001we commence okay we're live go ahead all right all right welcome everyone at first like to say that we're holding this board meeting in accordance with the governor's executive order that allows for electronic meetings that order is set is set to expire on June 30th next week so we will resume in person board meetings after that time we plan to honor social distancing guidelines for our upcoming in-person board meetings and also would like to remind my fellow board members that we will have only one board of eating until July the first meeting of the month and that is a typical practice for the board to not hold a second meeting in July so David if you could please call the roll dr. gentry dr. gentry he's struggling to unmute but she's here she's present in
002the cell right present was present miss appearing present speaks present miss bugs present as present miss bus President Bush is present miss player Peter's present player Peters the president's pooper Walker present super Walker's present mr. frog man Carrie you've had eight members present thank you alright so we will turn first to the governance issues and the consent agenda and I do have one question about one of the consent items which would be number one see five community school communities in schools of Tennessee and I did anyone else have anything else any other consent issues that you'd like to discuss off the consent agenda okay well I just had a quick question I noticed that we are funding communities in schools now and it was my understanding that we were that MNPs was funding communities community
003achieves as our in-house community in schools Community Schools program my question is have we funded communities in schools in the past is this a new practice because it was minor seeing that they were raising private funding and maybe they just raised part private funding and then we fund the rest of their activities but that was that's my quick question good evening miss frog I think the team is not on the call so I will respond to that question under our community achieves umbrella are several different programming strategies that exist so we do have our community achieve these we also have our Family Resource Center's and we also have communities in schools communities in schools has been under the umbrella for several years now providing services to selected schools particularly in our Rd schools area with
004regards to attendance and other wraparound supports and so I hope I answered your question if you need me to elaborate on anything else please let me know I think that's it so what you so they are they raise private funding but we also help fund their their work as well right that's correct okay okay well I will move that we approve consent agenda item 1 c5 if there's a second second okay so we I'm sorry this is your sorry I moved to approve the consent agenda that's fine with me all right so I'll withdraw my motion to approve the one item and move to approve the entire consent agenda is there a second second okay so there's a motion in a second David would you take the roll call vote please dr. Gentry prove it's
005cute vote sign is so broad I sell rug votes I'm the spearing aye spearing votes I miss bugs I spends no time this bush I wish bad sign is player Peters I display your peers but Simon's people Walker aye it's people Walker roadside mist Road I okay chair you have eight eyes thank you next we have the 2020 magnet schools Assistance Program competitive grant application resolution do we have a motion this is sherry I move approval it's on Constanta okay you you don't see them okay well resolution okay so this this is my mistake I suppose the resolution I thought was a separate matter is that a separate matter from the consent or is that still part of the consent it's listed on the agenda as part of the consent it's 1d and 1e both
006of those discussion of the resolution just to make some comments and I guess I can do that at this time so but we voted on it so I'm as a matter of procedure I mean I can help you with that if there's if you'd like some clarity but otherwise I cannot go ahead that's fine so if you want to take that up again a member of the prevailing vote would have to make a motion and then you'd have to have another member of the prevailing group in which every that motion prevailed unanimously so anyone can make that motion anyone can make a second then you'd have to have a two-thirds majority to reconsider okay I'm gonna make a motion to reconsider just to make some comments about the resolution that we've just approved and so
007I would appreciate a second second this is Jill okay can can I call for a vote please on that David yes miss gentry hi Jim's bedside mysel rod hi so adverbs I'm sparing i scary verbs Imus bugs I bugs bugs Imus Bush I wish votes Imus player Peters hi let's play a Peter thugs time is people Walker hi people Walker road sign is frog okay I have eight eyes I was taking the resolution separately but you're corrected it's under consent so so I just wanted to make a few comments about this resolution because I think it's important that the board stays looped in on on any decisions that are made by the administration and obviously our director schools has authority to make operational decisions on behalf of the district but you know this is an
008unusual time and a lot of the decisions that are made around the pandemic and responding to changes and numbers are gonna require quick decisions and real-time changes and so obviously we can't as a board have constant school board meetings to address those changes so but I do want to clarify I did have a conversation with dr. battle and I am getting some feedback just from the public concerns that we may be seating all of our authority to the to the director without having input and so so first of all I just want to clarify three points that I've already addressed with dr. battle first is that that that the decisions that are made and I don't think it's important to change the actual language of the resolution so I'm just going to to state these
009the concerns that I have and have an agreement from dr. battle and just move forward that way first of all I think it's important that the decisions that are made by dr. battles team that the board is immediately informed of any changes and that was part of the resolution but I just wanted to be very clear we will have we're going to get reports but we need to have immediate reports if there any major changes I think it's also important that dr. battle makes decisions on changes in consultation with the board chair which happens to be me right now but will not be me for long so whoever is the chair would have consultation with dr. battle about any major changes that are made and third I think it's also important to point out that
010the board must approve any funding changes that happen and that is that may not be necessary to state because that would be governed by statute but we will still have input on any changes in funding so those were the only comments I wanted to make if dr. battle wanted to want to say anything I welcome your comments otherwise I'm happy to move again to approve this resolution okay I'm gonna make a motion to approve the resolution as written second and he just got them yeah I have a question are you gonna speak to the second resolution aye which what second resolution II that's what I thought we were voting on now I'm this is where I'm confused I'm sorry I am talking to Paul II a resolution to approve the Nashville plan okay perfect so
011if you're not gonna change anything can we just make a get a motion to really consider Genda as in its totality totality either way excuse me I do have a comment to make about about ie before we move on okay miss miss frog I appreciate your comments the sentence that concerns me is okay to the extent that any board policies conflict with the Nashville plan they are temporarily suspended which means we are board policies are some of our board policies are even one of our board policies could be suspended temporarily if it can with the Nashville plan and that's a little scary to me we have our policies that have taken time and energy and that have been agreed on by this board so I would ask that before we suspend any board policies that
012conflict with a Nashville plan that dr. battle inform us of that dr. Ballard wouldn't would that be all right with you Jill this is Melissa this I just wanted to pipe in and say that this language is similar to the language that the board approved with regard to virtual meetings and that we suspended board policies that conflicted with allowing virtual meetings similarly here if there are board policies related to it's almost hard to envision what board policies may be implicated it could be a number it could just be very few with the Nashville plan that they would be suspended to allow for the orderly operation of school exactly so if my question remains the same if there are particular board policies that need to be suspended I would just ask that the board is informed
013of those prior to the time Kilis is Melissa again are you asking to amend the resolution then I'm not sure where we are procedurally are you making sort of a request similar to what that's because I do think that board notification is built into the resolution the resolution is actually not binding I'm asking for a commitment from dr. battle verbally that if a board policy is going to be suspended that she will inform the board of that particular policy that is being suspended temporarily hi Joe this is dr. battle I think that should not be an issue I think keeping in mind that any plans that we bring forth will come before the board I think the only scenario where is if there's like an immediate situation where there's a colvett response and we have
014to respond immediately given some and as Melissa said I can't even imagine which one it will be but just if there's a need for an emergency situation but otherwise all plans will be coming before the board before any execution or implementation so I think that is is agreeable understanding that you know when we when I make decisions regarding inclement weather we're talking about one or two days sometimes there might in this kovat error who knows but there could be a scenario where something comes up that might impact our ability to remain operational for a number of days that might require a quick response so that's the only kind of consideration I will put out there but as Melissa mentioned I can't imagine what what that could be given the policy waivers that have already gone
015before the State Board on or not behalf so I think that is doable for sure and of course reminding the board that our plans moving forward will come before you in the in the weeks and months to come thank you dr. battle that satisfies me and I'm happy to make a motion to approve the consent agenda as written all right thank you for your your support of my motion to rescind so that we can have a little discussion all right so David would you take a vote please dr. Gentry I the injury bug sign is so wrong I said all right votes I'm disappearing I disappearing birds I miss bugs I bugs books I miss bush I miss bush folks time as player Peters I this play appears those signs Cooper Walker alright people Walker
016but aside I'm this flow I spoke boats I met him sure yeah they dice thank you okay next we will turn to the directors report our people HR update thank you madam chair at this time I'm going to turn it over to dr. Chris Barnes our chief of HR to provide you with her our people HR board update good evening madam chair good evening board in dr. battle I'm pleased tonight to bring you our board update it's gonna focus a lot on our current staffing patterns and where we are you get advance this slide please as we talked about HR has really three main goals and all the work we're doing focuses in one of these three areas obtaining the best staff training them to be better and retaining those teachers and staff that are
017good for kids this report tonight is going to focus intentionally on next slide please our work to obtain and our work in retaining those teachers who have been displaced either through budgetary concerns or through consolidations so next slide please I want to say proudly that currently we have 39 schools that have zero certificated vacancies for the 2020 2021 school year in addition next slide please excuse me these are some of our tweets out that we've been doing every time a school hits their 100 percent staff mark I've asked them to send us something so we can share out with the community the work that HR and principals are doing in hiring and obtaining those good staff members next slide please these are just a few of them our HR twitter page has sending those out
018almost weekly so our next slide please further we have 63 schools with three or fewer vacancies and certificated areas that means that almost 75% or a hundred and twelve hundred and two of our 138 schools have three or fewer certificated vacancies currently for the 2020 2021 school year and we're very proud of the work that principals have been doing to advance that and to work with hiring the best people for their school if I could say next slide please this is just an overview and I took this from yesterday so you can see the numbers are even down a little more from when I sent the update on Friday currently we have 241 support vacancies 195 certificated and a grand total of 439 just for a frame of reference last year at this time our
019certificated vacancies were over 275 so we are moving in the right direction beyond just making sure we're obtaining the best staff we are also working to retain those staff that had been affected if you can go to the next slide please one more advanced please go back I'm sorry we do have teachers that were displaced due to budget and enrollment oftentimes if the enrollment is lowered or if a staff funding is lowered those people are displaced now this year we had 183 teachers who were displaced through no fault of their own meaning it had nothing to do with their performance it had nothing to do with the work they were doing with children it was simply a budgetary or enrollment issue instead of allowing those teachers just to look for their own jobs we've been
020supporting those 183 folks those are certificated and support I'm sorry it says teachers but those are both both ends of the spectrum and we've been lucky to place a hundred and twenty-six of those hundred and eighty-three so far and we're looking at it's about 69% and we're looking to place the rest of them in the month to come so our work has been helping those people look for vacancies helping place them in schools where their license and their ability will help support children in addition if you can go to the next slide please due to the school consolidations we had about 100 forty-two certificated and support staff that were affected by the school consolidation we only have 15 of those left who are awaiting placement so almost 90% of those displaced by school consolidation have
021been settled in new locations if you go to the next slide please there are some areas that we still want to pay attention to we have currently 19 math bacon C's and 42 exceptional education vacancies those 42 vacancies for exceptional that do cover the gambit of our high needs our resource and several different exceptional areas because those are specialty licenses in the support world we have about 50 for nutrition cashiers we're looking for and several more in the nutrition area and we are looking for about 25 exceptional education paraprofessionals so even though we have come a long way and done a lot of work there still is some work yet to go in those areas next slide please one more thank you as we've talked about when I first came in one of the concerns
022was about making sure we had actionable data in information about what our turnover meant and where it came from one more slide please this is a screenshot of our website for HR and as you can see we have put an exit survey one more slide please we have put an exit survey link right on our website so even if an employee has left our district they are still able to provide us with that information that we need in addition if you can go one more slide please and one more thank you in addition every time we receive a resignation notice this email goes out a personalized email goes out to every employee inviting them to take the link take the survey and also involve invites them if they have more specific concerns or they like
023a more comprehensive exit interview to contact my office and the HR team will be glad to meet with them to make sure that we get their feedback in that space if that is better for them next slide please Oh one to also add we have about over the last month or so we've gotten 150 responses to that exit survey and once I'm looking for a goal of about 200 and once I have those I will be analyzing parsing that data out I'll provide you that analysis and also to the executive directors so we can help support the retention and at individual schools just want to share with you a couple of quotes it's been really great to have principals actually email me directly and talk about the work that the hiring managers and the folks
024in the HR department have done and it's really private military prowess II the work that the HR folks are doing to to improve their customer service to the schools and to the principal's and I think I'm just going to leave that slide up there but that's that's the presentation I wanted to provide for you can I give you any more information or do you have any questions I'm just saying thank you mr. Barton says fabulous you just have this information that you guys are working hard and I'm glad to see teachers that were displaced are being placed and maybe one of the upsides of the sort of recession is that some of these support staff positions can be filled quickly along with school bus drivers so anyway thanks for all your hard work and your
025team yes ma'am madam chair yes Chris I want to thank you number one welcome to Nashville thank you so much for coming and moving your family and yourself and I know your family's in the process of moving and thank you so much for coming to Nashville I really appreciate the work that you're doing I especially appreciate the exit surveys and to keep up with why our teachers our employees are leaving I also want to thank you for keeping me updated on principal placements and I have one question you said that for all those who have been displaced 90 percent now have new placements in schools with classrooms and am I correct that we have 195 openings for certified teachers is that correct yes ma'am so you have out of the folks that you have hired
026this year those are not there they're not I know this couple of days didn't think about the process one is a promise of placement and another is an actual placement so those other folks are they actually placed in a school are they or are they on a list to be placed they're on a list to be placed if there's one problem it's hard to say that we have we do have some vacancies where we don't have any vacancies for someone specific licensure area when I talked about those 15 that are still to be placed from the consolidations nine of them our support staff and six of them are certificated staff and currently we're waiting for the right openings we're also trying to accommodate folks I don't know if you know maybe I'm just from the
027from the sticks but this is a big city and driving around it is challenging so we are trying to work with people to find places that are geographically convenient for them you know it's not fair to have someone who school got consolidated and make them drive an hour and a half to come to work in the morning so we're trying to work and we do realize there will be another sort of round of vacancies that comes up over the past month and we're confident that those people will slot into those vacancies as they come yes do you have a contingency I've heard from some principals that if we make the decision to go back to school in person in August that some teachers will quit at the last minute they'll either take a retirement but
028they don't feel comfortable coming back to to the environment of the school environment do we have a continue thinking about that and it's there a contingency plan of how to deal with those last-minute yes magnin sort of it's a it's a danger game of chicken that we're playing because we obviously don't want to have more staff than we have vacancies however we do know that there'll be more vacancies dr. battles built a very comprehensive plan for our reopening and we have some opportunities in there for staff that may not feel comfortable coming back to work because they're in a high-risk category or something of that nature and part of our hire forward plan as we talked about was to make sure that you know we get the right teachers and staff but then we also
029treat them in a way that they want to be in our district we support them we mentor them and we are hoping that some of the things we're looking at doing will reduce the number of teachers who leave us after the school year starts one very good example is in the past what we've done is when a teacher has been waiting for their license so they've applied for their license with the state and it sometimes takes two or three months we've been paying them as a substitute teacher rather than as a first year teacher and so we're looking for some ways to provide for a permit to teach for those folks so that they don't have to work on the substitute rate while they're doing the job of the teacher and that accounted for 40
030or 50 vacancies last year from what the principals were telling me so there's several different things we're looking at in that hire forward plan to provide for things like that yes thank you Chris I think to fact that not only are you an HR expert but you are also a previous educator so that goes a long way in dealing successfully with our turnover and our vacancies thank you so much yes ma'am and I would be remiss from telling you my folks who work with me are the experts they have been working diligently and hard and they've been you know answering the phone when I have a crazy idea at 9:30 at night and they've been helping shape this as well so I really the work is theirs and the the congratulations really go to them
031and we're looking to continue to do the things that we're doing to move things forward thank you thank you yes hi Chris how are you I'm good ma'am how are you I'm good you know when you first came to pretty Nashville you know I was pretty tough in this topic about our teachers and retaining and recruiting that kind of thing and I just want to tell you I am so super impressed well what you come in and you've done and we've never had this happen before I'm sorry never from in my time of being on the board and I'm sure some of my parties can agree but they've seen something that's different about HR so I will appreciate you so much I appreciate you for me and like mysterion said you stand in contact with
032us you're telling us about our vacancies that communication means everything and I just want to tell you your hard work your staff kudos to you guys continue that work continue what you're doing your mission is definitely not I'm not in vain because you're doing such an excellent job so I was going to tell you thank you for your hard work thank you for having those ideas at 9:30 at night that's how you get things done right so I appreciate you so much and thank you for keeping us informed and you know you're moving the needle so we appreciate that ma'am I just wanted a we're just getting started as well dr. Gentry I thank you madam chair dr. Barnes I just uh wanted to go back to the vacancies conversation you shared so 39 schools
033with no vacancies 63 schools with three or less three or fewer vacancies and so that leaves us that totals up to 102 so it still leaves us with a good bolus of schools that have according to your down four more vacancies right yes item is to know which of those schools especially how many of those schools that are looking at 4 or greater vacancies are on our priority schools list and you may not have that handy right now but if you could send that and then I would just the next timely and I guess we're not convening in July but I would be looking to see how we're going to address that right so we've made some changes and some adjustments we typically have a large number of vacancies in those schools anyway we've gone
034through an entire school year with some of those schools missing some key staff in math and literacy areas I don't know that the adjustments we made will see any benefit if we enter into the school year looking at the same level of vacancies for those schools and those students specifically I want to say it's for those students so I would like to see the numbers broken down even further with your bar as to the number of vacancies and in what subject areas and air in support areas are we still looking for for talent schools yes ma'am and I think even even further priority schools it's really our middle school space that is the most challenged and so the next time we do a board update for dr. battle for to send you I'll make sure
035I include those specific questions in there I have a question this is free to play or Peters can you tell me how many of people have retired through their natural ten year as in their career they've come to a maturity point and decide to retire and have those vacancies are those vacancies included or are we still waiting for more requirements to come through and be processed most of the folks who have retired usually let us know at this point because there is sort of a hold over before their first check arrives so a lot of them have told us already simply because that way there's not a break in in in salary that comes to them I think there is some question as as Miss pairing said about how many there will be late in
036the game because of the concern regarding health and wellness right now in May and June we had 104 retirements and resignations I don't break it out necessarily any different than that but we do look to try to find ways you know a lot of our folks do you like to retire and come back as 120 day employees and so they sometimes revolve the door and turn around and come right back but but I don't have the exact percentage of how many of those were retirements versus resignations okay it can also can you have a copy of this presentation after the meeting please of course one thing I want to note is that the numbers I am looking at our folks that we are taking through the process of hiring they've offered been off for the
037job they've accepted it the jobs do not come down off of the the job board unless we physically take them down there they don't come off until actually they're actually hired hired the very last step so some of the discrepancy you'll see is there are still jobs out there that have been offered and we're working to try to take those down to help us focus our efforts on the places where they most need to be there's miss Elrod thank you madam chair so I so you have 42 exceptional IDI teachers that are needed in 25 Paris is that correct yes ma'am what is our plan to try to find those specialty license positions it's it's difficult because the best place we usually find those folks are growing our pair of pros up into teachers you
038know we have several different programs to support them going through the process of obtaining their license it's hard to put an alternative teacher in an exceptional IDI position because the job has more than just children and and learning with it there's also a lot of paperwork there's a lot of rules and regulations to follow so we are looking to try the best spaces to encourage teachers we already have to go back and obtain their EE certification and transfer over but we are looking and just sort of beating the bushes for every time we find an EE applicant we send them towards those schools that have them okay and then what are we what about the 25 Paris we are hoping that some of the folks that we have that our support vacancies can move into
039that role as well and so we're just looking to prepare them and place them some principals are concerned about budget and things like that so there a little bit of everyone's holding their breath a little bit to see what happens with enrollment but usually our pair of propositions come in sort of later in the game okay so I guess my question is probably more along the lines of the 42 for the exceptional ed students this seems like a lot of positions so I'm curious is that an increase from in the past or is that on at is an average number that we usually have well one of the things I was very impressed with and I've been in collaboration and talk with the exceptional director and dr. Williams as well is we really work to
040have a very low student to teacher ratio for our exceptional ed students they're they're shooting for a 15 to 1 ratio and so the trick is to make sure that we've got those people going in the places where the specific needs are right Michael did 42 EE vacancies when I've looked at um I've got people in my department looking at Metro Nashville is the 38th largest school system in America so I've asked them to track number 32 number 45 or so to see what kind of vacancies they're looking at to see if we're missing something specific so the school is like us in large urban districts what are they struggling to fill as well and I will say the exceptional ed is a nationwide problem yes I think you know it's a double-edged sword I
041think it's amazing I came from a district that had a ratio of 1 to 34 exceptional in it and to have us reaching for one to 15 that does create a lot of EE vacancies which is a good thing because that's how we support children but that is a large hill to climb and so we're just doing the best we can to find it okay so the one the 15 to 1 ratio can still be met that's what we're reaching for with those vacancies that we currently have if I filled every one that's the plan yes ma'am okay we if we filled everyone got it okay thank you okay any other questions or comments all right thank you mr. Barnes thank you for the opportunity okay all right dr. battle do you have any more
042comments on this topic before we move to reopening of schools no me I'm not only a specific topic okay all right I will turn it over to you all right good evening board members it was good to see you this morning even under difficult circumstances a tannish Evers memorial service as I said at our last meeting it's gonna take a while to get used to being in these meetings without Anna she was a tremendous leader and a delightful person to know and I know we will all miss her dearly tonight I wanted to give you an update on our progress towards reopening our schools in six weeks next slide please the Nashville plan put forward a minimum standard for schools to follow when operating in the Cova 19 environment it's set forth some rules on
043what could happen in phase four phase three or phase one or two environment based on the mayor's roadmap for reopening as of yesterday Nashville is in Phase three of the mayor's plan which allows for schools to be reopened but with some significant restrictions and safety precautions put in place to mitigate the spread of koban 19 the national plan for reopening is a countywide framework for MMPs private and charter schools with the understanding that each organization and each school might have differences in implementation in order to create implementation plans and further guidance we've created a task force with three working groups consisting of district staff principals teachers parents union representatives health officials and other stakeholders who might provide important and necessary insight into how we can best reopen in August those working groups are operations and
044safety academic planning and student family and staff support next slide first up is the operations and safety work group consisting of 29 members they are working largely on the logistical implement implement implications for safely moving around on students and staff into buildings while keeping everyone safe and secure the group includes individuals representing our operations teams transportation nutrition services principals health officials and communications who are working to develop implementation plans and guidance for schools some key issues they're looking at include identifying scenarios in which a person might test positive for kovat the protocols are put in place for addressing that positive test and how to communicate that out just as we have protocols in place if we found a gun or another item in school or there was an emergency situation we need to have a
045consistent approach in place for when schools closed so that we notify staff parents students and the public at large but when a case presents itself this group is also developing further guidance for health screening and monitoring protocols to take the information in the national plan and put it into context for the school environment here at MPs they're looking at how we can put in cleaning and disinfecting protocols for daily activities and in the event of a positive kovat 19 case while also giving God is two schools on how they can safely accomplish open houses or other events without endangering the health of staff or families next slide our operations team has also already begun the process of purchasing PPE and disinfectant materials so that students and staff will be protected when school starts we know
046we'll need a lot of mass as well as gloves sanitizer and disinfectant to meet the needs of students and staff if we're going to follow health protocols thankfully we'll have funding from the cares Act grant to support these efforts and allow for a healthy supply when we begin school this fall obviously the overall amount required throughout the school year will be determined by the spread of Kovach 19 in the community next slide one of our greatest challenges we face is how to provide a consistent high-quality education in a variety of different environments and to do so equitably for students of all different grade levels and individual circumstances chaired by David Williams this team has five working groups focused on professional development curriculum and instruction supporting all learners devices and materials and ongoing support and evaluation
047next slide there are many issues to unpack in this working group how will distribute computers and supplies to students assessing students academic needs to help them make up for any loss of learning resulting from the school closure or summer making sure we have plans and structures in place to support all students at the start of the school year and training all teachers in the digital environment to support their students learning whether we are in class or working remotely next slide the student family staff support workgroup is looking at wraparound services and supports to give students and families a more productive working and learning environment and care for the needs of our mfps families a student's ability to learn is heavily influenced by their life and family environment also open 19 presents challenges to teachers and
048support staff above and beyond work we need to be looking at how to continue to support families and staff in times of distress or need especially already vulnerable populations who struggle with social distancing remote learning and many other factors that change daily lives as a result of the pandemic next slide please while our working groups are soliciting the input of individual teachers staff and families it is critical for us to get a broader sense of the mood and sentiments of our stakeholders before moving forward with finalizing plans for the next school year next slide and our staff surveys we broke it into two parts certificated and support staff in order to gain insight into the classroom and beyond for 4449 employees 3126 certificated and 1,323 support participated what we see here is that most teachers
049and support staff want to see either a hybrid approach or in person classless slightly more teachers one in person versus remote while slightly more support staff like the idea of distance learning over in-person classes the plurality of both like a hybrid approach which was defined as in-person or remote or staggered schedules between in-person classes and distance learning we also asked teachers how comfortable with remote learning they were and 86 percent of teachers said they were either somewhat or very comfortable with remote learning while 14 percent were not at all comfortable our cares at request includes new funding for teacher training in the virtual schooling environment and so we hope to see those numbers shift as we get closer to the school year toward very comfortable next slide not surprisingly among teachers teaching staff we found
050their preference for in-person classroom settings was highly correlated to their comfort level with remote teaching those who are not at all comfortable supported in-person classes by 67 percent to 6 percent for distance learning while a plurality of those who were very comfortable wanted to see distance learning and 41 percent wanted a hybrid approach next slide we also ask that you open-ended questions to gather feedback in our research assessment and evaluation teamwork to categorize and code those into categories for analysis here we ask them what is most important and they consider returning to in-person work what we're seeing is that the most important thing for teachers and staff is to see and understand the protocols and measures in place to provide for their safety and that of their students and then to see them put into
051action that also includes the emotional and mental health of students staff and Families there's also a strong desire by some to return to the normal classroom or work experience and there are two splits among those who have either a very low or very high fear of kovat 19:00 next slide when we asked how the district might address concerns they have about reopening the majority wanted to see the development and communication of specific plans procedures and protocols for the next year that's what our working groups are doing now we know that there will be some flexibility required at the school level but it seems very important that there be a common set of protocols in place so that all staff can rely upon them ones returning to the work environment it will be very important moving
052forward that we continue to review refine and reflect upon the protocols in place soliciting feedback from staff and families along the way about their efficacy and how we can improve next slide through our parent and family survey we solicited feedback from families about their preferences and desires for the upcoming school year here we can see that a plurality of respondents is not comfortable sending their children to school quite yet but 60% of respondents are either mostly comfortable or comfortable with returning to in-person classes in August nextslide Elementary families are the most comfortable with a return to in-person classes while families of students in non-traditional schools represented here on the chart as other are less comfortable sending their students to school those schools include Early Learning Center's alternative learning centers Harris Hillman Merle the virtual school
053and others next slide when asked the best option for their students the plurality one in person and the majority seventy-four percent one either in person or staggered about one quarter of parents would like to rely on distance learning when school starts next slide once again we see that elementary parents are most supportive of in-person classes which should not be surprising as elementary education is the most challenging from a virtual perspective and requires the most time and attention for parents to be successful the older the student gets support for remote learning grows with the most support from high schools or other schools next slide so what do we do with the data we've received it is clear that there is a strong appetite for remote learning options among 1/4 of our parents and teachers it is
054also clear through further exploration of our options that the type of staggered schedules required to teach all students in person while maintaining social distancing protocols would likely not be possible without significant investments in new teaching staff even with that there will still likely be many parents who wouldn't be comfortable sending their students to class due to Coba 19 concerns that leads me to the conclusion that we should be offering virtual schooling opportunities to as many families as possible allowing them to gauge their circumstances and decide how feasible it will be to support their child's education in a remote environment there are a number of factors that we still need that still need to be decided how this how will this work from a budgetary perspective how will divide up the work among teachers allowing some
055to move to remote teaching how to assign grading and responsibilities for those student outcomes on a school basis understanding there are budgetary implications for student based budgets ensuring students who need technology have it available to them we have computers on order from Dell but we won't have all of them by August so we must have an equitable way of providing these to the families that need them I don't have all the answers today but we are working to have those questions answered following the fourth of July holiday to give parents time to consider their options and decide what is best for their students and give us time to implement the staffing accountability and training plans necessary to pull this off one of the reasons I wanted to bring this idea forward now is so that
056we could get the questions and feedback from you and stakeholders that can look that we can log and work together as a team to have answered in a way that makes for a better plan to serve all students if enough parents opt for remote learning then we can reduce pressure on our school environments to better allow for social distancing protocols necessary to protect the health and safety of students and parents all right so I will I will continue on if there are questions we can I'm always come back to them but I also wanted to give you a brief update on the budget process so in addition to the remote learning plans let me give you a brief update quickly on the budget process if we can advance to the next slide next slide please
057we're a very appreciative of the Metro Council for prioritizing education during their budget process which has resulted in some additional funding for MPs that can be used to cover the deficit created by the 3% cost of living adjustment enacted in January as well as additional funding or petition potential funding for staff raises as you remember we've already identified ten million dollars in budget cuts and savings in the budget that this board adopted in May we requested an additional 15 million dollars in unrestricted funds for our operating budget to save or save all 50 million dollars in additional cuts the council adopted budget budget reduces that deficit in half which will help us to protect school budgets from cuts this year we'll have a more thorough analysis of what those savings look like it especially called
058board meeting to discuss the budget four point nine million dollars was allocated to a contingency account to raise the minimum wage for MMPs employees to $15 an hour just so we're clear this is enough funding to raise wages to $15 an hour but not to provide additional pay increases for those making above $15 an hour in order to reduce the compression effects of this finally the council created an 8 point 1 million dollar contingency fund for a step increase for certified and support staff in doing so the council sought to redirect money that was going to be allocated toward our fund balance however it can only be allocated if our fund balance is above 3% thankfully our staff have been very diligent about sticking to our savings and budget reduction plan to account for an
059estimated 62 million loss in sales tax revenue based on the numbers we've seen coming in so far sales tax revenue has not decreased as much as a Metro finance department predicted this means that savings will be redirected towards the fund balance helping to ensure we are well above 3% in order to access the contingency fund however the Metro Finance Department has not provided updated revenue projections and it looks like they would not be certifying our fund balance projections until potentially August or September after the May and June sales tax revenues come in from the state to metro and then to mfps one thing we'll have to be diligent about is making sure Metro understands that those funds that were placed into contingency accounts should be added to our baseline budget for maintenance of effort next
060slide last week the Tennessee General Assembly adjourned again but not before taking away funding that was supposed to go towards teacher pay raises across the state right right now as a result of that we are anticipating a potential loss in revenue compared to FY 1920 although we won't receive those certified numbers until July of course throughout every school year revenue projections urban flow and so this may be covered under normal operational efficiencies and ideally greater than anticipated local revenues next slide please the Metro Council approved the mayor's request to allocate twenty four million dollars from the city share of cares egg funding to provide laptops for all MMPs students and hotspots for families who need them unfortunately high demand nationwide for lower cost laptops for students means that the supply is very tight and there
061aren't 90,000 computers sitting in a warehouse ready to ship we've been working closely with Dale to provide them sooner and we anticipate we'll be able to get a portion by August with monthly shipment to during the school year we'll have to prioritize those students who need them for full remote learning and then put an equity lens on delivery for those students without computer access at home last week we also found our initial application with the state of Tennessee for cares AG funding to support remote learning our PPE and account for nutrition services revenue losses we are still in discussions with the state about our funding formulas and are awaiting approval so that we can receive the fund funding and allocate it accordingly so with that madam chair I will close out my directors report and
062definitely make myself available for any questions from the board okay thank you dr. Bethel um are there questions or comments I have a question Stroeve okay miss bugs doctor battled the students who still have laptops from this past year are we doing an exchange of laptops are we working with students who didn't have them first as I know there was a two laptop limit per household so maybe you know just could you walk me through through that absolutely our current plan for students who are in possession of one of the 10,000 devices that we deployed over the spring will continue to have those devices we will not collect those until we will be replacing it with one of the newer devices so those students will be able to maintain access to those devices until the
063new device comes in in which we will swap them out with regards to distribution of the other devices will definitely be prioritizing with an equity lens as well as students or families who might opt for the virtual option going into next school year and so will be duly approaching that particularly in a priority school spaces and students and families who do have a have an immediate need for devices and for connectivity okay and then for one-to-one support staff so let's say that there's a staff a pair pro or a support staff member who has assigned one student and but the pair Pro doesn't have a laptop have we considered how they'll be working with their students or what that might look like in the following yes we had initial plans for all employees with regards
064to their roles and responsibilities in a remote setting I will tell you that the workgroup team is hard at work right now really updating those plans given that we will likely have two scenarios in the virtual setting and the in-person option for families moving into the fall and so we're adapting our plans now anticipating that regardless of the structure that the family may choose that we can immediately engage the student and the adults the employees have the resources that they need in order to maintain contact and to deliver a quality education so our original plans had roles and responsibilities for everyone including our one-on-one support but we will have to adapt that and our routine is in the process of adapting that and we'll support those employees with the right resources so that they can
065execute upon those plans okay and kind of to follow up with that do you see that being a major budget adjustment is that something we need to help advocate for or do you think we'll have funding for those resources yeah I what we have I'm currently with our certificated staff first majority of our certificated staff already have devices the space that we'll need to land in for certificated staff will likely be around connectivity so we are still advocating and getting resources to our certificated staff in that space for our support staff we will continue to have the need I mean to be able to fill the gap around devices and connectivity so that will continue to be a space that will need to close some gaps and and continue to advocate around to ensure that
066all of our adults are equipped also with the resources they need to work with our students if we what we're building into our plans is for the adults and for the students who will be in the virtual space we will prioritize devices and connectivity to those individuals so make sure that they do have those resources we are also planning for a blended approach even in a face-to-face scenario we have to be prepared in the future to pivot in the event that our numbers increase or we see a significant spike in any particular community or across the district and so we're planning for all of it at the same time which means that all at the same time we've got to equip our certificated staff and support staff with devices and connectivity okay I had another
067question but I'll come back to it because I just slipped my mind so thank you for that no problem thank you very is thank you i dr. battle really appreciate this this presentation and would you send this PowerPoint to all board members and if it's possible to get this prior to board meetings it's always helpful to have it prior to a board meeting so that we can digest some of it before the presentation I have several questions one it's about the task force we we know that elementary is very different than middle school which is very different than high school are there principals represented in each of the task forces for elementary middle and high school yes I believe we have software that now we have added a few more principals to our work groups
068we've they've just been so gracious and volunteering their time to meet and to get to get their insight so I think we balanced it out now in all of our workgroup teams I'm so happy to share that and also with regards to I will definitely get you this information part of the delay with providing the feedback data was we wanted to get every response we could into the data to share with you we had some goals of how many thousands of responses we wanted for them from parents and from our staff so I opted to leave it open to make sure that we could gather as much feedback as possible so absolutely I will get you the data and definitely understand the need for having it in advance when possible so that you can also
069digest it but we will definitely make it available to you and our numbers should be up-to-date from all the responses we've received thank you and about the cleaning supplies I hear it since we have outsourced our custodial our custodial staff I hear from some of my schools that there are times where they don't have the supplies disinfecting supplies cleaning supplies that they need because the company that that we've outsourced to doesn't always provide that so it looks like there's money in our budget from what you presented today to supplement that but we might need to follow up with principals to be sure that the company is providing what they should be providing and then we can supplement on top of that but the most important thing is having these disinfectants for our students about training
070it looks like there will be a combination possibly remote and in in-house learning and that may look different across the district it's are we going to offer training for our teachers this summer so that they understand more especially in literacy so that they understand more specifically how to teach guided reading and the different process writing that is incorporated and balanced literacy to do that alone offers challenges and I think teachers might need some additional support so will that be part of this summer training yeah absolutely I think what we also saw in the feedback that came back from our wonderful staff and employees I'm so thankful that they all took the time and our parents to provide their their feedback and we got a lot of feedback they say thank you for asking and for
071letting us lend our voice but what we did get back from them are two things that you've mentioned one making sure that we have protocols in place but also those resources the disinfectant the hand sanitizer all those things that our teachers will need and our staff will need to make sure they're following all the social distancing and the proactive measures we want in all of our schools the second thing the second thing that also did come up that you mentioned was around training we know the importance of making sure that our our staff are trained to prepare for the start of the school year one of the timelines that we were up against with regards to budget we knew that we were in a targeted saving space for the month of June and so we
072initially communicated out to all staff with regards to our training plans for June now that we're on the backside of the Metro Council budget being approved our cares Act being submitted and now being able to present recommendations to the school board for approval of our budget for next year we can finalize the the depth of training that we can provide for July and moving into the school year now I say that to say they will be ready to hit go when it's time for us to do that so the team has been hard at work planning around what the needs are taking in the feedback from our team around what they need in order to prepare for various scenarios moving into the fall with this data and with this conversation I think what it's also
073helped us to do is to really focus in on what the true scenarios will likely be I know I'm a couple weeks ago we started planning around four scenarios when I spoke about it two weeks ago I talked specifically about three so now we know we've got two primary scenarios it will be focusing on for next school year which will further help our team deliver quality professional development to all of our employees in preparation for the start of the school year right thank you two more comments I want to commend you for the surveys that you have distributed and sought feedback from our teachers and our employees and our parents so thank you I know that was a big task and it's so important at this time thank you and the other thing is I
074appreciate that you are thinking about this in terms of we don't all have to do it the same way Elementary again I mean just thinking about wearing masks and social distancing at the elementary level and at the high school level I mean this there's different different problems different challenges at each so I'm so glad that you have principles and in those and there's various committees so that you can hear from them because they are on the ground with the students absolutely and I think this is an opportunity given the feedback that we have received to be as responsive as we can to our families and our employees trying to set conditions that are supportive during this you know new new time new kovat era that we were experiencing and so I think you know as
075the board has commented and has expressed to me that we want to be responsive to the needs of others while also keeping at the forefront that we want to continue the SEL and academic engagement and progress for our students so that's what we're looking forward to do thank you I'm Jill for their feedback and again thank you to everyone who took out any time in their day to provide this quality feedback to us it really has helped us refine our recommendations to the board moving forward and I look forward to providing even more opportunities to define these plans as we move forward so I know in hearing this feedback in the direction we might be going there's going to be questions there's gonna be wondering and I'd rather have them now than then in August
076so if you have questions if you if you have things circling around to your mind we want to hear it so that we can work towards solving those challenges now in preparation for smooth smooth start in August thank you dr. battle thank you thank you I just got some questions I'm sure all my colleagues do too this is probably going to be one of the hardest years in the history of public education in this country and so I know that you guys are working 24/7 and appreciate that a couple of questions is there a way to get the survey data that you did with parents disaggregated maybe by school or cluster I'm just curious if there are parents who are more worried in one part of town than the other perhaps we know that 50%
077of the cases are in South Nashville right now are those parents more concerned more likely to keep their kids home than other schools do we how do we prepare for that if there's an imbalance of kids who don't stay in the school for example some curious of that if that's possible to get that information just for a point of reference for us as we think about messaging yeah absolutely I think as you're looking at the data just keeping in mind that we do have variance and the percentage and number of responses by schools so what we don't want to equate to is won't one response in one school to a hundred and fifty responses in another so just you know for context kind of keeping that in mind again part of I was just kind
078of trying to summarize this and pull it together today was because we wanted to continue to get more responses from as many families as as we could so we can absolutely share some additional data with regards to school and I think I shared a little bit of data with regards to tier level and we could see some of the differences and some of the requests given the elementary middle and high school so absolutely we can share additional data that would be helpful to you as board members as we move towards the start of the school year okay I'm curious from the cares next money you know secretary DeVos asked for what was considered an not the normal distribution of funding to go to private schools this year the you know the equitable services allocation and
079so I'm wondering if you know of that money that was sent to private and charters what percentage is it more than what we traditionally should distribute based on title 1 allocations or was it I'm just curious if anybody knows yeah Hank do you want to jump on and answer the question I do and I'm also feeding a baby yes thank you mr. Walker fortunately based on the letters of intent the they did not come in as high as we originally estimated you ask a good question about how it compares to the other federal funds that they receive in the percentage and I will check on that you're correct that typically that's distributed based on the poverty based need of a student and this was based on the actual enrollment in the school but fewer schools
080chose to participate than we originally estimated and so so that was good news because more the money could go to public schools okay thank you I'm curious as your teams are deciding lots of important moving parts this is not about federal funding if you want to go back to Henry so if we have an outbreak in a school for example of kovat if we see a hot spot in school what is the decision matrix have you guys decided yet is that school closed does a part of the building closed does a feeder pattern closed have you guys started thinking about that I've had some questions about how that's gonna work I have and I can reference the Nashville plan but first our work groups have been planted towards that so Chris Henson do you want
081to add any response to the question regarding our covert response in a particular school or multiple schools and we have as dr. battle indicated earlier we have a representative from the Metro Health Department on our workgroup and so part of our discussion as of late has been just exactly that but what what would happen if we have a student who ends up testing positive or a staff member and I shouldn't say what would happen because it will happen what would happen what would we do and so we're gonna be dependent upon the health experts and the health professional to help us determine what that needs to look like and so I don't I don't think that they've come to a full conclusion as of yet but that is a part of our discussions in our
082in our work group along with many other things but we would really be depending upon the health professionals when that does occur and I hope that gives you enough answer knowing that we're gonna need more specificity as we get closer to the school year beginning you know with regard for the Nashville plan the one thing that may not be widely known is that we do have an health expert in house in Nicole Poole and she is our primary contact with the mental health department and what we did establish was that we would use that train of recording up through the Metro Health Department to make informed decisions with regards to any COBIT outbreak as we move forward so we do have that structure in place and what might not be widely known is that is
083the same process we use for any other illnesses or outbreaks that we could face throughout the school year so when people ask do we follow how many students or faculty ask for the flu we do and that's the process that we utilize to make an informed decision around any particular school closure or for a district live so we would use it the same structure it will become a little more complicated with regards to individual school closings which is the exactly the work that Chris and his team are working is gone giving the contact tracing that will be necessary in this this kovat space thank you so I'm curious about when we have students come back and what six weeks if your instructional team has put some thought into how they're going to assess learning loss
084and how they're going to assess which students have lost ground and which students have not for example or moved ahead and will see all of the above is there I know the state has released a version of Tianna ready that's not right it's not for public reporting it's not for accountability and strictly just it's an offensive version of an assessment that districts could use but have we thought about using map testing I'm just curious if we're gonna be able to get a handle on where kids are so that families and teachers can work together to move kids forward after all this lost time yes David Williams is who's chairing the academic work group and they have split up into subcommittees to account for assessing learning loss as well as many other factors the one thing
085that we have considered and talked about is the need for us to address learning loss to address the transition I mean our students ended abruptly they're their last school year so how do we account for that but at the same time keeping you know high expectations in front of our students we want to make sure that we still have our students accessing grade-level material but we do have to take the time to assess where students are caring for those social-emotional learning needs this has been very tragic for a lot of our students and families and so we are considering our approach to assessing learning loss so that we can build strong plans into the school year so that will definitely be a part of our reporting out and the next couple weeks with regards to
086what that will look like in a virtual space and also what that will look like in a face-to-face environment we are also considering how the two can have a great deal of consistency because at some point we will get past this covet era and will you know be likely in a more of a normal face to face I'm scenario will always be planted for the blended learning but it's all it all has to be playing for right now so yes that is a consideration and I don't believe David is on the call to speak any more in depth about that but the team will be prepared to share out these specific plans in the weeks to come with regards to how we plan in Metro Nashville Public Schools to assess student law so there's lots
087of guidance and ideas out there and we're trying to take everything in stride doing what's best for our students to make sure that they have a an efficient and sufficient transition back into to the school year the last thing I'm going to say I know that there's active advocacy for further stimulus funds from the federal government and I don't know what shape that's going to take and what that's going to look like but I do think we're gonna have to invest some meaningful resources into mental health supports and social-emotional learning supports for students and hoping we can leverage community partners alright I think that we're just gonna have to be really intentional welcoming students back in a way that acknowledges all of the different challenges that they face and so just want to make sure
088that's still a priority among the many many many things that you guys are trying to figure out right now so that's that'll do it for my questions thank you absolutely thank you I think you're on mute I'm Christian mani you could have whispered that to me dr. battle I hate I just remember my question in my apologies but just for protocol purposes how should families go about I'm sorry if I missed it but how should families go about letting the district know if they do want to engage in virtual learning you know if they decided to last minute do they just send their principal an email and receive their laptop or what you didn't miss it at all we've not we've not released that plan yet but what we are looking for is a very
089systematic way by which families would opt into the virtual space we want to make sure that it's simple we want to make sure that every family has genuine access to be able to do so we will be rolling out some of the expectations around it if you do opt into the virtual space to account for it you know we have a very transient population but in this space we need pretty good consistency with with where students and families land so that will be information that we will be sharing in the weeks to come I just think it's important to get ahead of the conversation so families and and our staff know what we're thinking about and we're planning towards so they can be considering what's best for their student and Families get all the logistical
090aspects of these options out there beer so perfect and then I wanted to ask what is it that we can be doing to help you all do you need and yeah just what do you need from us Hey feedback is critically important every family dynamics and situation is different so if there are considerations even if it's you know individual consideration we need to know about it we need to hear it so that we can be planning for it now I think just reminding everyone that this is a new space for all of us will all have to be flexible we'll all have to be able to adjust to this new way of connecting engaging and educating our students and so any feedback recommendations that you have that you receive would greatly appreciate us we would
091greatly appreciate and I'm sorry we would greatly appreciate that so feel free to engage with your communities in any way that you see fit and share that information back with is if somebody missed the surveys that were going out we need to know that we need to know that we there are other avenues by which we can connect with them and account for their voice in this process as we move for okay Thank You Sharon so you know my world is centered around on our little people you know getting our kids ready for in the garden and the biggest concern I saw on the PowerPoint presentation that elementary parents do you want to see their students thank you wise if they can't go back to school because we know how important that particular grade levels
092that that great need in order for them to be very successful born into a middle school in high school and I worry about kindergarten that's what I worry about too because you know we have to do vertical learning and I'm not sure you guys have talked about what that looks like because we know that that is such an area that we have preschoolers that are still at home that are not in preschool or of course you know that we haven't been in full about almost four months but they miss that foundation so I'm really really worried I think a lot of parents I've spoken with that are getting their kids ready for kindergarten that they're worried because virtual learning is gonna be very difficult for those students to be able to grasp those very high
093need you know Laura supports so that they can be successful going in first second third grade fourth grade but that's what we that's why worrying about do you have a plan for those students because I think this is Berger gonna really need to focus on especially with those kindergardens coming in this school year and I'd be the first petunia I'm very worried about that process I know at my Center we definitely prepare students for kindergarten but there are other centers other you know care places that are not doing that not that it's a bad thing it's just that you know we have to really worry about that foundation or I can't involvement somehow we're going to address those needs because virtually I think that's where parents are worried about and again safety is always important
094bow is number one and with this common area we don't know what's going to happen of course in the fall even as we're planting right now and of course you know you said that so you haven't planned about those kindergarten yeah so so the good news is if you've seen the work group teams they are large because we want to make sure that we have representation from every space and so our early learning leaders and and lead leaders at central office and externally are part of the work group and so the with intent we have them a part of the academic planning we have them part of the operations as well as the supports so that we can have all these considerations in play so when you're thinking about our pre-k students we're even thinking
095about our youngest younger learners in in kindergarten when you think about our exceptional ed students when you're thinking about our English language learners but were you thinking about all those groups of the students who have varying needs we're trying to plan around all of them and what they will look like you a remote space is a parent selects that immediately think about thing back to the spring when we'd shifted to promote learning for three through twelfth grade what we did for pre-k K wanted to look different than what we did for our third through twelfth grade now we now have the ability to capture some of our younger students and our Schoology plan before our pre-k and our kindergarten student is it looked different I'm from the veer began and so we knew that we
096had to do things like get them a nipple ative x' we knew that their devices looked a little bit different we knew that we were connecting with them much differently via the internet or the television so the team is I'm diligently working around what the plans should look like and how they should be varied given the age of the students we need to make sure that everything is age-appropriate for our students as we're planning for the in-person and for the virtual so absolutely those voices are around the table to make sure we don't miss our youngest learners especially as they're preparing they're in their foundational years to prepare them for their experiences in elementary school middle school in high school and you'll you said after the fourth of July's will be coming back to come
097on look at some of the well things that are going through phone okay thank you everything for the welcome okay it's player feeders okay we to be meted I have two questions the remote learning we expecting teachers so if I'm you know a fifth grader assigned to Miss Jones in person classroom my parent decides to do the virtual classroom is Miss Jones still going to teach me virtually or minus my sent to another class setting that separate from his Jones to do my education yeah there's a thousand ways to approach that's the Merriam but what would likely happen is you would not get your teacher assignments until we know if you're opting for virtual or if your for face-to-face we're going to be looking for as many budget-neutral scenarios as possible to make that happen
098and so we will be trying to match where parents opt into the school structures that the student is assigned to because we want to keep our students assigned to and connected to their selected schools or their neighborhood schools wherever they where they've opted into so there once we get beyond this they can transition back in smoothly with teachers who are also serving in that learning community so it would likely happen in the opposite direction more than likely where we would know first which which structure you're opting into and then assign teachers accordingly okay thank you yeah that's look started so on the teacher and how would the teacher end but that you addressed that in the question that we're not expecting teachers kind of play both roles as in-person and tech as you know technically
099very taxing physically and emotionally when you're teaching and training over online the other part is outreach how are we out reaching Gardens survey is only online are we providing robo calls for people who do not have access to internet or technology how are we doing outreach for the survey and then also how we're going to outreach for the information I want to be also that we're very intentional kind of given some of the criticism that we've had in the past about how the outreach particularly to certain communities whether it be language barriers or whether the economic barriers to having access to communications that we as a administration are very intentional that we're stretching ourselves to make sure we're communicating to the fullest extent about this complexity of this I know we're gonna ask for a
100little now hopefully what people give us a lot of grace as we've listed we're in very uncharted territories but also we're doing our due diligence to make sure we're communicating to different populations giving where they are at the given moment and giving where certain parents might be working first second shift or even third shift and that we be able to communicate them in a fair and equitable way given that we're in its uncharted territory about how our education students and indemic yeah so all of the above we're leveraging all of our avenues of communication to seek this feedback particularly with regards to the family survey the reason that one of the reasons that we did choose to continue with the platform that we use is that many of our schools are already using that platform
101and for those of you who are not familiar with possibly you get a via text message and so we already knew that particularly in our priority schools that families were already used to the possible surveys and so those were there's also the survey system that we utilize a few weeks back to assess how remote learning went and so we went that route knowing that we got a high level of engagement with parents with using that type of survey but we've also utilized our social media platforms and all other tools to push that information out so the families were aware to to to participate we did the same thing with our staff I know we sent an email out we we did some blasts I spoke to the principal last week and encouraged them again I'm
102in a virtual setting to provide their feedback and and over the weekend we received like 300 more responses so we will continue to leverage all of our communication platforms to engage as many families as possible with the with the possible a it also translates into the families native language and so just all those considerations we try to keep it played to engage and hear back from as many families as possible and safe and then one more quick question so the funding for the PPE equipment and the more the physical structure of the school that's a separate pot of Kara's money then from the laptops that that are provided to help supplement that funding for it yes the devices and connectivity was a part of the mayor's cares Act funding what you saw tonight was our
103MPs cares act funding application that we've submitted and a portion of that did go to PPE thank you thank you dr. Gentry I just have one quick question and I think you alluded to it earlier when you were presenting the data are you leaving the survey opening a little bit longer we we left it open through today thus far what we will be doing is now that we have a set of data that we can utilize and help guide us we will be utilizing some additional survey data questions to help us go deeper around where we should be going next so now that we have a better idea around where our families parents and staff are now we can ask even more detailed questions about their needs as we're moving forward so this survey will
104likely and but we will likely follow it up with additional survey and feedback opportunities and I just want to just reiterate the importance of miss Cooper Walker's request to see that data disaggregate it so I mean just want to ensure that we've got at least representative feedback from all portions of the city yep that'd be welcome miss Elrod thank you madam chair so I have several questions so my first question is in regards to our I guess we're keep referring to as our PPE funding so within that and when then our operations structures are we going to be doing any testing of students or teachers or staff or any one of those anybody else that would be inside of our schools are we going to do any testing four people are gonna be inside of
105our schools okay Chris you want to take the first stab at that and that I can reference the the natural plan with regard particularly to students when they return to and as you can imagine that has also been a part of our discussions in our work group and what we've tried to look at is the feasibility of doing certain things because particularly with the size of maybe some of our high schools even middle schools the feasibility of doing something for all students are all staff on a daily basis just isn't there we have not necessarily discussed testing what we've talked about is if there are if there's an exhibit of symptoms then the school nurse or the health department nurse in our case would then isolate the student or staff member and I'm assuming at
106some point there would be a test that's something we need to nail down good question that we have not at this point received the final answer as far as what that testing might look like at the school level it's mainly been if a student or staff member exhibits symptoms then of course every school is going to have a number of the thermometers non-touch thermometers where that can be obviously taken and then looking at any of the other symptoms but we'll raise that at our next meeting on Friday dr. battle you may have more to add no I'll share that you know based upon the CDC guidelines and the recommendations that have come from the health experts it is it is not recommended through the national plan or via our health experts to do massive testing
107for students prior to the start of the school year or every day just because of how can change but as Chris mentioned we do have plans in place to provide an in via the state as well they provided thermometers for us to be able to check for symptoms throughout the school day so just so everybody's clear about that it has not been recommended by the health officials that we do massive amounts of testing before schools the for school or daily due to feasibility and due to the likelihood of steel being able to transmit the virus beyond having a fever sure you may give me a symptomatic okay so I want to make sure I understood particularly mr. Henson's comment and then from reading the Nashville plan so if we have a student that is showing
108symptoms then they're gonna be quarantined inside the nurse's office and then it is there's gonna be a discussion on Friday potentially of if we're going to provide or do testing to see if it's allergies or not allergies or whatever it might be that's correct we've mainly been talking about since all our buildings are so individually unique no school building is the same and so when we talk about a nurse's office that may not necessarily exist at a school so we're looking at alternatives alternative locations that would be we would be able to keep students so and or staff members but particularly students isolated and away from other students and staff members and then if there's of course more than one keep everyone socially distant so we've mainly been concentrating on that aspect but but again
109we'll we'll discuss that with the Health Department at our next meeting on Friday okay and then I guess my follow-up to that is I wasn't sure many of us know the Health Department is sharing their data with the police department lots to be said about that but are they going to be sharing that information with us as schools you might have to have you reset your question I understand is that they are no longer doing that if I'm not mistaken our living but before I jump too far into there Melissa rubbers do you want to offer any commentary to that but I'm pretty sure that that practice of sharing with the police has has ended Melissa do you want to add anything first before I go deep into my response no I agree that practice
110has ended yes okay and we would be maintaining our district practices with regards to when part of what we've already been talking about is when we notify staff and families with regards to cases because of our protections we're not even able to say who the student was and we will go through our contact tracing protocols with the department they will they will take the lead on that and that's what they've committed to but we still have all of our protections in place for our students and families and our employees okay so though that practice has ended with the police thankfully we're not going to be asking for that or anything so we're not getting any of that it would be sharing we wouldn't be sharing that information now got it okay has been a question
111and then my father what questions are really about all the computers and I frankly have sent a really long question or series of questions about the computers which I'm not going to ask all of them right now but I guess I'll ask them most of the most pressing ones is ninety thousand pieces of hardware no matter what they are but particularly because our laptops and hotspots is an exceptional lift for us particularly because we already have a small or IT group we have a group that needs more people already and they already have other responsibilities so my concerns are with a significant piece of material responsibilities is there going to be like a dedicated IT or help desk line for parents and students as they're getting used to using these new pieces of technology and
112the software that's on them I know that our assumption is a lot of our kids will know how to use the laptops because they've been using them inside their classroom but particularly for elementary age students that's always that's not always the case and so what is our plan of trying to help parents is it a dedicated line is that training what are we doing to help make sure that they can use what we give them so do we have anything in plans for that I know your team has been working on this do you want to offer what we know thus far sure and I have seen those questions thank you doctor severe Doug Renfro who heads up our IT department has has submitted some responses we're still massaging massaging that and so hopefully we
113can we can get those answers to you we did have a dedicated help desk when we went through the initial distribution of laptops back earlier we plan to continue to do that and also to beef that up and to potentially reorganize some of the IT staff to provide more resources for that help desk and so at this point that is that is the plan and without going back and looking at all Doug's answers I don't want to misspeak and so if let us work through those questions and get those responses back to you but I I do know that the plan is to continue and to beef up that helpdesk where students and parents and Families can either call in or email any issues that they're having and hopefully they will receive a timely response
114got it okay thank you for I assumed that you guys had seen that you know once again 90,000 pieces of equipment is a huge lift for us and we are like everybody I said we're gonna need some grace from everyone on that but we need to also make sure that not only we're providing it but that it's usable when we provide it and so I want to make sure that we have support services not only for our teachers because the assumption is going to be that our teachers can help with these pieces of hardware because they came from the schools and that's not a fair responsibility to put on a teacher but it's also going to be necessary for our parents and for the kids as well and of course to make sure that they're
115safe computers so that there's complete access to a parent controls and filters that are needed so thank you for all of the heavy lifting I look forward to those answers and I'll just add into that last piece that you mentioned because I remember the response the the laptops that will be distributed will have the same filters the same protections that that any of our computers would have in schools that's the way that that's being configured and so those would not be any different than the computers that we have in schools in that regard thank you thank you yes thank you okay well principals choose who their virtual teachers will be we're still in the process of making those determinations but will principals be heavily involved in that process absolutely what we what we're working on
116is the the qualifications like what what how do you prioritize who should get first kind of dibs in the remote space versus not we definitely want to be considerate of our employees who have underlying health concerns we want to we want to also make sure that we have strength in and teachers who will be working remotely and so we'll be building out somewhat of a protocol for principals to you use to help them make informed decisions and of course on the front end we'll get principal input and how that protocol should be developed so we are working towards that to make sure that we are seriously considering the health and well-being of our employees who definitely need the remote setting and then also teachers who are just gurus and the remote setting and can do
117a fabulous job keeping our students engaged in learning rate and has to be the any consideration about perhaps not starting kindergarten and pre-k in the fall maybe postponing that until after the beginning of the year when there's less chance that those kids could get sick because we're doing the remote learning for pre-k and kindergarten students would be very difficult and then maybe having them continue or doing some summer school or extending the year for that population we have definitely considered phases of opening up next school year I think what we have seen in the data is that our strongest area of parent desire for in-person is an elementary space and so I think we've got to take that in consideration that our youngest learners families are desiring to get them back to a sense of
118normalcy wherever possible and when we can practice good social distancing so I think we would need to be responsive to that but at this point we are considering every strong practice that will set our students up for success we also have to keep in mind that we have outside of pre-k I'm thinking about kindergarten we have state laws and and requirements that we have to follow with them out with the amount of time that they're engaged in learning throughout the day so we would have to take that in in consideration and we also as I mentioned earlier we have to make decisions that are age-appropriate for our students and so when we say we think about remote learning and virtual learning space we have to envision something different for our pre-k and K students if
119that's a space that they opted into I think we would not be doing ourselves justice by thinking of it and planning for it in the manner that we would a high school student and so we would need to make that adjustment to make sure that we're giving them the best that we can offer in this during this covert era yes and kind of in the same line will we require all high school students then to be virtual since that is what the parents seemed to be most comfortable with we're thinking less something and lists of a requirement I think that we wherever possible as we're making these plans I want us to be my recommendation will will be for us to be as responsive and supportive to our families to our students to our employees
120as possible to set us up for best success and so while we do have a large portion of high school students who would like to according to their families or could be successful in the remote environment I'm we will definitely also have our share of students who will need to be in a face-to-face environment I mean you know and I just fundamentally I there's not much they can replace a face-to-face environment anyway and so for some of our students it's going to be the best way for them to engage and to learn and to get back to a sense of normalcy and so as opposed to a requirement the way that I would like to recommend our plan being is to be as responsive as possible to the needs of everyone during this very difficult
121time and I keep reminding everyone that nobody caused it nobody could have planned for it so we've got to do the best we can to get through it as quickly as possible hopefully we get through it to make sure that we are closing gaps that we are addressing any learning loss and can accelerate learning outcomes for our students at the same time yes well this may be an outlier but if a child chooses a virtual learning atmosphere but then wants to participate in extracurricular activities like sports after school will that be a consideration that will be considered definitely and that's why we're trying to build a structure where students remain with their assigned school whatever school that they've chosen they just might be engaging in a virtual setting and so we want to keep that
122sense of community we want to keep that sense of connectedness wherever possible so that students can continue to you know kind of move as cohorts with teachers that they know they care about them but that they're also connected to clubs and extracurricular activities that we know really support many many of our of our students and so I mean I've been talking to school teams and principals and teachers I mean they've been doing virtual clubs over the summer and during the spring our athletic teams have been working out virtually over the last you know couple weeks or so and so we want to keep those connections available for our students and so we've got to be thinking about our structures to keep students assigned to their zone schools or their choice schools so that they can
123continue to engage in those activities we don't want to do anything that takes away a strong enriching learning experience for our students so anything that we can protect in this space that will be a priority for us appreciate your flexibility if if a student is sick and they are at school and they or they develop symptoms of kovat while they're at school what will be the process I mean going to a school nurse that's also caring for other students and giving medication that would probably not be the best way to isolate that student and and sometimes parents take a bit of time to be able to get off work and get pick up the student I'm sure you thought about that as well yeah it's one of the protocols in our appendix for the Nashville
124plan what our world routine now is doing is bringing in context to as Chris said so we're thinking through now now that we know what our protocol is and we have our contact in house and we know who our contact is at the Metro Health Department and they're going to take responsibility for the contact tracing so on and so forth we have our script ready for when we call parent so we have to do over call that we've been working through all of that but what Chris and team is working on is that like in a school building first list we got to make sure that we're very clear on who has a nurse and we're working with the Metro Health Department and see if we can get a nurse in every school then we're
125looking at the facilities what what are the what are the facility constraints that would allow allow us or prohibit us from following this plan and so that's what they're working through now so it's one thing to have the mayor's we're opening got to have the national plan but then you got to think specifically about each school and so when we say each school then like takes the plan it works the plan there are specifics about schools and the ages of kids that we have to consider to make sure the plan is actually working so to your question we have some schools that have spaces that used to be health clinics or that aren't health clinics right and so you have more of a likelihood to be able to respond and then scenario more effectively then
126you have some smaller schools where the nurse doesn't even have a dedicated space so how do we account for that so that's what Chris and his work routine is working on to make sure that we have those individual plans and I think it's important for us to be clear that we will have district plans and district protocols but we've got to account for some of the variances that could occur in individual school spaces so there there is not always a one-size-fits-all when you're thinking about implementing and so that's what we're trying to think through now yes I did my last question and I suspect this this has come up before as well but for students who not doing their work in distance learning what will be the protocol I don't know that we can demand
127that they come in but what will be the protocol to help those students become more engaged and complete their work and you know learn from our school environment yeah I mean first off the the connectedness between students and teachers is gonna be critical addressing their SEO needs are going to be critical we've got to find out quickly what it takes to engage our students and be willing to move upon that quickly and really exhaust everything to support our students successfully one of the benefits we have again is that we have an NPS Virtual School and so this is not new work to us as as a district we do plan on leveraging all of the successes of our MMPs virtual school our leadership there are teachers who are there that I mean just amazing with
128what they're able to accomplish with their students but but really to answer your question when we resume school we're resuming school and so with that comes you know responsibilities with that comes you know grading and feedback of course you know we'll be assessing for for learning loss the testing isn't everything but we want to make sure that we can track in progress monitor that our students are growing and learning and are truly engaged and so with that we will be leaning on the strategies that are virtual teachers and our in-house traditional teachers always leverage to make sure that students are held accountable for their work for their progress for engaging because our goal will be to keep our students growing and learning as of August 4th I'm moving forward which will be a little bit
129different from the way we ended the school year the way that we end of the school year was we wanted to engage in connect and we were not providing grades we providing feedback and that was definitely great a great trial run for us but in August the message is not if we're going to resume and and continue to grow our students it's how we're going to do that and so I think that's the the point of clarity that we'll need to echo throughout the district and the city that we will have accountability measures we will have engagement goals for everyone regardless if you're in the virtual or if you're in the face-to-face environment thank you so much dr. banner thank you okay does anyone have any more question of there's this player Peters one more
130if a teacher you test positive for for Kovan and then they have to go in quarantine for 14 days how would that affect their sick time given that if you you know you get affected and probably you know one to X quarantine wipe out your sick time have we thought about how we're going to address that given that you know if you caught something in October then catch the flu or get a bad science affection you know come June or December how do we affect that with employees I think Melissa auberge has this one I'll let her chime in the cares Act included special provisions under the Family Medical Leave Act for emergency sick leave for that exact situation so they would be entitled to 14 days paid if they were subject to a quarantine
131order that would not affect their sixth time okay great thank you you're welcome okay I had a few last questions if no if everyone else is finished the pr2 everyone else says and dr. battle thank you for this presentation I do not envy you in your role right now planning for every possible scenario one question that has come up for me is whether the percentage of teachers who are teaching virtually versus in person will affect student budgets in anyway our goal is to build this in a way where that that it's not a not effective and part of that is we've got a in order for that to not be a large concerning issue for us is that we've got to be responsive to the needs of our our families and if we know that
132their comfort level is not quite at the level to be in a face-to-face environment we've got to be able to provide a high-quality educational experience to them in a remote setting the best we can and so if we are able to respond to the needs of our families and definitely to our staff our goal is to build our structures to have very little impact to school budgets in addition to that while I'm on that topic even when we present and share the recommendations to the board with regards to our operating budget our goal in that space is still to protect our school budgets we're doing everything we can to ensure our schools maintain their current level of funding so that they can't staff and provide the resources necessary in both the in face and virtual
133setting ok and another issue that's come up is that maybe a challenge is how we provide virtual and in-person instruction in high schools where teachers have to have certain certifications so we may not have enough teachers to do both and I get this may be something you have to decide based on each particular high school but wonder if you had any thoughts on that yeah we've had a as early as today we had a conversation about this very topic and one of the I guess advantages of being able to be in a virtual space which you cannot always capitalize on when you're in a hundred percent traditional setting is that if you have for instance a special certification with a teacher and of course that needs to be offered in a virtual space you have
134the opportunity to come on so now more students have access to a course that they might not have had a teacher in their school building who has especially certification or there weren't enough students who signed up for the course and now you have access to it and so it gives us an opportunity to leverage the strengths of our educators in the district as well and another option that we would also have is that we do have an M&P as virtual school and our virtual school staff has have been incredible in meeting this this very neat that when a school is unable to provide a specific course they have in many situations I'm stepped up and provided it on behalf of those students in that school or multiple students across multiple schools okay thank you and
135then so what happens so it once parents decide that they are virtual or in-person what happens if mid mid-semester they say hey we're now we're afraid there's been increasing cases we want to know we're in person now we want to go virtual how are we going to handle that and this is Jill I started smelling when you start asking your question because I thought this is also where you were going to go this is probably the most difficult part of this process we have a very transient population here in MMPs and with providing the structures we will be providing some expectations around the making a decision it will be very difficult and nearly impossible for us as a district to be able to maintain the in and out flow of virtual versus in person and
136so that is something that parents students will have to consider as they're making their decision now if we truly are in a scenario where there's an uptick in cases or in a particular school community the likelihood is we will be going back to 100% remote anyway so let's say you're a family that you chose in person and things just went haywire I mean the experts are expecting a peak and in the fall and if we experience that one we will be probably at that point making a larger district decision if not the city might be making a larger decision and so there are some contingencies there that you likely still wouldn't have to opt in and out because we might be making the decision on behalf of the district if we find ourselves in that
137situation but the ability to transition in and out of remote to face the face will be nearly impossible for us to pull off and maintain social distancing and so there would be a commitment from families that and we're looking at various scenarios where they would have to commit for a quarter or a semester time given the scenarios because it's going to help us best plan and really protect everyone given the the Cova scenarios we could be facing okay and then the other question that keeps running through my mind is I can see scenarios where we would have if you're serving the whole district you're going to get a certain percentage of families that are want to do virtual and certain ones that want to be in person in the school but I can see where
138we may have certain areas of town where we may have more working families that one if the majority of the kids are going to be in school and versus other areas where we would have you know more children staying home and I are we are we able to accommodate a large population at a school or at that point well we consider moving some of the children possibly to another location if we have an over or not as normally crowded school but which would be overcrowded for for purposes of social distancing yes so what you will see in the Nashville plan as we look at the social distancing options that have come from CDC and from our health experts it gives us somewhat of a formula of what you can accomplish given the the size of
139the school and the number of students right and so you know for instance if you cannot achieve the six foot distance between each students which by the way most school districts are saying that it's nearly impossible to do then you will look at mask if if you are unable to do maths it may be it's the littlest youngest students where it might be impossible for them to maintain you might look at sneeze guards so there are different strategies that you can that we can leverage to make sure that we're within CDC guidelines of course wherever we can reduce the size of classes we're going to go forward we already have protocols in place for large gatherings and the cafeteria space and transportation we're looking at all those protocols but what will help us fine tune
140those protocols is once we know where families and students will ought to be in the fall and to your point we're going to have to do a huge be very intentional charge at trying to make sure all families know the options before them and that they do have equal opportunity to let us know what is best for their family and so we're working on targeted plans to make sure that we have we're not just waiting on parents but then we also have our outreach to make sure we're connecting with as many families as possible ok one more I think this is a quick question I'm gonna turn it over to mrs. Bush after that so my question is I don't know how pervasive this is I don't even know if it's true but I did
141get a complaint that there was a computer pond one of the ones that we gave out the high school student had pawned a computer I'm wondering how we're able to control the use of these computers or we're tracking them the ones that we're giving out because that's a huge number of computers - beginning to especially some of these older kids you might think of better better uses for them do we have protocols in place for that yes let me let I'm just looking at my list here who's on a call probably Chris or Ken you want to chime in this is much easier when we're in the boardroom I can just see who's where this is this is Chris and I'm gonna go back to that was one of Miss Elrod's questions and so I'm
142gonna go back and find that response that Doug Renfro provided so I make sure that I say it correctly let's see here here we go so that rim frozen response was we haven't collected the laptops from the spring deployment yet as students are still using them for great improvement and summer learning experiences we did have three families report stolen laptops and each completed a police report prior to the deployment we did notify the Metro Nashville Police Department that these devices were being distributed and could potentially end up at pawn shops and to be aware we currently have a team that includes external partners planning for the larger deployment and the question was in relation to what community partnerships are we going to have with pawn shops goodwill etc to make sure that the laptops are
143hotspots to return back to us and are not sold or donated and so that was the response and we'll we'll continue to refine that response but that's what we've done with the spring deployment of the laptops y'all got niggy okay thank you so much for your less comments and it made me think about what the options that talked about it you just talked about as far as parents optimi and to which everyone they decide as if its purchase all of this and face you know in person do a deadline or I know possible you still creating that information to be sent out to the families is there a deadline for your team to know exactly the direction or how to start setting up those those options yeah we plan on getting that information out within
144the next couple of weeks if and I think miss bugs asks a very similar question we're working on those details so that we can get all the needs to know out there the families before they make that is that decision for next school year we know how critically important it is for them to be able to make the decision to have that information so we're working diligently to pull that information together and to roll out our system by which families can make that decision so that is to come you might also remember that just a couple weeks ago I had not planned to make this give these recommendations this soon but I know the importance of everybody really being informed and wanting to know more so I wanted to get this in front of the
145board as soon as possible given the feedback that we've received so we're trying to work ahead the timelines that we have in place and so hopefully right around July for the week of July 6 weekend we can roll out more details to not only families but to our employees as well so board economy we're gonna try to we're gonna begin to try to push this information out as quickly as possible knowing that there are lots of questions there's lots of things to solve for and so we we definitely know a lot of them we might not know them all so as we hear you know things for consideration we definitely want one to roll those into our plans thank you my last coming in about the laptops I do that's one great thing about having
146students in Metro fool you're able to definitely connect and be able to relate to things that are happening in our district with our kids and I do have two lovely their laptop computers in my home and I will tell you that my students just look crisp and go back and tell the team over at IT that they did a fun mama helping my students get long gone and it did not take a long time for them to get through to help this they were so so quick and I was really shocked on how fast my students got the ruler they don't know they don't follow the rest as well so you have to kind of push these kids you know so while I'm at work I'm on the phone telling them you better get all
147that Oh what I see and then I'd better get out response and they immediately called me back and said mom calm down I got through and I got the help that I needed so I just want to tell you Chris go back and tell them that they did they're doing a great job and I'm sure and we grow these laptop that I'm sure that they will not come short of customer service for our passing well thank you all right do we have any more questions for dr. battle before we move to announcements all right well thank you very much for those presentations I know that people were eerily awaiting that presentation having the conversation a bit early and I am gonna go start tonight with Miss poopa Walker for announcements thank you just a couple
148of things for everybody to remember next week 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday the 30s we have a special call board meeting to vote on the final budget based on Metro councils approval of their budget so tune into that and then our one meeting in July on July 14th will be hosting a 4:00 p.m. Governance Committee meeting to address a range of policies and so reach out to me if you have questions about that or want to put anything on the agenda thanks okay thank you Miss Claire Peters my this one whoops camera I just want to take a moment here just to recognize the lives of two of my fist professor is dr. we was Mitchell who was one of the chair of the Tennessee Historical Commission and what he contribute to Nashville and education in
149Nashville that um he's been a history professor at Fisk and taught here in Nashville for a long time was the the historian of consultant for the original roots not the reboot and so it's gonna recognize his life and the effect that he had on I know hundreds of Nashvillians and Metro school students who matriculated through through University man I just want to recognize his life and then also dr. gene Lambert who was also professor at Fisk in the fine arts division who also taught quite a few Metro Nashville students and the fact they had in the Liberata Rena at Fisk University and acknowledged their lives in the education arena and hope everyone has a healthy and healthy summer and thank you to the administration also for putting on the virtual graduation last Sunday to honor
150the more formal kind of ceremony that we could for the students of class of 2020 so I just want to say again graduations to all the seniors in the class of 2020 for getting you through a unprecedented and tough school year thank you thank you miss Bush I did it this time so I can hear me right okay I just wanted to to say Guillen thank you to those board members that came out for Ana's mass today it was a beautiful ceremony to celebrate her life so really great to see the administration there gaining some board members that did a attend so it was definitely i'm sure her family greatly appreciated all the love and support that was there today and also i'm so excited for the class of 2020 congratulations again to all of
151those students i have heard nothing but wonderful things about the processionals and I think dr. Bell and I had spoken about this before that maybe that's something that we should we should definitely we should consider every year because it was so much fun again I think I parted a harder than they did so I just wanted to also give them a another shout out to them and we wish them the very best thank you thank you miss bugs yes thank you and again Shepherd family we you know our prayers and thoughts are with you really hope that you enjoyed the flowers and just know that we you know we're wrapping our arms around you during this very trying time even with the pandemic you've now lost a loved one on a lighter note I do
152want to welcome and thank Astrid Hughes for joining us as the new director of equity no diversity equity and inclusion sorry you have your work cut out for you but I can't wait to work with you just thank you for taking on this role and it took almost a year but we finally have an education liaison for the city so I'm sure we'll be meeting with him individually and wish him the best of luck is we work to connect the city and support education as best we can I want to continue to send my thoughts and prayers to the Barbara Hale family till was an occupational therapist and MNPs was also an MMPs graduate and sadly passed a few weeks back but she was honored at the City Council meeting this past week so we
153continue to send them there send them our thoughts and I want to just say to the greater community at large even though we're in very unprecedented times with limited resources black lives do matter they do matter and I thank you to all the old those community members who have reached out to us to hold us accountable to make suggestions to ask questions to probe us to be better and do more for our students especially those that we may have traditionally kind of seemingly forgotten about so in the with that line of thinking community members please continue to engage us please continue to make suggestions if you have a policy suggestion if you have a budget request please feel comfortable reaching out to a board member if you're a board member is not one that you
154know or don't feel comfortable with reach out to all of us and I think that I think we can really make some progress thank you miss spearing thank you I want to echo Fran's comments today it's a beautiful Requiem Mass our beloved in a Shepherd I want to recognize previous board member Joanne Brannon Amy frog Fran Bush dr. battle paint clay and the mayor of Nashville John Cooper and his policy person John Bunton we really felt Ana's presence this morning especially on the departing song when the saints come marching in thank you thank you Miss Elrod thank you madam chair I want to welcome several new principals in the district to area so we haven't Hank would we have Damon Kathy and Oliver we have Hawaii Wilson so we are so glad to have you
155grin bearing is also but I'm not gonna step on the toes of that announcement cuz I don't think it's been announced yet so we also have a new principal at Granberry on the Oliver note we also have three teachers who won the 2020 Blue Ribbon award for teacher leadership category as a teaching team so congratulations to Nikhil amber witting and Jane Ryan and so I wanted to thank those teachers particularly because last year was so different for us and this coming year will be as well I wanted to say thank you for all of their commitment to our students and their co-workers as Jeanne mentioned there's going to be the budget meeting next week we would really like it if everyone would please attend and be prepared so we can have that 1 p.m. meeting
156and then during the governance meeting there is going I'm going to be bringing the naming facilities which is our board policy 3.21 to be reviewed and discussed with board members thank you thank you dr. gentry thank you I just also want to welcome all of the new principals that we have in the district one area we've got new principals at White's Creek at Hanes at Jones at Cumberland welcome to to all of those individuals we certainly certainly appreciate you taking on these roles of serving our kids I do want to just follow up with mr. Peters her comments about dr. Revis Mitchell and dr. gene Lamborghini and was a church member of mine at First Baptist Church Capitol Hill and she continued her her love of teaching and her passion for kids and youth she
157did a lot of public speaking training and oratorical training with the youth of our church and you know it's been a tee time and dr. Mitchell's presidents you left better you look better for for that time that you spent there I also want to remind us individuals watching of the town hall meeting for the whites creek cluster that will be held on June 29th at 8 o'clock p.m. okay thank you and there being no further business this meeting is adjourned thank you all this has been a service of the Metro Nashville Network if you would like to see this presentation again or for more information about this and other programs visit nashville dot you