5.13.25 B.O.E. Work Session

001Good evening and welcome to the Germantown Board of Education work session Tuesday, May 13, 2025. that it's 5:33 p.m. We have uh a lot to discuss this evening and I appreciate everyone that worked on um the materials for tonight's presentations. We do have some company with us that we'll hear from um as well. At this time with 17 items listed on the work session agenda, I am going to take the opportunity to um maybe just bring some items 13 and 14 in particular up to the top of the list, not based on uh importance or anything like that. I think it's very important um that we all things on the list are are equally as important to discuss tonight. But um in this particular case, since we have Mr. Bland here um who will be

002walking us through both of these items and he will be leaving us um this evening following tonight's meeting to go on with the Houston High School varsity baseball team to indeed win the last game um as they uh travel across the state to Clarksville. So uh that's our plan. And we're going to start with agenda item number 13, which is cell phone storage in classrooms. Okay. So, um I'll have a presentation, but this is more for us to talk about the policy change that we're going to need to make. But I think as we talk about the policy, we also need to talk about just what's happening at the high school and procedures that we have there and how our current policy um isn't necessarily meeting our needs or isn't reflecting reality and also to

003the legislative changes that have that have really prompted this. So let's talk a little bit about um what has happened. So statewide there is a policy change. Um they passed a new law and it restricts the use of wireless communication devices during class starting with the 2526 school year. Um it applies to all wireless two-way communication devices. So if you think about smartwatches that talk to it um phones that would be included in this and it requires us to develop specific policies around um cell phone usage. Um so we know that this is going to be um something very difficult once we start talking about changes that uh we need to make um because I think having a phone and access to your phone has become so ubiquitous with our students um I want to

004say it's like heroin but um they are checking that thing constantly um and not they're waiting for the moment when they can check their phone. they're they're waiting for their next fix of social media. Um it has become a a challenge at the high school. So we know that when we do this, I don't want you all to think that we're not going to we're going to have to talk to groups of students about reality and we're going to talk a little bit today about it. We're going to talk to parents about what does this look like because there will be consequences associated with this. But we know that this is going to be a big endeavor that we're embarking upon and and staff training too. So um let's talk about initiatives that we've seen

005uh in other districts. So let's talk about first reality what what our current policy says. It says, and you I think you all have the policy in front of you, that students may possess pos possess personal communication devices and personal electronic devices including cell phones, laptops, tablets, wearable technology such as eyeglasses, rings, and watches that have the capability to record, live stream, or interact with wireless technology and MP3 players. I don't know who has an MP3 player anymore. uh on school property as long as the devices are turned off and stored in backpacks, purses, and carry alls. That last clause is the one that I say is not being followed. Uh when you say that it is turned off um and stored in backpacks, purses, and carry all. And it says, however, if there's prior

006approval from the principal or his or her designated teacher may grant permission. So if they were using a study guide on their phones, that that could be granted. The reality of what's happening is every chance that I think students get in downtime, whether it's walking through the hallways, if it's in the cafeteria, um, every moment I think that they are on their cell phones. Um, we have had a problem if you talk to the high school with cheating. Um, and it has become so easy to take a picture and have it uploaded to AI instantly and you can get the response whether it's essays or math problems. it's uh instantaneous and and they become so good with you can do it with a smartwatch, you can do it with a phone. It's become a real

007um problem. So that's our challenge that we are facing. Um I don't think we're going it would be my recommendation to be as specific when we talk about the policy. I think what we're going to look at are solutions that keep students from their phones um during the school day. Uh and we're going to look at a a product that does that. So, we're going to talk about um one possible solution. I'm not saying this is the solution and then I think it's time that we can talk. There are districts that are using this product that Mr. Bland found for us. And tell us about this product, Mr. Bland. And we're going to see a video in just a sec. Yeah. So, I they only sent three. Uh two of them have a magnet. Um

008and you see three bases. There are three separate bases that are on the table. Uh what you do, you take it um you push this back side against the magnet and then you push this up and it unlocks the phone. It'll pop up. So use your index finger and there you go. And now it's open. So until you use that magnet, I don't I haven't tested if it's destructive. I mean, but it's very um hard to get this open. I don't think you can cut it with scissors. uh you would really have to try to get this open if even if you can get it open. Um so there are two different options for these pouches. This is the magnetic version. There's a version with velcro for students that may have medical needs and they

009may need access to their device. Uh yeah, so we're going to see a little quick video on this product, but let me talk about why we're considering this. And like I said before, we did anything like this. We're going to need some policy changes in June that we're going to work on. uh it may not be specific and say the name of the product or what it's doing, but what this does, and I've lived through the days when cell phones first came out and we had the policy where we had to take them up. It was an assembly line in the office and it was a full-time job for the front office staff because they were collecting so many cell phones. So, if we go to the situation where anytime a student has their phone

010out, we're collecting it and taking it up and um those are going to be problematic and it's going to take away from instructional time. this product puts it on the student. We know that any situation we come up with, the students can find a way around that. Just like our current policy, they can have it off. But with this, if a phone is out during the school day, then we know they're they're breaking the rules. You can't say, "Oh, but it was off. I was just moving it from my pocket to my backpack." Which a lot of those conversations are happening. And what you see at at the high schools and the middle schools is inconsistent enforcement of what's happening with the policy. And Jack, you may be able to talk. Some teachers may have

011that caddy that they use really well and some may be like, "Oh, it's okay. We're done with the lesson. You're on your phones." Um, those are real challenges for us. So, let's talk a little bit about this product and we'll talk about other solutions and policies. So, there are initiatives like this that say, "Hey, what happens if we go cell phone free?" And I think that was the original intent of legislation. They were trying to say, "We're going to have no cell phones in our schools because we have problems with students planning to have fights and then they will film uh fights, students filming students inappropriately in other situations. There are all kinds of um ways that cell phones are used besides cheating in inappropriately at school. But programs that do limit phones have seen

012increases in active achievement, better behavior in students, higher engagement in the classroom and attendance um issues have decreased. So these yonder pouches, like I said, is one solution for that. In this case, the procedure at the school would be it's on the students. They're told and and it would be middle and high school specifically at the elementary out of we need this type of solution. We could stay with our current policy or procedures that we have. But in this case, the students are told when you walk into school, you put your phone in your pouch and you keep it. We're not collecting phones. We're not storing them somewhere in case they get stolen or something happens. The students have this in their bag. You have these magnets that are locked up outside of the school

013on post or in certain locations. You also have some that can be locked up in the schools in the hallways that can be unlocked at certain times. Uh if you wanted to have it in a specific classroom, like if you want to say study hall can have phones for example, you could have that magnet in that location. You could have special permission for that in that class setting. So there are options carveouts we can do with these pouches. Um they are nationwide. They are lockable. It's expensive. Um so that's some something that we have to talk about. It's an expensive solution for us, but it may be one that we take. So, let's hear a little bit about the Yonder pouch and see a little PR video for them and then I think it's we

014would open up discussion about what's happening in the schools, how we think this would be effective. Hopefully, we've got volume. Educators around the world are seeing the damaging effects of student engagement, social development, and mental health. So, cell phones out have been linked to many of the district's recent problems. Texting, tweeting, pieces of anxiety and depression, bullying, staging fights, and filming fights. In an effort to crack down on cell phone usage, the district piloted these magnetic locking bags called Yonder. It's an easy solution for a generation in the midst of a mental health crisis. [Music] Yonder is the established leader in creating phone-f free schools. For over 10 years, our product and program has allowed students to experience the focus, creativity, and relief that comes from a phone free school day. As students enter school,

015they place their phone in their assigned yonder pouch. They close and secure their pouch, keeping it with them throughout the day. When leaving school, students tap their pouch on an unlocking base to retrieve their phone. Yonder is used by millions of students every day across 26 countries. Our school partners report having more teaching time in the classroom, improved student safety and wellness, better student engagement, student behavior, and academic performance. Creating phone-f free schools is a community initiative. Our comprehensive program provides support to our school partners from start to finish with step-by-step guidance, parent communication materials, policy development, and proven expertise to ensure everyone understands the difference a phone-free education can make. It's amazing to see kids come to school and not have to worry about that phone going off or them being bullied by someone

016else on social media. It was kind of um annoying at first, but then I saw like the difference between like my old school and this school. I see more people like interacting rather than being on their phones. Like especially at lunchtime and break time, they are way more engaged. Everyone's happier. It's night and day. I saw kids faces again. [Music] So, with that, I think it's time to just talk a little bit. Sorry, I've got um talk a little bit and and really open it up to y'all on thoughts about what does this look like for our schools. Um Jack, if you want to talk, we'd love to hear like your experience with phones and your thoughts on this, too. And like I said, we're going to speak to student groups. We're going to speak

017to teachers. Uh we're going to talk to staff, but we know it's something we can't continue as we are. I think is the biggest challenge. Jack, I'd love to hear what what are your thoughts on cell phones? Yeah. No, I'm all for an initiative um to reduce cell phone use uh you know, within the classroom and in learning environments. uh speaking on this this yonder specifically, my first thing I'm thinking is like, okay, how are we going to get around this? Like if I'm a student and I want my phone, how am I going to get around this? Um so like you said, it's on the student to put their phone in here. Yes. And so the the real challenge for us is so like when a student does have their phone, you can't say,

018"Oh, I didn't put it in the the pouch. It has to be in the pouch." Of course, they could have a dummy phone in there. They could have any just like they do with the shoe caddies right now. They could have an old phone. They could have a burner that they're putting in that caddy. So, there's always a way around. It's more around the enforcement of if you have a phone on your person that's not in this case, then we start moving through progressive discipline. So, we start having conversations. But yes, they could there are lots of ways around. I could just not put it. I could just not lock it. I could do all of those things. So it it ensures that there's no excuse or possible takes away all excuses. Okay. Because that

019was my first thing was like you know what if I just put a a rectangular object in here and then you know had my phone in my backpack and you know used it on in bathroom breaks or That's right. There's nothing to there's nothing to stop if if students want to hide a phone on their person. They they can. We know that that's a reality. Um, so I guess I just kind of question how effective this would be. I mean, what it sounds like is essentially you would have a zero tolerance policy in the classroom if it, you know, you're supposed to be in here and then they see you with it. Yes. And so I just one one part I guess I just don't understand like if that's where we're going to, why do

020we need this? It could just be you don't get a second chance to put it in something and then again like people are going to use it in the bathroom or whatever if they don't put it in here. I just I don't I don't know what's the what's the price on it too. So it's it's it's hefty. I think it's $30 per pouch and then you've got the cost of these. We're talking it would be for us I think $100,000 for this program for all of our middle schools and high schools. It is a a substantial cost. That is one of the concerns for us. Yes. Why are we moving to a zero tolerance? The the challenge we have is essentially we have it's supposed to be put up. Um and I don't know the

021other solution. Yeah. I guess I mean I I guess I don't you know if the problem is maybe inconsistent enforcement I don't know like is the having a pouch going to solve that. I mean it's still going to be on somebody to enforce that. And so I just don't know if the pouch really I'll think maybe I need to think on it more. I just I don't really see where the pouch gets us. So, I've used the uh yonder technology at concerts. I think the last one was uh Chris Rock and uh Dave Chappelle and you know there were people trying to figure out ways to open. Now, these were grown folks. Yes. Figuring out ways to open it and they could not open. Right. So, I do think it's an effective technology if we're

022looking to uh limit access to cell phones in the schools. kind of also agree with what Ryan's saying is, you know, do we really need it if we can just adopt a zero tolerance policy and enforce it? Of course. And then the last thing I think about um is uh emergency access, right? And I think you mentioned something about the magnetic uh stations would be outside Yeah. of the school or Yeah. So that's why they have the I think the different types of magnetic pouches. So you could have these the ones that have the case that are in the hallway that get unlocked at certain times before they to school. So students not only have to do the one could do the ones outside, but you don't want bottlenecks at the unlocking stations, but you

023also have the ones that are portable, too, that students could unlock and you could have one or two in each hallway if you have situations if you had a real emergency. Of course, we talked about you could try to cut into this if if it was emergency in the classroom. Well, I would I would say, you know, from a parent perspective, uh I would definitely want one in in the classroom because if it's a situation where, you know, my son or daughter is uh locked into the classroom because of, god forbid, something happening outside in the halls, then I would want them to be able to not have to think about going into the hall, right, to unlock it. That's right. Right. So any way we go on it, I think we do have to

024make sure we look at it from that perspective of what's the worst thing that could happen and we need to be prepared for that uh aspect of access as well. Yeah. One of the things when I spoke with Mr. Griffith, we were talking about the same we had the same conversation um was making sure that students always have the ability because they do have their computers in their classes that at the high school level they can email their parents and so uh I had Mr. Kathy check with technology to make sure that is uh green green lit at the middle school we lock that down where they don't have the ability to email. So that may be something different that we look at for different locations, but all those things are going to have to

025be taken in consideration of what do you do for emergencies. So I think it's important to make sure we're clear on what the law requires. And basically the law just says prohibits a student from using a wireless communication device during instructional time. That's it. So it doesn't say anything about the halls or lunch or study hall or anything. It's just during instructional time. So obviously it's an issue. Um I know two years ago it was pretty much wide open. I know this year they attempted a a a school policy. I'm talking to high school specifically. They attempted a school policy that said off during instructional time and then could use it in the halls and at lunch. Um I I know my daughter, she's texting me less than she used to, but she's still texting

026me more. But and I will say like I'll just use Coach Wolf is here. So she's in a dual she's in a dual enrollment class. They've been done for what two or three weeks now. So like it's basically a study hall. So I mean and then it was I think what two weeks from the start of school until they got going. So you have classes like that where you're in a room but you know until the class gets going or if the class is over there's nothing you know so that there's no instructional time. I also think at the high school is using Instagram a lot as a primary means of communication. I see it because I'm, you know, I'm I'm on Instagram and I see a lot of their communication. And so I wondered,

027you know, does this if we went to the pouch, does that impede that because I I don't know, that's why I'm going to lean on you to tell me like how much you're relying on that that mode of communication throughout the day. And then I'll I'll I kind of I'll continue here in just a second. So, like just your general thoughts on like Instagram and, you know, communication and and things like that. Yeah. I uh I think it's like Snapchat and texting. If I'm going to message somebody, those are my top two. And then uh you know, Instagram's more for like entertainment uh scrolling. But uh so if if the main the main law is prohibiting it during instructional time um you know like what if the the pouches were were used like in every

028class like everyone you know had their personal pouch they put the phone in the pouch and then as they got out of class they were able to use the magnet like because I mean in the hallways is is that one of our bigger concern concerns too because you know during class time and you know when you're trying to learn and the teacher's trying to teach you know I'm all for no cell phones and I think that would lead to a more interactive environment with all the students but you know the efforts it would take to not let students be on their phones in hallways between classes in the bathrooms like the the enforcement is like that that's going to be difficult like very difficult and I don't know if investing in these these pouches is

029the best way to go about because like we said like we'll find a way you know y'all found a way with the Wi-Fi for sure um but no I I like I think something's got to be done um and I think you as a student would probably say something's got to be done I think it comes back to and I I'll go to Ryan's point. It's It's an enforcement issue. Like, we have a rule on the books now that's not being evenly enforced. I think some are doing more than others. So, if they're not enforcing it now, why what would lead me to believe they're going to they're going to enforce this all of a sudden, you know, with the, you know, now I say the middle school, there's no reason whatsoever at the middle

030school, I don't even think we need these. It should be if there's a phone out at all at the middle school, we go straight to it. There should, in my opinion, there's no reason to have a phone out. Like the phone should be in the backpack stored at the middle school all day. I don't. So, I'm really kind of more addressing at the high school. But if we're having an issue with enforcement now, then we're going to have the same issue with enforcement later. And it can't just be, well, there's a board directive. I mean, what's the diff? You know, there's a board directive, there's a school rule, lo, a local school rule. To me, the root cause, if I start drilling down to why the failure point is selective enforcement and that that and

031I don't see that going away just because we have a board rule or a pouch and so I think that has to be addressed. Um, if our families tell us um that, hey, this is something they'd like to see, I'm I'm all for making the investment. uh if our families are not for this then I think we can accomplish it with more of a zero tolerance and every every student no matter what you put it you put your phone in the cubby no matter what you know like no questions asked they go in there and then you get them at the end of the class um you know and and if the teacher doesn't want to do it well then we we've got to you know follow the process there um but yeah I think

032status quo of just expecting you know us to kind of you know the pouch but you know uh you know in selective enforcement I think it's not going to get us anywhere. I'm all for making the investment if our families give us a a sense of direction. I think we'll hear from them that they are are not you know that they feel like the phones are an issue. I think we're going to hear that loud and clear. I think I don't know. I think we might get some mixed reviews on the pouches. So, uh, but I'm I'm very interested. I'm very interested in the focus groups and I think Mr. Bcker is going to speak, you know, I think, you know, the shock and all from the students. I think he, you know, I think

033your your point of view, I think I I agree with the reaction that we're going to get there. But I' I'd like to hear what our families have to say, but again, I come back to it's got to be enforced because if not, then, you know, then we're we're wasting our time here. Yeah. I I think the challenge with enforcement um and like I said I think it was a lot more when they started the initiative and when they had the cubbies the problem is volume and as a teacher you know how how much time am I going to be spend uh dealing with phones it it was a lot when we used when we had the zero tolerance before it was a constant um challenge for us um so like I said I don't

034know if there is a perfect solution um but I do think it's something we're gonna have to talk about Jack I noticed that you mentioned Instagram Snapchat chat, texting. I guess Facebook is for us old folks, right? You guys don't really utilize that anymore. Yeah, I don't know if I've ever used that. Gotcha. Gotcha. Thank you for that clarification. Um, I would like to hear Mr. Bland's thoughts on it. You know, from your perspective, I'm impartial. Um, was mainly looking for a solution for not only the classroom, but the disruptive behaviors throughout the day. the social media aspect. Um, and a lot of that takes place in class, but some of it takes place in transition. So, I'm not for against them. Um, I think if you look at, and numbers can say whatever you

035want me to say, but if you look at the numbers of the people that are using them, they're seeing positive feedback, whether it's um more engagement from students. Um, I think that's the big one. uh less time like this and having face to face conversation. So I I'm looking at more of a holistic um solution rather than just the enforcement of the in-class instruction part. So that's why I brought this up to to the cabinet uh for review and I I think we thought it would be worth the conversation with you guys. We're We're not done looking for solutions, but I I I I kind of like this solution. I don't hate it. I guess I can say Yeah. I don't hate it. Price is different. Yeah. And and I think the goal for us

036today was not to make a decision on are we purchasing this pouch? How are we crafting the policy? Um like I said, we're going to be talking about the policy in June. And I think it's going to have to be more general. And then for us to work through our parents and our communities talking about what is going to be the solution for this and and how do we do it. Yeah. I mean I agree. I think we're going to hear from most of our families that they think, you know, cell phone screen time during class is a problem and they'd like to see less of it. And I I certainly don't want it to be a situation. And I well I think the solution has to be something where it's not you know our

037teachers addressing individual kids throughout every single class like you say because that's just such so time consuming. We can't just expect it to be um you know here and there and there I'm going to tell six different kids in one class turn it off. I mean, we've got to have something that will take care of the issue at the beginning of class and not have it come up, but I don't know what that is, but we're going to keep on looking. Just super quickly, I just want to manage expectations about the policy before we get to June, though, so you can kind of be thinking about it. But, um, and Mr. Ker used the word zero tolerance. So I want to make sure that we kind of carve that out just a little bit because

038the statute does require that uh permits a student to use wireless communication device in the event of an emergency or to manage a student's health. Also to allow students um to use wireless communication in instruction or otherwise if it's part of their IEP if it's part of part of their 504 if it's part of their individual learning plan. uh and if the wireless communication device is being used by a student with a disability for the operation of assistance technology to increase, maintain or improve the students functional capabilities. Um so I mean you know usually when we think of zero zero tolerance we say nobody gets to do it. So I just wanted to carve out that those right. No that's good point. What I what I meant is zero tolerance outside of permissible use. Yeah.

039I just wanted before that let's start thinking in those and I don't really know and that's kind of what I wanted to say like right sitting here right now I don't know what that means is um manage a student's health. Sure. Yeah. So like one of the ones so that's the why we have the Velcro pouch option. So I know like for diabetics now they have the sensor on their arm and it can talk the sensor actually talks to their phone and they can check blood sugars and they can monitor those. So, I mean, I can think of things that do count like that, but I'm just thinking, you know, what if somebody says, "Oh, my need my watch to say what my heart rate is today." You know what I mean? I mean, I

040I don't know. So, we got to just think through that. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. And zero zero tolerance is kind of a shorthand way. I mean, that's always difficult to actually put into practice anyways. I mean, there's always going to be reasons that somebody needs an extra chance or something. Yeah. And I guess to the watch, I mean, you're not going to I'm going ask because I I don't have an Apple Watch. Can you post to Snapchat through your watch? I mean, I'm wearing a Garmin right now and I can't directly text people. Like there's there's certain watches where you can like an Apple Watch, but like this I just used to like for health like tracking my steps and uh gives me feedback on like stress levels and and stuff like that which

041like as an athlete and someone who cares about my physical health, you know, a lot, you know, taking this off for seven hours of the day would be like, you know, yeah, I guess my thing with that would be for the watch I I don't I'm not you can't do much with it. Like if you're not able again and that's maybe just my ignorance, but if you can't send you know Snapchat post via your watch then you can text via you can text but as far as like uh you know like you know you can't air can you airdrop through your watch? You can take a picture with your watch and you can also upload that to AI on a watch. So yeah, I mean there's cameras on Apple watches now. Yeah. I mean it's

042problematic. We got my, you know, my middle schooler, we got him an Apple Watch so that he would not have a phone. So, it's at least harder for him to use. They have pins now too that can, but you can also use again your watch is also a watch. So, it's helpful. Yeah. So, I guess we got to figure out how, you know, how granular and what do we do here? I think the first step is acknowledging there's a problem. I think we're talking. So, I think we Yeah. So that's first step we have a problem now. How do you know what's the solution? Um and and I want to make sure that we're supporting our educators and giving them something they can work with. Again, I don't I don't want them to be you

043know I don't want them out there fighting the fight alone, but that they do have a large part to play in this. Well, and parents need to be involved, too. That's that's where it's got to start is parents need to set an expectation that the kids know they're not using it in there so that our teachers aren't spending uh multiple you know all the time during the school day doing that. Um yeah and I mean wireless communication device I would think it would include an Apple Watch or Jack's Garmin. I mean I get happy when I just meet my stand goal you know every other day or so but Yeah, I think Brian's right. There's a problem. The thing that's on my mind in terms of enforcement, and this is I didn't articulate this very

044well, but let's just say that we say, "Okay, we're going to extend this to the hallways or the lunchroom or the whatever like that. In terms of enforcement, do does every teacher know this kid has an IEP? Does every kid know this kid has a 504?" You know what I'm saying? Correct. That's and that's kind of where my head's at in terms of trying to get us all, you know, pointed in the right direction. That's it's just a little hard right now. I think it's important for us to to really level set that this is going to be a pretty tough issue to to deal with. Um it's very hard to go back to an analog world now that we're in a digital, right? So, um, this is not going to be easy and I

045think it's going to take all the input that Ryan and Brian said as well, parents, educators, students, um, because we're all connected. Well, and again, I mean, a lot of our discipline problems come from phones and everything. So, so I guess for us going forward, we just need to have the policy in place. the solution whenever as long you know we just need to have this you know a plan of action you know and it could be I don't know so Mr. BL, how like what's the turnaround time on these if we were to want to implement this solution as far as getting them ordered, getting them in the magnet setup? Like what what what are we looking at from a time frame? I I haven't got gone down that road, but we're thinking about

0463,400 units. Um, and they have a they suggest one unlocking station for every 100 kids that leave through an exit. So, at the high school, we have several exits. So, you don't, you know, you don't have to have so many at the high school, but I wouldn't think it would take more than a couple weeks to get them in. Now, the installation of the locking bases, that would be different. That would be a Mr. working with the plant managers to get them. Yeah. I guess where I'm going with that is, you know, depending on the feedback, you know, maybe maybe there's got to be a heart-to-heart with the students to say, "Look, this, you know, this is this is it. This is your if if you don't perform your ways. Welcome, welcome to the phone.

047You're going to enjoy the pouch." And and you know, and we're the adults are going to enjoy it a lot more than you are. And so maybe we've got to be in that mode. Um, you know, again, like the feedback's going to tell us, but where I lean towards I see pros and cons to this. Where I lean more is making the students do what what they're supposed to be doing now. And if they just continue to refuse doing it, then you've left us no choice. That if if from a progressive standpoint and the cost and all that, that would be my preference. That's ultimately up to the will of the board. Um, but you know, I think you know, it's got to be day one of school or during schedule pickup or however they

048communicate at the high school to say, look, there's a state law. We've tried to be nice about it. Now, we're going to be a little more like, I don't care what you want or think, the phone's going up in the cubby when you when you go in. And then if that doesn't work, then welcome to uh welcome to the yonder. I don't know. Uh, that that again, that's just my thought. But again, if if the board decided and you know, and our families are on board with it that hey, this is something we want to implement, you know, whatever, August 5th or whenever we get started, then I'm okay with that, too. Um, but you know, whatever whatever the cure is going to be, um, you know, we're going to have to make sure we're

049committed to it and and follow through. Okay. There is a significant impact of telecommunication devices in the classroom during instructional time at Houston High School. There is nobody I think around this city that would dispute that. Um, I will say over the past year I have heard more from parents about what are y'all going to do to curb this issue. So I think that that it's timely and not even just because like let's just say the folks in Nashville had not passed this legislation. I would still feel obligated for us to be having this conversation to address the just enforcement of existing policy or I mean I I personally am supportive of a full campaign. We need buyin from parents. We need buy in from staff. And the last thing I want is to tie

050staff up with more burden of, you know, policing and and I'm frankly I think the pouch is pretty snazzy, but um I'm a little taken aback by the investment fiscal fiscally speaking. I'm not saying I I couldn't get behind it if if if it were something that what I hear though is based on the stations for the unlocking and um what we discussed with the carveouts um to me I'm not rushed to jump to something before we address the policy and address how we might improve um enforcement existing and I was envisioning um you know a lot of Um, I appreciate board member Bcker's, you know, talking about, well, if we don't have it in class, but then we do potentially have the ability to um unlock for different times throughout the day. Again, I'm

051just thinking about the first five minutes of class and the last five minutes of class being eaten up by everybody going to the little, you know, I mean, is that really what we're trying to do here? That doesn't achieve the goal in my opinion. That actually probably just makes more disruption in the instructional time. Um, we and when I say a campaign, like we truly have to get buy in for everybody, all parties. It is a new day, y'all. And I can just tell you as a parent of people who have phones at the school, it is a situation. Um, and you know, the biggest thing to me is I look at it and I think the parents that I've heard from look at it more from an academic impact. And while that was pointed

052out in the video, that was the lowest percentage, it was more of a um like mental health and behavioral impact that the statistics reported. Um, and I think that that's a way broader initiative that that we are looking at as a district, as a board, um, as part of our strategic plan. Um, I'll be here tomorrow afternoon and this topic comes up in that goal. It's, um, you know, specific to student readiness. So, I see it real holistically. I think the term was used. And then I also see it day-to-day implementation, enforcement. Um, I know that it's if with like anything else, if rules are only, you know, applicable third period and sixth period, well, okay, we're going to push the envelope. We're going to we're going to see how much we can get away

053with. If there is an expectation that when you arrive, this thing is not going to be out and these things are going to happen as a result of consequences. Um, we're not there now. We are not there. Um, and so I would really, really, really like to see us get policy. So that it's something when once we receive feedback uh from staff and from families um that that's our primary function is to craft that and then procedurally get everybody behind it. Um you know from from the superintendent on down to administrators to to every body in the classroom because the last thing again that they need is to be constantly having to micromanage this more than they already are in my opinion. um it should be to reduce that to reduce not only the use

054and and just the um distraction, but to keep everybody from having to even deal with it. Um I I'm I'm not naive. I'm hopeful that we can make progress. It's not going to just be a flip of a switch. I appreciate Mr. Bland doing the the research and come finding a product that could help us achieve the solution that we're all kind of moving toward. I think trying to trying to come to um a solution ultimately just to reduce um phones in the classroom during instructional time but also knowing that that broader effect of the social media and we you know I I fully understand what happens at home or when you leave campus that that's not that's not our purview until it starts to impact what happens in the classroom and on campus. Um,

055and so phones are going to be phones, social media is going to be social media, but if we can do our part to try to limit it when it's a learning environment and benefit people's um, you know, just overall well-being while they're in school on campus. I think that's our responsibility. I'll be curious what the feedback, you know, kind of brings us. Um, I'm I kind of appreciate that I'm not leaning one way or the other. the fiscal note, if you will, is is something I'm mindful of, especially if we don't get a majority buy in from the community um stakeholders that are going to have to really get on board with this for us to for me to consider it um from an investment standpoint. But I think that we're we're there, we're having

056the talks, we're getting the feedback, and I'll be really curious in June. Um I I want least restrictive language. That's how I like policy in general because I don't want to tie the hands of um anybody and set them up, you know, for a circumstance or a situation. And I'm also mindful that hey emergency situations that's the one thing that the same families that are like please get the phone away from my child during the day but also let my child have their phone because God forbid something really you know terrible or traumatic occurs. Um I think there's going to be a balancing act that we're going to see and hear from from the feedback we receive. And um there's other people and I know it's Hamilton County that's the one that did the uh

057the big initiative a few years ago where they just were like no phones y'all not going to do it. Not going to have them. What are we going to do about that? And then I hear, you know, well great, you don't get to walk around with a little lapel pin that says I have a 504. Um, and um, so I'm mindful of of of there's other things that we could consider and I'm just glad that we're having this talk because it's very timely and um, I don't think that it's just going to happen like uh, a flip of a switch like I say, but we're obligated to come up with good and craft good um, policy. So first step for me personally, that's my priority. Um, and I hope that the board will express, you

058know, other things that is of interest to them. And I'll look forward to to hearing from board member Bucker and maybe some of his uh committee that he, you know, gets with and and collaborates with for some more feedback from the actual student population as well. I'll tell you personally I agree with I can't remember exactly which board member mentioned it but from a middle school standpoint I I feel like that's something that we can nip in the bud um more from a procedural standpoint and I think the the more we set the expectation for our students that they're not going to be out the devices that is the personal devices that um that is just helping us for the future implementation and enforcement of whatever policy we move on for the high school specifically.

059So, I do have one last question for Mr. Bcker. Did you um did you notice that the stress level on your watch went up as we had this discussion? I haven't checked it yet. I'll have to look at it later tonight. Just check it. Okay. Um so, we don't have to make a decision on this. This is really for us. I want to first touch for you to really know all the different things that we're considering and obviously we're going to have to engage parents, teachers, staff, but we know that we've got a problem, something that we've got to fix. So, I assume that we're going to have numerous conversations on uh our cell phone challenges that face us. Well, thank you for the presentation and for bringing like I say a product to consider.

060Okay. Okay. Ready for field. Let's move to another fun topic. uh is going to bump up to number what I'm going to call it number two affectionately turf field discussion superintendent. So this really arose from uh challenges that we've faced because of additional programs that we've um had added in the district. Um and I think that several board members heard from lots of different parents and and teams and programs um this past spring specifically. Um but as you know we have uh track and cross country teams. It's the track that's a bigger problem than the cross country at our elementary school uh at all of our elementary schools. We also have it at the middle school level. Uh lacrosse has become a tab bus a sport and we have uh varsity and junior varsity programs.

061Um I don't think they have a freshman yet but I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually have they do have. It's coming. Um we have numerous middle school teams. Um I think are there two or there three? How many do you have? There's three boys, three girls. So So six different teams um that are all trying to utilize um different fields. Now uh we also have soccer at the middle school level and the high school level. And I think they have freshman JV uh and varsity teams. Um it's not as much an issue for the girls team um because they're in the fall for soccer, but boys are in the the spring. So, the challenge that we've faced specifically this past spring was when we have a rainy spring, um the fields that those teams

062normally use at Houston Middle School and um the city allows our lacrosse teams to use Johnson Road Park field. Um they're all start competing for the turf field uh at the high school and trying to schedule onto that same uh field. And that's conflicting with the track programs for the elementary and middle school um programs, the high school programs. The other challenge you also face uh for the high school programs, they want to be in the stadium uh at certain times. They want to have access to the jumbotron and the and the speakers, they want it to have that home uh feel. And there are times where they want it to play at the the middle school because they've done so much work and that program has invested so much into that uh facility. um

063it has really become their home field, but of course their limitations that they have around when it rains, how much play that we have had years where we ruined that field and it wasn't good for the rest of the season because we played during multiple rains and had tournaments there. All those things have created this conflict for the same uh facility uh at the Houston High School stadium. So I think that's what we need to discuss and I think Mr. Curry, you talked about the fact we can't continue and and the more that this goes on, the parents are going to become more and more concerned that we've got these programs that aren't able to compete. Um, we're very thankful to uh Germantown High School that has allowed our elementary and youth teams to to

064practice over there, but that's not necessarily what we want as a a district. So, I thought it was um good use of our time to talk about and really gauge the board's will about what are next steps for us and and how are we going to to relieve this. Um so, Mr. Posski, you can come up too if you want or Mr. Kathy, I don't know who's jumping in on this to you can stay. You don't have to go. Um, but I I thought it was valuable for us to to really talk about what does this look like and and Coach Wolf is here too. If we have um questions, he can answer things for us about what does it look like and how do we move forward. Um, we know that we need additional

065field space to house these teams. Mr. Bowski was actually looking at a netting solution that we had so that uh we could have lacrosse practices going on at the field and also have youth track around around the outside of it. The challenge with those systems and we did find a netting system that we can afford and and we can purchase. The challenge with those it's not an easy setup and installation. If you're setting it up, you probably want that to stay for a set period of time. So that that's one of our challenges that we face. So um I had Mr. Possi actually reached out and he he was actually working with a consultant for us who um actually helped uh with the turfing of the fields u for Cameron Brown in the city. But

066you have some projected costs um for different fields within our um district to be turfed. Um and so I really want to get your opinions and have a conversation about how do you want us to proceed and where do you want us to go next? Uh we did send an official email to the city. Uh we do have four is it four years left in the land five years left in the land usage agreement. The property is ours behind Houston High School. Um but the way it reads is we have to allow the city to have primary use of the two um softball fields to the south of that. Um and we can make alterations and changes to those as long as they can still have their programs. So, even within the five years of

067the contract, um if the city wasn't willing to change anything, we can modify those as long as we're providing some ability for them to still have use for softball um programs there. So, I I think it's time for me to stop talking and and really turn it over to uh you, Mr. Picassa or Mr. Bla. I don't know if you have anything to add about what you have experienced or do this process here. Hit that mic. Yeah, I I have two kids playing lacrosse. Um, and this early spring was tough on them and being able to practice regularly. Um, but I think it's it's a much bigger issue than any one sport or any um one program. I think that there's a real need. Um, a lot of middle schools now have tracks, so we

068don't have we don't have anywhere to put that. Um, but I think it's it's a real need for a district our size with as many kids we have participating in sports to have a a second track somewhere. I think that's that's a priority in my mind. Um, and with that a field in the middle of it would be a great addition. Um, don't know if we have space for that. So with the city's with them having control of those fields back there. So I think, you know, we need to have other options kind of ready to go if that's not something that's able to come to fruition. So we've we've come up with some other options for you to look at. So I spoke with Mr. Heisman this afternoon and and philosophically they say yes,

069they they are they are not unwilling to look at this. Um they do want to obviously provide for their programs and have some some options for those programs. it we are going to have like a future meeting where we have to sit down and look at the schedules for the programs that are um in the contract mentioned that they are provided on those fields. So we would have to look at how would we what time frame would we alter those fields? Um what would that look like? Um, but I do think for me one of one of the things that we need is is just more field space in the district because that does open up the track uh for the youth programs that we have at the middle and elementary school levels. So with

070that and I know that you all have children who practiced elsewhere or not been able to practice. So yeah, I suppose this kind of my first question is are you talking about a new turf field or are you talking about turfing the soccer field at Houston Middle or the baseball field at Houston High? What what what kind of what were the what were you thinking of? So I wanted to bring all the options for you all to look at. So I've I've got it where we could turf everything in the district where we could um money is I have so here I'm going to pass these out. I forgot to so here's I asked that we receive this information this way so that it could be one piece it could be two pieces it could

071be here please yes like thank you okay I think everybody's got one does everybody have one here thank you so by doing that then it does break it up so that any combination could be considered because it wasn't a specific ask and it wasn't a specific program. It is a um a combination of hey if this then that and how it allows for um I guess increased practice space or availability of that and you know like we said there's even more TWSA sanctioned um yes programs coming. This isn't just, you know, I I'm going to talk I'll let everybody kind of get it going. And I just want to say that this has been a long time coming conversation and there's a couple of pieces to that for me and that is the parkland that

072the superintendent referenced. Um I've been here every step of the way with that agreement and that in my mind was intended to be a short-term solution. Um, and we said it then what if we need it? That when we sat right here and said, "What if we need it sooner?" Okay. Um, fast forward to that was back in March of 2020. And then in March of 2025, just 5 years later, I sat at city hall and I looked at the mayor and the city administrator and I said, "I think we need it." Um, you know, while we couldn't predict um the future, we we knew enough to know that we may need it sooner than 10 years. And what does that look like? And I expressed that um as part of broader conversations of uh

073investments and facilities and um in order for us to be able to have said facilities for our athletic programs, we are sitting on some of those already in my mind that will be needed to be retrofitted or renovated or brought up to the needs but technically that is something. So, um, not as an action item on behalf of the board without board consent, but I did verbally express that that would be something that I would like to see the city consider. And here we all are. Um, that is something from a contractual standpoint that I'm going to be curious what that could look like. It's going to require flexibility and again collaboration with the city, parks and wreck. I mean, it's going to be a lot of people having to come together and decide that

074we all want bests for not just GMSD students, but also the all the students, excuse me, children in the community that are benefiting from programs. And that was a big part of also a conversation at this table in the past where GMSD invested in the girls softball facility and we said we were doing this as a greater good for the community not just for student athletes that happen to be on the softball team. It was a primary um need for them, but the benefits of it were far greater and were to be, you know, enjoyed by all the students uh age children that participate in softball in our community. Um that was part of how we looked at that. We also during that time um had the opportunity to turf and we elected not to

075because it wasn't something um that the board at the time felt like was fiscally uh sound as far as all of the options that we were given. we needed to accomplish and achieve certain things and that was going to be something that we would talk about later that and the concession stand and um there were parts of that project again looking at it as a multi- um option project and we elected at the time as a board to not um go with the one that included turfing. Um, fast forward last year during the budget work session um I brought up a conversation uh or discussion point, excuse me, to um that we've had baseball families and and staff reach out about well maybe we would like to consider turfing part of the ba the current

076baseball facility. So now add lacrosse and add the amazing elementary, track and field and middle school programs. Here's the deal. We have more student athletes than we have space for them to adequately practice. That's where we find ourselves and that's a good problem. My personal opinion. Um but we're we're at a crux. We have to figure it out and we have a lot of ways we can do that. Um and it's going to cost money at the end of the day. it's not going to, you know, we're going to be good stewards, I believe. But I think that by looking at it, um, needs versus expenses versus impacts. If we look at something that can really transform the ability to schedule for multiple programs, to me, that's that's the thing that it's going to benefit

077the most people. So that's personally how I'm kind of coming at this is it's like, hey, if we do this field back here and then all of a sudden everybody has a home, I'm for it. Let's figure it out. Let's find a way. I'm hopeful for that. I think it's really important that we look at it big picture and then we can thank you for the superintendent to um work with um the consultant so that we can see all the small morsels or parts of what it could look like. I think that there's all kinds of conversations that could be had kind of subcon conversations about this overall discussion because it is a very blanket discussion turf discussion that's what it says. Um and there's every which way we can come at this and so

078I'm excited for the opportunity. Um I see a lot of benefit and I can tell you I've heard from more parents about this very topic uh in the past year than I have the past six. Um, so I think that it's very timely and uh the stuff's not getting any less expensive. So as we look at the fiscal impacts, I you know that's that's what we get tked to do at this table. So um I look forward to hearing from other board members and their thoughts on it as we open up the first official discussion on turf. So what you have before you in this back just explain you have like the different parts of each thing. What what would it be to turf every field in the district? What would it be to turf

079the infields for baseball and softball? Uh what would it be to to do the multi-purpose field without the track? We wanted to give you a menu. And I think what we eventually see because once again this is not about the need. Um we all they're all they all have the need. It's more about um how do you want to allocate this money and it would be something that we would be using from reserve to do this. So yeah, and I guess speaking to that, we did get an extra bonus for being a high performing district. So that prompted my initial discussions with the superintendent saying, "Hey, we got this money that kind of basically dropped out of the sky on us, a million dollars, and so we've got some needs." That kind of prompted the

080discussions that I had uh with Mr. Emanuel and also Mr. Uh, I'll just speak to the track situation. Uh, for the middle school at Houston, um, it was pretty dire this year. Um, track at the middle school level is actually a TM TMSAA championship sport. So, if you look at the hierarchy of sports at the TMSAA level, track at the middle school level is above lacrosse and a lot of other sports. Matter of fact, we have athletes going this weekend over to Clarksville to run in the TMSAA state championship meet. Um, we were not able to do any offseason workouts on the track. So, the high school gets to do offseason workouts because it's during the course of instruction. During the month of February, we were basically told middle school can't have it. So, lacrosse

081had it, which again that you know, whatever. Um, but then prior to our first meet, Houston Middle had only had two practices on a track. Um, and that's just you can't survive like that. I know I've used the analogy, Mr. Kathy. I mean, basically what we're looked with is setting up a pile of brush on the greenway as a hurdle and jumping over it. I mean, that's really what that's kind of where we were. For your distances, you can run around the lake, but at some point, you need to be able to run on a track and do that. Your sprinters, your, you know, your 400s, your 800s, you really need a track to run and pace, and we just didn't get to do that. Matter of fact, we had a lot more practices at

082Germantown High this year than we did at our own facility. And I'm thankful for Germantown High and us being able to do that because in the past we've not had that ability and the elementary schools didn't get to do anything. And I kept hearing from the parents that we were our our track coaches that basically we were getting kicked off for lacrosse. Um to which I kept going back to the superintendent saying, "Hey, you know, this this isn't sustainable. We can't do this again next year." So, um I you know, we're gonna have to do something different. I think to me it all hinges on the city and the availability behind the behind the softball field or behind in the back of Houston property that I think that's going to determine because if they say

083no you're not going to get it for five years well then our options are really limited. uh if they say we could have it now, then I think we're able to do some stuff. But I think any further decision making, it's going to come down to that point and and I if anyone from the city's watching, we need that decision made pretty quickly because again, this is going to take time. We can't be six months from now trying to figure this out because if we are, then we're going to be right back in the same situation uh that we are this year. Uh I'm sensitive to Lacrosse again. I'm I'm sensitive to their um the needs. Um but from from a track standpoint, we have one place where we can practice. Um lacrosse has they

084do have Johnson Road Park. It's not ideal. Although the city did redo those fields a couple years ago, so they I think they spent about three million on those fields redoing them. So they they're I mean I don't know what their level of upkeep is, but at least there is a place to go. But from the track perspective, um we had nowhere else to go. Again, it was up to uh basically it was Germantown High and I don't and Riverdale I think did almost all their practices at Germantown High. I don't remember Riverdale coming over and using um our our high school track and they also are TMSAA uh program. So, um we've got to do something. You know, I I know uh I think we've got some options. Um, I guess we just have

085to see um, you know, what we can do, uh, what we're able to do. I think, you know, when we start looking at maybe like baseball, I think we look into a lot more partnerships there. Um, for me, I also am looking at what investment is going to impact the most students. And so, for me personally, again, if I look at baseball, that's that's a very limited audience. when I'm looking at like this the one that the one here in the back potentially that impacts a lot and so you know that that's going to you know ultimately drive my decision making on where we go with it but yeah it is it's a pretty dire situation and and I'll I'll close with we're just we just spent a million dollars on this track for next

086year. We're gonna have probably the best track surface in the area. It would be a shame that we can't use it because we can't have access to the field. So, I think my expectation would be we just spend a million dollars on the track. I I expect that we're going to use it and not just sit there and look at it. So, I I all that being said, I'm interested to see where we can go. I'm open. I'm very open-minded on this knowing that we have to do something. So, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Real quick, um can I ask a question just to clarify existing turf on the high school football field, we're coming up at 10 years of that. Um, and from a maintenance and all that standpoint, is that something? Uh, it

087will be something that we're going to have to address. They say that they have like a 10 to 12 year lifespan. Uh, and it's because of UV breakdown as much as the wear and tear because you can patch and you can do things and we haven't hit we haven't had to do serious patching and things to that field. It's it has held up well. Okay. Good. So, I have all expectations that we'll get through 12. It's about 50% of the cost is the underllayment that you do on that turf field. So really what you're replacing when you do that, you're replacing the carpet and the beads. Your your drainage and stuff is still uh intact. So it would be about half the cost of what it was um originally. Well, and I'm mindful I I'm

088uh open it back up. I just wanted to clarify this just as we're talking holistically about the group, how many people because there's a lot of programs, athletic programs, non-athletic programs, co-curricular programs that invested financially in the turf project are are kind of a OG original turf project. Um, and you know, they've been paying overtime, whatever their portion was. And and I think that this ultimately once we start having more conversations around additional turf, there's a little uh history lesson opportunity to clarify on that because there's there's a lot of families that had little bitty kids or didn't, you know, weren't even with us then that have just sort of heard kind of the urban legend of how all that went down. And and I I think that that just kind of as we start

089fresh ground zero in the financial talks about these considerations, it's important for people to understand how their program that maybe they're involved in now participated for a while because when someone thinks that their program paid a lot of money and didn't have access, that gets people frustrated. And I understand that. Um, I understand that from every way all the way around it. Uh, you know, and so I know that that's kind of coming to I feel like a close from the payments from a lot of those groups and organizations um and teams and and booster clubs and and we talk a lot about how we're benefiting the most student athletes and students. And then also I'm always mindful about how we're helping keep dollars in parents' pockets, you know, um, and you know, that's a

090factor. And then I'm also mindful that a lot of times the booster clubs have to partner and we we will have to try to meet in the middle. And you know, it's like, hey, we can do this, but we're going to need to come up with a plan just like we would with the PTO um for our playground, for instance, um, in a few minutes. And so I think that that's all that has to be part of it. um understanding where how we got here and also understand where we're trying to go. So I think it's important that that I don't want to hash it out. It was even way before my time, but there's a lot of misconceptions in the community about it. I do know that. And so I think that as we're

091talking about turf, I think we all need to be prepared that those questions and comments are going to continue to come up. So, um, Chairman Griffith, uh, Chairwoman Griffith touched on something with the existing field because this would be a replacement of that existing field on the high school. No, what we're talking about doing is on the two uh, fields behind the high school, the two softball fields. You can see the existing baseball and softball field right there. This would be where those two fields are. So, that's what I'm saying. Adding this additional multi-purpose field uh essentially on our books creates an opportunity for lacrosse team if they want to have games there. If they're rained out on Johnson Park that they can have practices there. For soccer, if they can't get on the um

092football field, here's a turf solution for them for practices. Um we have girls flag football that is a Tito West sport that is coming in in the fall. Uh that's going to be u another group wanting to use field. This is that space behind it. Got. So, what about like the Houston Middle School football team? Um because there's often times uh where we have to use the baseball field uh to practice on. This would be for all groups. So, that would be another group that once again would have access and during football season they could schedule practices at the same time. You're not going to have to do a later. You could do earlier practices for those group uh groups. I know that's always a challenge of um timing. It would be a huge have

093a huge impact on all of those programs. When it comes to priority the sport for the field, I would imagine that the priority would go to the sport that's in season. Yes. Okay. Few things. Um I think no matter which direction we go, even if we were to add that field, I think we still need that net system. so that it could be used by more than one group at a time. I just think it's crazy to not have the field be usable when tracks going on or vice versa. Um, and Mr. Hendrickx brought up something that I was going to point out. The baseball outfield is a huge space and and can be used by other groups to practice if it's or could be I guess if it was turf. Um, I think the

094soccer field, it looks easy and you know, you look at the numbers and you're like, well, let's do that. But you have to remember that the soccer seasons are split. So, the girls are in the fall, the boys are in the spring with two or three teams per season, um, plus games. And it it doesn't give us as much as, you know, it looks like on paper originally because he did it with stripes for every sport you can think of on the soccer field. Um, yeah, I would agree. I don't that doesn't give you as much flexibility as it initially looks like on paper just because of the way the soccer season's run. I think from a parents perspective also, you know, the fees that that we pay for paying uh for our children to

095play these sports, uh we do expect them to have facilities uh to practice on uh that are of the same quality that the amount of fees Yes. warrants. Um, so next steps for us, like I said, we're we're going to schedule that meeting and talk about logist because I think the first thing that we all have to know is what's the timeline? Um, can we add the spec proper and and what are we looking at doing here? I think the next thing for us to do for this board would bring you a menu of options. Uh, similar to what we did with the softball field. um hey we can do this field we can do this we could do this multi-purpose field we can do infields at softball and baseball we can do all these

096things and then um at the end of the year too end of the fiscal year when we're also talking about once we know the full reserve that that is rolled over I think those are discussions that are worthy for us to have um once we start moving into this next fiscal year Just one more thing to add to the turf conversation. I just want to make sure to temper expectations on the actual constructibility of these projects should the board choose to move forward with moving funds from reserve for us to pursue these. It's May right now. Uh coach will soccer girls start practicing in August. Would that be accurate? July sometimes. If if the board came back in June and said, "Go get them for soccer." I don't think we would be able to do

097that project until next summer because fall, girls are going full tilt. Winter, you can't do a construction project like that just because of the conditions. Then spring, boys are back on the field for their sport. And so between getting bid packages, releasing construction, ordering materials, etc. I just want to temper expectations that that one is really a summer project. That's the time to do that project. As far as the rest go, um, and I don't want to speak for the baseball program, but baseball tends to be a spring and summer sport. So fall and is certainly the I think the ideal time to attack those for softball and baseball should the board choose to move forward with those. And then, as Mr. Emanuel said, the back softball fields are really an anytime project if the

098city is willing to amend the land usage agreement that we currently have with them. Uh, so I just wanted to temper expectations as far as if this board says go, uh, we still have to work within the confines of the timelines that it takes to do the construction and our current teams that have to utilize those fields. Thank you, Mr. Kathy. I think that's very important to consider. Um, and I I'm I'm going to go ahead and anticipate that we are going to begin hearing from more people in the community after this public discussion this evening. And uh, you know, everyone looks at it differently because of their personal experience, whether it be with track, lacrosse, soccer, softball, baseball, um, what that access is. And I think that to me it's also twofold that we're

099talking about I think it's a great example if let's say we were to turf the outfields of the softball and the baseball fields well of course we would hope that the programs facilities who they actually are would benefit but it would also be to add availability for practice space to maybe middle school lacrosse um and and so it's not just you know for one, we're talking about how we can look at this facility scheduling situation we find ourselves in and get creative and and have benefits for just a lot of different people, not one over the other, picking winners and losers. Again, I think that I've heard again and again tonight that it's it's about the benefit of the most. And um there are certainly board member Curry pointed it out, there are some teams

100that are way greater. You know, we talked a lot about during the softball conversations, you know, if you have 16 to 20 people. Well, you know what we weren't having back then when we did that? We didn't have, you know, championship uh middle school softball program. But when we said we were going to invest in the high school program, it was to grow our own. And we've done that. Y'all, I just got chills because that was what it was for. It was to it was to add opportunities for students and we did that and that's something that didn't previously exist certainly not at that level and by that investment and and that planning we built it and they came I guess is my point. So, when we're talking about facilities for students and and we

101only have so much property that we can work with, we're we're going to have to, you know, look, and I'm really excited to to kind of go through this exercise and process understanding that not everybody wants turf. I'm going to throw that out there, too. I think it's really important. Um there's one particular sport that I have not had one person ask directly about it and some of those folks really appreciate their current facility like it is and uh you know I think that that is also has to be tempered with the needs of the actual teams that do play on certain um facilities or certain fields. So, um, now we have a whole menu to discuss and to consider. Um, and I appreciate the future, uh, information that's going to be brought to us.

102And I certainly thank Mr. Bosski talking about the netting that could give us some pretty immediate solutions. Um, because that's something that that um, we again, it's something that fiscally and um, impact uh, is pretty quick and and something that we could hopefully digest. So, I look forward to getting some of the um financial parts of that um sooner than later. Thank you. Can I ask Coach Wolf a question? Just I want I want your time to be worth it for being here. Um how much just for annual maintenance on your grass field uh that you're that you look at. I just curious to see all in what your costs are on an annual basis. So 50,000 Um, listening to this, I've been thinking about it two ways. with the new position that I have

103and then also as a soccer coach. Um my first thought was that on a pecking order I don't think that it really matters because I think the people the people that are lower in the TWSAA minds aren't lower in their sport. They don't think about it in those terms. It's the importance of what they're doing. Um, from a soccer standpoint, the synthetic new soccer fields are pretty similar to grass. From a soccer coach's standpoint, I would think anybody who's going to give me turf in this situation, I I would I would like it. However, from that other point of view, I think that we probably are this the sport that needs the the least. I think that if we have a if you throw lacrosse onto our field, it will be a catastrophic nightmare. I

104think it will be bad because of the amount of teams that they have and the amount of teams that we have. We're trying to have a JV in middle school. So, that's going to be two, three, five teams that are going to be in one season, five in the other. the spring and TWSA's wisdom was to put all of lacrosse and not split. Why they do that, I don't know. Maybe that's one of the reasons that they're sitting before the the state legislature. But from a standpoint of of two, I I I look at it differently. But I would think that if you ask me what I think should happen first, I think that number one, baseball should get a turf field. Like there's no doubt. And then the second most important thing is that

105field that is built in the back. I think that alleviates almost every one of your problems. We practice at five o'clock in the morning of soccer does on the turf field. People drive by their thinking. But that's our culture. We ask our kids to do whatever is necessary and they're willing to do that. And you can ask Jack about that, but that's probably my my two cents. Yeah. And I appreciate that and and your points well made about the the pecking order. Um Yeah. Yeah, I guess for you because you know like if you have a game coming up that you're on natural grass now and you have a game coming up that you know is on turf then obviously you can make an adjustment. Getting this extra field would be just another field for

106you to be able to use to prepare and depending on whatever the surface is. If it's the the helix surface that stands up more like grass then I guess you know you can kind of adjust and plan because obviously the ball bounces I've seen it in person the ball bounce is a lot different on that football field than it is most definitely. So, you obviously have to practice and prepare for that, especially from a goalkeeper perspective. And we do after school. I mean, lacrosse comes in later because of time. Um, but I will tell you that with the flag football issue coming in, that's going to really just dominate that. And again, we can go at 5 in the morning um to get used to the turf field. So, it's not something that we just

107need. I don't know if we've played any games on the turf this year. Our our grass field is in probably the best shape it's been. Um, but again, it's it's I don't think you're going to fix the problem by putting two sports that are so um populated that are going to be able to fix that. And I looked um because I was going to reach out to TWSAA, but I looked at all the states that had lacrosse and they're all uh boys and girls are both in the spring all across Virginia, Maryland, you know, all the all the big lacrosse states. That's just where it is. So like, well, we're kind of stuck with that. Um but yeah, I want to make sure again that we can impact the most students. Um so maybe but

108I I am you know I think about your cost like that's a that's a big cost over there but maybe there are some advantages for you to stay on a grass field just to have that because you're going to go play games on grass fields. Um and then that way you've got that and then there's turf that you can go to to prepare as necessary. Um well the state legislature also has given us funds to maintain our fields. Okay. So everybody gets a certain amount of money and it really helps out. Okay. Um when it's about overseating Ry or stuff like that. Okay. But it would reduce if if if the other sports if baseball that would reduce the cost. You know we talk about how much it costs to play sports. That would reduce

109the cost of the sports for the for your individual um participants that are in this uh community. Okay. Yeah. Your feedback is important. I mean, you're living it. So, obviously hearing your perspective, I think uh helps the decision-making. So, I appreciate it. Yeah, you should have called me about the pouches, right? Touche. There's We could go right back to it. Um, thank you, coach. Wow. Come on up. It's not too late. They're still here. Um I yes I um I do think it is important uh and I appreciate coach Wolf mentioning that because when we talk about facilities where there is maintenance fees associated or the cost rather not the fee I shouldn't call it that they are often absorbed partially in the participation fees but that was something that the district specific to some

110of the asks and one in particular made by the baseball program in the past uh 18 to 24 months that there was some um budget I guess um allocation given to offset some of those cost of the maintenance that they were having to um take care of out of some of their booster club funds and and some of their other fees. And so those are things that again we're mindful of. And I appreciate Coach Wolf mentioning that if you do go artificial surface, a lot of those recurring annual investments may be reduced. So I'm going to be thinking about that when we start to look at how many years, you know, would it take for X expense to be, you know, re realized if we were to take, you know, those away by going to

111a different um surface. At this time it is. Before we before we do that, I just wanted Yeah, I we talked about a lot, but we hadn't actually said what the costs are, and I think people watching may be interested. Um, and once again, these are just Yeah, these are estimated bid. These are real just estimates. These are just estimates, but softball. Yeah, I'll read them. Softball 390,000. The uh new track 710,000. multi-purpose field associated with the track 800,000. Uh turfing the soccer field at Houston Middle 810,000 and then turfing it looks like the entire baseball field including infield would be 1.25 million and that the infield only would be 580. So all in if you were looking at all these together you're looking around $4 million and I think we just also need to

112be thinking about I mean honestly I think most if not all of these are probably are needed. I mean that's what we hear about a lot but we got to think about ways to fund it and I think that's going to have to be us getting creative because we got a lot of stuff we need to do at Farmington, at Dogwood, at Houston inside the school and we've got to we've got to get creative. Is there any further discussion on Thank y'all. I know that these were long um discussions, but I think for us to move strategically forward that they they were worthy discussion. So once again, no decision at this point. We're just wanting to bring something to your attention and then uh us have a further discussion about what are next steps. Like

113I said, probably a menu for the board to say where do we want to go. Thank you all. I I I would like us to do the working. So, if we can grab it in five minutes and come back and let's keep on tricking through if y'all are good with it. Can we say 7:10 p.m. I know we've got some visitors visitors too. That's what I'm mindful of. That'll help get as a matter of fact, if we need to make some adjustments in the agenda. Okay. For those as well, we could do that. Okay. Re reconvening and uh taking working meeting literally. Uh thank you everyone for their time. We still have a lot to uh to get into, but I would like to also ask that we make an adjustment since we have a

114visitor here who needs to um travel to get back home. We appreciate seeing you annually, but we are also mindful of your time and your safety. So, agenda item number five, property liability, workers compensation, and student accident insurance. is up. Mr. Kathy, would you lead us? This is the time of year for us to look at our renewals for those four insuranceances that Miss Griffith just mentioned. Um, for the pricing summary in the attach in the attachment, you'll actually go to page three and see the differences in year-toear. The biggest increase was in property. Um, and I'm going to give the floor to Mr. McDonald if you have any questions but the best explanation here is claims experience coupled with the fact that property values actually increase and when property values increase the cost to

115insure them also increases. So that was where the biggest jump was. There were some there was a very very minor increase on workers compensation as well as liability student accident stayed pretty flat. Um, and all summaries of all of those policies and coverages and what's included with those are included in the attachment. Uh, I'll be able to answer any questions that you might have. Mr. McDonald is also here if you have any questions that are uh in the weeds insurance questions to that you would like to ask. I'll just comment the rate increase wasn't as high as I anticipated. I know how much my personal homeowners has gone up and so percentage-wise this was lower than that. So, I didn't see anything that was unreasonable just for my own view. It It's a challenge. So,

116just to be clear, y'all aren't buying insurance from an insurance company where you're a customer. You're buying insurance from a captive that you own and you're a member of the captive. So, they've been challenged because a lot of the footprint of all the properties are in Hamilton County, in Knox County, and you can see what the weather patterns have been doing across those, but they've been doing everything they can be keep those very consistent and to make sure that if a big loss occurs over here, we've adjusted your property values accordingly. And every three years, we have every single property reappraised for replacement cost. and y'all get a full copy of that report that can be given to your maintenance department. That all makes perfect sense to me and um to the point that the

117increase I appreciate the explanation and um board member Curry pointing out, you know, incrementally speaking, it's in alignment with what we would expect to see. Are there any other questions specific to um the changes that are being presented tonight for us to consider? Well, one other thing, if y'all get sued in your capacity as a board member, there's $5 million limit. And I think that's I think that's y'all are y'all are are giving your time, talent, and treasure to this board. And I think that there's a lot of things that go out there in education. And I think it's in the back of your mind what happens if and we've had situations come up before that we've dealt with, but that is very critical to y'all's role and be able to make the decisions that

118you need to make. I appreciate you pointing that out. I will tell you as as a a state legislature that is often considering figuring out ways to to kick us out of office um or our elected capacity with real minimal um teeth to some of those bills that have been considered of late for recall purposes. I'm all for that being out there and and an option for any elected office, trust me. Um, but I think that you hit on something that very few people can appreciate except for the five of us that are sitting here tonight. So, thank you for mentioning that. Is there any uh other question? Are there any other questions? Any further discussion? All right. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you. You have a good meeting. Okay. Agenda item number

119one at 7:17 p.m. GMSD fiscal year 2526 federal capital cafeteria health insurance and OPED budgets first reading Mr. Manuel. So we're going to highlight uh changes from last year's budget. As you know most of these budgets are coming from uh federal funds or they're coming from state or they're an isolated fund. um and they are actually we're told here's the amount that you have and here are the ways that you have to spend it. So I just wanted to highlight some of those details. So the first and we also have the staff members here if you have specific questions about um functions of parts of those budgets. So we can explain each of those but know that our other funds budget the first one we're going to look at uh consolidated administration uh title one

120funding or to all title funings Carl Perkins IDA part B and IDA preschool. Um we do see a slight increase in adjustment. Uh it was equivalent to 38,651 uh dollars from the previous fiscal year to this fiscal year. Um they are spread throughout um that budget. So if Just if anyone has specific questions about those budget, it's very similar to what it was last year. If you want to look at the specific categories, like I said, Miss Huffman or Miss Ael can answer questions about those budgets. If not, I'm going to move on. The next uh other funds budget that we have is school nutrition. And as you know with school nutrition besides some of the fixed costs that we have a lot of it is projections around how many meals are we going to

121sell based on previous years. So our uh company that we outsource with actually does an analysis of previous expenditures to see in prediction of markets to try to make a guess but they're projecting that there is going to be a slight decline in their revenue of 2.6% which is 59,000 as compared to the previous fiscal year. And because of that we've also projected uh the same or or reductions in expenditures as compared to the previous years but but we have reduced more about uh 7.7%. Uh but you can see that budget there if you want to look specifically at you have the nutrition budget in front of you. We can answer any questions on cafeteria. Was there anything um in particular that they pointed to as a result of I mean trends, expenses that impact?

122No, I I I think just based on what Mr. Jones, you can come up, Mr. Jones. Um they're looking at market trends, too, and they're looking at sales tax expenditures and how much money people are spending. So that they're also trying to make those projections of how willing people are to spend money. And I I think it was bringing the numbers closer in line with FY24, the actual uh revenues and expenditures. So basically a year out seeing the patterns and what did we see and then applying those moving forward to get closer to reality. Correct. So if there are no questions on cafeteria, we will move on to Yeah. Go ahead. Real quick question on cafeteria. So this doesn't I don't see where our whatever our reserve fund what do we have about 1.7 or

1231.8 8 million in there. Now, I don't see that reflecting. That's about 1 1.7. That's because at this time we're not spending it. Okay. So, this will just be we'll just be adding to correct. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. There will be some plans probably for uh some additional uh building improvements at the high school and additional equipment needs. So, that that will come later. And as you know, our objective with the cafeteria fund is to always have that be a self-sufficient fund that also pays for itself. So whenever we do build reserves um besides saving money to start up the next year, we look to upgrade the equipment or upgrade the kitchens uh there. Yeah, I've been uh pleasantly surprised to see the balance grow and I know we had a kickstart from the s or

124from I guess USDA funding from COVID that kind of helped kickstart that. But we've got a nice balance there. So hopefully, you know, um knock on wood, we don't have anything urgent, but I think we're going to have enough to make some investments here at some point and and still be in good shape based on the budget. So I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. Okay. Um so that's cafeteria budget. Moving on to capital improvements. So this one is kind of an odd one. We do a projection based on previous years of what the county commission gives us for capital funding. uh we make it mirror the expenditures but once again we don't recognize or spend any any of this money until we actually receive it from the county commission and so

125uh we will bring that before the board to recognize the actual money as it comes in uh and then also spend it so I don't know how helpful it is to to budget the capital improvement it really is we're waiting wait and see and once we recognize it then we will make plans to spend it but based on previous years we think we received two to million is our share of the capital funding that they provide to Memphis Shelby County Schools. Well, I think that um since it is part of the capital improvement budget specifically um in the previous conversation when vice chair strain, you know, we talk about how anything that we're going to consider coming out of reserves on All all this goes hand in hand. I mean like our ability to to

126pull from multiple sources and um get creative and um you know when we look at these things it's trying to realize what's actually going to come in and we you know board member Curry mentioned some some funds that are now part of you know some benefit of being a high achieving school district and how sometimes additional funds come to us. This is just keeping us what I feel like is our guideline, our parameters that we anticipate almost exactly as opposed to when we do receive additional funds, how we plug and play with those and our ability to adapt to these other things specific. And I'm saying this now because it's we're talking about the capital improvement revenues from the county in particular. So, I think that we're going to continue to see how um whether

127it be how U Shelby County um invest in facilities and how you know what that looks like for us, but a lot of that's unknown. We can hope that some of those things come to fruition and that some of the things we talked about tonight, you know, maybe those will be things that we can say, hey, if we get these funds that, you know, we didn't anticipate, then we've already talked about the things that we would like to do with them. But they're no more than a discussion until you have the actual dollars associated. That's correct. Are there any other questions on this capital improvement budget? Okay. Next one I thought uh is going to take a little bit more um discussion because we talked about in our general fund budget when we talk about

128health insurance uh we are self-insured. um we do go out uh to partner with the third party to to provide that for us, but we're the ones maintaining this. And as you know, costs for uh prescription drugs and just health care in general have increased and we had the benefit of having 11 years where we did not make uh substantial increases to that plan or cost to that plan. We know that that's not the case anymore. Um we are having to make changes. As you know, we budgeted for our board an additional 800,000 into this health insurance account um that we saw. We also uh that we predicted um we also have some predicted cost and so you see that amount of 978 additional dollars there. We are increasing rates for uh staff members. Uh

129we know that this may not be the last rate increase that we see, but it's the first step that we're going going to take. So, let's talk a little bit about what we're doing um in our health insurance account. So, we have moved strategically with our health insurance account over the years. Um we've tried not to raise cost, but you can see where we are. We offer um in the previous years, we offer three different types of plans for um our staff members, and we think that's a really great benefit to have. know that there are other districts that only have one option for a for a plan. The reason we want to do this is depending on the staff members place in life. If they're young and they don't spend a lot of um

130money on health care costs, they may want to have a cheaper plan that doesn't have as rich a benefit versus once they have children and they get older or they start having health issues, they may may want to move to a richer plan. So, we think having the different plans is important. Um in yellow you can see changes that we've done over the past. Uh so examples are maximum out-ofpocket uh expenditures that we have or prescription drugs. So when you see that OO maximum um that's the one two three four it's the fifth uh row down that OOP maximum that's talking about the maximum out of pocket that an employee or that their family would have to um pay. So know that when we look at um prescription drugs too, there are also changes that

131we're making. So I won't talk about the previous years, but know that we were making slight changes within the plan um but it wasn't increasing the the cost of the premium for the staff member, but we know this year that we were going to have to change that. So the first thing um that we're looking at change that we are changing is the prescription drug cost. That's that RX for for 30 days. And the different numbers that you see there are the differences between uh cost of a generic drug versus a a onbrand drug versus a specialty drug. So you can see um there where in 2425 it was 1050 um and it was 100. Know that one of the changes we've made there and you can't really see it in that chart but you

132do have a hard copy. Does everybody have Let me pass this around. I saw Mr. Strain looking for um Oh, here they are. Look, I got my contacts on today. Can you pass these around? Sorry. Yeah, thank you. So, you'll have two, sorry. You'll have two documents. You'll have our health changes that we have for this current year and you have the previous year. Um so let's focus on um this current year. Know that we went from um the previous years of 10 once again for onbrand for generic drugs, $50 for brand drugs, and a hundred for um specialty drugs. That's the out-of- pocket maximum. Don't have to worry about that. um know that when you look at what we're moving to, for example, if you're talking about um our in network plan or our

133basic plan, that those are changing to percentage amounts for drugs. So, we're going to a 10 for generic drugs, 100 for brand drugs, and then 20% of the cost of that specialty drug, not to exceed $200. So, there is a cap on how much they're going to pay per prescription. But this is and I think um Miss Stratton said today 70% of our costs for our insurance are in the medications and so that's something that we're going to have to look at continuing. Uh we have some very expensive specialty drugs that people are on and they need it um for their quality of life but um know that it it is a a big challenge for us for the plan. So this is our first adjustments that we're going to see with this plan. So

134you can see the the changes, the maximums, but if anybody has questions on what we're going to see. So between the increases that we have added from the general fund to the changes that we've made um to the plan, we think that we're going to make our plan much stronger. So, um, just so I'm not hurting Miss Stratton's feelings, she always writes the best script. So, I'll try this in my best Miss Stratton voice. Just to highlight a few of our revenue sources for the health insurance fund. Currently, we have 545 uh 518 active employees and 27 retirey employees who utilize our health insurance out of about 700 uh employees. We collect medical premium payments for those folks in addition to the GMSD employer contributions during 20 pay periods um during the year. For the

1352526 school year, we increased the employee portion of our premium rates by 5%. And once again, in addition, we budgeted uh 800,000 from the general funds also on the employer portion of this uh to help balance this account. The increase in employee employer contributions for the 2526 school year attributes to about $6.9 million in revenues. Um in addition, we anticipate to continuing to see quarterly pharmacy rebates. And as you know, we partner with a group called Wellon. And so when employees file prescriptions, they're looking for the cheapest path for them to to fill that prescription. Um, so this year we have been averaging about $25,000 in rebates each quarter by using Well done. So it's a beneficial program. And finally, we have allocated 1.2 million of our reserves and need to serve as a cushion

136to cover the claims just like we did last year. Uh, so this brings our total revenue budgeted to um 8,78,575. On the expenditure sides, uh we budget amounts to cover potential increases with our medical stop-loss, pharmacy claims, as well as administrative services for fiscal year 26. Our administrative services include our benefits consulting fees from ESP. Our thirdparty fees for Lucent Health, well done, and concern, which is our employee assistance program. Uh in addition, we're budgeting 540,000 for the GMSD Health and Wellness Center, the clinic. Um to date we have had a total of 727 visits to the clinic and we're averaging a utilization rate of 88% for that clinic. Uh we received numerous positive feedback and once again it's keeping our employees healthier um and getting them back to work quicker uh so that the

137clinic is a benefit for all. This brings our total expenditures to once again uh over eight million. So, if y'all have any questions about the health insurance account, um we can talk about those. But just some highlights, uh once again, 5% increase of the cost to the employee on the premiums. Our total out of product maximum was uh was increased by 40%. Increase band uh brand went to 50. Specialty once again was 20% with a max of $200 per prescription on their co-pays. and spouses of active employees who are 65 plus and have access to Medicare transition off of our plan onto medic Medicare becomes their primary. Um so we believe we've handled it from the employer side, the employee side and also to working with the benefit. We're trying to uh manage this account.

138Uh and once again I don't believe this is going to be the last time that we adjust. I think next year we're going to have to make some more adjustments to it. We just know that's where we are. So we're making steps to do that. So if there are other questions on the health insurance account, I'm glad to answer those or we can have a discussion. No, this is something that I don't think any of us take lightly. Um former board member O, she was pretty open that last year, I think she kind of sounded the alarm saying, "Hey, this is this is likely going to have to happen here." Um you know, we're kind of at that point. It really is a miracle that we went as long as we did without any increases

139to the program. Um I can tell you in corporate America mine mine goes up every year and there's not been a year mine hasn't gone up. Um and so I I was kind of jealous of the plan that they had because I I wish I had it. Um so um but but I was just going to give some Oh, sorry. Yeah. Go ahead. some perspective of what that what that increase does in the plan. um just you know once again it's out of their 20 pay periods. For example, the HR single um goes from 6747 to $70.84 a paycheck. So it's not a a huge change especially in a year where um this board has provided for our staff with cost of living adjustments uh and teacher increases. But so there's also a chart that

140shows how much they're out of pot that one. Yeah, not that one. Do you have the other one that has the pay one? Okay. Okay. Other questions? Oh, sorry. Yeah, you won't see that one. Thank you. Yeah, that was I mean 5% of $2 is not much. 5% of, you know, so I think that's relative and I appreciate that when you see it by increase and paycheck and pay period over 20 I mean, it's an increase. Um, but I'm [Music] mindful of that over a period of time and again being the first increase. I was also going to ask if you could give an example about that out of pocket because the maximum going up 40% jumped out at me as a little greater than say a 5% premium increase. And we have that right

141here. I'm just trying to see which one was the previous and which one. Yeah. So that's the example in the coverage that you can see for that for that out of pocket. So in here the let's see I'm just going to go. Yeah. So if you look at um for example, yeah, show me one. So if I look at that one plan and I can't see that one there, they go from 11,000 for just the employee for the out of for the out of maximum to um 16,000 would be that change. 45,00. So know that that's what they're seeing seeing change as far as how much coverage they have. And what the last two years we've moved because we were short. We've moved what about 1.5 or 1.6 million each year. Yeah, it's around 1.5

142to 2 million that we're moving to adjust in. So that's why we're we're trying to hit that through the 800,000 from the employer, the employee contributions, and also lowering lowering our cost to a combination. Yeah, combination. But I appreciate that, Board Member Curry. that is I mean it's it's not that somebody hasn't had to um do the recovery that's been occurring in the budget process annually over the last couple years. I've always thought of our district's insurance plan to be, you know, one of the better ones in the municipalities and that was sort of my next question is just comparing it to our neighboring municipalities plans, that sort of thing. Are we still favorably? Yes, we are still the benefits are still better and I think the co-pay is actually lower than most except for

143one of the one of the categories. But like I said once again in the other uh comparable districts, they only have one plan to choose from. So yes, we are still that's always something we take into consideration. We want to provide the best benefit. Thank you so much. Any other questions specific to this topic? Okay. Okay. Where do we go from here? Anything else? No. So that takes us to the provisions. Yes. So that takes us to the next uh general fund budget. So as you know in between readings of the budget, there are slight changes that occur and Mr. Kathy's going to take us through the changes for the already approved budget. I really like this format. Thank you. So the board approved the budget on first reading and generally what we do is

144just bring any changes that may have occurred between first and second reading. And so I'll just hit the key highlights or the big big changes. Really, there's three. Um, the first one is we project $25,000 in additional revenues. Um, I'm going to butcher the acronym, but let's just say it's the weighted fully uh some it's WFT8, the weighted full-time equivalent of average daily attendance. So, that percentage moves slightly. Uh, we got those projections from Shelby County uh earlier this month. So, we project $25,000 in additional revenues. Um there are a lot of minor changes between accounts and that was due to probably one of the most thorough reconciliations that we've done. We sat down with human resources and went through every line, every account, every salary and you'll see some minor changes between accounts doing

145some reconciliations um and moving a few people between accounts because we thought they were better that job duties and responsibilities that they performed were better suited in one account versus another. Um you see an operation of plant uh there's a reduction of $55,000. Um that's due to a $100,000 reduction of the custodial budget, but then we add add the $45,000 for the property insurance increase. Both of those budgets rest in 72610 which is on the right side. Um third from the bottom operational plant. And then we basically after all those changes, the $25,000 in additional revenue plus the $91,000 that we freed up after all of these changes and reconciliations, we put right back into the capital budget. Uh as the board remembers, we had originally cut that capital budget just over $400,000 to balance

146the general fund budget. So, we took the $25,000 in additional revenues plus the $91,000 that we freed up through all of these changes and reconciliations and put it into the capital budget. So, there's been $296,000 put back into the capital budget. Those are really the key changes between first and second reading on the additional revenue side of it. down at the bottom, special education reduction of 123,000. Can you just explain that? That's uh two two things. One uh was movement of some personnel in that in in that uh specific uh line over to regular instruction. Um so you'll see there's an increase on regular instruction 7110047,252. Um and then there w there was some reconciliation done with the pair professionals within that account where we actually had uh one too many budgeted. So that was

147a benefit to the to to that uh budget when we went through and did that entire reconciliation. Thank you for that explanation. Are there any questions about additional revenues or additional expenditures? Wow. As a big fan of reconciliation, I really appreciate you walking us kind of through how it and and the especially for those that are going through this first for the first time. This is how you know again there's going to be massaging adjustments and a lot of times it's just reallocation in a certain spot. it it's not it's not new or going away as much as it is just moving around. So, thank you that you've made this very easy for us to go back and look at the actual documents. So, I appreciate that. Okay. Anything else on the second reading budget?

148Let's get to number three. We're finally there. Yes. Fifth amendment to custodial services agreement. Mr. Got Mr. Bosski. Actually, this one's going to be Mr. Posski. B. All right. Get to a fifth amendment without a lot of stuff happening. Okay. Um, as you guys know, we put a request for proposal out for custodial services. We had a great response from a lot of contractors. Some we were very familiar with, some we we weren't. Um, but a parallel process. We always engage our current um providers. and they submitted a proposal and actually came back $2,000 less than what we were paying. They said they realized those savings based on um supplies being used. So, the amount of paper products, the amount of cleaning supplies, things like that. Um that they were able to recognize a $2,000

149per month savings over the current contract. Um, honestly, with the state of the buildings and the fact that our current contractor has been responsive this year, um, I feel like complaints, phone calls are down from the schools across the board. Um, with that in mind and with those realized cost savings, you know, uh, we are recommending and feel that it's in the best interest of the district to continue with that current provider. And can you tell us who that is? SKB. Thank you. Discussion questions. Um, so I was just curious about the hourly rates that we're showing. Was that used to calculate the total monthly price or was that work on top? Those are for outside of school day hours. So like if we had them at a football game, that's how much it is

150per person per hour. Okay. So what uh SKB is not listed there for the at least the sheet I'm looking at for the RFP. What's their hourly rate? I I didn't see a change in the hourly rate from the but I can look that up. We'll have that information to you by the end of the night, Mr. Curry. We'll we'll dig through. I just wanted to do make sure apples to apples comparison there. So, if we look at the uh price monthly uh compared to our current provider, um it does appear that there are two bids that came in under what their price monthly is. Um, can you help me understand um, you know, with a SKB being more expensive per month, is there a reason why the other bids uh, did not get uh,

151chosen? Yeah, and I'll jump in on that one, too. Um, I think since we have been a district, we've had five different custodial providers. Um, and not all relationships were as responsive or uh beneficial, but I think the reason that they're wanting to just continue one more year um is that we are having really good years where the staff is responsive, administration is responsive. That that's the answer is because we're having a good we're having good years. Um and so we're wanting to continue one more year with the current provider. Okay. I don't know if you had anything to add, Mr. Nope, that was that was it. I guess the reason I I'm curious about the hourly rate because obviously we had the football games, we have basketball games, we have wreck league basketball games

152that we're incurring expenses for. Correct. So the hourly rate would come into play on those Saturdays for us when we clean. I'm assuming there's like if there's a game over in Forest Hill Gym, I'm assuming we're doing they're coming in and doing some cleaning, right? I think that I did. I don't think they do. Okay. I think it's they get on the morning comes in during the normal. So, the main the So, combination to answer your question because we have night crews in the buildings that are usually staffed till 10 p.m. roughly. So, they're covering the night events really when the when the hourly rate comes into play is if there's a weekend event. That's really really the only time we don't have staff. We have staff scheduled from as early as 7 in the

153morning until 10 at night. So on week nights now weekends, if we had weekend events that we needed custodial coverage for, that's when that would come into play. So an example that would be like Blackhorse, the the wrestling tournament. Um, you know, I'm assuming maybe for the Mustang Classic from a track doing there and not always utilized. Sometimes the plant manager covers and provides those services. Sometimes we sometimes we have a custodial. So, it just depends on the event size and most of those they're charged back to the organization that's using the facility. Um, question. How many times did SKB get uh I guess subject to the non-performance penalties uh in their contract? Zero. Good year. Other questions? Um, per board member Curry's ask, we will get that breakout um just to give the whole

154scope of comparison. Appreciate that. Sure. as we're working on the other items. I'm sure that they're digging in right now. Okay. Thank you for um walking us through the rationale and the recommendation. Agenda item number six, Farmington Playground Project. Oh, sorry. Oh, did I go right by there? I sure did. Maintenance service agreement. Number four. That's okay. We're hopping all around. Number four. I marked a mark soon. agreement on that one. Um, ABM came back and in our previous contracts they have where they can increase by 3% and that's what they submitted to us and proposed to us. Um, so that's the contract that we have presented to you. Just to refresh the board memory, board's memory on this contract. This is for the outsource maintenance services that are provided to us. So this is

155main trades would be electrical, plumbing, uh, locksmith, carpentry, roofing. uh for example, we have a few in in-house operations folks, but they can't obviously handle every trade or every maintenance work order that comes in from our schools. So those are the major trades that are provided within this contract. Um and this would be a recommendation to extend this for one additional year. what has been um I guess the experience and we've been with them a long time so I'm I'm mindful that like you say it's contractually something that they this is the maximum they're able to do and and it's based on percentages and this in these days and times it's it's reasonable in my mind um probably in the industry as well I'm assuming so is there anything else um that was considered outside

156of that you know things that we asked them to do in addition or you know kind of shoring up any just ask requests I mean from a um proficiency standpoint and just business as usual let's renew is that kind of the thought process here I've been in constant contact with their upper level management um not just locally but regionally and nationally trying to um I guess shore up a couple of trades that I didn't feel like were as effective or as efficient as the others and they've been responsive and I think they know there's um there's an issue in one of the trades but they are working to resolve that. So I feel like their upper level management has been responsive. Um, I would say additionally there's a ton of institutional knowledge in the guys

157that work for ABM that are assigned to our district. Um, there's probably, you know, 50 plus years of working in these exact schools under Shelby County. Um, and it's it's something that I I I can see a different path in the future, but there's so much institutional knowledge in the guys that work for them right now. They're aging. They all work for Shelby County. Um, so they've been around a while. Um, to me, I feel like that's the biggest benefit we have right now from ABM as opposed to other companies. I mean, they know where things are in the buildings that no one there may not be another person on earth other than Mr. A who knows where those are. Um just the bowels of Houston High School are um very convoluted and and they

158they definitely um the people that work there now make our relationship with ABM work. Um as the people start to change, I could see us looking at a different route for maintenance in the future. And just to clarify too, these are not major projects too. These are small maintenance repairs. There are times like when we have major pipe bursts that we have to go out to an electrician or a plumber. These are smaller trades and maintenance that we have to or excuse me is ABM is uh assessed a monthly uh score like SKB. I don't have a monthly score for them in in the contract that I've seen. Any other questions specific to the maintenance services agreement? Thank you all for your cander and for your explanation. I think it's important to point out, you

159know, we have great folks on staff, but this is just like in my mind having an industrial um maintenance person, like if you lived in an apartment or something or, you know, whether you have an office building that you go to every day that someone's there to to do those things, you know, that that pop up and you want to institutional knowledge and responsiveness uh are two things that's really hard to put a value a financial u value too. So, thank you for sharing that as well. Okay, now are we on to five? Oh, now we're the playground. Agenda item number six, Farmington Elementary playground. Yeah. For our Farmington families, Mr. Rasfield was here and she was going to advocate strongly for it. Yeah. Two and a half hours ago, our first discussion ran a

160little long. Um, but I think I I speak for Miss Brassfield in saying that a playground would get her infinitely closer to her vision for the school and what she wants for her students. um her relaying that vision and and having this utopian, you know, school setting that she's looking for, whether it's, you know, in all of her endeavors. Um she has conveyed that to the parents very well and they have supported this wholeheartedly and fully. Um over the past two years, I think they've raised $154,000 towards this playground. Um, for those of you that don't know Miss Brassfield, um, I think her her kind of mantra is we're going to be the best and we want everything and everything is above and beyond. So, we came with a couple of pre playground proposals and

161of course she was like, well, what about this? What about that? What if we added, you know, the kids want swings? She did surveys. She did focus groups to see what the kids wanted, what they loved, what they um didn't really care about. So, I think, you know, the parent support is there and and they have really done a great job of raising money for this project. The district will put in some money towards the project. Um, but this is something that she really believes in there. The physical activity law next year is I think going to change if it hasn't already. I don't know if it's it has already gone through. So they've increased the minutes for elementary school. Um I see them going back to the monitoring that we used to have in

162the past where they would look at your schedules and you know you had to show them where your 120 150 minutes a day were coming from um or a week. And this gives an on-ampus option and gives flexibility. It gives um some autonomy and you know just offers her a way to not only um enhance her school and bring her vision to life, but also you know make sure that she's able to hit those new mandates from that physical activity law. And I'll just add that historically uh we followed a similar path at Dogwood when they wanted to stall their onampus playground. the school raised roughly half the money. The district uh kicked in and covered the other half of the portion of the of the playground. So, this is we've done past practice this

163way and we welcome those partnerships with our schools, our parents and our principles where uh we're happy to come in and support those things and then we we have done that in the past. Yeah, kudos to the parents and I know they've been uh patient too as we've worked through kind of looking at what else is going to be going on at Farmington. I think it looks great. Uh, I know my kids will miss the big mound where they try to push me off and things like that, but um, looks really neat. I like the falcon head. Yeah, I just want to commend the the Farmington community for really rallying around this. Um, their work is going to make this come to fruition. Uh, a couple things. So, I know we're looking at brick and

164mortar for the portables there. So obviously this we we already know where this is going to go and it's going to be free and clear. Yep. I've started just in case the approval process with the city. Um and that was part of you know their look is I need you know where are the utilities? Where is the new building going? and it's going to leave plenty of room between the playground and the new building for some green space just for you know free play tag running whatever. Um I will say and I think it's part of the delay has been I know for a fact Miss Brassfield did not know how much playgrounds cost and I don't think any of her parents did either. Um, and I I don't know if you guys have looked

165at it, but the surface that you have to have for a playground to be up to code is anywhere from 20 to $28 a square foot. So, they will keep the uh they'll keep the existing special ed playground. So, it' be similar to Forest Hill where there's a dedicated playground there and and the new one. When we start construction of the addition, it's actually going to move to the other side of the addition. So, it'll be a new that one. It's pretty aged. Um, but there's going to be a new playground on the playground side of the addition. So, it'll move north. Yeah. And and you lived this when you were there, just for the community's knowledge. They don't have a dedicated playground, so they're out having to use the city park. And so, um,

166there are obviously concerns with that. uh which I think is one of the reasons that the Farmington families have responded the way they have is they know that the challenges obviously that had to have been something that was in the back of your mind every day out there it's a challenge and and I think what the difference between there and maybe Dogwood or Riverdale when they you know are utilizing the city parks cordiz is a lot bigger busier street than those two are kind of tucked back um and so you know not only people coming onto into that park, but also it's easier for the students to get out of that park. Yeah. For Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I I enthusiastically support this. Uh like I said, I commend if she were here, I

167would tell her great job for all that and I'm looking forward uh to seeing all this project come together. What would be the time frame? Would we be able to do this over the summer? Um what are we looking at realistically? I don't know if they could complete it over the summer, but they'll get close. I'll add to that that Mr. Powski has been doing his due diligence because we want to double, triple, and quadruple check that when we put the playground down, we don't put it on top of utilities. We don't put it on top of infrastructure because one bad thing happens and we don't want to dig up a $300,000 playground. So, we are we are double quadruple checking and just making sure we have checked every possible everything and done our due

168diligence before because once we put it in, it's there and we don't want to have to have to disturb it. Okay. I echo my fellow board members kudos to the Farmington community. Uh I am a big fan of uh making things happen regardless of what you got to do and and they did it. Uh one thing uh you mentioned the special ed playground. It does appear that this uh rendering has some inclusivity in it that will allow students of all capabilities to be together. Am I looking at that correct? you're looking at that correct? And and really that other playground, it's it's supposed to be a preschool playground and it's designed for preschool kids. So, this allows our older students with special needs access to the playground. So, we do have there are some swings

169that are inclusive that pretty much anyone can use. And we tried to make sure there were structures that also included those students. And in you can't really see from that rendering, but there's a back of that that we feel like in in talking to the rep and and we did have some concerns of the the parents of of the students with special needs as to, you know, we're contributing money to. We want to make sure, you know, we're represented understandably. Um, we feel like that larger structure also will be accessible to the to the majority of our students. Well, I want to thank you for uh taking that into consideration. I think it's important for that school community to to have everyone um together like that as much as possible. Thank you. I appreciate board

170member Hendricks u making note of that. This is for all the Falcons. Um, and I I know it's been said, but if I didn't echo, listen, Miss Brassfield had me when she was roller skating for the round tables to get kids talking and socializing them, you know, and and increasing their connectivity. Um I will say that the um parent uh organization uh and also the supporters of it financially the way that they were able to come together to partner um they they came and they did it and then they did it a little more. So it's it's been a it's been a privilege to watch it. Um but it is uh I appreciate Mr. Kathy pointing it out. um I lived at at Dogwood. You know, it's like, hey, we're going to do our part

171and I appreciate the partnership matching um opportunity then as I do now. So, thank you for um bringing this to us to kind of see because it's been a long time coming and it really is uh remarkable. The rendering really is special and I I hope that we're able to, you know, if it is the proof that we could make this happen. Any other questions on agenda item number six? All right, now we're on to agenda item number seven. Riverdale Middle School construction bid fiscal year 2025- Z004 the mic. Um, I don't know if you guys have been to Riverdale during the school day recently, um, last couple years, but there are a lot of people that aren't in maybe the most appropriate spaces that they could be in. Um, we have a gym storage

172room with one, two, three, four of our clerical people in it. We have upstairs there's a curtain that's walling off one teacher or one tutor's um space. Mr. Bond I think is always I'm going to whatever I have I'm going to make it work and I'm not going to complain. I'm not going to even bring it to anyone's attention really. Um and I appreciate that about Mr. Bond. Um, but I think this is something that is very much needed for Riverdale. What the plan is is to take the locker banks where there's the kind of you know shoulder high lockers, remove those lockers. They're not utilized nearly as much as they were um you know a few years ago even. We don't have textbooks. We don't have you know a whole lot of stuff that

173we don't use in schools anymore. Um, we are going to keep as many of those as we can and move them to the other side of the hall. But basically, the downstairs locker area will be turned into four offices for the ladies in the storage closet, which then gets the concession stand to not be a storage closet. So, um, that can be more of a concession stand and I think just just gets a lot of the building back to its original purpose. um it offers some confidentiality and some privacy that's not there. Now, the upstairs locker banks, there's two up there, those are going to be turned into kind of small group rooms. So, for tutoring, for if it were, you know, a group of students with special needs where there only two or three

174of them or if that's, you know, the maximum size for that grade level, it could be almost like a mini classroom. But the majority of it with having the elementary and middle school with our tutoring programs, the majority of it will be used for them. But they also have, you know, therapists that are doubled up that could use those rooms very easily. Um, the last part of it, I think, you know, is equally, if not more important in their counseling department. They have it's not a half wall. It's a little taller than a half wall, but it's partitions and they're all open at the top. There's no doors, there's no anything. And I just don't I don't think that's an appropriate setting for a counselor to be talking with kids or meeting with kids or

175trying to help kids. So, the plan there, it's still going to be um kind of a modular partition setup, but it's going to extend past the current ceiling so that we can then put insulation up there and offer them a much more private setting in which to meet with students. Um it wouldn't be enough space for, you know, a classroom, but they have four counselors there. So, um, we want to make sure that they each have a space and that the kids can walk in there and speak to the counselor without, I guess, knowing I was going to say wondering, knowing that the other three rooms can hear them, you know, clear as day. There's there's just not a wall that goes all the way to the ceiling. So, those three um three different areas,

176the upstairs two locker banks, the downstairs locker bank, and that counseling office are what this um what this is addressing. I remember this came up in the discussion of all of the list. I went back and looked, I didn't see any numbers. Um, I feel like this came in under what the projections were when we talked about this on the list of projects that we were going to take out of reserve. I just want to make sure. Well, there's Well, there's two. No, that there's another one that's coming that you're probably thinking the number. I don't know if we put a number on these. Um, but we are also talking about the orchestra in the multi-purpose room. That's going to be another project that's going to come before. So, we split those two projects. That

177one that one we did a rough square foot number for. remember going back and looking, but yeah, I mean I think they've got to have it and and they need more. The orchestra room that we're going to be talking about at some point that that's a need as well. So, uh yeah, I think this is uh to me this is what we call the cost of doing business. I was going to say to me dollar got to have it dollar value this is this is the biggest bang. I feel like I feel like we're getting a great deal here, right? Yeah, I agree with that too. And and I think this is just an example too of you know while maybe the student population and number-wise has not changed a whole lot at that school

178it's just a reflection of how school is done differently these days and you need more in different spaces and that's a reason we need to do this as well. Yeah, we've talked about the fact that, you know, as we started as a district, uh, RTI didn't exist when we first started. Uh, and it's got to be it's an intervention period that's built into the day. Also to the required tutoring programs where we have to have uh a 1:3 ratio of tutors with students based on the all those things are new programs initiatives by the state that that have been added and we need to have new spaces for those. I'm a huge proponent of the privacy that will now be offered for the counseling. Um considering Riverdale being a K through eight um school, you

179know, the types of conversations that could be going on grades six, seven, and eight. Uh and I think that it's very important uh when we look at the mental health of our students to be able to offer them a safe space that they know will not be um invaded by others. uh for them to be able to express their problems, concerns with uh their counselor. So, uh thank you for for that addition. I appreciate uh I mean to me I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Picassi. These are dollars I mean perfectly spent or you know considering approval. Um there is no doubt about it. Raider for life here and we just found a way. Uh and it's it's the blessing and the curse of that institution. Um they deserve it. They deserve to have spaces that

180are of 20 2025 needs and and while like you said um vice chair drain while the the enrollment is is as steady as it could be the needs are different. I have seen the triage I call it. I think I said that before when we talked about u the projects and needs there for the tutoring and intervention and you know what they find a way and I'm I'm confident that that they move the needle with that uh tutoring. The point is is it was not in a space that was designed to do it. Um I think that just a few years ago we spent money on lockers that are no longer as you pointed out the the need's not there. So, let's do something else with it. By this potential investment, we we can just

181reimagine existing spaces, which I'm a big fan of. Um, you know, again, getting creative with where we are, what we have, and making it make better sense for what we need. Now, I'm also a product of all those half walls over there. So, there there could be a study done at at the benefits or uh the um probably long-term effects of that. Uh again, it's just things have shifted, things have changed, and we this right here is just a perfect uh example of how we're responding to those. So, I appreciate it very much. And I think a you know, a byproduct of this, I feel like we're honoring the adults in the building also that show up to work every day. And um I feel like that's that's important to them as well. Yeah, that's

182a much better working environment. Sorry. You know, no one wants wait that is not what it was intended. Um, any other uh questions or discussion on that project. Well, then we are on to agenda item number eight, the intercom system project at Houston High School. If we're going to be in the ceiling, let's do the things. It's me again. Um, I think everybody knows that most of the systems at the high school are 35 plus years old. This is probably, you know, one I know it's the original system, but probably one that um, you know, we should have done sooner, but here we are now. And like Miss Griffith said, as we're opening up the ceilings, it's um it's the best time to do it. Um it not only changes out all the equipment, but

183it updates us to a more modern system. I mean, right now it's a purely analog system that is all basically speaker wirebased. Um, this gives them a combination of analog and digital system where they'll be able to do more with the system, but it also addresses some areas where um either the sound isn't the greatest or there's not enough sound. And that's mostly these common areas when we think about the the hallways, you know, the lobbies, um, gym, cafeteria, spaces like that that we just need clearer sound and, um, a more modern, fully functioning, up-to-date system. Um, there's only really two phones or two I mean, they are phones, but two phones that you can use to make a call over the intercom system. So, we're going to add some stations so that each of

184the administrators, especially in the a building, are able to make a call from from their offices, but also um it does come with some capabilities for doing things from your phone as well. And I think all the new systems do that. I'm not I'm not shooting for the, you know, the highest upgrade that we can get here. We're just trying to get a system that functions properly that um brings us into, you know, the 21st century. I think the 21st century part is is the obvious when we talk about being possibly some original. I'm going to use the term technology really loosely. Um to me I hear you saying something that u points out to me some benefits from a safety standpoint as well. Not just communication um not just the audio part but the

185ability to be and I mean this is a large campus and it's a different time and so thank you for pointing out the accessibility from administration uh from different points in the building. A big thing with that is the changes to the fire um drill law, I guess, where now when if if the fire alarm goes off, we have to as administrators and as district personnel, we have to inspect and make sure that it's actually a fire before we have the kids leave the building. So, if they're as administrators each assigned to a zone to check to see if it's a fire, well, but then they all have to go all the way back to the main office to make the call. Both the phones that function for the intercom happen to be in the

186main office. Um, so somebody has to go all the way back there or they have to radio or call back there. So, it is um partially safety um issue as well. And I'll just add uh this was a request that came from the school as well. Well, they they asked us to look at this option because the issue of the issues that they had with the intercom system. Um, and to your point, Miss Griffith, it is a definitely a safety upgrade in that in in the event of an emergency, the intercom is going to be the primary means of communication with the building. It'll be the first touch. So, um, in addition to the fact functionality, logistics, coverage, and safety, we and the fact that we're going to have the ceiling wide open while we

187do the the project, this we thought this was worthy of bringing to the board for consideration. Another one, too, where I know it's just phase one, but I was surprised it was only $240,000. Well, there will be a phase two that comes behind it next summer. So, just just a temporary expectations there. So this will be phase one and then if we receive approval from the board to proceed with phase two of the ceiling tile and grid project, we'll bring the phase two intercom piece as well for the first floor in the main building. So, uh, I'm looking at the proposal and I don't see anything about, um, you know, if something goes wrong with the system, um, will they come out, is that included in there or will that be on our maintenance team

188to do? Because we know technology, right, it's going to have some issues. It will fail eventually. Um so there will be a warranty period and then um depending on the issue if it's the you know main equipment that makes the system function we would call them and and we contract with them for other things across the district. Um they do a lot of our sound systems, lighting, things like that. Um if it was something major, we would have to contract with them. If it's something minor, replacing a speaker or adjusting a speaker, our plant managers are able to do all those things. You know, we always have to turn it off and turn it back on to try to fix the first. Right. Do that first every time. And then finally, real quick question. As

189far as the funding bucket, I don't remember seeing this on the list. Is this out of reserve on this one? That's a good question. So, we will actually fund this through the general fund. There are dollars left in the general fund capital budget to fund this project. Okay, perfect. Nice. Okay. Any other discussion on the Houston High School intercom project? Very well. Agenda item number nine, federal budgets. Discussion to develop a resolution regarding approval of federal project fund budgets. Oh, hello. Thank you, Mr. Picowski and Mr. Kathy. Thank you. We have with us Mrs. Huffman and Mrs. Ael, Superintendent Manuel and team. Okay, so that was a mouthful. um hoping to give you guys a little visual about what we use in order to get approval of our budgets um from the state level. So

190this is kind of great time to do it with the other funds budget up for consideration. So the objectives we want to explore what e-plan is assess our existing approval process and then investigate the development of a resolution to a single approval from the multiple approvals that we do currently. So what is e-plan? E-plan is kind of what I shared an online platform for ma managing all of our um federal funding applications. We also have to do reporting in that compliance. There's so many fun features within that. Um myself, Miss Ael, our supervisors, core office, state people are all in e- plan working through our budgets. Just wanted to give you a little visual of what that looks like. So you can see the left hand side where it says things like funding, planning, um

191compliance, LEA, document libraries. This is where we go. So that consolidated tab is where a lot of our federal budgets go. We spend a lot of time in this document. This is like my second home. Um so what is our current process? Step one would be we draft our budget. Well, they give us an allocation that changes throughout the year. Yeah. And and so I'm going to give a just a bigger picture of how this works too. What the state department of education has done is they have submitted a plan to the federal government uh for all these funding pieces and then they take the states and and then they allocate those out to eleas and then we have to have a plan that that's a big umbrella. Our plan has to fit within theirs

192and so that's why also too you see amounts changing and fluctuating because it's that interface between the all the eleas and the state and the federal government. Sorry. Oh, please don't jump in whenever and however. So, um, this is our original allocation and like I said, that can change throughout the year. So, our current process is myself or Miss April will go in and draft the budget with the amount that's given. We submit it. It goes to Mr. Jones who then reviews it and it hopefully approves it or sends it back and says make changes. Then from there it'll go to Mr. Emanuel. Step two, it reaches up to the TDOE court office. They review it. They either send it back for changes or they send it up. It then goes to the FBO director

193who reviews it. Our acronyms federal programs oversight is our FBO director. I apologize. I didn't know that one off the top of my head if you can believe that. Lots of oversight. That's right. lots of oversight who then reviews it. They can send it back to us or they'll send it to approval which then Mr. Emanuel approves. So step three, Mr. Jones would then prepare a budget amendment. We discuss at a work session in hopes that it's approved at the board meeting. If approved, then the CFO makes those changes in Skyward for expenditure. So I just kind of want to share this happens every single time an allocation comes. That's different. It could be for I mean I'm being facitious but 21 cents. Um and we have seen that but if you look at the

194time that it takes and I didn't go into the full process of how one makes changes in e- plan but that's very lengthy but once we do all those processes we're looking for ways could we make this a little bit easier after that original approval. So here's the proposed approval process. Step one and two are going to look exactly the same. There's nothing that we have control over when it comes to submitting it to the state and then the procedures that lie here at the district office. The only thing that would alter would be step three after that original approval is that after Mr. Emanuel approves, we get it back from the state. then the CFO would make the changes in Skyward. I know I went very quickly but I tried to be brief. Are

195there holes to Yes. So what we're hoping with the board is to get us out of these changes because what we've seen happening more and more frequently is I don't know the number of budget amendments that we've had for the same account where we're not changing them. um we're getting a notification from the department to say, "Hey, your allocation has changed by $53." And so then we go in, we have to write up a plan of how that has changed and how we're going to allocate that money. Then we're going through all this process. Then we're sending they'll send it back and say, "No, we think your plan needs to say something else." So this is really short. It usually has several revisions like a term paper that we're writing for this. And so we're

196look looking for the to streamline this. So the board approves that initial amount and of course we would come back in and say here's where we settled at the end of all these these changes. So just curious what are your peers like you know counterparts in the industry statewide. Is this an an I guess an initiative that other boards are being presented similar things um to to try to these oversight all the acronyms all the oversight um to just to simplify the process. It's not to cut part of it out. It's simply just to take a lot of what I hear is a lot of redundancy and remove make it as as streamlined as possible and it's more about the timeline. So the districts I've talked to for example about their summer learning budgets that

197we just received um we have whole school to to do in summer school basically from start to finish and we received our funds last week. We quickly did our application. Um, if we had not hit it right with this work session and the board meeting, we'd be even in bigger trouble. But as it is, like it'll be hopefully approved from you all on May 19th and we start the following week with our teachers. We're going to it's going to be cutting it very close to get our funds in. And so other districts have found that they're not having to present that part to their board because we know we're getting the summer learning budget. It hasn't changed since 2021. It's the same amount essentially every year. We have to get the state approval. So, we

198have found that some districts are not having to present it to the board, but we would also, of course, bring it to you after we have state approval just hoping that we could go ahead and start the purchasing process. And sometimes we receive funds the day after or week after a board meeting and then we have to wait a whole another month to bring it. And a lot of these grants are on tight timelines. So, that's the gist of spend the funds and get them done by June 30th, but it may change. So, who owns the process? like if we did a resolution, who is that going to? I I think the most important piece of that, and I think it's responsive to your question, we didn't just dream this up that this might be

199a good suggestion. The comp controller came to the districts and suggested that if their districts were amanable that this would be a So, so this would go to the comproller or to review that in terms of any audits. But I mean uh in terms of the resolution, we just have to have it on our books for them to when they do our audit to know. Okay. So you'll obviously help with the resolution. Yes, sir. Yeah. Perfect. All right. So I'm just wondering how much of this is driven by federal which is about to be gone and so I'm wondering if that will give us more latitude as we go forward because I think I think the do the federal DOE is down to I mean like it's 1159 and 59 seconds for those guys. So

200I'm wondering if that's not going to help improve the situation. some some but un not unfortunately we do not have a large number of ELLL students comparative to other districts and what you see on the federal level is they're making a lot of changes to those title programs we're not seeing it necessarily there are some reductions but in the uh title one I don't think there there are major reductions that we see there so we we will probably see same levels of um federal funding in those areas where we don't have those student populations. Other districts are seeing subst are predicting substantial changes. Okay. I guess I was wondering like if we send this to the state and they say, "Well, you know, this is out of our hands. The federal government's requiring this, you

201know, and so if I didn't know where where the process because obviously the federal government puts bur, you deal with it every day. You know, the burdens that are placed and so I didn't know if this process was in response to something that the federal government required that that could be going away. So yeah, I I'm yeah, I know personally I'm I'm happy to help try to clear the path for y'all. So whatever we need to do, I think it'll be a concern of getting that going. Any other questions regarding I'm going to call it a an a suggestion um with good evidence to support it. Thank you. Agenda item number 10, approval of 2026. Um, what time is it, y'all? It's 8:29 p.m. Rolling. Come on, we're going. Yes. Um, spoke to the regional

202guy for SKB and their hourly is 28.50, but they include supplies in that. Some of the other ones were just hourly labor rates. We got extras. Would you all be agreeable to a threem minute recess? Yes. Okay. Thank you. See you at 8:33. All right, back at it. We are in the work session agenda two. Agenda item number 10, approval of 2026 27 instructional calendar. Miss Ael. Hi. Okay, I would like to um introduce the the draft that our committee developed. Uh the GMSD 2627 instructional calendar committee convened March 27th consisting of one staff member from each school, one parent from each school, six Houston High School students, district office staff from various departments, and one board member. Thank you, Vice Chair String. Committee members interacted with their school communities to gather feedback regarding the

203first and last days of school, fall and spring breaks, and other considerations. And then we came back together April 8th for a virtual meeting to discuss the feedback, noting common preferences and new ideas to consider. And TLA developed the final draft using the feedback along with the instructional time requirements set forth by the Tennessee Department of Education. And so just to give some background knowledge about those time requirements um by Tennessee code annotated 49-6-304 part A um requires that we maintain no less than 200 days for staff which breaks down to 180 days for classroom instruction. However, since we do go more than six and a half hours a day, we go seven hours a day. We have 13 stockpiled PD days or inclement weather days. And so we always send an application to use

204five of those inclement weather days for professional development. So our students will attend 175 instructional days and that that allows us to meet our 200 day contract for all staff. And along with that, I will say that um there are some items of note. But if we look at the draft calendar in our traditional format for 2627, it is very similar to our previous calendars overall with a few items to note. Um I will point out similarities with our municipalities. So thankfully we've been able to to kind of all collaborate together and and align our fall and spring break. So we do have um the same first day of school as Karville with August 5th and then Arlington and Lakeland begin on August 6th. That's very close. the same last day of school for all

205of the municipals and the same fall, winter, and spring breaks for all of the municipals um along with the last day of school of May 21st. But some of the um interesting differences about this calendar came about through our committee work and we loved the ideas that were shared and I think a lot of you have heard some of these ideas through our strategic planning committees also that teachers would like more in-person professional development. um 24 hours of flex PD can be daunting and um they would like more time to collaborate between the schools and so forth. And so we have built in time for that. Um so what I want to point out is if you look at the calendar um as we're in school and by the way you have a draft template

206that can also help you see the entire year laid out. Um so that allows you to kind of count the number of days if you wanted to. But September 4th falls right before Labor Day. And we felt like that would be a good time to take a break for professional development, like a district learning day, to allow teachers time to dig into the data they have so far, any lesson planning they need to catch up on, any collaboration they want to do as a group. Um, so that would be a day out for students and a day in for teachers, and it would give families a long 4-day Labor Day weekend. So, that's one item that's different that we haven't done before. And then we also um built in half days before every major break

207for students. It's a half day for students just like we do at the winter break and at the end of the school year. We have found that the Friday before fall break and the Friday before spring break, it's it's difficult to be there the entire day. Everybody's ready to leave. The students are ready to go. Families are ready to get out of town. So, we would like to um do half days for those. And this came about through the committee. Like we said, it was an idea that was shared and uh the teachers would still work a full day to maintain their contract, but they would also be able to use that time to finish up their grades, to collaborate, to close out the quarter, the grading term. So, that was different about this calendar.

208Um, and then another item of different is since we are adding in that extra professional development day, it does reduce our flex PD hours from 24 hours down to 12 hours, which we think our teachers will be very excited to hear about in 2627. Um, next year we will have 2526 we will have 24 flex PD hours. That calendar's been approved by the state, so it's it's locked in, but we do like that we have that flexibility for the 2627 calendar. So, that's some background information. I'm happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback. Is there any concern about having two four day weeks coming off of spring break? Because this is this calendar year is an early Easter. Yes. I will tell you just from doing research from a couple years ago, a

209lot of districts take spring break that week. So, they'll the years that Easter falls early, districts across the state will go with a later spring break and then they take off that whole week. I'm not saying that we do that. I'm just that seems to be practice in others other areas of the state. Um I mean is there a concern because it's like spring break you're off then it's four days and then another four days. We talked a lot about that in our committee and Mr. Strain could speak to that as well. Yeah, we did talk about a lot about that and I think it really kind of came down to people understood, you know, there could be a little bit of, you know, four day multiples, but there was a a desire to have

210that same week off as the other surrounding districts just for people who have kids in different schools or for employees who have children in different schools, things like that. That that was the bigger ask. We met March 27th and it was it happened to be the the week after spring break. I think it was the Thursday after spring break and we were all already exhausted and we were like, you know what, we would really like to have tomorrow. I have to kind of ease back into this into the school year, but that was one of we that's joke a joking comment, but we did talk about that and that it is so close to spring break. Um, but there were two you you look at the pros and the cons and it won out just

211to be aligned with the spring breaks of the other districts. Um and it falls at a good time right in the middle of uh the second semester. So yeah, I guess the So all the other districts are doing the Friday before Memorial Day out of school like the the Friday like the very last day of school. Oh, they are all going to until May 21st. Yes. Yeah. I'm surprised. Yeah. I kind of like this year that we're out on a Wednesday. But I mean, I guess your only risk there is if we do have a really bad winter and we're out a lot of days, then you're e now, you know, depending on the timing. Now, that four- day weekend where you thought you had a 4-day weekend, now you're now you're down to a

212three-day weekend. I know where you're extending on past. I mean, there's always that risk, right? Um, knock on, we hadn't had that lately, but we've come real close. So, that's always, you know, that would be a bummer if we had to come back. you know, the day after Memorial Day or something. But I guess that's kind of the, you know, if that's the consensus, then I'm fine with that. Any other questions, comments? Well, I I'll just say it was a a really good committee meetings. We got a lot of uh input from a lot of different people and Miss Crowder and others really uh led a good meeting and took a lot of feedback and there was a lot of discussion small group and then and then larger and uh I I really think other

213than you know you could always take a fall break a week earlier a week later or spring break weekly week later but for the most part I really thought there was a consensus on really most thing. And even then, really, it seemed like most people uh with the spring and fall breaks, their concerns were really just kind of to have it similar to the other districts and around town. And the calendar is posted of course for this meeting and then we will also share in the world of our own newsletter Monday as a draft calendar. So, we do meet that night. Um but if you happen to hear from any any other family members or whatever things that we haven't thought of. Um but we do feel like this is a strong calendar based on

214the feedback that we received just in the informal surveys they did among their school communities. We had over 250 responders and so I shared some of that feedback with you. Um there was a strong support for October 12th through the 16th for fall break and then sort of that mixed leaning toward aligning with the other municipals for spring break. I want to thank everyone that participated in this process. Um staff, students, and especially the parent volunteers that committed to uh the time to to solicit feedback probably from their friends and neighbors and also represent their school communities. Thank you, Vice Chairman Strain, for participating um on behalf of this body. Uh this is one of those things where you're never going to make everybody happy, but you also this is one of the best processes

215where I see that we get so much input and we really work to um you know kind of u hit hit the high points and and what you just described to me is that uh teachers will be heard um this half day. I I like that it's something different and unique and if other folks have done it and um you know I think we keep up with the attendance enough to know that in our community there are a lot of folks that that do have significant travel especially with the major breaks whether it be fall break, spring break, um the winter holiday break and uh so keeping that kind of in mind is is nice as well. Um I'm I'm you know we're we're keeping uh what we already have approved for the upcoming year

216with the um two-day break for Easter. Um again as board member Curry pointed out because that's a fluctuating holiday. Um, and it often is I appreciate him mentioning the closeness to spring break because it does sometimes you feel like even coming back from January like are we ever going to have a fiveday school week and then next thing you know it's like spring break and here we go again. Um, I think that hearing from the staff about the 24 hours, um, versus the ability to actually be in the school, you know, a lot of times during the pandemic, we've really focused on that flex and we've really focused on alternatives and um, kind of hearing the feedback now is maybe a little shift back to traditional and uh, again, it's like things change and so

217we hear that and and we can, you know, plan accordingly. And um I will say in the feedback that we've received from a standpoint of surveys in the past specific to calendars, it didn't matter if it was kindergarten family or uh 12th grade family, one of the overwhelming themes year after year after year is alignment with other municipal district breaks. Um and uh all the reasons mentioned, you know, whether it be just impacts of multiple districts in a family, whether it be students or um employees of other districts or just friends in the community at a greater broader um you know, just people who like to vacation together. We've heard it all, but that is one that has continued to stay consistent in my time going through this exercise. So, I appreciate that. I think

218we had a couple of outliers in the past couple of instructional calendars and if this gets um moved forward, I think it'll be nice that everybody can go back to saying all the municipal districts are at the same spring and fall breaks. Um nobody has to wonder which one's different. So, thank you for the feedback. Thank you for the recommendation. Um and I I would like to, you know, get some input from people in the community. So, as usual, I'lluh share it out there and and um you know, just let people know that this has been a process we've uh gone through once again and that a lot of people participated in it. And again, thank you for those who who did directly participate. You're welcome. It's very distributed as well. I have not been

219on this whole time after I said make sure everybody has their mic on y'all. It's getting late. Anybody want to hear what I had to say about the calendar? Call me 9016043161. Feed feedback was really good that we are aligning with the other municipal districts. Um and based on the previous years, uh that's been a positive thing about this calendar and you're going to be looking for feedback from our constituents and so please reach out. Thank you. Thank you to the committee. Yes, it is getting late. Okay. If no uh further comments or discussion, agenda item number 11, summer success camp budget. You were just mentioning that. That's right. One of those federal grants that we uh approve are our summer camp budget. Um, and since we haven't talked a whole lot about the summer

220learning camp in a little bit, I want to give just a quick background on um, we basically plan for an entire school where we have staff, we have cafeteria, we have curriculum, we have supplies, lunch, snacks, in-house field trips. We involve every department and district office, payroll, everything. Um, and we do this in a quick quick turnaround. Um, we are thankful for these funds for the summer learning camp. It is a law that we have the camp and it is structured with four hours of ELA and math combined. Uh we can break that up at least have one hour of ELA and three hours of math and vice versa depending on what students need. One hour of intervention and one hour of physical activity and we invited over a thousand students this year for rising

221grades one through nine which is existing K through eight students. invited over a thousand students that we identified through priority lists and so far we have almost 300 um who have committed to attend and that's typically about how many we have in our camp is about 300 we'd love to have more um and so our overall allocation that we have received uh the $670,000 and8 670,889 is very comparable to what we have received in the past it is based on our percent of economically disadvantaged students and um I already explained the timeline earlier on when we received the funds versus trying to buy everything. Um, we were featured, by the way, in the state summer camp video and that is posted on the Tennessee Department of Education learning acceleration site. We have Miss Brassfield in

222it. Uh, we have some teachers and students in it. Uh, so that is a good video to watch if you want to learn more about summer camp. And you can see that a lot of our allocation goes to staff. We identified our staff to teach um because that's the whole purpose of this camp is to help students learn the upcoming to be able to access the upcoming grade level content more easily. Um and so we identified our highest performing teachers. We always have more teachers apply than we can hire. We would love to hire all of them but we do look at level of overall effectiveness um for teachers to determine who we will select from all the schools. And teachers love this time to collaborate with each other also by coming together from all

223the schools. We will serve in two different school will be in Forest Hill for our elementary camp and then Houston Middle for our middle school kids. And we have two administrators. Um Brian Fischer, Sarah Strickland will serve Houston Middle. Um they'll split that up half and half. And then we do have one at Forest Hill. Uh Miss Joy Fipps, our assistant principal. So it's a great opportunity for them to leverage their leadership abilities as serving basically as principles. Um, so you can, like I said, we focus most of our allocation on teachers and then the rest of it we have broken down into um, supplies and materials that we need for camp. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. How are the kids uh, that are invited chosen? So, we have a

224priority list based on criteria that the state gives a guide guidance and then we have to submit that in our application. We use as much data as we can get. We use the Ames web data that's been given out throughout the entire year because we want to see the whole picture of a student. We use the bench. So Ames webs is a it's an assessment. It's a universal screener to check for skill deficits that students have. So we do those two or three times a year um depending on grade level. So that's the first one. Yes, thank you for clarifying. Once again, we have acronyms. We have lots of uh testing words that we use. Uh we also have our standardsbased assessment uh MVPA also called case in some of the schools. So we use

225that data that's been gathered. We use teacher feedback. We use um grades the students have earned. We so the whole picture everything we've we even have their TCAP score from the previous year as much data as we can have for a student. And then those students who have consistently scored more, you know, kind of approaching not quite on track, um, are the ones who are identified as as priority students who would benefit strongly from attending the camp. And the camp runs from June 2nd through the 26th, Mondays through Thursdays. So we do not um go on Fridays, which teachers love and I'm sure families love. Um, we will be attending one Friday this time of June 20th because district office will be closed on June 19th. Um and then we have a makeup day by

226law. We have to have a makeup day because this is tied of course to third and fourth grade retent promotion pathways and the fourth grade adequate growth. And so we students have to attend 90% which means they can only miss one day of camp and then they no longer qualify for that promotion pathway. They have to have a different pathway. Uh we do have to give a statewide a state post test at the end of the camp. So this is all state driven. Um very much academic standards based but we make it fun as well. Yeah, I do know. I mean, the students I know who have gone have really enjoyed it. You know, you think about going to school in the summer, but they they they want to go. Um I know you mentioned

227we have not received any additional funds since 2021. Have other districts throughout the state received any No, just it's been consistent. Put the money in and don't raise it. Okay. because it's based on our percent of economically disadvantaged students and they actually kept it the same for the past three years. They even though our ED population might fluctuate somewhat. They have they allowed they grandfathered it in for three years and so we've received basically the exact same allocation. Yeah. Because the state department's funding it through TANIF funding which is for free and reduced students. Um the challenge is that doesn't necessarily align with the students who need to go to the camp. A lot of times those students who are coming uh who are free and reduced students do need extra supports, but those aren't

228always the students. So, it's odd that they've aligned it that way that that's how they're determining your allocation, but it may not line up with the students who are having skill deficits or having struggles and need to attend that summer camp. So, for us, our ED participation rate that's expected is 2.17% of of our overall attendees need to be economically disadvantaged. and we always surpass that in our attendance. Any other questions, comments? I appreciate it. Point by Vice Chair Strain. I know a lot of folks that really look forward to this and it's like what? But that just is a testament to um the things that we do to make it fun. Um and you know, our staff's investment in that. Um and again I always appreciate the opportunity for um administrative leadership, you know,

229opportunities to to be realized and in these kind of outside the normal school year times. And so thank you for pointing that out as well. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Agenda item number 12, capturing kids hearts contract purchase approval. All right, I'm excited to bring to you as the board our request to purchase um capturing kids hearts and this is what Miss Brassfield was here for earlier and seeing where it was on the agenda, I just said, Miss Brassfield, please give me your talking points. So, I'm going to share a few few of her points and I will try to do my best Miss Rasfield um voice as Mr. Emanuel did with with Mr. Stratton's voice. Um, but let me just explain kind of background real quick about why we're even wanting to look at this

230and then I'll get into the cost of it. Um, but the need is that we saw school administrators have expressed over the past few years the need for resources, tools, and training to help students struggling with behavior as well as with anxiety, not to mention just developing relationships with students. And that's what this program is about. Um, so after we saw the success at Farmington, which I'll touch on in just a minute, uh, Mr. Bland looked into this leadership training. It was a two-day training that all the principles were able to go to in November and some cabinet members went to that and that's where they all came away saying this is what this is it. This is what we need to meet that need that we've had for behavioral how do we address our

231students and help them grow um and be ready to learn. And I will share that um Miss Brassfield did give some talking points and so I'm going to share some of that. Um, so she shared, "I want to begin by asking a simple but powerful question. What do you remember most about your favorite teacher? What is the way they taught or was it was it the way they taught or was it the way they made you feel?" That's the cap the heart of capturing kids hearts. I have seen firsthand how CKH, another acronym, CKH, transforms classrooms, not by adding more to a teacher's plate, but by changing the way we connect with students. It's not a curriculum. is not a oneanddone workshop. It's a mindset, a relationship building framework that gives our teachers the tools

232to create classrooms where students feel safe, known, and loved. And when students feel safe, they learn. It's really that simple. When you walk into a C CK classroom, which Miss Brassfield has said, you're always welcome to come, you feel the difference. Kids greet you with a handshake. They celebrate each other with affirmations. They hold themselves accountable to a social contract that they helped create. You see emotional safety and action and you and you see learning taking off. I believe every student in Germantown deserves to experience that. Every teacher deserves to be equipped with those tools and every school deserves the culture that CKH builds. This is how we support our students mental health, improve behavior, increase engagement and strength strengthen teacher retention all at once. So those are Miss Brassfield's words to share. Um, we

233have much more I could share, but given the time, I'm going to jump into the contract itself to explain that we would love to implement this program in all of our schools next school year, which consists of starting off with a two-day training during inservice. And it is a very intense, powerful training, but it's not a oneanddone, like Miss Brassfield said. It will continue throughout the whole school year with an engagement partner that will continue to support us, online curriculum tools. So it is a mindset implemented throughout the year. Our um you can see that it is a rather expensive contract. Um so the original amount was $315,000 $395 um over the whole year but we did apply for a grant already which we linked to our new um still evolving strategic plan goals. Uh

234we linked it to that wrote the grant. Megan Gashler wrote the grant for us. We we received it and the most they could give us so they will only give up to about 20% of the training and we reached that. So they did subtract $58,395 to take us down to $257,000 for this contract implemented over all six schools all school year. So I will be happy to answer any questions and we do have the money allocated for this. Uh the only reason this is coming to the board is because it's over our threshold for approval. But like um Miss Abel said, our principles, our cabinet members went to this training and saw how powerful it it is. And when you talk to Miss Brazfield and her teachers, uh she did it for all of her

235staff in the school, clerical staff in the front office. Uh she did it for her PTO parents to talk about let's create a contract together about how we're going to work with each other and interact with each other. And she said it has been transformational uh at her school. So it's something really powerful. What are the um I guess measurements that would be used to determine effectiveness of this program? That's an excellent question. I I would go with surveys and just anecdotal feedback especially discipline. You know, you look at classroom discipline, classroom attendance because with an anxiety issues, you see attendance issues. Um so there are many ways we could track this and that is an excellent question because with any implementation, we need to have a way to measure how effective it's being. And

236Miss Brassfield actually tells the story of of several students at her school that were struggling or having challenges and once they've implemented this program, that relationship with the teacher and that student has changed their trajectory um academically and in the classroom. So, she gives some very specific stories that I'm sure she'd be glad to tell you too of students with their names. So, it's really special. I went to the website. Uh if you haven't had a chance, I recommend it's very informative. Um, and then the the foundation, the Flipping Foundation that powers it looks like their their mission is education. So, it was very informative. Um, I was wondering, so I'm going to ask you because you were at the high school. So, what what is it because obviously your your teacher population at the

237elementary school is completely different personalitywise than at the high school. So, what does this look like transformationally for the high school? Another excellent question. and Miss Ross kind of talked that through also with the with the the implementation people that we met with. Um, you can definitely tailor it for high school, but one of the first respondents that we heard from because they brought in a superintendent from school, they brought in principles from surrounding schools. They were high school principles who said that's where you need to start. you need to start with the high school because that's where sometimes it's harder to, you know, when we teach such a higher content course, it's harder to focus on that relationship and that brings that focus back to that and it gives a common language for every

238teacher and student to speak to. And so they have found that it's it's also made faculty closer together. They're able to use, like I said, that common verbiage, but it can be tailored for high school because you start to hear, okay, social contract, what does that look like at a high school level? um there they have worked through so many high schools successfully that they had a way for that. And I did not mention that we would also have one totally separate for our varsity and JV coaches. It's it's called coaching greatness and we heard from the coaches who went through it in Kerville and some other districts who said it was gamechanging just in their interactions with students and athletes. So definitely looks different in different buildings. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I

239think it's um yeah, I wish Miss Brassfield and I think she's probably watching, but u definitely I'd like to find out more from her just the experiences, but it sounds again from what I've read and seeing it. And then your description through her I think is uh I think I'm I'm sold on it and I'm I'm looking forward to seeing some transformational change. Are our counselors involved with this or is it more administrative le or how? It is actually all certified staff. We would love to also train classified staff which we can look at later but for now we have every single certified staff member will be involved in this training and everybody implements it in the same level. So and and the cost dramatically goes down. The the big cost at the beginning is

240for all these initial trainings. Then you're doing refreshers to train this. bigger upfront cost. And is this sort of a replacement for character strong for or is it something different in addition or? So it could replace character strong but since we have we we have put so much time into developing character strong and we added tier two and tier three this year for small group and tier and individual counseling. uh we would have to do a phase out approach with that if we decided to, but we wanted our counselors to be able to see it this coming year, see if they think it could be a good tool. It it could absolutely be used instead of Character Strong, but that would be a that would take some time to transition into that. There are resources

241on their website and training for that. That was my question. Is it a a replacement of another program like Character Strong or would it be more of an enhancement? When I hear focus at the high school for super you know impact and I hear um you know just that connectivity to me that's that's just extra that's just additional benefit. Um, I would also be very interested to learn more about the the coaching specific, you know, um, version and, uh, I'm glad to hear feedback from people that have utilized it already. You know, they're the greatest, you know, I guess ambassador of a product is is if they recommend it um, just genuinely based on their experience with it, that uh, that's helpful for me. Any other questions at this point? I mean that I think

242that Miss Brassfield obviously has piloted this for her to have direct examples of shifts and changes that have occurred. You know, I'm I'm mindful that people in the community may hear this and say, "Oh, that's a lot of money." But I also appreciate the superintendent pointing out that this is already budgeted. This is um something that if not if it were $5, we could y'all could just do it and we'd be on our way. But I think it's important to discuss it regardless of whether or not we have to approve it due to the threshold of the investment and the expense. I think it's important because it, like you said, going into the strategic plan, this is the very thing that I continually hear about in the community that we need more of. And so

243this is uh in my mind a response to the ask for additional training for staff and uh things that are going to help students deal with things like we talked about about buildings. I mean just um experiencing, you know, school every day is different in 2025 and and it sounds like this is a program that really will not only benefit um our students but also our staff that's with them every day. and my superintendent's report will be on capturing kids heart and I will have a special guest speaker who will help us who may give us a little inside scoop on what it really looks like in school. So fantastic coming to a school district near you. School board meeting Monday evening. Great. Um, okay. If no other questions for agenda item number 12, we

244have covered agenda items 13 and 14, which now gets us to agenda item number 15, teacher tenure recommendations for 2025. The GMSD teachers we are recommending tonight for tenure consideration have served the required probationary stata stat status of working in a Tennessee public school for at least five years and have proven continued success as a classroom teacher by earning levels of effectiveness scores of either above expectations or significantly above expectations within their last two years of teaching on a probationary status. These levels of effectiveness scores are determined through classroom and professional evaluations as well as student achievement and growth data. As a reminder, tenure is an employment status. All teachers in GMSD are considered either probationary or tenured. Tenure provides due process for teachers during discipline or dismissal cases. In addition, tenure teachers have continuing

245employment with GMSD unless they're being dismissed for cause. Earning tenure is one of the highest professional distinctions an educator can accomplish. While Tennessee state law outlines the tenure eligibility requirements, the granting of tenure is a local board of education decision. For your review, we've provided a handout that explains the process for identifying this year's tenure eligible teachers as well as the individual names of GMSD teachers who we are recommending the GMSD school board to grant tenure status. At this time, I would like to read the names of the 46 I didn't know she was gonna put that line in there. The 46 GMSD educators who are eligible for tenure. The GMSD human resources department along with the support of six of our school principles and superintendent manual is excited to recommend this year's educators who

246are eligible for tenure within our district. So, here we go. She didn't know what time this was going to be when she wrote that. Casey Fernandez at Dogwood Elementary. Sabrina Mink at Dogwood Elementary, Shelby Morse at Dogwood Elementary, Millisent Williams at Dogwood Elementary, Molly Wilson at Dogwood Elementary, certified staff members, uh, Anna Beck Bennett at Farmington Elementary, Jonathan Derek Brookshaw at Farmington Elementary, Beverly Pearson at Farmington Elementary, Taylor Petty at Farmington Elementary. uh at Forest Hill. Jennifer Brenamman, Elizabeth Collins, Shvitra Davis, Megan Dwire, Shannon Harris, Stephanie Hathaway, Emma Koger, Mary Jane May, Christina, and I'm sorry if I'm messing up their names. Shrimpser, Kimberly Thomas, and Skyler Workman at Houston Middle School. Jordan Bell, Megan Fowler, Dr. Anmarie Pratt, Storm Skunover, Melinda Sturgil, Kayla Witet, uh, at Houston High, Alexis Almonte, Emily Bratell Malloy, Leslie

247Coleman, Ashton Collins, Sandra Condra, Meredith Gladney, uh, Elizabeth Handy, Virginia Hunter, Timothy Perry, Jerica Ross, Robert Sabu, uh, Sabbo, sorry, um, John Zeke Vzna, Gary Wartenborg at Riverdale Elementary, Kip Lton, Julie Nolles, Megan Pasonic, Abigail Wade, and then at district office, Jane Gity, Victoria Gast, and Adam Shepman. Are there any questions on tenure recommendations? Can you read those one more time? Well, yes, I could. Now, there's some great folks in there. That's great. Thank you for that. It's uh always exciting to see the list. And that's a very extensive list. I think we talk a lot about um the ranges of our staff and I always annually point this out is that there may be people that are um being recommended for tenure in GMSD that have already earned that status in other districts. Um

248and so now they have gone through the exercise of uh going through what it takes to get that recommendation um from our district. If we are on this gets us to agenda item number 16, nominations for TSBA school volunteer recognition and student achievement awards. I am not going to read these to you because they are in your board packets. Um, but I just want to let you know that these two individuals were selected by the staff at Houston High School. The student was the parent volunteer was selected by our PTO presidents and some consultation with Miss Griffith, our school board and the superintendent. Yes, I'm so sorry. So, lots of different um people contributing to our choices this year. um two great solid nominations and if the board does vote to accept these um I

249have let them know to pencil in our June meeting because we are going to do a formal recognition of them and uh we'll do a big publication release once you all vote them officially as your nominations. So that will be Lindseay Baker rising senior at Houston High School for next year and Joy Williams outgoing Houston High School PTSO president. the presentations uh what you put together. I think this is the first year you've put together like a like a packet which is really awesome. It looks great and so I'll hold my remarks uh until the that meeting. But uh yeah, I just wanted to say I read through it. It looks great. So, thank you for that. One question back on the teacher. Both very deserving. And I one question back on teacher tenure actually.

250Will we be voting on that next week or will that be in a June? I believe it's next week. Okay. Yep. Will there be cake? Yes. Y'all keep it in the road. Here we go. We're almost there. Um yes, I want to thank um Miss Crowder for preparing some some you know good presentations specific to these recommendations. And you know I think it's I always remind people we as a board don't select these people that we um get to approve potentially. And I actually really appreciate that. I think that it's important that it comes from the school community and um these two people for this year's um s of recommendations are are very fitting and very welld deserving of this. We've u had parent volunteer recognition award all the way to the state. We've had

251our student uh achievement award winner go all the way and make it uh as a state level. And I would certainly say personally that these two um award of our recognitions uh here at GMSD have what it takes to to do that as well. And uh I look forward to us going over this next week. I think they've started to rename the like our larger district meeting just to just call it the GMSD winner because we win that all the time. We got some great people. Um, if no further questions or discussion on the nominations for the TSBA annual awards, that gets us to agenda item number 17, which is further business. Is there anyone that wishes to bring forth further business at this time? hearing none. Uh the work session for May 13, 2025,

252GMSD Board of Education is adjourned at 9:18 p.m. Y'all, thank you all. That was a great hopefully