001Good evening. Welcome to the Germantown Municipal School District School Board work session, Tuesday, September 23rd at 5:37 p.m. We have two items on the agenda for this evening. First of which is the school activity fees for 2526. we've had some additional um club activity come in that we need to consider. >> So, as you know, all school fees that we collect from our families have to be approved by the board. And so, we do seasonal approval of fees. And we we just did this, but uh since that time, we have five new requests, I think, six new requests from, uh new clubs and organizations that want to form and operate at the high school, and they want to take a fee up from those. So, uh, as always, we can get additional information about the
002club if you want. Miss Ross is here that she could answer questions about these clubs, uh, in the meantime. Um, but, uh, the clubs that are proposed are the Blue Suede Crew Club, and they want a $10 fee for their students to join that. Uh, the fall play has an updated uh, fee of $175 for supplies, materials. The spring musical has a fee of $250. The community service club, which is a new club, uh has a $20 fee for supplies. A new club of the photography club has a fee of $25. Uh and the art a new club called Artflow uh has a fee of $15. Uh so if y'all had specific questions, we can get those answered for you before um the business meeting or potentially Miss Ross could answer some of those questions
003now. So if there are any questions, we are glad to answer them. Is the Blue Suede Crew, is it a second Elvis related club now? Okay. Wow. Okay. >> The answer to that question was yes, it is. >> Wow. >> Okay. All right. That's great. >> On Oh, I think I got hit up with this one already in my um school cash online request. Um, and I was the community service club said it is new, but it existed previously. Did it >> just be that the activity fee is new? Oh, the fee is new. >> Okay, that makes more sense. >> It's Middle Cough is the new sponsor listed. Yeah. >> Okay. Because our former um student board member was one of the founders of that club, so I knew it previously existed. I highly
004recommend you follow their Instagram for the record. Um, but thank you from to Mr. middle calloff for jumping in on that. That answers my question. >> Fantastic. Um that gets us to agenda item number two, which is further business. >> I do have one piece. I know you may have >> um we do have an item that could potentially be brought to the board uh for the business meeting next week. Um as you know um when we talked last I think it was our last meeting uh we were talking about the back to properties and the fields um back there. Um Mr. Bosowski has been uh working with somebody who could serve in a capacity as far as architect and engineering to design and develop that uh and is working on a contract with that
005individual to to do that to serve to represent us in that capacity. Um so if we do have that uh and we can get that negotiated and worked out, we would want to bring that to y'all before, but we would get it to you several days in advance and answer questions about the contract. Um but just like our typical um engagements that we have with u the firms that we've used in the value, you know, there's a fee based on the total amount. So um usually with architects and engineers, we're looking at an 8 to 10% uh fee for the total cost of the project for what they're doing. There are other things that are outlined in that, but we're hopeful that we can get that uh next step in that piece for those that
006property back there moving down the line. also to um our attorneys and I didn't know if this was going to be what you were going to address, Miss Chairman Griffith. >> It is. It was. Please proceed. >> Sorry, stealing your um but they have been uh discussing um how can we modify or amend uh that existing uhou between us, the land usage agreement to to allow us to have access and go ahead and develop that back property so we can get that ready and start moving on those back properties. So, uh, they've been pushing the document back and forth with each other, making, uh, adjustments. So, uh, chairman, I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add to that. Um, but those are two things that are coming up in the near future.
007>> No. Um, I do anticipate the, um, revised to be put on um, not next week's agenda. I would say that would be our October business meeting. So everybody um I think has seen it and will have um any time to ask questions to our um board council and then it's my understanding that the city will also be taking that up publicly for a vote as well during that time. >> Yeah. just short term if we can work out in the agreements which we will we will want to bring to you that that contract so we can get them engaged so we can start the design process meanwhile on a parallel path uh the city's uh land usage agreement to be modified we're looking to do that in October and then we would want to
008once the design's done we would go before the the commissions that we're required to go before in order to move that project along so full steam ahead on those projects so that's our update on Yes. >> Any questions >> specific to those topics? Um, anything otherwise further business related? >> Um, I know I mentioned this to Miss Griffith. Mr. Manuel, I'm sorry if I didn't mention it to you, but I was just going to again kind of open it up for a little bit of a discussion of our last meeting with the city um last month. And I was going to see if Mr. Ellis could also share just sort of a brief overview of the FAC subcommittee meeting. Did you have that? >> No, that's what he was going to be doing. Yeah. Yeah.
009>> All right. So, yeah. So, >> but did you have something? >> No, I was just going to open it up and ask Mr. Ellis to >> Thank you. >> to give his report if he's got >> I attended the FIC meeting on September 10th where the formal recommendations were made from that committee to be passed on to the FIC and then to the BMA. uh looking through AAA bond ratings and things that have changed in the city, the recommendation came down from PFM to raise the limit roughly $23 million on short-term debt. If we were to go over long-term debt, as much as $ 38 million, increasing our bonding authority, that doesn't mean, of course, that all that's going to be bonded out or anything else because the city's always going to take a
010financially conservative route to make sure that they have bonding availability, but it will increase the amount of dollars that hopefully we will have some of that pushed towards the high school renovation projects that we're looking towards. Thank you. Any questions specific to that recap or report? Thank you again um to board member Ellis for participating in that capacity. >> Did they talk about a timeline where they may consider adopting changes that were recommended or anything like that? >> My understanding is it was going up to the next FAC meeting and then would go directly to BMA. So, this would be two-month process roughly to push those changes through and then it would go through the process of starting to outline how they would want to handle that debt capacity going forward and seeing where we
011fall in there. And then I think just kind of I think the bigger takeaway for me at least from our last meeting with the city was just and the discussion of the agreement kind of segus into it is just their openness to letting us go ahead and move forward with you know what we would like to do on the back property. And I know um I think engaging the engineering and architect group is the next step in that and trying to figure out, you know, exactly how we're going to design it and price it and plan it. So I know we'll have some big discussions and decisions to make on what to do back there and when to do it. But I think that's a a good move and look forward to hearing more on
012that. >> Agree. I think it's shows that we're not going to let any grass grow, if you will. like we're going to have everything lined up so that when the clock starts, we're able to move swiftly. And I appreciate that. That's what the um Mr. Kathy and Mr. Manuel have continued to say that that's their intent and this is uh certainly in the spirit of that. So, thank you for getting that information together and for Mr. Bossky's effort as well. >> Uh Mr. Ellis, I had a question about I mean, sorry, can you hear me? Is it good? Um, is that does that result from that meeting is that you know is that good? You feel optimistic about that? Like how is that really going to affect our ability to like move forward? Like is
013that we how much of that money are we really going to get? Do you have any idea? >> No way to speak to how much that we will get. The city has tried to maintain about 80% u bonded out. also 20% available, but they would do want to reduce the terms of some of those because one of the things we're downgraded on from our age rating agencies is long-term debt. So, they want to reduce some of the bonding limits on some of that and look at some shorter term debt. It will mean or I'm confident it will mean more to us. I just don't know how much that is, but the results about what's expected. If you look at the most basic metric, which we thought was our most limited, it was the bonding authority
014per capita. they have increased that. There's four other buckets in there um with a different one being the most limiting on it and that's the one that caps at the 23. >> Thank you. That's uh very helpful. >> Great question. >> Anything further specific to the financial um process that our city's going through and our participation in that effort? Are there any other um further business specific items that anyone would like to bring forth? >> I'll just update the board. So, uh House Bill 675 was a bill that we met with um Mark Cochran, representative about that was the bill he was sponsoring. Uh that uh consisted of what finally passed was that there was an advisory committee on innovations and K12 education. tomorrow uh that committee is meeting. Uh did want to update the
015board. Um so the committee members uh are from the Senate side. Uh Senator White, Aberry, Low Watson uh from the House side, Cochran Sepiki, Hasten, and Slater. Uh Commissioner Reynolds is there uh on the committee. And then the state board of education representative is lady named Chrissy McInturf. She's a teacher in Washington County. So she serves as the only licensed educator on that committee. Uh as our commissioner is not a licensed educator. Uh tomorrow they are going to be discussing in the morning they are going to be discussing career and technical education. Uh in the afternoon they are going to discuss assessments. Um so uh previously they've met and they've discussed teacher evaluations. That was one of the ones that they discussed in the past. Uh this one they will be discussing CTE. So I
016think just really there's a focus from the governor's office in particular to really enhance CTE education. Uh the assessments that is something that we have met with uh chairman White uh Mark White about uh we had him out to Houston. We talked to him about assessments. Uh just to let you know who's going to be speaking. You're going to have a couple uh from the department, Dr. David Leair and then Jonathan Kriswell from the Department of Education uh from Perry County Schools. Ashley Car Ashley Carroll um and then Angel Moore. So I would assume they're there at the um request of Representative Hasten from N Metro Nashville, Dr. Kevin Chaff is reading specialist. Uh Bill Kerry who is the founder and executive director of Tennessee History for Kids. Always enjoy getting emails from him. So
017he'll be part of that panel. uh Bob Nardo who is the executive director at Libertas Charter School and then two uh members from SCORE will be there, Aaliyah Guthrie and Dr. Sharon Roberts. So I am encouraged hopefully um I'll try to catch a recap of this and hopefully I'll have something to present to the board uh next week, but it is encouraging that they are at least meeting and discussing. I did reach out to Representative Hasten with some examples of some testing frustration, you know, just personal where we don't get our test results back until the middle of the summer. So, um, I actually echoed that to a member of the state board of education last night on our way out of the meeting. I said, you know, we've got to do something different. Like,
018you know, getting getting test results back in the middle of the summer does no one any good. There's no accountability. You can't threaten a grade. they they figure it out. Um so anyway, uh we'll see what comes out of this, but they are meeting, so that's encouraging. Um and we'll see what the final reports are, but I did want to update the board on that. >> Thank you so much. Um I think that many board members I want to um thank Miss Ael for updating us with the high school's um kind of timeline for um the bell schedule kind of uh assessment and how they're going to, you know, analyze information that they've gotten and received um over the past several months. And then um raise your hand if you received Oh, you didn't receive
019it. Oh, I should show it to you. Okay. Raise your if you've received your um parent input request, I highly encourage everyone to participate in that. My understanding is we're already getting good activity in that um channel. So, um I think that as we continue to receive questions and things and and as those come to us, we'll certainly come to the experts here that we rely on to get that information. And uh stay tuned for um kind of what administration at the high school rolls out and and starts to to get more communication as as that is made available to everyone. So thank you for the update. It was very helpful and very timely. It almost was like queued up the all the action. I was like all right thank you. Is there anything further
020at this time? Superintendent board members. That's you too, but you asked a great question. All right. Well, then we are wrapped up and I appreciate your time this evening. Meeting is adjourned.