001[Music] good evening at 604. this business meeting of the germantown board of education is called to order i'll give us a minute to enter before calling for a moment of silence welcome everyone for us to begin let's start with a moment of silence please miss griffith if you would lead the pledge of allegiance please pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda the chair will entertain a motion i move to approve the agenda as presented i second the motion was made by miss landers and seconded by miss griffith ms subramani if you would call roll mister stream yes miss landers yes mr curry yes ms griffith yes the museuf yes thank you next on the agenda is recognition and awards this month the
002national merit scholarship corporation announced the names of its semi-finalists in the 67th annual national merit scholarship programming including eight houston high school seniors they are here with us to celebrate tonight when i call your name if you would please stand up come up here to the front we're going to give you a certificate and you've got to wait because we're going to have everybody take a picture together so we'd like to recognize these houston high school seniors sophia chang [Applause] okay and i'm i apologize on the front if i mispronounce any names daniel gotchchalk [Applause] ham and gin [Applause] hari raja durai [Applause] robert randall [Applause] darce shaw [Applause] ashley yan [Applause] and susan zhang these academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7 600 national merit
003scholarships worth more than 31 million that will be offered next spring the nationwide pool of applicants is about 1.5 million and the semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of u.s high school seniors additionally the national merit scholarship corporation has identified 34 000 performers who raked remarkably on the psat and we'll get to our committed students next but we wanted to thank both groups for how you are representing houston high school and we're excited for what you're going to do moving forward and what you're going to accomplish for us for the city and for the country we thank you for what you're doing in your hard work [Applause] make sure thank you congratulations [Applause] so as i was moving too fast we have another group of students who also performed incredibly well on the assessment these
004national med these students are commended students and they're identified as 34 000 high school performers once again they've achieved in the top in the country and in the state so we'd like to recognize them at this time aslam souha [Applause] sorry sue aslam matthew bae miller owen cantor [Applause] anjali chetta [Applause] adam oaf [Applause] jefferson hamlet ozza osman [Applause] mega parikh [Applause] gavin reed [Applause] chancellor reynolds [Applause] and daniel ooh so my guess is we're gonna have to do two lines um for us to get a picture so let's see if we can work it out once again these students perform tops in our school our state our country and we are proud of them representing germantown schools and also we're excited to see what they're going to accomplish moving forward everyone freezes and now
005we are also recognizing emma grace benzing this evening as you know she was selected as the delta region student excellence award recipient by the tennessee school board association this month due to pandemic restrictions that in-person meeting was moved to a virtual setting so our board wanted to take a moment to recognize ms bensing in person she was chosen for her commitment to servant leadership and representing student voice as she served on many district level committees last year so we'd like to recognize miss emma grace menzing if you come on up thank you congratulations and last but not least we have staff recognitions tonight and they're the first of their kind each month we will be recognizing employees that empower they're teachers that are working to further the goal of creating student-to-student connections inside and outside
006of the classroom this month two teachers from houston middle school began a new program that helps 8th grade students both express themselves as individuals and their belonging to the 8th grade class at houston middle school they begin a rock garden in which each student is invited to paint and place a rock they hope it will become a houston middle school tradition with each class adding their rocks to the garden each year we want to thank andrea starks and devin pullman for starting this new tradition as this month's employees that empower y'all come on up and for us this was a charge for all of our teachers and all our staff this year we know that this has been a challenging time with the pandemic we have students that are returning from fully virtual learning to
007hybrid learning and we want to make sure that we are providing a place where they can reconnect to their school communities and make sure that they know that they're a part of gmsd and they're part of our family so these two staff members have done an incredible job of taking up that challenge enough thinking of something that connects students to each other and to their school so once again thank you [Applause] that concludes our recognitions tonight you are welcome to stay for the meeting but as always please feel free to go you don't have to hear about all of our voting items but thank you all very much and have it have a good evening easy we moved to the reports section of our agenda mr strain if you would give us our tln report
008despite some additional requests from state legislators for a special legislative session to address the shelby county health department's authority and federal measures directed at kova 19 tennessee legislature has remained in recess last week governor bill lee's administration reported improvements in reading and math for students who attended last summer's summer learning camps based on 10 question tests administered at the start of the six-week camps and then again at the end the governor's administration reported an overall improvement of nearly six percentage points in english language arts and more than 10 percentage points in math the camps required six hours of daily instruction in reading and math five days a week tennessee's basic education program or bep review committee is urging governor lee to allocate more funding for school nurses and counselors next year according to the committee
009an annual investment of about 110 million dollars is needed for tennessee to attain nationally recommended ratios of nurses and counselors in public schools currently tennessee funds one nurse for every three thousand students one counselor for every 500 elementary school students and one counselor for every 350 students in grades 7 through 12. the additional funding would improve those ratios to one nurse for every 750 students and one counselor for every 250 students the bep committee also urged additional funding for teacher compensation technology and hiring more special specialists for the state instructional intervention program in notable state and local news superintendent manuel has been selected by his fellow tennessee superintendents to represent all tennessee public school districts on a tennessee department of education committee reviewing annual measurable objectives or amos ammos are requirements the department sets for
010each school and district to incrementally reduce the number of students who are not testing on track or mastered on state standardized testing in federal news the u.s department of education's office for civil rights or ocr opened directed investigations in five states including tennessee exploring whether statewide prohibitions on universal indoor masking discriminated against students with disabilities who were at heightened risk for severe illness from covet 19 by preventing them from safely accessing in-person education ocr is concerned that state mass restrictions on schools and school districts may be preventing schools from meeting their legal obligations not to discriminate based on disability and from providing an equal educational opportunity to students with disabilities who are at heightened risk of severe illness from coven 19. ocr will begin collecting data from each state educational agency as part of the
011directed investigations over the coming weeks opening a directed investigation does not imply that ocr has decided there has been a violation of a law that ocr enforces in legal news 20 states including tennessee have filed suit over the biden administration's interpretation of title ix protections as applied to lgbt students tennessee attorney general herbert slatery filed a lawsuit in u.s district court in knoxville asking for a number of declarations regarding title ix including that the law does not prohibit schools from having showers locker rooms and bathrooms separated by biological sex the law does not require school employees or students to use a transgender person's preferred pronouns and the law does not prohibit having school sports teams separated by biological sex the education policy carries the possibility of federal sanctions additionally u.s district courts in memphis nashville
012and knoxville have issued orders requiring students and school employees to wear masks and or preventing opt-outs from mask requirements two of the orders including the order issued by the united states district court for the western district of tennessee will remain and will remain in place during the pendency of lawsuits alleging prohibitions on universal indoor masking discriminate against students with disabilities who are at heightened risk for severe illness from coven 19. tennessee attorney general has filed appeals of those two orders stating the rulings have impeded the governor's executive authority during an emergency to direct the state's public health response governor lee has not decided whether he will renew his mass opt-out executive order which expires october 5th finally on sunday local state senator katrina robinson was acquitted of 15 of 20 charges she was facing in
013a federal theft wire fraud and embezzlement trial that began september 13. senator robinson's defense for the remaining five charges began today that concludes my report thank you mr strain we move to the chairman's report mr strain reports he attended the houston high field house donor appreciation event dogwood pto meeting and the tsba fall district meeting webinar ms landers reports that she participated in tsba's legal lunch webinar which the topic included students in the first amendment and orientation for the new student board representative she attended houston high field house donor appreciation event and the tsba fall district meeting where she was awarded the tsba school board academy level three mr curry reports he participated in tsba's legal lunch webinar with the same topic and the orientation for the new student board representative he attended the houston
014high field house donor appreciation event the tsba fall district meeting and multiple houston middle school and elementary cross country competitions ms griffith reports she visited mr murray's classroom at houston middle school to observe the application of grammar and logic to a constitute constitutional civics based lesson in japanese culture that's a mouthful i'm sure it was and presented at dogwood's september pto meeting she also attended the houston high school football field house donor appreciation event and germantown chamber of commerce luncheon several houston high school and houston middle school football games including homecoming go mustangs orientation for the new school board representative and the tsba fall district meeting where she was awarded the tsba school board academy level two misoff reports that she participated in orientation for the new school student board representative and attended the houston
015high field house donor appreciation event several houston high football games and the tsba fall district meeting where she was awarded the tsba school board academy level three believe it or not we are approaching the end of the first nine weeks of school i didn't know that we would get there at some points in time this year so far we have seen our students working hard and enjoying being back together again we have seen our teachers work to engage and grow our students creatively while dealing with the in and out nature of illness and exposures we have seen our administrators be more flexible than they should reasonable reasonably expected to be be should be reasonably expected with changing requirements outside of the district's control we've seen our nurses and district staff work exceedingly long hours and
016weekends to do more than is necessary to keep our students and faculty safe and to keep our school door doors open to all of you from this board we thank you we know how much you are doing how much you are going above and beyond and we know that like us your focus continues to be student-centered we sincerely thank you last week our neighbor city collierville experienced an unimaginable traffic tragedy bringing home the realization that nowhere is immune from violence please take time in the coming days to speak love into the lives of the people around you to our collierville neighbors we love you we are praying for you and we stand with you september is national suicide prevention month this board recognizes the importance of mental wellness in educational and lifelong success for our
017students and our staff our emphasis in our strategic plan regarding serving the whole child and social emotional learning is intentional and purposeful our students learn best when they are safe secure and well gmsd will be implementing district-wide a new social-emotional learning curriculum called character strong this curriculum will work alongside owais anti-bullying program besides the educational component i would like to every student teacher staff member administrator district employee superintendent and board member to know this i love every one of you you are loved and you are enough just as you are if you need help or if you know someone who does please reach out to any of our school counselors or another trusted adult we also have anonymous alerts or the the national suicide prevention lifeline 1-800-273-825 this concludes the chairman's report mr jones financial
018report okay you have your financial reports for the month ending august 31st 2021 on the balance sheet reporting assets liabilities and fund balance totals are for the following funds school operating 17.8 million federal projects 152 000 cafeteria fund 297 000 capital projects 1.8 million health insurance 1.1 million opeb trust 4.4 million and in our general fixed asset account group our value of land buildings and equipment is at 118.6 million and just a couple of comments on the statement of revenues and expenses and the health insurance fund during the month there was a 1.4 million dollars in medical and pharmacy claims a rather high month one of the highest we've experienced and we do expect a significant reimbursement from our stop-loss insurance carrier for claims in excess of 115 000 and finally in the opeb trust
019fund a year to date realized and unrealized gains on investments uh totaled 99 000. and that concludes my report thank you mr jones now for the superintendent's report mr manuel thank you in just a moment we'll pull up a presentation that should seem very familiar so as you aware the state of tennessee applied to receive their sr3 funding from the federal government they submitted assurances to the federal government and they have received all that money so all the money has now come to the state of tennessee and is in the bank accounts for the state of tennessee uh we have been going through a process several months of creating an sr-3 document that has gone through several revisions with the department of education and we are seeing the the end of that process here there
020may be additional budget amendments that come but this department of education has asked for two more processes to be complete one we presented the back to school safety plan as we started getting ready for this school year but they have said now that as part of this process they want the school board to have approved it so this is one of the action voting voting items tonight for you all to approve this this does have the changes as you know we've gone through several different legislative changes that we've experienced from different different governmental agencies so this does include those the second thing that we're going to vote on tonight that we'll also discuss is there was a change in sr2 versus sr3 funding we had put and this board had approved to include virtual school
021in the sr3 funding the department of education has deemed that the purpose for sr3 was to promote in-person learning starting the new school year and so they requested that we have a change and that we moved that amount of money all the money that we're putting for the virtual school into our s or two funding modify that funding and then we would see the increase in the houston middle school expansion because as you're aware the houston middle school expansion was all of our sr2 funding so you'll see an equitable increase in decrease in those two accounts so those are two items so because the board is voting on this i thought it would be good to go back and review our back-to-school safety plan during my presentation so one all gmsd schools are required to
022offer in-person full-time instruction for the 2021-22 school year that was a change last year we had to submit a clp continuation learning plan to the department of education that had to be approved by the commissioner of education they took away that ability for us to use virtual learning in and out of school so we are no longer allowed to do that that's how we were able to accommodate with the hybrid plan last year none of those options are on the table moving forward so let's talk about what we do have the option to do we did have the option to create a standalone school for virtual education and so if you remember when we had first put out a survey to all of our parents seeking level of interest at that time the number of
023coveted cases were decreasing there wasn't substantial interest in the elementary school students and so when we were developing our program we really started out with middle school and high school students so we were really looking at six through 12. in light of everything that we've experienced we did go back and revisit and the department of education changed their stance and allowed us to change our application and so we did expand it through k through 12. so we do have an online school but it is a standalone separate school it is not something that you can move in and out of you are actually enrolled in that school just like one of our other schools and this would be something that we could continue moving forward social distancing another key component of our plan one of
024the key recommendations of the shelby county health department is to provide three feet of social distancing when possible classrooms will maintain that um physical distance we know there are situations where we cannot accommodate those so that's why that when possible in the cdc language and department of health is crucial for us there are times when we can't when we're doing transitions or we're doing cafeteria now we have gone back and revisited to do everything we can to promote that social distancing but we know that that helps reduce the number of close contacts that we have in our school when we abide by those numbers masks are requiredness you know when we started the school year we were following the health department regulations of being highly recommended and then we had the health department come and
025there was a mask mandate on us and we had to follow the mask mandate and then we had the governor's opt out and we followed that too and allowed that and then we had the revision of that so know that at this time where we are in this process um we are still following the the mass mandate we do not have the opportunity to or the option to not follow that masked mandate so we will continue to collaborate with our shelby county health department you know we're looking at vaccination rates transmission rates in our schools we are looking at how many close contacts actually become positive cases all those things may influence our decisions moving forward in the future and maybe something that we ask the board to consider if at any time we start
026looking at doing things separate or different from the health department or tennessee department of health we will still follow guidance and best practices but we will have to look at data as always to make informed decisions other things that we will do and we are not doing the student health checks we do have one for staff ms stratton is very good about always reminding staff to do their health checks when we get the opportunity we spend a lot of time and effort around contact tracing it is as you mentioned chairman of a full-time job for our staff when we are looking at cases on the weekends and the evenings and they're having to call individuals and i think i've heard estimates of two hours per case that they have to to complete contact tracing that
027is not required of school districts that's not our job our function we are here to educate students and we don't have built-in staff for this purpose um so know that we have people who are taking on extra responsibilities to accommodate that process we feel it's important we want to keep students safe but at the same time we have to balance the amount of time and with forms and things that we're being requested to submit we want to be transparent with communication whenever there's a case in school we send a letter to the whole school that there's been a positive covet case and know that we've also increased that by the addition of a dashboard that will show those positive cases and then with athletics arts and activities we think those are important for students and
028we have safety protocols in those events but we know that a lot of those are parent choices and how comfortable they feel with letting their children attend these events because there are inherent risk when you're doing something that may remove masking or it may remove that social distancing but know that we do feel it's a priority when we talk about student mental health and well-being and that concludes the back-to-school safety plan you mr manuel ms subermani are there any citizens to be heard thank you we move on to the consent agenda included in the consent agenda are the approval of the minutes the review and revision of policies first reading and miscellaneous fiscal year 2021 2022 budget amendments the chair will entertain a motion a move to approve all of the items in the consent
029agenda second a motion was made by mr curry and seconded by miss landers mr bermani would you take role please miss landers yes mr curry yes ms griffith yes mr strange yes yes thank you we move on to board action items number nine a approval of lea healthy and health and safety plan the chair will entertain a motion i move to approve the current lea health and safety plan second motion was made by ms griffith and seconded by mr strain is there discussion i just want to thank superintendent manuel for your presentation and going over that uh with us again i know i think it seems to be pretty fluid as things change but i appreciate the work that you and your staff have done in order to keep our doors open and you know
030keep our numbers where they are so anyway thank you for the update and uh again i guess we'll stress to the community that we're having to be as flexible as we can but we're doing the best we can to keep every one safe and healthy and school going so thank you any additional comments or more discussion i'm just going to state that the rationale is board approval as a requirement to complete sr approval from the state so in order to get our funding we do have we do have a need for this approval miss uber money if you would call roll please this griffith yes it's the stream yes the slanders yes mr curry yes yes thank you moving on to 9b approval of esser spending plan the chair will entertain a motion i move
031to approve the current esser spending plan is there a second second motion was made by miss landers and seconded by mr curry is there discussion as i'll be glad to clarify again as i mentioned the major changes that we saw here we moved the amount for the online academy into sr2 and decreased the amount for the houston middle school expansion by that amount then in the sr3 we see the goal removed the online school removed and we see the increase in the houston middle school edition there was also a smaller funding change the department of education said that we could not provide the workers compensation or claims that we had sorry the yeah unemployment claims sorry used unemployment claims money that the board had budgeted for that they said we could not use that purpose
032so unemployment claims have now been uh removed and we were taking that in-house so those are the changes that you see from the budget that you had previously approved my assumption is that there will be additional budget amendments that we have just like we do with other budgets as we go through and try to spend this money there may be other minor changes as we progress through any additional comments or questions okay i'll just highlight from the work session of the comparatively few changes we had and so that was again a testament to the good work from everyone here so mr bermani if you would call roll please mr curry yes miss griffith yes mr strain yes miss landers yes museuf yes thank you moving on to announcements the houston middle school boys and girls
033cross country teams will be running in the tms double a state championships in clarksville on saturday this is the first time the teams have competed in the tm tmsaa and they're competing in state which is just incredible so best of luck to both of these those teams i would never have been on those teams i'm way too slow the houston theater department is performing three student-directed one-act plays on october 1st and 2nd starting at 7 p.m tickets are 5 at the door and it is in the houston high school auditorium the houston band has its first marching competition of the year this saturday in huntington tennessee so good luck to our marching mustangs fall break is october 11th through the 15th our next regular board work session is october the 20th and our next business
034meeting october the 26th seeing as there's nothing more on the agenda this meeting is adjourned well it's fine well that's fine okay can you hear me now so carl kelsey is my name and i've got two daughters that are in the district sophie kelsey and sadie kelsey i'm also an er physician i've been an er physician at methodist germantown for 17 years and now i'm at st francis bartlett i've been there since 2016. just looking at a lot of touchy political issues i had one question that has to do with crt or critical race theory is that something that is going to be implemented in our teaching programs we don't we don't respond to citizens to be heard during meetings well um but we can address that if you want to send us an email
035or we can speak to you after after the meeting about that okay all right and then secondly i wanted to point out some interesting facts that i'm seeing clinically in the emergency room for the last eight weeks uh my colleagues and i have been asking specifically uh patients if they've been immunized if they have had covered the illness or or not and what we have found is that patients who have had covid who have had the illness myself included i had it in november for the last eight weeks zero zero patients are showing any symptoms of coronavirus they're not coming in for coronavirus they're coming in because they have a laceration or appendicitis okay so natural immunity is working and not only is it working it's superior now we're also asking patients if they've been
036vaccinated and if they have coveted now of course 45 percent of people who have had covet are asymptomatic so a lot of people don't know if they've had covet but if they have been vaccinated they are showing signs of coronavirus but only mild maybe mild moderate symptoms and then lastly people who have not been exposed to coronavirus and have not been vaccinated are the people who are who are sick okay one last thing as it pertains to masks there was a article i believe is in the new england journal of medicine it was done in bangladesh it was about 90 000 people that were studied masks versus no mask wearing if you don't wear masks then you are nine percent more likely to transmit coronavirus that was statistically significant now what makes it even more
037interesting because i'm looking at all of us who are wearing cloth masks they subdivided it into people wearing cloth mask versus surgical masks cloth masks the the difference was two percent okay so essentially it was a wash if you wear cloth masks it really doesn't make a difference if you transmit the virus or not based on this study and then if it was a surgical mask the difference was 12 and that's all i have to say but yes i'd like to talk to somebody about critical race theory if i could thank you very much okay thank you october the 26th business meeting yes and now the meeting is adjourned