer but it's extremely hard for these students to stay focused you know i got a chance to we always get a chance to kind of walk around and we see uh what it looks like on a daily basis right so we noticed that you know it is hard to keep kids focused and it's hard to keep them engaged when you know you have so many little people that are on this on the computer and and teachers are trying their best to you know engage with each student but it's such a lack of support
093that they really want to do more they really want to do more of course so i am a little worried about the lack of loss of academics for the younger students they are getting some academics but it's definitely not enough it's definitely not enough so i'm really worried about that for our students and you know i i'm just trying to make sure that i do my part and make sure that i am very transparent about what i'm seeing and what my teachers are seeing about virtual learning for our students especially our early learners and just to let you know they're tired their eyes are hurting you know they're tired they talk about how their eyes are burning you know they're on a system you know and most of our early learners are not done until
094about 2 30 each day they do take breaks in between and of course they take lunch but it's really starting to get really hard on them they talk about their backs hurting they don't you know how they're sitting and all that and i know that maybe you know they're young but it is important that we pay attention to that so i just think the more and more of this extended virtual learning that we have our younger students it's really going to be problematic um as far as their academic support and success well and thank you for the feedback miss bush um i greatly appreciate that last week i had the pleasure of convening our director's teachers cabinet and we took some time to talk about you know what the success is what was going well
095what opportunities exist and what additional supports were needed and they will tell you and i'll repeat it here i ended the call by saying i y'all have energized me you have come to the table with after week one now particularly in the elementary space and week two for elementary middle and week two for um secondary they have already um started to come convened with some tweaks and adjustments we can make to ensure again that we're setting our students up for for more success and so we've got we've got some of our teacher leaders right now um working on some tools and resources that we're going to be sharing um district wide as a matter of fact dr bellamy and his entire team are working on this right now because we immediately after week one said
096give us some feedback we want the feedback how's it going what are we hearing of course i've received my own feedback as well that we could layer in um to make sure that we're making those adjustments and and again that happened at the end of week one with us being um in particularly the uh the the curriculum space and for some schools who um went ahead and started their their map assessment so we've got some tools and strategies and tips we're going to be sharing some adjustments we're going to be making um here soon based upon the feedback from our teachers and feedback that they brought from their parents and students um that will help continue to improve this and i think you know it's important for us to keep reiterating this is this is
097fairly new for everyone right and we're really really early on in in this process and so there will be some adjusting and adapting we need to make in order to make sure we're kind of hitting the sweet spot of the rigor that we want in front of our students but also all the supports which we kicked off the school year with are happening for all of our students um so with that feedback ms bush i think is representative of some of the things our teacher leaders are working on right now so that we can start to make some of those adjustments and i greatly appreciate those as i'm as i'm hearing little things that we can tweak and adjust um we're doing that um whether that be from this curriculum instruction side whether they be
098from the structure on technology side we're going to continue to make those adjustments to provide at least while we're in this virtual environment space the best experience um that we can okay and i'm gonna ask one more i'm gonna ask so one more question i promise i'm not gonna i'm not going to take all your time but i'll come back to the sports later but i'll let everybody talk about the academics that they have you know whichever way um what my other question is of course when it comes to their homework um when it comes to making sure that we are or you know the students are being able to uh transmit their homework or um yeah the assignments that are assigned it's kind of become a little bit difficult because of course um some
099parents don't have printers and i think it was supposed to be an equity thing that we made sure that we were not going to stress uh though you know that wasn't gonna be a stress and so i noticed that the teachers are still kind of wanting that kind of uh assignment to be um uh to be submitted and it's just kind of impossible to kind of do it because you're trying to take a picture of it you're trying to send it you're trying to do this it's just so many moving parts so it'd be nice if if the assignments were either by word document or not pdf or anything like that something that they can easily submit back to the teachers because some parents are going to pick of course you know we got the
100packets that are being picked up now you know we're getting those in so we were just trying to figure out ways like you said to come up with ways that's going to be much much easier for our families than you know during this virtual time as far as submitting their assignments that's one of the adjustments we are making we have a great tool and resource already available to our teachers and we're going to be emphasizing that and sharing those again tips and tricks to make sure we're not putting undue pressure stress or anxiety on our students and families because there are ways for students not to have to print not to have to upload not to take a picture and send um to their teacher and so again our very own teachers are going to
101be leading um some of these videos sessions and documents to support other teachers and that that was the beauty of the conversation on on friday where you know one of our uh wonderful educators said you know i'm struggling with this how do i do this and immediately i didn't have to say a word immediately uh one of their fellow colleagues said hey this is this is what you do um in that space and so we're going to share a lot of that district-wide to support everyone because everybody has their strengths and talents in this virtual environment and we're going to begin to leverage everyone's expertise to help alleviate that on our student and family side so received and that is one of the specific areas that we're going to be updating and training continuing to
102train our staff around and thank you and i won't take you away any longer let everybody else have their com their comments and questions and i'll come back a little later okay thank you thank you miss spearing thank you and dr battle i just want to say at the top of my my uh questions here thank you so much for your comments about leaving the board and your appreciation and i have more to say about that but i'll wait for a little bit later i am so appreciative that you are um using a measured uh phased-in approach uh the i think the worst thing that we could do is to bring our kids back too soon and then have a spread of covet and then have to shut schools down and when we do that
103and which has happened we know we see it on the news uh it just puts everyone in disequilibrium and it causes hardships on the family certainly uh that that translates to kids so thank you so much for that and i appreciate so much the partnership uh partnerships that you have uh forged with ymca i think that's going to take a lot of stress off parents and and students and um i also appreciate the fact that you're very thoughtful about the athletics and postponing any kind of competitions and uh performances mnps has become you have set an example for the rest of uh middle tennessee and i just want to say you rock thank you so much thank you miss bearing appreciate your feedback okay any other questions or comments miss elrod thank you madam chair
104um so i am going to probably start from the end of the conversation and work towards the beginning of your presentation if that makes sense so we can go back and share slides if we need to in a easier method okay so um first uh i appreciate you hearing the feedback i know i was pretty vocal about how he needed better laptops for our teachers and laptops for our paraprofessionals so i appreciate them being prioritized not only so our teachers can do the job that is needed of them but so that also our children can learn from them and so i appreciate that being done and us getting new laptops not just for our students but for our teachers to do uh all the work that needs to be done um i want to try
105to make sure i'm going in that order but my questions are maybe out of order for a second um in regards to our students coming back in a tiered approach after fall break are they going to be allowed to still go to the ymca even if their tier has returned to school if their parents choose to do virtual school so k-12 will say has come back into the classroom but the parent wants to still do virtual school maybe through the end of the year are they still going to be able to choose the ymca as their place to do that so our partnership with the ymca will likely shift once we begin to phase back in particularly with starting with the elementary schools where they will likely not be on our site to provide that
106supervised care so that's the first thing the second thing is that our families will continue to have the option however of the in person um the traditional or the virtual learning space and so how they structure their virtual learning space is up to the parent right and it's up to their structures that they have i'm available i know we have families working individually i know we have students coming together to work in really small groups that will be up to the family but more than likely our partnership with the ymca shifts to more of our traditional space right because remember we're using sites that are already partners with the y which means they typically provide before and after care the the the full day care experience during the school year is a new space for
107them however they've been doing it well and doing it well since the schools closed back in back in march so the the mmps ymca partnership for full day will likely transition to the before and after care since we will be using our facilities for our traditional k-12 experiences okay so once that grade level is allowed back inside the school building will okay so i guess the real question is is are we going to be doing elementary or k-12 as one transition so we'll be phasing it in we'll likely start with kind of the pre-k two space and then the rest of elementary then middle and then high so if you had a fourth grader because so you're down in the elementary school even though you've not been phased into the classroom yet you still are
108not going to be able to go to the y because that building is being so let me say that once we phase all the way into fifth grade that's when you'll see that transitions happen got it yeah and it could very well likely inform the way the grades in which we trans transition in first uh we just want to do it slow and steady to make sure we have that continuity of learning got it um some feedback that i've received though minor feedback is how come the ymca is able to do it in our schools or not so i just want to reiterate and of course you are welcome to interject uh that it's a ten to one ratio i believe is what we've talked about and um it's a maximum of 60 students at
109each location and so obviously the potential for spread is not as much there because it's a much smaller group of kids and a much smaller ratio is that true that's correct okay um additionally because i know we've talked about it but i want to make sure we've talked about on the board floor um the ymca program no matter what grade is that program available to students that are exceptional at if they continue to do virtual school yes as long as they meet the requirements for the ymca that should not be an issue but i'm also keeping in mind that our most vulnerable population of exceptional education students will be our mmps staff will be supporting them in their respective schools and you know keeping in mind that we have that's important because whether student attends
110a special day school one of our contracted schools or traditional sites those spaces are unique um for those students and so we want to make sure that their environment their atmosphere is consistent to help them transition back in and to focus on their development um because when we look at i'm looking at my notes on my phone so i apologize if it looks like i'm not paying attention i am um so in that um phased approach with exceptional ed so starting september 23rd would be students with disabilities in a traditional school so those would be students that have a 504 iep plan but that would not be all students with a 504 or iep plan correct how are those students being identified as being allowed to come into the school at that time yes so
111our exceptional education department curriculum instruction team school teams and families will actually make those decisions and so our school teams who know our students and families well have a keen understanding of the students who need those additional supports who truly cannot access the virtual learning environment but in that september 23rd phase in we're talking about students with disabilities in our traditional schools who participate particularly in the modified curriculum so that's a you know that's not a guarantee but that's a group of students that we definitely want to explore and have conversations around or who have significant challenges accessing virtual learning um effectively and our school teams and families have a good understanding about that particularly because of the process of transitioning the clips into the virtual environment uh we learned a lot but you know
112we want to also be supportive of our families that if we if a parent feels like maybe they weren't captured there and their student has significant needs or their needs have grown um since we've been out we have a process by which parents can request an iep meeting for review to see if their student is eligible okay so that was my follow-up question is if a child is not in that original group of students that have been identified but a parent says this is actually much more difficult than we expected or there's something i need to discuss with you they would just need to call an iep meeting as they traditionally went through their rights yes and they will review it through their process and i just want to be clear this is as you've
113mentioned it doesn't um mean that every student with the iep or 504 will be a part of that phase in process we have students with exceptionalities who are thriving who are doing well who you know just needs you know additional accommodations and supports and modifications and so i'm just being clear about that but if a family has a parent has a question a guardian has a question about that we'll just alert the team we'll go through the iep process and make that determination on behalf of that student okay and then how many students do we think are going to be participating on that september 23rd so parents have this is this is still an option for parents they don't have to take us up on this option we just want to i think there's going
114to be plenty that don't yeah there will likely be plenty who don't and we're anticipating that and and that's okay we just want to stand ready to support um our families on the high end we're estimating about 1500 students being eligible um it's likely that half of the students would um take the option of of the face-to-face and so we are going to be working over the next few days um week to have those conversations with families help them make those informed decisions but definitely respecting um their decision if they choose to keep their student in the virtual learning space in which time we will continue to provide our supports and services in the virtual space to the best of our ability and we're going to exhaust everything we can do to make sure those
115students are are getting what they need okay um this isn't necessarily a question but it's more of a statement as you know most parents that are parents of a child with exceptional ed it's historically diff more difficult for them to get employment and to have understanding employment and so i i really appreciate you um prioritizing our exceptional ed students and families and making sure that we're better able to serve them during this already challenging time it's exceptionally stressful for all families right now but exceptional ed families they really need some more understanding and i i appreciate that they've been prioritized you know well thank you and again a kudos to our exceptional education team and really all of our staff across the district who have all expressed their passion their need to make sure that
116we're thinking through this through an equity center manner and really prioritizing students in appropriate manner to make sure they're being served um accordingly so thank you for that and again kudos to the ee team and in every educator out there that's doing the best they can guys support everyone thanks and then um my last question is kind of it's not applicable to an individual slide but i know that we've had some concerns about students that may not be involved in virtual school right now um maybe not necessarily because they're part of the hero program with the amazing catherine um but because frankly at home is not the safer place for them for whatever reason so i would like to know what are we doing currently about students that may not be participating at all or
117were they're not participating as expected through synchronous and asynchronous opportunities to try to guarantee that safety and do that follow up yes so we are currently monitoring our active participation for students um in schoology and i know we've talked about that in great deal that we do have a requirement for active participation and it's not just um logging in so we're checking that daily our teachers are also taking account of students who are participating in their synchronous learning opportunities and following up with students who are not um they're not actively participating so we have the effort on the school um at the school level in addition to um having a pretty robust attendance plan for every school and so every school has the resources and tools this is what you do when it is day
118one versus day five versus a10 and how you alert that through our system in addition to that our student supports team and our eo office in particular are drilling down as well to the individual stu student to see what those uh what the needs are and so based upon their outreach um as well as the outreach at the school we're able to say oh this is because you don't have a device we're bringing a device to you oh this is about connectivity we're bringing that to you or whatever the need might be it might be translation supports or just training on the device and so we're being very flexible very creative in that space to make sure that we're following up with every student this week we also launched our navigator program and we have
119every school might some schools might call it something different but our district title for it is navigators where we're doing the one-on-one check-ins with every student and so again we've got the individual teachers following up we've got the school district support team following up and in particular our el office as well as our navigators following up and those navigators are not necessarily the assigned teacher but an adult who is doing care calls to make sure our students have what they need it's also important to mention you know with this question that our school sites remain accessible and so if students have a need to stop by to call to report that our school sites are open there's always someone at the site who can receive that information and so we'll continue to push out supports
120and we'll continue to have our mindful minutes and and and need to know for our student options during the day but we're trying to pull out all the stops to make sure that um all of our students are connected and that they have what they need to be successful in this space we're a few days out from having our whole enrollment balance happen i mean this is this happens in the traditional space it takes a few weeks for that to happen so as soon as we get that pretty clear cleaned up based upon the um feedback we receive from families will be even more we have an opportunity to be even more intentional with regards to the students we should be expecting to engage every single day okay okay um and then i guess my
121last question sorry we have someone entering the room so the last question uh that i have is in excuse me is in response to um well dang i lost my train of thought you know what go on to genie poopoo walker and i will get back to you i am so sorry i will get back to you please excuse me chair folk yeah that's all right miss pippa walker we'll come back to you i'm i'm sorry i threw you off uh miss elrod um a couple of questions one i want to say uh to folks that are listening in tuning in tonight we have heard from so many parents particularly elementary school parents we hear you we understand this is a critically difficult challenging time folks have to work young people don't learn well on
122laptops we get we hear it we we know it we're trying to do the best we can and i just want folks to know that we are we are reading every email and feeling the pain um i want to ask you do we have a sense for how many students perhaps haven't logged on or haven't showed up yet online are we tracking students that maybe we think are enrolled but maybe haven't appeared online if there have there's a sense for that yet um yes we have a pretty good sense of course we're still early on from balancing out um rosters um and so with regards to our average attendance we're about 91 percent of students actively engaging every day which leaves us about a nine percent rate absentee rate but all indications for students we
123might have to move off of our rosters that's about around six to seven percent of actual numbers of students which is a very manageable number of students for us to be following up with and making sure they are connecting on a daily basis and that's not to indicate that they haven't connected or actively engaged at all we're seeing um shifting from from day to day for students and part of this is just educating educating them because we've had conversations that say you are working but you have to log on to schoology every day in order for your attendance to count so we're still on our campaign to say this is how we account for active participation our teachers have guidance around what to do in those scenarios when students are keeping pace they are completing
124their tasks their assessments etc but have not connected but we are continuing to push to our students and families that you must log on and actively engage in schoology every day for your attendance to count so i'm very promising numbers um early on for that active engagement but we want every day to count for every student so we'll continue to push that yeah so let me ask you i know the department of ed usda department national department i'm not ed of department of agriculture has said that they're not going to continue to allow free lunch for all students have you guys been in conversations to have you begin to think about what that might mean for for students mnps this is a recent trump kind of ruling usda ruling so early conversations we have different
125conversations happening in different spaces thank you ken for coming on because i believe we fall under a different provision with regards to our meals but please chime in um thank you so yes the um the special summer option that we were able to use all spring which allowed us to feed all all children 18 and under based on area eligibility officially stopped the day that schools started back that's been a national usda decision we've worked with the state we've worked regionally the council of great city schools the school nutrition association manufacturers all lobbying usda to have that special summer option restored usda again issued a statement this week saying no so what that has meant is that as we transitioned into the school year things from the food delivery perspective look very much like a
126traditional school year students getting meals at a cep eligible school get the breakfast and lunch for free breakfast is free for everybody across the district if they are in a non if they go to a non-cep school if they qualify through the traditional process then they get free lunch as well as the free breakfast if they don't qualify under those those provisions then we debit their lunch account for the for the price of the lodge it's a real paperwork that's problem challenge so it means that you know at every stop they've got to write the student's name their their school their grade their id number if they have it it administratively it's a hassle but it seems to be students are accruing debt right now if they accept meals from the business if they are
127a no i am qualifying student in a non-cep school right okay so this is a good opportunity for folks to advocate to the usda perhaps okay thank you great and as espn said that i know the council of gray city schools has been doing a lot of advocacy in this space so very excited about the school nurses do we feel like we can fill all those spots are there nurses in our universe early indications suggest that we can and of course we would like to move on that as quickly as possible so everybody will be established at the point in time we begin to phase back in all of our students so we're working closely with nicole bull who's working closely with the metro health department to ensure we can meet that need okay i
128appreciate that i appreciate all y'all's hard work thanks to all of our staff thank you thank you ms silrud thank you chair frog and dr battle i apologize we had a or i had a child and puppy situation coming through the door that i needed to spare you from so um i guess my my follow up last question is we've gotten some communication it's not been an incredible amount of communication but there is some concern particularly for our younger students and the difficulty they have with managing the synchronous and asynchronous portions because there's just a lot of management that needs to take place with parents whether it's because they don't know how to type because they don't know what the word mute means whatever it might be um it's just requiring a lot more management
129of parents and so a lot of the conversations and questions that we get from these parents are is there an opportunity or a possibility that the amount of work that's required or the type of work that's required is going to change throughout the year whether that's when they transition into school and they choose to still go virtually or if they choose to do virtual throughout is there ongoing opportunities to change some of those requirements and have some more grace and flexibility to parents so they're better able to manage it yes i'm going to channel my classroom role and just say that's what we do as educators like i said last week was the first week for elementary students to be in the curriculum portion of um with what they're accessing in schoology and so immediately
130it might have even been on thursday thursday or friday we came together to say what what do we need to be thinking about what do we need to be shifting what do we need to be um adjusting as we move forward and and part of what we're going to be rolling out fairly soon um are some of those um guidance documents um that will say now that we know more right now that we know more here's how we need to balance this out for our students and so for families parents who've expressed that we've heard you and we want to make sure that one we're giving our students a quality experience we definitely don't want to assume that they can't because we know they can and they will but we want to make sure that
131we're being responsive to that and so um again part of those some of those adjustments will be coming fairly soon to make sure that you know things are manageable that we're meeting all the requirements that we should be meeting but it's all manageable as far as the mode and method by which we um continue to support and grow our students so adjustments you know will become and supports will be coming because you know part of just how we release the modules and the tasks how we kind of check listed so students can follow what they should be doing because it might you might be on module 3 but i don't expect you to do all module 3 on tuesday that might be a week or two weeks worth of tasks and so we're going to
132give some more guidance and supports to all of our teachers to help manage in that space and again i think it's just kind of adapting to where we see our students are and we definitely didn't want to assume that our students couldn't because they've shown us a lot about what they can do since we've been in this virtual environment sure i mean as i've tried to say to lots of parents i mean the plans have been well researched and well thought out and in practice it's always something different and so the feedback is appreciated um and needed so that we know what that experience is actually like that user experience and i'm glad to hear that we will continue to ebb and flow as needed and be responsive to that feedback um and then lastly
133i want to just make sure that we're clear because a lot of parents not a lot of parents but some parents do want their students back in the classroom for whatever reason it may be and so are we still aiming towards the nashville plan as the benchmark um of how we do that transition plan for pre-k through second and so on or those where are the measures that they can find that we're trying to hit yeah as i mentioned earlier it's a combination of course the nashville plan was really grounded in um the city's plan as well and we've learned a lot more um you know it's important that we adjust to that and so we've seen some new metrics be introduced that really help better describe for the lack of a better word where
134we are where our local context is and so it's still pretty very much grounded in our cities plan which aligns to our nashville plan and we're making those same adjustments as the metro government is making those adjustments we are too um but we're also taking advisement from our health officials uh with regard to the spread and we've seen a significant spike in school-age cases over the last two weeks since school started to open and so they're making sure we're very aware of that information of course all the guidance that's coming from the various organizations to help inform how how we move forward so you know a compilation of all of that and and we have to be aware of all also what's happening around us because we um know that schools and school districts have
135attempted to open and have had to close and so we want to be mindful of that that we have a sustainable plan as we move forward so we're following all of those metrics we're grounded in the nashville plan and we will continue to take advisement of all the health officials and experts with regards to informing best informing our phased-in approach that's all i got thank you i'm sorry i was talking with my microphone you didn't have dogs in the room so um thank you ms alright and dr and obama kinney i'm going to turn it over to you thank you thank you can you hear me okay thank you um thank you dr battle um for your for for the update and for your thoughtful leadership i just had a few questions and it may
136be reiterating what some of the questions that have came come up um but wanted to add uh re-ask the question again around the options for continual virtual learning as that transition and that phased approach comes in from what i understand and just want to kind of reiterate that is as students begin to phase in in those tiered sections parents will still have the option of doing uh remote learning um on the virtual platform uh for their children correct that's correct okay and then as a result of that will students still be able to provide have teacher support during that time in a virtual platform and what will that look like yes we will be continuing on with our framework as it's currently built of course making the most informed decisions as we need to make
137shifts and adapt but it will likely mirror um the structures that we have in place with the aligned teacher support we're also going to make sure we're communicating to our families what the traditional option looks like because the traditional option um on october 12th is not the same traditional option from october 12th of last year and so we want to make sure our families are aware of that what's going to be different um for students once we begin to phase in i mean there we could likely still be at a place where large gatherings can happen they might be eating lunch in the classroom i mean all kinds of variations in the scenarios we've already built based upon our context at that time and so we'll continue to take social discipline efforts to help mitigate
138the spread regardless of when we phase in thank you my second question is around um the the ymca and the opportunity for parents to be able to connect with the ymca um i know you said that the enrollment availability starts right after labor day where parents can um utilize the services with the ymca what are the qualification for parents um to be able to use this is just is this just for essential workers how does what does that look like yeah so um just one point of clarification they can start identifying um asap okay tomorrow hopefully things will be up and running by the end they will start after labor day okay so thank you for that regression process i mean part of the enrollment is the parents will have to um just uh communicate
139identify document that they are a working parent or guardian and the supervision is needed for them to provide for their family and so um that's the accommodating space that the ymca and ymca is in that if if a parent needs a supervision for them for their work experience structures and to provide for their families then this no-cost opportunity will be available to them okay thank you the other question around that is i know we are limiting it to 60 students per site and so at how soon is the turnaround to be able to increase that are those structures already in place for you to think about that expansion um and and can you talk a little bit about that absolutely and i know these are asking the same but i just want to make sure
140that we are no problem um so as i mentioned earlier um the partnerships with the ymca are being phased in based upon already existing partnerships so they're already kind of in compliance for the lack of a better word with the standards that we would need space um and resources and tools that that's already established in these spaces we've already identified kind of what the next phase would look like which schools um how and when we've already identified that to help easily transition again some of our extended learning staff will be supporting the ymca a bit on the training and on the initial on the ground supports to make sure we have the success of of our students but as we're going to say in close communication we always have um jennifer bell um leads those
141conversations with our uh partners i'm in the extended day care extended experience world and so she'll continue to monitor with their lead their contact to see if we're nearing capacity at any site but i also want to take the opportunity to reference that we're expanding seven sites for metro national public schools that they run other sites as well and our families will have access to those um too so there we have seven but there are others that are not at capacity that if they're more convenient for families that they could also leverage great thank you um the next question that i have um is uh and i appreciate and thank you for for really being intentional and listening to families with exceptional um in the exceptional ed population and the phased-in approach that you're looking
142to do related to that for families and these are specific questions that have come to me and and if you could address um around parents who choose not to send their children part of that that exceptional ed population that choose not to send their children to uh schools in that phased-in approach but want para profes professionals to come to their home can you talk a little bit about that please i mean it is kind of simply put because of the current context that we're in um the precautionary measures we want to take and the spread of the virus we are providing will provide two opportunities for those structural services then being the option to come in and provide those services in the school buildings or the virtual learning supports which wouldn't include a paraprofessional or
143a program specialist coming into the home it would include their paraprofessional program specialist providing virtual um supports to the student their teletherapy services whatever the student may need but because of the context with where we are with the spread of the virus in our city we're not able to send our employees into the homes of students we continue to be creative and innovative like we're doing here around our phase-in approach to continue to meet the needs of our students and one way we're doing that is to say we can't send them in but here is a phase-in approach by which we are happy to welcome our students back in to receive the smaller ratio support um to support their needs okay thank you and so just to clarify and kind of summarize what you're saying
144is students um in students in that exceptional ed population that need a paraprofessional uh can come in in during that phased-in approach to receive services but if they remain virtual those services will not be provided in their homes correct so their services will be provided they will be provided online virtually but not in their homes correct all right thank you um i just wanted to make sure um the the next question i have is about the navigators um so there was a little confusion i think about navigators um versus um i believe uh the paraprofessionals or those that are supporting specifically the e uh the ee population so our navigators are supporting all students navigators are supporting all students okay and can you talk can you reiterate what the role of the navigator will be
145yeah so the navigator is um an adult um that serves that particular learning community who will take the time to have one-on-one check-ins for students and we have scripts and and resources that we're going to be providing just to do what we would essentially care calls to students they'll have a small caseload to make sure they're following up with the same student week over week and there they're able to connect students for additional resources they will not be the only adult reaching out because students will also get the support from their classroom teacher other counselors and mentors that they have on site but we really wanted a very coordinated effort to ensure that every student regardless of the school they're in grade level or classes that they attend has that caring adult who will help
146them navigate this virtual space so whether it be i need something because something is happening at home i need a device a food i just need a mentor someone to help support me through this then that navigator is going to help them be connected to those resources to ensure their success in the virtual environment thank you and so for families who have not been able to connect with a navigator or having heard with a navigator how do they how are they able to to begin that connection yeah so we um that some schools you know you know how this happened some schools have already they started year one because they had a similar structure in place and so we did not have those schools um reinvent the wheel i mean a few examples of that
147i know i.t creswell they always had um their school parent is what they called who we were categorizing as a navigator donaldson middle school already had their system set up because our educators know you have to do this this is important according to the social emotional well-being of our students some schools needed to go a little bit slower at it um you know particularly in elementary space you're getting you know new students in who are starting school so we want to make sure we set the appropriate foundation high schools have had the advisory model uh for a while and so they need time to balance our schedules and know who's going to be following up with who um so we're just now entering into the space that we're saying everybody should be getting their navigator
148system up and running um and so by by the time we um hit labor day everyone should be in the space of navigators you know who your connection is i mean things might shift every now and then i can't promise we won't have roles and responsibilities shift but the whole idea and goal is to have someone who's constantly following up and checking in with the student great thank you um and then i have another question i'm sorry i'm i'm hitting you with all the questions real quick um i have another question um that and and and some feedback that has come around our ell population um and access to translators and and those translators helping students navigate and helping parents navigate the virtual learning experience can you talk a little bit about what the ell
149department is doing and and some of your challenges if any that you're having in that area yes um our eo department is doing tremendous work as well as our school leaders who are working on the ground with all of our families they've been hard at work they've been busy their enrollment numbers are huge every day and increasing as as we move forward they've been pretty innovative i think i might have mentioned this happening after the last board meeting i probably provided in a board update that our eo office is now the hub for devices um hotspots needs for our el families when they enroll because we want to make sure that that translation support is their interpretation support is there to provide to our families and they're simply in a social distancing way getting them
150logged on getting them the tools and resources they need before they leave the enrollment office and so that was a shift we immediately made when we started looking at our numbers and um following which students were connecting which was nod and feedback from our parents they have also been going out to schools and setting up somewhat of support hubs for students and families that if they just needed to stop by for a moment to get additional support or direction on how to navigate in the virtual environment space families have been able to do that i know we've had a large group molly stovall and her team have been out at glenview for instance our central office staff has been going out and our student services team just released a plan earlier this week to leverage
151many more of our central office staff members to go out to schools to be available to support families as well as our translators to support families in this space and i might recall that prior to the start of the school year we had our translators come back on um payroll um early to help prepare for the start of the school year and i saw hank come on for just a minute he's probably going to mention um some of the other needs that have been identified from our el department thank you yeah thank you and and our translators um are actually a little bit separate from the el department just for people's information right now and of course that was a priority of this board and the budget season was to provide more translation services and
152um and so you know the need is out there for sure so thank you and i will i will just say um obama kenny that we have um daily update meetings and part because our english learners and our exceptional education students and other populations are priority for us we receive daily right well this week we just shifted to monday wednesday friday but we've been receiving for the last several weeks daily updates to make sure that we are adjusting um to those needs and so i'm very thankful for the team in pivoting and doing what's necessary to get everyone connected great thank you and then my final question i apologize i'm going to finish up i just want miss elrod had mentioned about the virtual learning platform the flvs for early learners i have a first
153grader so i can empathize with miss elrod and many of the families in our district with early learners and and just the intense um workload that students are experiencing there so i'm happy to hear that the district is in tune with that and beginning to support teachers um and administrators across the district uh to to help parents and to kind of spread out that that that curriculum um one example that we looked at was um one module having 14 different slides um with that so at a first at a second grade level and so um it you know just just taking the time to do that and help support early learners in that process with that load um thank you and i'm very appreciative of it as a parent myself um and in listening to
154many of our parents across the district so thank you again i truly appreciate your your your attention to all of that and really listening to to families and and teachers and across the district with some of many of their experiences and working to adjust appropriately and before i get off i do want to say thank you to jill and amy on your leadership i just joined um with the board but i was very appreciative at the way in which you welcomed me into the board and really met with me and so thank you so much for the work and leadership that you have done and your commitment to mnps and and the mmps family so thank you all right thank you so much berthina i appreciate that um miss bush i believe has a few
155more comments and questions uh yes um i wanted to i had a few more questions um as far as the ymca just a few more questions surrounding the virtual look and then i'll move on to the um the athletics um as far as the ymca how soon will the link be up to sign those families up for their students so how would that look online so that they'll know exactly what to do because after tonight they're going to be online okay they're all ready yes and i believe um it is up now on our website and we'll also be sending out a communication to families as soon as possible and hopefully likely tonight as soon as we get done in a call out to inform parents on how to access that link so it's up
156now and ready to go so my son works at camp with johan so he just shared with me that uh the phones were ringing off the hook on friday so he said they're almost at capacity but they still have space so that's so that's something i want to share with you and then uh the second question um teachers just i wanted to talk a little bit about teachers and the ppe and the safety measures if we return to school and kind of how that looks on the planning and preparation i know teachers have had um serious questions and concerns surrounding safety going back to school they love their students they want to be back with their students um but they want to make sure that it's safe can you share with us and talk to
157us a little bit about those measures um yes so um through various means and ken if you want to come on and add to um this discussion um there's various means by which we're we have secured ppe um for our teachers and so i believe in their kits they will receive a supply of mass they will receive a face shield they will receive um i think it's hand sanitizer um ken you want to jump in sure good afternoon so we've got a lot of ppe and is coming it is coming from a variety of sources just to give you a little bit of a sense early in the late spring june timeline we ordered about 1.6 million disposable masks for students though we have those on hand a portion of those have been delivered to
158schools they went out last week some are going out this week the state we got received a shipment from the state they provided us with another 1.6 million disposable mass for students we got those in the warehouse last week we'll distribute those as we get closer to students returning in person the state has set up a process where schools will from this point forward will request a variety of different ppe that they may need including mass sanitizer i think face shields are on the states list as well then those will be ongoing monthly shipments we also bought about 13 000 gallons of hand sanitizer it was enough for at least a gallon for every teacher plus 10 percentage schools a lot of that has already been distributed to schools we have purchased about 60 face
159shields for teachers and for students to use we've got some additional plans to buy additional sanitizer as we see the need we're trying to be really prudent with the money we're not um and because the state has stepped up and started providing supplies we're trying not to have giant stockpiles and work with what they they're providing and to make sure that we've got a good balance the other thing that i should mention the state provided two cloth masks for every staff member the district bought about twenty 000 cloth masks that also we we pushed out in late july early august we've got another uh 30 000 i believe that are on order that we're expecting to come in shortly and then the state will also be providing they give this they'll give the schools a
160choice they can either provide cloth mass for teachers at the rate of two per month or they can provide one disposable mass per teacher per month so there's a lot of there's a lot of ppe available the one item we that's a little difficult to come by right now we bought about 11 000 hand wipes uh containers that we're in the process of distributing the state is providing some but that seems to be the item that we can't get even with long lead times so and i think in addition to that you i don't know if you mentioned the thermometers that are being provided to every site and sneak stars i mean and this is why i asked ken to come on because we're taking extreme efforts to make sure we have cpe and the
161protections um um in place we've also uh missed bush to your question work with seiu mnea usw to make sure that those leaders are around the table with regards to needed ppe for all staff and for students okay you know and another note about safety um how are our school buildings looking right now so when we i hear about all the ppe it's a lot of a lot of material um so how how does this how does our how does it look in our schools when they go back of course we've seen a lot of from other school districts how they you know got the um the little feet on the ground six feet you know apart and classrooms may have the barriers around the desk is that something that we're doing also or how
162does it look we've provided a number of signs to schools there's still some work to be done on that front as schools develop their their specific plans and how they look you probably won't see we have provided we're calling them sneeze guards internally but i don't think that's the official term but plexiglas shields for the front offices and those kind of high traffic uh spaces across the district part of the the face shield numbers part of our concern with the uh the desktop units that you see is they they protect going forward but they don't extend back past where their child sits so if a child turns to their side and sneezes they can it goes around the barrier so we're looking at the face shields as is a little bit better protected for everybody
163that knows than those desktop units um so i think i i got your question they're working through some of the building specific plans okay and so we'll be prepared just in case we transition back into the classroom we'll pretty much have all those plans in place okay and by working with um seiu i mean mmda it's always a fun time uh time here but so are there at the table and they're having the conversations and they're i would assume that they're also playing a part of the transition in fact back to the schools and having a conversation about how it looks and how safe they feel that they'll be so all this conversation is happening is that correct correct that's correct okay all right that's all for that and then now if anybody i want
164to just go and go into sports and i know it's getting late but i want to make sure i address um the concerns that surrounding the sports and the decisions of the um cancellation of athletics and extracurriculars um my first question is um as far as um there was a letter that went out on july 29th i think he went either to the mayor's office or came from the mayor's office and i think we had all signatures that were on there and i think it was the committee uh that was listed as far as um the information on the letter that was asking uh of course to suspend uh athletics and extracurriculars could you kind of expound on that um you're talking about the letter that um was postponing until after labor day initially yes
165that one yes so um that came through the nashville plan committee that dr joe hunger and myself were co-chairing and so that that advisement based upon the level of the spread of the virus at that time was for us to delay um the start of competitions until after labor day given the local context okay and so on the committee i guess in here i'm gonna wear i'm not a coach but i'm gonna wear the coach's hat right now because this is where all the concerns are coming from so i want to make sure that i ask and ask their question um and and one of the reasons why i think it's maybe a little bit frustrating for the coaches and it's just it's not just for football we're talking about soccer we're talking about golf
166we're talking about all that falls under their umbrella um that they feel that they don't have a seat at the table um they feel like they are being left out of the equation when it comes to making these decisions for our students um so and of course i also like i always say i always try to do my homework before i come to the board meetings so that way i can make sure that i can best be able to articulate the cares and concerns um so um they um so again they they're trying to figure out you know why they don't have a seat at a table why because principals also are having the same concerns and i did hear you say that there will be multiple meetings this week that's going to be able
167to you you'll be able to talk to the principals and hopefully the coaches and kind of get their feedback and input and right now i know that it's been suspended but i'm hoping that after having these conversations within this week or the next couple of weeks that there will be some type of um um i would say uh some some some options more options on making and help and so that our kids can compete um so saying that um one of the members that's on the board or on the committee i think his name is brad i think it's pronounced which committee are you referring to the same one on the letter is it bran yeah he's the headmaster of the nba okay so he's the headmaster of montgomery bell academy so the question and
168concern was raised is why he was making the recommendation or signed off on the recommendation and yet his players are playing i have no information about that there's speculation as far as i know because i don't govern um mba or any of the other schools that are represented so i have no known knowledge of them playing um right now okay so they are playing next week and so i guess again it goes back and this is just the coaches how i'm wearing because i'm trying to you know ask questions on their behalf and so they are saying is it good for the goose and not the gander is it good for nba headmaster to sign off on a letter telling us that we cannot or to suspend any athleticism into after after labor day but
169yet his team is playing next week in memphis and so that's why that's what we need to try to figure out and get those questions again i mean i don't know of them to have played a game yet um and i don't know of them preparing to play a game yet i know that everybody had schedules so i don't know what's on their schedule but i think this goes back to context i mean i definitely don't govern or have authority over any other school or school district but it's also why you see every school district in a different space right now because everybody needs to respond based upon their local context hopefully they're following the data the metrics and the science and the guidance from the health officials or experts but they have to make
170those informed decisions for their schools and their school districts it's also why you don't there's not a uniformed approach to what schools are doing right now because it all depends on your local context and and your needs we're also comparing one school to an entire school district which is difficult to do given any measures to mitigate the spread of of the virus but again i can't speak to what any other specific school is doing with regards to now or for the future unless something happens um and then i can reference it but i'm unaware of that right now okay so i just wanted to bring into your attention and that is occurring and that they are um having a game next week at st benedict in memphis and they are having contact sports um i
171think the major concern is and i'll just hit again and we'll move on i think what the coaches are saying is that how is it that we have someone on the committee uh a headmaster that's making decisions for mmps athletes when he's doing uh he's he's actually allowing his his team to play so that's that's what i just wanted to again i'm just trying to bring it out so i can make sure that i'm getting all their questions answered and be able to be transparent on what they what they wanted you know wanted to be heard um so i just wanted to make that um that comment for them and then also um we have this is what they're asking so the question is so we do have of course all our private team our
172private schools that are in davidson county they are in davidson county they're not in other counties and we do compete against those private schools and i'm just trying to figure out with um the hangar dr jehanger that's it okay i got it i got his last name um he's made recommendations for mmps i think you're muted miss bush okay i'm sorry that little thing wave is over okay so i just go back so they want to know of course i was saying that uh we play private schools in our district as far as in davidson county right so they're not outside the county and we do compete against them the question is um um what is your hanger dr johanger saying to different to them than us so he's making recommendations about mmps and so
173we're trying to figure out what's the recommendations made for the private schools is that something that is a cross davidson county or is it specific to a district schools so with regards to the nashville planning committee remember that committee comprised of representatives for um from all different types of schools not for the purpose of giving a um one-size-fits-all approach this was our discussion around the metrics um the guidance that we were going to receive in order to inform reopening for our schools and being able to maintain that and so every school system or type of school is equipped with the same information each type of school and leader has to make an informed decision to with regards to reopening and convening extracurricular activities those are individual decisions we don't we don't govern them at all
174nor could i require them to do anything nor doctor hunger in that space i mean he does have the ability as the um kova task force chair to put forth um orders and guidance from um from his seat our plan is grounded in safety we have to make sure and ensure that we are prioritizing the safety of our students of our employees and their families and that's what has grounded our decision-making and our path moving forward i can't again i cannot speak to anybody else's process or plan or what they choose to do but what we do know is happening is that those in certain scenarios where schools have reopened or convened groups that we've seen um spikes in cases we've seen closures we've seen entire teams been quarantined we've seen that happen over and
175over again and so it's also about the risk level that one would be willing to take we have continued to keep safety at the forefront of the decision making for our students to make sure they're safe and hopefully have those experiences once conditions allow and so that that would be the kind of the defining factor on the nashville planning committee and what one how one responds to the next steps based upon the data metrics and science that's before them gotcha and so my next question on the uh science and of course safety so we have to come in our coaches all of them every sport who did condition who did work out this summer and we have to commend them that they've done an excellent job because as we understand and we did not from
176what we know did not have any cover cases from them conditioning so they really follow the safety guidelines that were put in place um so we should be very very very proud of what they've done and so that leads to if they've done it then why can't they do it now so again this is coming from coaches that are saying we have done a great job to make sure that our students are safe when we practice this when we're conditioning and they just feel like they are not getting the fair shake to be able to play now we know that most of our kids in metro schools are black and brown kids and they want to make sure that it's equity and they don't feel that it's equitable right now because we have brain we've
177lost you there yes okay i'm back i'm back i saw it this time and so they want to make sure that they their children their their our kids is being treated with equity and that's what they're not seeing and they feel very very strong about that because they do see again the private schools of david's davidson county that our work that our plan that are practicing that are being able to compete and yet our students mmps just us are not being able to do that and of course i just mentioned safety is always important and they have done a great job making sure that that happened in six weeks um that they have been doing this so they feel like it's like about the halves and the have nots and i'm just i'll finish up
178real quick but this is what they're at this is why for them to have a seat at the table to be able to have the discussion for them way before now not you know way before now okay yeah so we i know they've had a representation um to speak but they want to speak like i said i've spoken with our principals that also um are have a part of this conversation and they also feel the same way so during this week i'm sure when you have you know the meetings and conversations with the principals um again we asked bring the coaches to the table they want a voice too they want to be able to uh answer those questions and for you to be able to see them and be able to hear from them
179that's what they're asking for so i'm hoping that will happen i heard you say it will happen this week so or within the next couple of weeks but you can respond to that yes so um a few things i mean just a reminder that we're in you know phase two um of our city plan which allows you know specific schools and types of students to make their own decision to be quite you know transparent and frank we we've seen not only um high schools be in this space we've seen it happen at the collegiate level we've seen it at the professional level as well everyone is taking extreme precautions with regards to contact sports and with regards to the safety measures that have been in place we have been following up with our coaches to
180make sure those safety measures are in place but i i would like to recall that we we have a number of um cases and students who've had to um quarantine or self-isolate based upon um the steel distance social distancing efforts that we've had with our team's conditioning so we are not um free of positive cases or close contacts being identified with some of our teams we have over the last several weeks i've been having our updates um one go out to our coaches but our athletic director has been making individual visits to schools to one and just make sure we're in compliance because we want safety to be on where it is but to also engage in in their dialogue um this is quite frankly a a larger um conversation and decision when it comes
181to safety for all students and i know again we focus a lot on football but we also have to be mindful of all the other you know sports that are happening so it you know i i i understand uh where we are with the various sports but we have to be thinking about all the various activities that are happening i'm at one time and keeping everybody safe so we'll continue our team is already engaged in conversations they will continue to do so and again the recommendation right now is to postpone them into further notice so that hopefully we can salvage some of the experience and some of the games and performance opportunities for all of our students but the safe thing to do right now and based upon the guidance that was issued by the
182health department is that if your local context doesn't allow for you not to be in a virtual space then we should not resume um contact sports in particular um intercontin scholastic activities until it's safe to do so but we'll continue to engage in that dialogue as we move forward okay and i think that's kind of where they they they feel they feel that you know engaging in that conversation is something they definitely want to want to have and they want to have that seat at the table as we know i'm sorry um and as we know um it's no it's not well i'm talking about all sports i was attract you know i ran track for mcgavin so i was on the coaster view and uh in the lake coach smith so i understand how
183it is very important to be with a another mentor and and these students have done a fantastic job they're not on the streets they're not committing crimes they they have an outlet where they can go and and yes uh be able to continue uh their their athleticism and then we also have to be mindful about scholarships we do have students that are our athletes that depend on scholarships where parents uh unfortunately are in such a social economic disadvantage and and and that's kind of where most of us our boys or girls uh also depend on they work so hard to get there and this is their last year so we just want to make sure that everything is played into this context to make sure that our students are getting you know that type of
184support also and also of course our academics are virtual of course all these all these are dif all these play a part and they're all different departmentally so we know that but we just want to make sure that everybody is having the conversation and that's what's so important because they want to feel just like with our reimagine we talk about our people we want to make sure that our people are included and at the table and have these kind of conversations so that everyone feel like they they made their part of the decision-making so i just wanted to make mention that again i was just wearing my coach's head to make sure that i was being able to um be a voice for our students also because our students hadn't even had a chance to
185to weigh in or our parents um so just wanted to make sure that we just need to be mindful of that and making sure that you know all parties who are part of this you know will have a seat at the table so i appreciate you i know there's a lot of questions um and thank you for all your answers and i just want to make sure that everybody who's listening tonight um will be able to hear you know what's what's the next steps so thanks so much thanks bugs hi dr battle i have one question about uh the hours for days for the day schools when we start to transition them so the first week on the ninth we're starting with the contractor day schools the next week we're working with mnps day schools
186is it going to be for a full eight to eight to four or i'm sorry eight to three or eight thirty two you know just what would be the times will the center if there will be their normal school hours perfect thank you okay any other comments before we move on it's been a long meeting i know we're getting tired okay um so we are now um two announcements and i'm just gonna actually before i get to announcements let me just make a quick comment um i made some really sweet uh uh remarks by uh dr battle about me and jill and i feel as borg here i would be remiss if i failed to also honor my friend and colleague jill spearing as as i've honored dr battle tonight jill has been a fierce
187advocate for the needs of our students not only is she an eight-year veteran of the school board but she's also a 35-year veteran of the district so i want to thank jill for sharing her knowledge expertise and wisdom particularly in the area of literacy these eight years i'd also like to thank her for remaining child centered in her work uh jill and i met at the very first campaign party i attended when i first ran for school board in 2012 and i really would not have made it through eight years of public service without her friendship and so happy retirement to jill and we made it all right i'll go around the table now for remarks uh and announcements and we will start with dr gentry that's okay yep is dr gentry still on the
188call all right let's move on to miss elrod all right here i'm here i'm here i'm sorry okay miss all right go ahead sorry i had mine written out and i wanted to pull it up that's okay um so i um again appreciate everyone attending this morning's evaluation because i guess this is really more evaluation committee meeting report i appreciate everyone attending the evaluation committee meeting that we had um at four o'clock today uh updated information about that will be going out soon um if you have any questions about it you're always welcome to call or email me so people know so it's on the record we went over the 2020 summer formative evaluation for both dr battle done by dr battle as a self-evaluation and then all of us individually and what our individual
189evaluations were on dr battle i appreciate everyone's um participation in that and then lastly uh for the send off i would like to thank jill smearing and amy uh frog for their many years of service to the metro national school board they have both proven themselves to be passionate leaders and i appreciate their commitment to our public schools instruction and our students and i hope you both enjoy your retirement but still answer your phone when i call thank you rachel all right uh miss spearing thank you miss frog uh thank you rachel ann and amy and berthina for your very kind words this is my last meeting after eight years on the board and 35 in education it's a bittersweet moment i want to start off by sharing that my appreciation for emily masters for
190running a great campaign and the big win that she achieved she will be sworn in on thursday and she will occupy this seat in two weeks you all will love her emily is full of enthusiasm and expertise and passion for education of children and teachers as a long-term educator before i took my seat on the board on the board floor i was interested in working on the other side of the table being a part of the decision making rather than a recipient of the decisions made sometimes difficult and but mostly productive the work on this board has been very enlightening over the last eight years i've worked with four directors including two interims during the last eight years i've been involved in three superintendent searches at last we have stability thank you dr battle and
191i hope you stay in this position for decades there have been been many wonderful experiences that i treasure and that i will cherish throughout time i've had the opportunity to work as many excellent educators and district leaders i admire just last week in her speech to accept the democratic party's nomination for vice president kamala harris quoted joe biden when she stated we stand with our allies and we stand up to our adversaries i want to repeat that we stand with our allies and we stand up to our adversaries the late john lewis said if you see something that's not right not fair not just you have a moral obligation to do something about it i embrace these words and these philosophies and this is the way i've seen my role as a board member in
192spite of the difficulties of the last two years and that includes previous leadership and undergoing open heart surgery even though my family wanted me to resign from the board by the grace of god i was able to regain my health and complete my full term in office i'm grateful we have experienced excellent changes in leadership over the last two years district level and board level amy frog and the late anna shepard's successfully led this district with respect for other board members expertise honesty transparency i'm so grateful for both of these leaders and friends i leave this board with a challenge to each of you there is nothing more important than literacy literacy is the cornerstone of all future learning just six months ago i funded a trip to new zealand to study their excellent literacy
193programs and success rates new zealand has a 99 literacy rate we can learn a lot from them just for a few minutes i want to share a few of my takeaways since this is my last meeting with you in new zealand meaningful rich literacy experiences occur daily no scripted curriculum teachers are experts in literacy because new zealand offers opportunities for outstanding continuous professional development in literacy it's not a sit and get but the expectation is that teachers will learn through their pd and then implement that knowledge and those skills within the classroom and they do child centered education is another important aspect of the new zealand curriculum student-focused curriculum age-appropriate meaningful books that relate to students background knowledge and interest additionally students are offered choice they select the books they want to read from a
194menu of possibilities they never employ nonsense words teaching skills and isolation is rare ample opportunities for students to socialize with their peers occurs daily they have periods 45 45-minute periods of resale recess and in some schools they have two periods of 45 minutes of recess principals and teachers are clear that students need time to run and play and socialize when these social emotional needs are met students come to class ready to settle down and learn another important point collaboration rather than competition it's the rule of the day teachers support teachers students support each other teaching environments are set up so that students have even more opportunities to work together they employ multi-age classrooms and common areas where students work on real life projects together hands-on experiences are abundant my visit was in february and march
195which was toward the end of their summer they had only been in school for a few weeks and fall was approaching one project for middle school students was to to determine the dimensions needed to cover a frame for a greenhouse to prepare for winter the teachers could have done this maintenance could have completed the task but students got the opportunity to use their skills and literacy and math to complete the project social and emotional learning is not delegated for the beginning of the year or taught as a subject it's lived and experienced throughout the daily curriculum students learn social emotional skills because they are immersed in an environment that promotes self-respect and respect for one another art is everywhere the indigenous people are called mari and their traditions and language and culture are taught shared
196and valued music and creative expressions are abundant additionally many schools have their own swimming pools and students learn to swim at school thank you for allowing me to share some of my experiences from new zealand with you but maybe the most important part of my remarks tonight is that i want to tell you why i'm able to leave the board i'm able to relinquish my seat primarily because of the excellent capable leadership of dr adrian battle dr battle has a servant's heart she's not one who touts her achievements in an effort to advance her own career dr battle is child centered she makes the tough decisions with grace and fortitude she stands up firmly to authorities while always making the right decision for students and teachers and i have been honored to stand by her
197side and offer support during these difficult times i appreciate the doctor battle always leads with kindness poise and gratitude dr battle thank you for the extraordinary opportunity to work with you over the past 17 months it has truly been a joy and i appreciate your leadership and the authentic respect you demonstrate daily to our students teachers staff and board members please call on me if i can be of assistance in the future thank you miss bearing all right uh dr nava mckinney oh mrs bush i think i've got [Music] you are going to be tremendously missed thank you so much for your leadership your cares your love for our teachers our parapros uh our kids our parents the community the community look to you for guidance they look to you for leadership they look to
198you for support and you you guys you surpass that and i'm so proud not to just call you my colleague but my friend so i just want to tell you both you're not going far so i know where you live so i will definitely be right there asking those questions and getting your support as i continue my mission on this board to serve for our families and our students and our teachers and every all of our staff and i just want to tell you that when i got on this board if it wasn't for youtube i don't know what i would have done because it was times i was gonna throw in that towel and you said no and because of that i became stronger and i became wiser and i'm so sorry we've lost
199you during these nice remarks you're making i can't i think your mic's off again okay there it is okay i know did you can you hear me now yes i can so i'm not sure what part of my love for you but i just wanted to apologize you know thank you for your passion thank you for everything and you are going to be greatly missed i know you're not going to go far and i know you're going to be there but it has been a a absolute pleasure to be with you guys on my journey so thank you i love you guys take care okay okay thank you so much fran for those kind words and thank you for your support and friendship we've been through some difficult times together and i appreciate all you've
200done to support us all right now we're at uh dr nevada mckinney can you hear me thank you um thanks all right so thank you to um i just want to take a moment to to thank our once again thank our principals teachers and support staff our paraprofessionals for all of the work they are doing to go above and beyond to meet the needs and support our students and families across the district i have visited many schools dupont elementary where i saw teachers go out into go go meet families where they were to support them and provide them the necessary tools that they needed with with for the families and for students also you know in talking with several of the principals um just the amount of work that they are doing and how they
201are so proud of of of uh of their teachers and their staff um really jumping in where they could complain but really jumping in on board and working as a team to just meet the needs in these unusual circumstances um i also want to thank parents i've talked to many parents across across uh my district really about their concerns really across mnps but but specifically my district about concerns that they were having but i wanted to acknowledge that even in the concerns that they were having i heard great things about our teachers and our administrators and our and our staff and their response and how it's been warm and welcoming and they feel like they're being heard across our district and that and that to me leads um leads me to really applaud dr battle
202and her leadership as well and her intentionality and how she's making decisions and doing things for our district so thank you dr battle for your leadership um and and for for for your team um in making that happen um i know that we are you know we we still have a lot of challenges um and and areas that we need to improve across the district but it's very heartwarming and and humbling to see our community really come together for the needs of our families and our students across the district and really understand and empathize where we all are in this journey to make the best possible education environment for our students so i want to urge everyone to continue to continue to do this work to continue to be innovative and finding these ways and
203most of all continue to be just supportive of one another as we're going through those journeys we're going to have times where we are where we we call it a day um and then we're going to have times where it's going to be an exciting day for us so just understanding that and understanding that everybody has um different levels of where they are in this journey and and being able to support this we never thought we'd be in a pandemic we never thought that we'd have a tornado that that that um kind of tore through our city um and and so i think we as a community have really worked together to identify that and really support the needs and look at it really in a equitable fashion and so i'm i i you know
204i'm really excited and hope to continue to do that work to ensure that every student in our district is receiving the support that they need and the quality learning environment that they deserve thank you thank you um miss bugs yes thank you um i would like to send a congratulations to mrs ashley croft callery the principal at englewood elementary school i got some notes from the parents who were allowed to zoom in and watch their principal be married doctors how exciting that how excited their students were and how happy they were to share in the moment so congratulations to you thank thank you for all that you do and all your staff are doing to support that south englewood neighborhood i would also like to highlight that creative girls rock a non-profit in nashville is
205having a back to school backpack bash a giveaway at mckissick september 12th at 9 30 a.m volunteers are still being accepted but they are encouraging people show up that day receive extra pieces of sanitizer uh other school resources that students could use uh and then another shout out to my brother's keeper and the different reading initiatives that they're looking to support with men of color uh or just community members uh during these kind of trying times and i thank you all for your benevolence and for your your thought leading this uh this charge thank you thank you um miss player peters um hello um yes um i want to thank um school bummer jill spear and amy fo for their service on the school board of the over their tenure being a public servant is
206not easy there's a lot of sacrifice it takes from family um and career and just want to acknowledge that um for your time on the board and for your service good night thank you all right miss pooper walker oh is jeannie still on the call all right i'm not seeking her so i'm gonna wrap up here um i know it's been a long night but since i've been serving for eight years i hope that you will um allow me a few moments to make final remarks uh i hate that it's on the end of a very long meeting but here is what i'd like to say um this is my very last meeting after spending nearly a decade on the school board i think i missed only four or five board meetings during my entire
207time as a school board representative so this board and this school district have truly been my calling and my life's work for the last eight years it's been a journey at times very rewarding and many times challenging serving as an elected official is not for the faint of heart this job often requires grit and determination as well as a willingness to stand up sometimes alone for what is right no matter the political or personal consequences as william faulkner said never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed if people all over the world would do this it would change the earth that's the role of a school board member we are here not only to serve as liaisons for the community and to build greater
208support for our schools but also to protect public education and nashville's children from greed and outside influence with the unrelenting creep of privatization interests and so sorry this is my dog hold on one moment please i'ma let her out all right that was the first time so sorry um all right uh with the unrelenting creep of privatization interest into the realm of public education this will be an ongoing battle and our hope that our newest board members will continue to stand strong in doing what's best for nashville's children i've learned that the problems of the city tend to work themselves out on this board the board itself is a microcosm of the city reflecting different viewpoints and backgrounds our school system as a whole is a reflection of the health of the city something that
209stuck with me all these years is a casual comment made by a teacher when i first decided to run for school board back in 2012 she said if everyone just sent their children to public schools we wouldn't have all these problems this was a novel idea to me at the time but i've come to realize its truth our school system although wonderfully diverse does not serve the majority of nashvillians in an increasingly well healthy city mnps serves about 75 lower income families neither the socioeconomic nor racial makeup of the school system reflect the actual makeup of our city with greater investment from our larger community not only of resources but also of our own children our school system would look and perform very differently from the start i've tried to champion a quote that my
210friend now has posted on her facebook page there's no such thing as other people's children we are all in this together and until we are willing to educate our children together it will be hard to drive real change in schools as a public school parent myself who has sent her own children to low-income schools and as someone who has personally attended public international and private schools i certainly understand the challenges in public education however the ultimate solution is for us to rally around our community schools not to continue to segregate and splinter the system we certainly have had leadership failures in mnps which have helped drive away families and good educators but with dr battle at the helm i believe we are in a good position to earn back trust and encourage our families to
211stay in our public schools we have yet to tackle the true work of equity in nashville although many have given this give this term political lip service the coleman report submitted in response to the civil rights act of 1964 was the first to document the achievement gap and continues to provide a viable solution for school districts the coleman report ultimately concluded that socioeconomic diversity in schools is the greatest driver of success even more so than extra resources or racial diversity although both are important at a time when schools remain underfunded this is one way that mmps can improve outcomes without additional investment coleman contended that what america schools america needs are schools quote where children of all different social classes intermingle there are many ways to undertake this work in mnps but our policies have
212often driven away many middle class families rather than encouraging them to stay in the district for example the changes in our disciplinary policy without proper supports in place drove away many families another concern studies show that charter schools are increasing school segregation the proliferation of charter schools in nashville has added to the problem of racial and socio-economic segregation within our school system instead i hope that mnps will focus on creating school pathways that increase rather than decrease socioeconomic diversity that we will re-envision our magnet schools that we will continue to expand arts and advanced academic programs in all schools and they will that we will expand our community school program which provides wrap-around services to students in need it's also vital for mnps to support parents working at the ground level to improve their neighborhood
213schools this has never really happened in my experience in any area of town finally i hope that mnps will begin a dialogue with families about what would encourage them to stay in mnps schools k through 12. there are so many great opportunities for partnerships that we've not yet tapped i'm proud that during my time on the board city leaders seem to have collectively reached a turning point about public education during my early days on the board i was a laughingstock if i mentioned social emotional learning or the impact of poverty on learning it was all about so-called quote accountability and school competition now however it seems that the majority of the city and its elected leaders have begun to recognize the need to meet children where they are and to provide all children with the
214same sort of education they might receive in private schools with much greater resources in the often quoted words of john dewey what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child that must the community want for all of its children i hope that we can all step out of our own selfish interests and advocate for the common good the greater good something that seems so lacking in recent days at this particular time our city leaders seem to sincerely wish to support our public schools and have come to recognize the vital importance of a thriving public school system this is truly a wonderful time for the school board with dr battle leading we are all finally rowing in the same direction i have great hope that we will see positive change in upcoming years finally
215i'd like to thank my constituents and supporters for this journey i'm deeply grateful for the ongoing support i've received over the years and for the wonderful friendships i have forged through public service this has been an amazing opportunity and learning experience i'd also like to thank abigail tyler for her willingness to step up and serve as district 9 representative i know that i'm leaving my seat in capable hands i will continue to be involved and to advocate at both the state and local level i'll continue to stay involved in my social media pages so stay tuned i'll see all of you around and i wish this board and dr battle great success in your future work nashville is counting on you and with that there being no further business this meeting is adjourned by everybody
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