001[Music] you ready miss ford call the meeting to order roll call please chairman mcclendon here here this is hill mrs jones here mr perez here mr smith mrs thurman here mr walker here dr wingate here superintendent dr roberson here okay that will uh move us down to the approval of the agenda do i have a motion should i move a second okay mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes yes chairman mclendon yes okay no executive session that will move us down to the pledge of the flag and meditation by miss starnes principal of clifton hills elementary good evening i'm lindsey starnes i'm the principal at clifton hills elementary school and i have brought some fifth graders with us today that are going to lead it because at
002clifton hills we believe that kids should be the leaders and and uh leaders of their own learning so that's something that we value so one of the things that they're going to lead you in tonight is something that makes clifton hills very unique every day we come together as a crew and you can sometimes think of like a a crew boat uh working together but it builds community so if you will please stand and we're gonna form a circle um and and everybody's invited to participate in the crew so we're just gonna get in a circle around and then i'm going to turn it over to the kids so they're going to tell you in just a minute why we gather in a circle um but it's it's very unique and it builds community so
003i would like to introduce our fifth graders from clifton hills i have sophia daniels eddie castaneda jasmine yerby and gabriel bermaca hernandez so i'm going to turn it over to them to lead you in crew yes good evening my name is sophia daniel and i am a fifth grader at clifton hills elementary school in the newly created district 11. clifton hills has been recognized as an el education credential school that focuses on the mastery of knowledge and skills high quality work and character as an el education school our culture is planned for developed and sustained through practices that bring the community together promote shared understandings and encourage all community members to become crew not passengers one structure that we utilize daily to build community and support students academically and emotionally is their crew today we
004are going to lead a crew meeting in order to build community within this space and crew meetings we gather in a circle to invite participation being a being in a circle allows us to see and hear everyone and provides access to our hearts and bodies not just their heads so miss yearby is oftentimes in a crew we do some type of reading of a text that that builds community or it's dealing with problem solving so miss yearby is going to read to you um a little passage about geese and so as she's reading if you'll think about how that applies to you in your work as the hamilton county school board and the community our reading today to consider is from lesson of geese as each goose flaps its wings it creates an uplift for
005the birds that follow by flying in a reformation the whole flock has 71 percent greater flying range than if each bird flew alone people who share a common direction and since a community can get where they're going more faster and more easily because they are traveling on each other's effort and momentum if we have as much sense as geese we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we're strong the collective commitment of the group creates security for each individual as you consider this reading think about a challenge you have faced and overcome turn and talk with the neighbor about how the help and support of the community help you overcome this challenge so also part of a crew meeting is the chance for you to talk with your peers and
006talk with your neighbors so again this whole reading was about community and how working together um makes the group better so jasmine let you read the directions one more time that last part so they can know what they're going to talk about okay as you consider this reading think about a challenge you have faced and overcome turn and talk with the neighbor about how the help and support of your community helped you overcome this challenge so we're going to give you about one minute to turn and talk to your neighbor if you don't know them introduce yourselves but share a challenge you have faced and how you overcame that challenge with your community [Music] um the kids all right we're going to come back together for our closing so thank you all for participating with
007us and sharing this experience so we're going to go ahead and close with our closing in closing we would like to thank you for your shared commitment to ensure that all students in hamilton county receive the best education possible we would like to offer you a reminder of your collective commitment to the children in hamilton county by presenting you with a token of our appreciation so we have stickers for the board of geese you can put them on your computer or your water bottle so they've got some to pass out so if you want to make your way back to your seats we'll still remain standing for the pledge [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you very much you did an excellent job good job good job guys thank you that's awesome good job [Music] please stand
008for the pledge attention salute pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Applause] thank you all for that uh next we'll go to our exemplars of excellence dr robertson thank you chairman mcclendon so we wanted to take a moment to recognize and thank two outgoing board members i'll start with mr walker appreciate what you've done the last year i remember one of our first conversations you promised me that we may not always agree but we can talk about anything and we'll figure out a way to move forward and uh you know the last what seven months eight months you've proven that true to me there there are times that you and
009i we've had a couple of tough conversations and always figured out a way to get to a place where we can move forward that's what you know i've really appreciated about you is your willingness to engage in conversations your willingness to take on tough topics but then most of all to try to find a place that we can move forward as a district and you know over the last year that's what you've demonstrated on this board and i just i want to thank you for your willingness to serve you came in at a tough time never easy to be on school board but you walked into you know a tough year ahead and we appreciate everything you've done not only for your district but for students across hamilton county thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] mr
010walker if you want to say a few words thank you um i do it's uh you know that's how i always want to be we can agree to disagree on things and talk about it and you've been straight forward with me and never been shouted out about talking about stuff uh as well and and i appreciate it i'm gonna continue to to be a voice in the community help any of you out anywhere we can uh you know when robert sharp was our principal of central we always worked well together gary keene was an assistant principal at central you know we worked worked well together you know what i would encourage and i had you know some great thoughts of how i would say something up here tonight but these young people tied it up
011i wrote it down because of my other job i lead a team of salespeople and we have some passengers on that team and so what i want to encourage parents out here is to become crew and not passengers this board up here needs your input these principals and teachers need and want your input and we can do it in a way that is conducive to us all growing together it can't be the pitch fork and the flames and the torches we're going to burn the school down but there is some systems in place where we can make this thing better and we got some things we got to work on um but we got to have that communication we need a bigger room so we could have 300 parents be here and at least be
012engaged we can't you know i'm not saying have delegations last for five hours we've talked about that before but parents please be engaged this superintendent wants to hear from you and truly works for you i don't know who i'm looking at because i'm hoping somebody's watching this but we cannot do it alone this board can't do it you know we've butted heads we've talked about things we have some groups in here that come up and speak whether i agree with them or disagree with them i applaud every group that comes up here and talks but they can't do it by their self so we have to do all of those things together and one last thing that sticks out of my mind because i do care about district 9 in our community gary keane since
013the primary win has been at every school board meeting he and i have communicated once or twice a week we've showed up at pancake breakfast we've done everything district nine is going to be in good hands and gary i'm honored that you're going to take this seat and represent district 9 well and look forward to uh you know i got that cell phone number so you know i look forward to hanging out with you and talking and sharing but if i can ever do anything for any of you guys or anything on this board in the community or you know coach hyland used to call me other folks on the board mike eva chester everybody else i like to think i have a little pulse on the community and i don't have to be you
014know a jerk and a bad guy all the time about stuff but if you want some honest feedback give me a shout and uh gary look forward to you representing us thanks everybody [Applause] can we say something i just want to tell you james you make a good jerk though i enjoyed that i kind of kind of had a kindred spirit with you there so that's good but anyway i've enjoyed the time that we've had on the board together and uh i've just enjoyed you taking on some of the tough uh subjects that we've had to talk about and been bold about it and being not afraid to say your mind and i and i for one certainly appreciate that thank you that you say what you you feel and don't really worry about if
015anybody likes it or not you were elected to represent your people and that's what you did you did it well and i appreciate it miss robinson yeah um james i've had fun getting to know you and you were so kind to introduce me to your wife and to your kids at the um the top 10 event back in the spring and um i feel like right as you're getting into your budget binder you know you're really starting to get the hang of the budget and now you know now hopefully you'll be able to carry that knowledge forward so um but no seriously i i've just really enjoyed getting to know you and i hope that we see you at these board meetings at least while i'm here for the next couple of years so thank
016you for all that you do in our community so thank you for your service so tucker obviously worked with a little bit longer um especially got to know each other well from january of 2020 to uh now when i took over operations i didn't realize that um you know what what all would hit us during that period but from working through east brainerd elementary and and you know being on the uh on the ground together that morning uh seeing what that happened all the way through our custodial rfp uh fund uh got to work very closely with you what i what i appreciate about you you as your willingness to advocate and your willingness to step up you know at a young age and do a really tough job not just on the board but
017stepping up to be the chairman you've got a ton of great things out of you i can't wait to see what you do with that i hate that you're not going to be on this board because you truly have been an advocate for students teachers and in the district in general and and we're here to support you in whatever you decide to move forward but thank you for everything that you've done [Applause] it's um kind of like james i've been trying to figure out what i was gonna say um tonight for a couple days i've been trying to put something on paper like miss hill she always admire how she can come in with prepared remarks and sticky notes galore um i even mowed the grass before this meeting to try to get my thoughts
018right um and and nothing really has has hit me um it's it's been an honor it's been a privilege for the last four day or four years um came in here 23 years old bright eyed didn't really know what i was doing but i acted like it sometimes and and now i think i'm pretty seasoned uh to do it i i think um this district has a lot of good going for it and i have no doubt that in the four years i've been on this board that we are in not just a better place a way better place than we were four years ago kind of like dr robertson said we've had a pandemic we had a tornado a new superintendent search we've had the gamut thrown at us and it's been challenging it's
019been hard work but we persevered through it and i think we've came out better and stronger the teachers of this this district many that i've become best friends with they do the hard work and i appreciate every single one of them even though we all know what it feels like to have hundreds of emails uh in our inbox every single day um when something is going on and and just to say that it's it's been an honor from custodial stuff to facilities um it's been fun to dig in and i have i've really truly uh enjoyed it so thank you all for allowing me to serve and thank y'all to the people sitting right here to the people that go into our schools every single day and do the hard work thank you all for
020what you all do and keep up the good work tucker i just want to tell you i'm going to miss you and i do appreciate the fact that you too took the time to take on some really hard issues we didn't always agree uh on a lot of things but that's okay we're not supposed to that's not what this board is about it's about the discussion and trying to move the school system forward and i do appreciate you i do appreciate the fact that you were always available to talk anytime you called you always return calls and you know the talk through things about why we were doing things and why we wouldn't do things but anything i ever asked you to bring forward you did and i and i appreciate that i really do
021i really appreciate you very much and i wish you only the best thank you i remember when we used to sit next to each other you taught me a lot in that first year oh yeah i teach them a lot miss jones tucker and james i want to say that it has been a pleasure to work on the board with you james i don't know what to say about you james walker because our relationship did not start here at the board i met you through dr highlander in 2014 so i've known you as a parent and a community member before you became a board member and you are a voice for your community um and once again we have not always agreed from 2014 to now but um we always find a common ground to
022either disagree i mean agree to disagree or how to move forward and i appreciate you for that and i also love how you are very highly engaged in the community and your grandchildren's lives i love that about you um because a lot of grandparents and parents don't continue that work once their kids leave so i know you'll be around and uh you can give us some of their lottery money yes ma'am that'd be perfectly appreciative tucker the baby of the bunch um i'm proud of you tucker um did you you tied that knot the tucker got here i gotta tell the story really fast well tucker got here he was dating caitlyn and he used to sit right here and kathleen said here and rhonda was of course in her seat and tucker would always
023talk about caitlin caitlin kate and i kept saying tucker how long are you going to date that girl for you marry her and he's like and dr highlander would coerce him the other way and i'd be saying don't listen dr holland you're gonna be by yourself but lo and behold he did propose to her and they're amazed i'm very proud of that but i am very proud of you talking your leadership and how you've done some bold things and taking some risk um to lead this district for i mean to leave this board and leading the district forward so i'm going to miss you but i'm pretty sure i'll be seeing you around this is not the end of the tucker mcclendon era i'm sure um but it's been a joy to work with the
024both of you as well as jenny and it's always hard to transition into new boards because you build rapports with people and you work through a lot of things so um i'm gonna miss y'all but i'm sure y'all will be around so it won't be too far away mr perez i just want to reiterate um i i think what dr robertson said you are an exceptional leader tucker and i thank you for the role that you took um and i i think we lose a great board member i hope our community gains somebody who has other uh thoughts in mind i and i and i mean that i think you whatever role you will play you will uh just uh show the leadership that you showed here and i and i uh look forward to
025whatever that means in the future so thank you very much thank you um it's hard to like not get emotional and this i cried whenever kathy left and i'm glad i wasn't here whenever jenny had her last meeting um but i want to you know i couldn't agree more you are a wonderful leader tucker and you are young and you have been like a little brother to me um i don't know who i will go shopping with now on our breaks at tsba conference so if anybody wants to pick up that role they're welcome to um girl i got you um but seriously thank you so much for all that you've done for our board especially this last year you've certainly picked up in a really difficult time 2021 into 2022 was not was not
026easy to be the board chair i'm grateful for the hard topics that you brought up and for how you really pushed us as board members um and i completely agree with the group like this is the this is not the last of your time serving in our community and i'm thrilled to have you as a friend and to have you as a colleague so thank you so much thank you dr wingate yes uh tucker uh man thank you for uh for four years of serving um when i'm sitting here thinking about uh that and folks have talked about all the different you've had a lot of roles on this board um in support and leadership and i'm sitting here writing down i mean facilities chair you were ferocious in that role and but it was
027good and uh vice chair chair um and i just thank you for being willing to plug in wherever you know wherever there was a need wherever you were able to uh add value and you've done that um i think that you've done it well so thank you for your time and it's been great getting to know you and james thank you because i know uh the way you came onto the board the way you entered that's not always the easiest thing to do you know an appointment and then it seems like whether you want to or not if you're appointed and you want to seek the seat it's almost like as soon as you start serving you're also campaigning at the same time so i can't even begin to imagine what what that has been
028like but thank you for your time and for your willingness to represent i know the community that you've already represented for so many years so thank you the only thing i did have prepared that i didn't say during my thing is um my challenge to the next school board uh my challenge to the administration and something that i didn't realize and probably till this week that had been at the core of every decision i made but it's the words that i've brought up i don't know how many times in meetings it's the words behind me on the wall that every decision that i've made that's at the core of it and in a world where education public education is becoming very hyper partisan very both sides of the aisle whatever way you want to look
029at it for the good or the bad however you think that's what needs to be at the focus of it wherever or however you believe that's what needs to be at the back of it um the 45 000 kids that this district serves every single day so my challenge to the next school board kind of on my way out is to remember that it's going to get heated it's going to get contentious we're going to we've yelled at each other we've you know walked out we've done everything you can imagine up here um other than today this board's a highly functional board that at the end of the day when you walk out of those doors we call each other up you know we talk about things we're here to support each other um and
030i know all nine of us and i hope all 11 of the people that will be sitting here remember those those words behind us so thank you mr walker i know i had a chance to talk with you for a second before we got in but i want to say it publicly i am proud of you i'm proud of your growth uh you know as most y'all know i watch the board and see things and pay attention but great growth in you and the leadership to come in uh joe was the the chairman when i first came in joe great leadership when we came in i didn't know if we're gonna have to go out in the front yard with that one guy in the back corner when we first got but all can decide
031i love that i just love that cause we're gonna stand up and we're gonna fight uh for each other whether we agree or not on something so uh that was really great i didn't want to come in after the primary loss and then that was on that thursday i didn't want to come to the agenda meeting on monday but as soon as i came in the warmth that this whole board gave me that was awesome but i didn't want to make it about many more proud of you tucker can't wait to see where you go and what you do and look forward to your your leadership continuing to grow same to you mr walker i've had a uh it's been great serving with you the last you know eight nine months you brought a lot
032to this board um and we bonded over the purple owls that we say out there so i appreciate your your leadership and and your service to district nine okay that's out of the way um get to the real stuff now presentations yes uh good evening um you guys are gonna put me to the test here on the succinct presentation can you start the timer i'll try my best so i do have an update for you part of our future ready 2023 plan really around the achievement and growth data that's been released for hamilton county schools of course as you all just spoke through our our core mission here are just cause and what we're working to do is that all children thrive and experience a future without limits and so as we look at our
033data today we always keep that front in mind when we're thinking about our future ready 2023 plan this is really around that accelerating student achievement portion of that plan and looking into how we are leaning towards those measures of course all of you all have heard this at this point so i will go quick on this but when we're talking about state testing data when it comes back they pull data in two different ways so they pull data off of the tcap scores and they look at achievement and growth and the best way i always think about this when it comes back how i orient myself to this data as it returns is like a running track so when we're talking about achievement today we're really thinking about it's like how many students cross the
034finish line so achievement scores measure how many students met performance targets on a subject or a grade level and that's like this image just to keep it in your mind is thinking about if they're running around the track how many of our students cross that finish line or met proficiency in a certain area when we get in to talk about growth growth data is like a little bit of a different measure on that track so growth data in tennessee measures a group of students and if they kept pace with their scores of others across the state of tennessee so this is like if you're watching that track race and you're looking at the group of runners it's similar to seeing who maybe pulls a head or paces behind others in that race regardless of where
035they end on that track or if they cross that finish line so we'll i'll come back to these images but thinking about achievement as crossing the finish line and growth around like how we are keeping pace with others across the district so when we look at our achievement data as it was returned this year we see that students across hamilton county met the highest levels of proficiency in ela and social studies since we developed this future ready strategic plan so you'll notice we grew in almost every content area this is kindergarten through 12th pulled together just for succinctness of presentation and it grew from 21 to 22 in almost every area with the exception of science but looking at that as well all the way back to 2018 english language arts and social studies we
036see that higher than the baseline than when we started we increased in proficiency in 19 of 28 tested areas i know this is tiny this is more for the print out or if anybody needs to reference it later so when we think about year over year from 21 to 22 we had an increase in 19 out of 28 tested areas when we look on the right side of how we compared to the state so how hamilton county did in terms of state performance we outperformed the state in 20 of 28 tested areas this year you'll notice the purple bar around there were four areas on this that stood out to me as areas where we neither grew year over year not grew we gained in performance year over year from 21 to 22 or we
037didn't outperform the state and those we can see in eighth grade science and social studies and then in geometry and biology so those are areas that we're continuing to dig into we always think about third grade ela that's one of our focus targets for us we did notice from well probably not from the last slide but on the last slide we saw that third grade ela is above state average this year but we also saw our students kind of stay in the same place when we look at proficiency and that was a different trend than what you see on the screen than what we saw in fourth and fifth grade so that's something we're continuing to dig into to see what were the differences there as well but you'll notice fourth and fifth grade english
038language arts saw tremendous gains over last year the blue and the green bars here well the purple bar showing third grade ela held pretty pretty close to the same place year over year so some of the highlights we saw when we dug into the details students in sixth and seventh grade saw the greatest increase in proficiency levels and they were almost ten percent increase from year over year in those grade levels our fourth graders which you just saw on the other screen saw 43 percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations in language english language arts and honestly when i think about our goal of 50 of third graders reading by the end of future ready 2023 it's kind of like an extension of that goal and where we're getting students to over time percent of
039our fourth and fifth grade students met or exceed which was actually six percentage points higher than those grade levels um across the state i'm sorry i met her exceed in math i am trying to go a little too fast for you guys so getting into growth data and again the visual here just to remind us same test different way to look at the data and so now we're looking at the data in the way that says did we keep pace with others across the state was our movement at the same level of increase as it was with others across the state and our peers in all districts so reminder of growth levels tivos is that measure that does a one through five five meaning that they had more growth than expected one meaning less gross
040than expected or seen across the state and so here's our results for 2122 we saw it kind of a very different pattern if you're looking at fourth through eighth grade versus high school which are those eoc or cte eoc means ends of course that's the nft and ready for high schoolers and then cte are our career and technical educators are concentrators in those areas so we saw if you count them up like a three four and five which means you are keeping pace or exceeding pace we saw about 21 of the 36 areas mostly in for all in high school and then we saw as you can see that kind of red box here which were the ones showing up in the fourth through eighth grade um and then system-wide as a whole when you
041put all of those together and what that means of course is that we didn't move as fast as others across the state this year and so when you think about our trajectory and movement when you take the whole state they had a steeper trajectory and movement than we did in those areas when we dug in by grade level and subject we saw some pretty clear patterns that i've just kind of highlighted here and across pattern for you ones that were showing up for us in proficiency or have been showing up throughout the year that we've spoken about multiple times and so we see patterns in growth kind of across the board when we look at the subject of math and then also when we look down across the grade level of eighth grade and so
042really thinking about um as we move into this year how what are the supports we're putting in place for our middle schoolers we've started a lot of support there around innovative middle school experiences and then also what are the energies and supports we're putting into math as we enter into an adoption year with a new curriculum and what that means is we're thinking about these scores in terms of how we moved relative to peers so a couple of highlights from from this data in front of us of course what you saw on that first slide that our high school and end of course or career technical educator students they really saw high levels of growth compared to their peers when you look at both literacy and numeracy or those combined as well when we dug
043in as a district just to different learning places of students we actually saw that our students that were projected to score in the lowest performance area actually saw the greatest gains and so that's something that we really see as a highlight as we continue to move through and how we we show that and and move that into other areas of our district and then as you as you guys probably feel right now we're really pleased with the proficiency gains but recognize there's still some areas for us to adjust and grow to make sure that we keep pace with others across the state and so we feel like the commitment we we've already committed to coordinated efforts like our app tool the academic press and personalization tool and that will really help us narrow the focus
044of what we're working on in each school how we're supporting them and then really tailoring that support to make sure all students move forward which is a really important piece to us as we think about all students thrive and experience a future without limits and so just as we talk about moving forward from this data i wanted to move this to dr stewart to really kind of remind us quickly of that academic press and personalization piece that we're getting into thanks shannon i i think when i sit here and think about this data i go back to some of the things that we heard from dr robertson from the beginning long before this data came out and he would say to us from the very beginning what got us here won't get us there right
045we've been positioned for the last eight months to really consider where we as you know as a school district and what's the landscape in front of us and what are the changes that we need to make you guys have heard me talk about the app um a few months ago but it really is a framework and a structure for schooling and our language is exactly this that that all hamilton county school children would show measurable growth and their ability to read write think through these things rigorous content worthwhile tasks and purposeful student engagement and there's nothing magic about this in particular other than the fact that we as a district are saying we are going to be focused and aligned our schools are going to create their own priorities aligned to this framework and we
046as a system are going to actively support them just just today i was on two learning walks in two different learning communities and yesterday a third everything the leaders are doing is focused on this we have teams of people going in and supporting and providing feedback and really see that this is a lever for change because it is a narrow focus with the right systems and structures to reinforce it these are the things that our schools can choose and they're all choosing different things based on their needs a lot of times we we try to make one size fit all and this is the absolute opposite justin or dr robertson uses the the analogy of guard rails often we created guard rails that allow people to find their place in between and focus on the
047things they need to focus on this is our personalization goal i think this is a goal that this particular board feels very passionate about that all of our kids would experience a deeper connection to each other kids to kids to educators and to the school community and so same thing our schools built goals and priorities under each of in each of these spaces one of the things that was a priority for us as we launched our principles in july was we said outright to them we want those first three to five days of school to be hyper focused on personalization we really believe that when children come to school and feel connected with each other and connected with the educators and connected with the school community they're better positioned to learn and we're seeing that
048all on every campus that we've been in we see this this seeing a sense of priority as our kids are better positioned to learn so these are the things that we're wrapping around our schools and focusing our schools on and building the systems and supports to uh to focus on it so i'll end where we always in where tucker we're tucker ended um we're deeply committed to to this just cause uh that all of our children would thrive and experience a future without limits any questions discussion mr robinson thank you for this data and always every year you do a great job breaking this down i really appreciate it um it's actually really fascinating to think back to my first year on the board and seeing this data for the first time and then seeing
049it six years later because this isn't a this isn't a sprint it's a it's a marathon and you know i think that including myself when i first got on the board but for the general public it's really easy to look at this data in a in a vacuum and like really look at it from just a very short-term perspective but you can't really understand what's going on unless you really understand the whole picture and you're looking at the whole picture so i feel grateful to be in that seat to see the whole picture um and hope that the way that we're talking about it the community's hopefully beginning to understand the whole picture too so um i was i've got a few questions um you know my first question is you know we set these
05020 23 goals and i just wondered based on the data that we're seeing um what do you think the likelihood is of us really hitting and getting getting close to our 2023 goals are so um we've hit many of the goals uh in terms of the specific ones here around literacy and 50 it's not very realistic um you know and i think again you've got to think the trajectory of when you guys approved that plan um and and we were heading in a really good direction uh and then we've hit some stuff that's been difficult uh the last two years uh i think it's also interesting to put into perspective though across the state you know a lot of people see these percentages and they think the ceiling is a hundred percent ceiling's not a
051hundred percent ceiling in the highest district in the state is 70 something for third grade ela or yeah i think it's high 60s high 60s right and so i think that perspective matters um we're we're going to continue to work on this we're going to continue to see the growth i think the fourth grade data is really important and really interesting data point to think about the number of years that those students have had exposure to el renewed focus on getting back to the basics of learning how to read right and we're focused more focused now on phonics and phonemic awareness and vocabulary acquisition all those things that um and past approaches weren't there and so that data jump to you know the mid 40s for fourth grade is something that's been pretty intriguing for
052us to look at and dig into but just to be frank saying the third grader is going to be at 50 by next year um that's a stretch yeah and i think it's you know we're we're going to be this board and our new board members are going to be working on that new strategic plan and i think that it's really important that the the 11 of us really understand what the realities are of that um so well and actually my next comment um is in relationship to being a parent of a fourth grader so my son is in fifth grade now so he's fourth grade last year and you know i waited like to the day of whenever this data would come out because last year when i looked at his third grade scores
053and then this year getting a look at his fourth grade store scores i saw massive improvement and so my comment on that is um it would be really great if we had a standard of going over this data with parents i don't even know if a lot of parents know they can look at their their child's scores i think i'm just really aware from being on the board um but i actually think that if we as a district are going to be held accountable for this data i think parents need to see it and understand it too because that shows progress for their own children right um so i think we've got to really think through how to get parents understanding this data and seeing it in real time too whenever the data comes out
054um because i'm looking at my son's data today as a as he's a fifth grader of his performance and what he learned as a fourth grader four months four or five months ago right so like i'm already behind the eight ball as a parent so just a thought and a suggestion um i was also curious what does an apg look like in real time like does that mean that my son or my two my two children who are at you know started school last week does that mean that already in these last this last week and a half of school that they have had some form of like personalization being like made around them okay i'm just like just quick 30 second like high level what does that look like yeah so i'm gonna go
055back to this to this slide so at csas for example they have set priorities in each of these categories so i don't know offhand what theirs is but let's say they they chose in personalization student to student that they were going to create student connection and belonging it means that they've built intentional strategies around that so that might be your fifth grader is a buddy with a first grader that might be that they have like lunch buddies that are doing certain things that might be that they've increased extracurricular activities to bring kids together that would be an example there um on the student to educator side of things uh this is where it's it's a lot like the student voice i think about a fifth grader he's probably in a leadership-ish kind of role in
056his school so maybe he's having influence they're creating increased access of student voice to administrative teams positive relationships and communication i was at east side today i can't even describe the interaction between the teachers and the kids and they had lots of strategies and cues and signs and symbols that just you just saw the joy and the openness there and that's a strategic part of their plan so very concrete strategies and are our principles rolling out these strategies to parents at some point i don't know that they are that's not been that's not been a priority okay it'd be interesting like to know as a parent what those goals are for my son's school and you know and how you know how i can just be encouraging absolutely i'm sorry thank you so much any
057other comments or questions yeah this is math adoptions coming up quinn it's coming up this later this year so the state obviously textbook commission will have to approve curriculum and that's november december-ish and then from there we've got to go through the process of selecting when was the last math adoption oh my gosh two six years two thousand let's just say so yeah it hasn't been that long ago about six years ago maybe seven i wanted to say it was longer than that but i'm not positive we can find that out well okay but that when we adopted that math it was going to make everything so much better you know i just wonder at what point things are going to start getting better from math because um i'm just not liking these these scores
058at all of course the reading scores i just don't like at all uh just because we're doing better than the state in a lot of areas doesn't it's not really impressive to me because everybody's doing bad and we can use a covet as an excuse this year but we can't do it for all the other years i mean we're going to have to do something to get this right and i know every time we adopt something that says well it takes five years for it to get better well then in five years we start something else and it's going to take another five years and i'm wondering when we're going to see a big turnaround because these kids that come on as kindergarteners i mean they're fresh it's not like we have to you know
059work to teach them something new these these people who came in these children that came in as kindergarten kindergarteners uh you know by the time they get in you know say third or third grade or so i think they should be showing scoring better than this uh because we've had them for four years and uh and i guess i'm just wondering why the grades are not maybe there's something i'm missing maybe i've been missing it since i've been on the board because i never have understood that the kindergarteners come in fresh we should be able to to teach them why we can't teach them to read is beyond my comprehension i just don't get it but anyway like i said i just i just hope that this next math adoption i know we had a
060math adoption back in 1998 i guess it was it was the worst thing that ever happened to this school system in my opinion i've seen a lot of bad things but that was the worst and i hope that we get our math adoption right i just hope we do because we really destroyed the education math education of a lot of students i hope we go back to the basics and don't get involved in this stuff that's you know how to build a better mousetrap when you know the math that we've used for years has taken us lots of good places in this world and uh and to use our kids as guinea pigs i hope we never do that again so let's think about that when we do ready to get ready to do a
061math adoption thank you any other i'll just say um i guess once we kind of figured the state me and dr robertson had a pretty frank conversation about where we were why we were there um and so i think you know no one in this board no one sitting up here is happy with being a one i think you have to understand how the state reports growth versus achievement to kind of understand it's convoluted i use sports analogies if you're a you know eight and five team last year and you're you know a nine and four team but the people in your division are 10 and 2 teams you're not growing as much as your other team you're making gains but you're not where you so it's convoluted on how it does how the reporting
062is so i just you know it's not where we want to be um i also think that we've seen unprecedented growth as we've moved forward the past three years um and that growth inevitably you're going to hit it's going to be harder to go it's easier to go from a 50 to an 80 and then it's harder to go from an 80 to an 85 and then an 85 to a 90 um when you're talking about how growth is so um one thing i've i dr robertson um i admired from his letter and our conversation is we're not making excuses there's no excuse for for this at all we have to highlight the good areas where we have made progress and we have to dig down deep on where we need gains and we've seen
063like mr thurman said math middle school and over the last three or four months i've seen before we knew this we're thinking about the math we're thinking about how do we improve that middle school um kind of structure and the innovation around that so um i think the steps are are in place and how we move forward will be um key in in that success i was not talking about the two best scores i don't like tv scores i never have because they're so subjective about what they can mean uh because a lot of people see that if you for instance if you score 95 and then the next year you score 93 you just you've lost but if you scored a 45 and the next year you scored 50 hey it in in the
064eyes of tvas it looks like you're doing better than the people are scoring 95 and that makes no sense to me i'm talking about the achievement score just wanted to clear that up no no and that's and and we're on the same page on the tivos and the achievement i think is is where we really have to to dig in any other questions okay thank y'all with that we'll move on to our board member disclaimer statement we'll start with mr thurman and work our way down okay i declare that i have a relative who works for the hamilton county school system at the board's vote on the budget or policies may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the
065school system i declare that i have a relative who works for the school system and that the board's vote on budget policies etc may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the school system i declare that i have a relative who works for the school system and that the board's vote on budget policies etc may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the school system i declare that i have relatives who work for the school system and the board's vote on all matters may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the
066best interest of the school system i declare i have a spouse who works for the school system at the board's vote on budget policies etc may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i'll cast my vote in the best interest of the school system i declare that i have a relative who works for the school system and that the boards vote on budget policies etc may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the school system i declare that i have an in-law who works for the school system and that the board's vote may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the
067best interest of the school system okay that will move us down to the approval of the consent agenda any items that need to be pulled yes i just don't want to pull d b two just to explain what's going on here uh justin it's the approval of the acceptance and allocation of additional funding from hamilton county government for sso positions just want people to understand what this is any other that's not the that's the ssl right not the arp funds yeah this is the sso yes okay any other okay roll call please mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes dr wingate yes mr thurman yes uh justin if you don't mind would you please explain what is going on here with this allocation of funding for the
068sso position yes ma'am so we we've been working really closely with uh hamilton county sheriff's office to ensure that you know we've got coverage across the county with um security whether it's one of our ssos or their sros currently they're short number of officers and so uh sheriff elect garrett had recommended uh this motion that um you know in spite of in spite of their efforts they're still having a hard time recruiting and so he recommended um sending funds from their budget to our budget for us to hire additional ssos so that we could have some coverage and some full coverage and overlap across schools so it's a year to year thing uh this is not saying that moving forward every year it's gonna come um but for this uh fiscal year it's just over
069590 thousand dollars because they had been allocated that money for it they've been allocated for sros and if you you'll recall a number of years ago we were doing the opposite we were sending money from our budget to them to hire additional sros so that's where his idea came from and the reason he made the recommendation i feel like it's a good thing for everyone across both organizations and we'll continue to work very closely with sheriff's office on this thank you mr prez and i think uh i heard or i've heard that even some officers um uh are looking at roles as ssos uh just because of the connection and the value they see in that so i just to me it's important to highlight this isn't a better or worse it's it's i mean
070an opportunity that many very well-regarded professionals uh see as a great opportunity for them moving forward so um yeah so i think if everyone's struggling with hiring we're struggling with hiring um you know and other uh offices are struggling with hiring but it's good to know that here's a role that that some people really value and highlight so i'm gonna say one thing real quick um glad my my uh last meeting i think i talked to dr dr corbin before he walked in and with this we will have an sso or an ssr sro sorry in every school in hamilton county um i think my first year on the board dr rocks i think we were like 25 30. he was funded 28. 20 yeah we had 28 positions totally funded but it was it
071was way under that so in four years we went from probably 20 sros in our school system to having one in every single school um and that's a testament to dr corbin who i don't think he he uh never lets me forget what i got him into when we started thinking about this sso program um so just kudos to to dr robertson dr sharp uh sheriff elect uh garrett and that to solving this problem that that's really important okay sorry ms thurman it's okay i just want to if everybody's finished he's going to move to approve second roll call please mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes dr wingate yes okay that will bring us down to uh administrative business matters um we have a 10-year recommendation
072uh on the first one and then 10-year reinstatement on the second one do i have a motion on the first one so moved second roll call please mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mrs sermon yes mr walker yes doctor yes chairman mcclendon yes uh motion on the 10-year reinstatement so moved second roll call please mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes yes yes uh that brings us down the board matters the ret uh the request for the new position uh we talked about this on monday um this is from additional funds in our perkins grant that's correct so it is grant funded and we i believe uh miss bagmey dr bagby uh said we got about 150 000 more from that grant program and
073that is what is doing uh funding this position do i have a motion to approve second roll call please mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes dr wingate yes that brings us down to the approval request for the revised schedule of sessions uh this we also talked about on thursday night going away from monday uh agenda meetings and putting it all on the same day on thursday do i have a motion to approve so moved second roll call please mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes yes can we explain to the people that don't understand what we just did we've always had agenda sessions on monday and we're just going to combine it and start at what time did
074we ever decide what time was 4 30 4 30 4 30. okay 4 30 4 30. okay we'll start it uh meetings will start at 4 30 we'll do the agenda session and then go right into the regular meetings and start six and then do what the regular meetings will start at six do you think we need that long we have to have a schedule yeah we have to have an exact time yeah you got to skip we have to have an exact time we can't say you have to have a not before time so the public who maybe doesn't want to come to the work session can we not do 5 30 6 is late i feel like if we're late at 5 30. i agree with you i think we could start it
075at five years if we do it at 5 30 you can say 5 30 or whichever is later right i mean because worst case scenario is you have a knot to start before 5 30. you get no break so you just need to start at four right and then go or because you get no break you know you'll go straight on your team i think you want a public comment as well okay i mean if you allow public comment and the work session in 90 minutes okay so so that's going to be in between the two meetings what we spoke about was putting moving two big time items the public comment and presentations to the first part yeah is it going to be at the beginning of that meeting or at the end of that
076meeting we were going to do both at the beginning that way we've heard okay and had a presentation prior to discussion of the agenda and then prior to voting i i think the timing's probably right wait for 5 30 or six for six because if you do i mean if you think about it if you have three to five public comments that's half an hour there do the presentation it's 15 minutes discussion of agenda items i mean again can we just make it not to start before 5 30 and that way if we're running if we don't have much from 4 30 to 5 30 we just just roll right into our meeting we don't she can't do that though yeah she can't do that as a public no public notice public meeting notice she
077has to have a time you have to have a a public notice of when it's going to be and so the question is does the board want that notice to be five or six i'm sorry 5 30 or 6. you you do need to have a reasonable time so that people aren't aren't surprised or inconvenienced right the the question is what difference does 30 minutes make well if the intent is to move if the intent is to move to do the work session and then to do your presentations and then to do your public comments 90 minutes seems like a reasonable amount of time it's it's quarter til seven right now and we have a very light agenda okay so then at six i mean if we're just doing voting i mean we might only
078be here until 6 15 or 6 30 just four or nine so it just depends so question i mean in theory you've you've already what has been happening if you go back and watch what happens on monday we have conversation then on thursday we have the exact same conversation in theory we have all those conversations from 4 30 until six and then when we get to this part we have the pledge your business meeting and then it's like you know yeah if we have record recognitions we'd have recognitions but the the presentation which presentations can go along uh we're working on that yeah please work presentations you did a great job so i like to live on the edge i still feel like 5 30 could work but i'm willing to give this a try
079this is the one who gets stuck in traffic that's why i was suggesting start at four o'clock that way out here by 4 30. that is when you have your people coming to do your meditation and pledge you need to i won't be here you all sit up here for 10 minutes then our principals and if we have students and stuff like that coming in so that was the thought process on giving an an exact time um and we all know we're not sorry about people that drive from sale creek if they're here they won't get home till so late but that's okay so what time do we say are we starting at four or four thirty four thirty and i mean the other thought process is at six you literally go from roll call
080approval of agenda your flag or your your flag meditation exemplars straight into the um the consent agenda and then you're voting and then you're you don't have delegations or anything so you're you're you should be good to be clear for the public we would have delegations prior to that so it's not that we're asking the public not to participate we're just saying we would prefer that the participation be prior so clarity once again 4 30 agenda session special presentations public comment business meeting at six right so the public understands if you want to appear before the board you're coming to the 4 30 meeting i want to go on record for saying that so they understand that so they don't show up at six and be like we couldn't talk come at 4 30. okay
081okay that will bring us down to uh delegations i'll hand it over to vice chair robinson great um i actually don't have a list just oh there's no auditions that's great all right um we have uh our first delegate angela uh laura vavaloro all right i'm gonna read the statement just real quick thank you for your interest in addressing the hamilton county board of education during your presentation please address the board as a whole not individual board members or administrators also please do not present complaints or concerns you have about an individual employee of the school system if you wish to voice those complaints and concerns you should contact the central office and ask for a meeting with the superintendent since the superintendent is responsible for individual employees please limit your remarks to five minutes
082i'll tell you we'll have one minute left and we will use that timer right there so you can also see it all right and you may begin hi uh thank you for letting me address the board angela favilloro district 5. i know all of you have seen my face a few times going off of what you just said i do i would like to add a comment about the the sessions change i guess in the spirit of some of the things with public comment a service to our working families and any families that are responsible for transportation for any of the students in hamilton county if delegates could be closer to the end of that session maybe instead of at the beginning i think that would be in the spirit of being able to have
083that word in there and like mr walker said we want all that engagement even if we want it to be reasonably timed and productive moving into some of the comments that i have for tonight i think most of it is pertaining to our policy that we approved last month for the review of materials and how that's been implemented in the schools there's been a lot of buzz right now about inconsistencies from different learning communities different schools different principles per se i would say all level of staff and students even as a member of that review committee that was something all the way back in the beginning of this year i was asking about concerns of execution labor constraints fiscal restraints and the window in which we were asking teachers to do this we already have
084a pretty anemic staff we're at the beginning of the year and we already have a lot of meetings collaborations we have teachers begging for duty-free lunchtime and duty-free planning time and many of our teachers adding another like menial task something that just takes a lot of time and not all schools have the same resources not all of them have the same people resources so we have some schools that have fantastic ptas right and they could just put that call out the batman call and they're there and they're helping teachers do all this stuff and some schools are really engagement core and so then that all falls on teachers and educators and then it's rippling through our students we have students who are not allowed to take out any optional reading right now i'm not sure
085if everybody's aware of that throughout this whole process with the state language with our policy language nothing is to be removed unless it has been reviewed given the tight retention um stricter retention policies and state law that's been put there on literacy if we're gonna um [Music] i guess hold our students to a higher standard of passing third grade on their literacy it's kind of outrageous to me to think that we didn't take the time and the thought to roll this out in a very effective manner so that we're not withholding optional reading materials from our kids and this is the good kind of reading right the kind where they're self-motivated they could be drawing on a paper or something else in their downtime but they go pick up something and read like that's the
086passionate kind of reading that we're trying that's the end goal right is to do it for fun do it for love and by withholding that in some places that's been it's it will definitely be detrimental um we know the laws are in place there's no question that we we want this we want to be able to be transparent but um i also have questions about the kind of arbitrary deadline um our state language the policy the pc 74 the public chapter do not have an actual time frame on it so my question is if there is one how clear is that because that's not been made clear through this whole process to a parent being heavily engaged in all of this um and educators also in the same regard um i just feel like for
087and i don't want to be inflammatory with this but like for the hcs foundation there are videos there are emails there are links to be involved it's your educators you know just asking for payroll deduction very well thought out strategic thing but you have something that we know is very in the public eye people have a lot of fears a lot of questions there's a lot of things going on around this and it was not executed in a very fluid thoughtful manner and i hope that we can get something consistent that tells teachers you don't have to put this on the list and the state's not sending this off for approval because that's not it you're looking at your collection making sure it meets the criteria for selection putting that list down and turning it
088in and then once the list is public of course from there if there are reviews and there are things that go on from there according to the law then that's what happens but there's been a lot of fear that's causing people to make poor procedural decisions thank you um before we move on to the next speaker um i do want to say that after these speakers i actually would like to talk about this topic because there's a lot of public commentary happening right now about this and truthfully as a board member i didn't know anything about i mean like i knew that the state put a policy or a law out but like i didn't know anything about next steps and so i think that it would be helpful for us to have an understanding
089and a dialogue of what's going on so i just want to put that out there hello heather um hold on just one second sorry i walked in super late i was at open house um where i gave away about a thousand books from my own personal collection and that's what i want to talk to you about tonight hold on one second let's wait one second i'll do it over here i can't i don't know what i've done okay last friday we got the email that hey you have to after hours on the weekend basically we were told we had to scan our libraries as a result of the new policy and that it would need to be done rather quickly i thought about my library there are two six foot tall shelves eight shelves packed
090full of library books i counted one row of shelves i estimated based on that one row because i wasn't counting every single one 2 400 books i have been teaching for 26 years these are all bought by me nothing has been bought by the district so i thought of them and i'm like my goodness what am i going to do with these i certainly don't have time to scan 2400 books so i gave them away i thought about packing them up i thought about taking them to mckay's and i said no these were bought i bought these for the children and so that's where they went in the hands of the children tonight at open house i loved seeing their faces the parents were overjoyed getting all of these books i'm like hey it's mckay's
091but it's free and they were so happy but many of my fellow teachers have questions they are the classroom teachers they do read alouds and so they've asked me to speak on their behalf they said what happens to the books once we've inventoried them will we receive a stipend for the many hours that it takes to scan them in remember last month i asked for that gift of time my goodness this is not what i'm talking about how many of you have been in the schools to help out the teachers to volunteer your time even with those questions unanswered i dutifully downloaded the book source and started pulling the books from my library that relate to the curriculum i pulled out eric carl dr seuss i remember fondly of my students singing to pete the
092cat i remember how the autistic child in my classroom learned the school rules with david goes school by david shannon and how even now as a fifth grader when she has those little fits about transitioning i say david don't be tardy and she giggles and moves on to class i think about how important all of our books are for teaching and not just the ones in the ela curriculum i also wonder what's a challenged book in elementary look like we've heard a lot about some of the high school books and so i brought some of my own so we talk about language well f for fart we talk about poop and all sorts of different ways to describe flatulence but it's a great book and my boys love it and they get excited about reading
093ask a struggling reader who's in third fourth and fifth grade they don't want to read the baby books they want to read about farts is this an appropriate language in elementary i don't know and then we get onto the topic of pornography again i talked about my sweet little child with no david well here's david running naked down the street is this pornography i don't know so i asked my librarian hey help me out find another book that's been checked out as many times as this 76 times since it's an installment 73 times since its installment pretty similar they're both in our elementary school they both have have seen things in them what's appropriate for elementary one both neither we'd like some clarification so like i said i gave away all my books because i
094just don't have time i keep the books that i've got and this is what i do with them i make them accessible for my students i download the youtube video so they can watch it my students can grab a chapter book and read it or have it read to them but honestly the only books that will be in my classroom as of tomorrow are curriculum books i simply don't know what direction to take next there's been given no clarification for us in elementary what's up scene language what's pornography what's acceptable where's a list of not this but yes this where's the time to scan 24 books i'm not doing it thank you [Music] thank you rebecca casey hi my name is rebecca casey i'm a mom i have two kids that go to uttawa elementary
095school i live in district 9. um before i get started here i'm going to humbly request that all members of the board stay seated for the duration of my comments this past summer a sitting school board member quietly organized a political forum on behalf of moms for liberty that's the same people that last year we were talking about them because they had a big banner on their website that said our goal is to get as many kids out of public school as possible just to jog your memory when i and other parents in the community heard about this we were concerned concerned excuse me and we wrote a an email which didn't receive any response except for i am deleting your email and you are not worthy of my time those are direct quotes from
096the email and i am happy to provide a copy of it if it's requested at the following school board meeting when a concerned parent and invested stakeholder in our community spoke up about this she was met with harassment by another school board member in the form of a slanderous and frankly poorly written op-ed this individual suffered because she dared to speak up this individual continues to suffer because she dared to speak up the board's response silence i see you now looking down you can't even make eye contact with me because you know you feel called out by this okay it's the most critical time probably in the history of public schools you have teachers begging you for resources teachers that are staying after school and asking for volunteers on facebook on reddit on all these
097places because they can't scan in thousands of books and you choose silence just to be honest with you i have very little faith in a group of people who would choose to coddle the feelings of a disgruntled co-worker who feels personally attacked by the assertion that schools are not playgrounds for domestic terrorists and yes i did say domestic terrorists it is a very good definition it's an appropriate name for a group of people who believe in overthrowing the government because a presidential election didn't go the way they wanted it to it's also a great term to describe a group of people who have committed themselves to the dismantling of public schools by way of wasting resources bullying teachers and whipping their minions into a frenzy over non-issues i am asking the board to re-examine these
098events the political forums the emails the childish behavior of a few select board members and lastly given the facts i am asking the board to cut all ties with moms for liberty i don't feel like that is a big thing to ask but i'm asking it thank you mr wingate yeah thank you i i just have one comment i know we've taken a look at some of our delegation policies and how we're going to do things i do also think we need to take a look at um what you write down you're going to speak about you need to speak about and if that's not what you're going to speak about then we need to figure out a way to um halt that speech until that individual wants to declare what it is they want
099to speak about and then speak to that topic that's my suggestion going forward thank you thank you um before we move on we'll miss robertson wants to talk about that i'll let dr uh robertson kind of explain where we're at yeah and and scott uh help me on this i mean we we need to be transparent of of the the conversation about logging classroom library books and posting those online that's not a school board decision nor is it a administration decision there was a new law that went into effect that says big in the beginning of the 22-23 school year the august 31st deadline uh is what we thought that we could reasonably defend as the beginning of the 22-23 school year so the reconsideration policy that you guys passed was part of a requirement
100of that law but the law explicitly says section one library collection means materials blah blah blah goes through it and then it it says you know it has to be posted by the 20 you know 22 23 school year um to say that we have been silent on this i think it's not fair to say that you guys have been silent on this um it's not fair we've had probably more heated conversations about this topic than anything that that we've talked about in the last six months scott and i have had some conversations about our interpretation of what this law means ultimately though it is a state law right that's absolutely correct the uh the general assembly passed this in in april as this was working its way through the general assembly this board's uh
101committee was was chewing on this very same issue and so this is something that's been on our radar screen that the inconvenience and i think we can all recognize that timing is inconvenient um is that the general assembly put a deadline in there for you know the beginning of the school year and their rationale i i suspect is that they passed it in april and so there was time to implement this what i think the general assembly didn't really think about with all respect to them on this is during the summer teachers don't work during the summer we have to we the board had to get a policy in place that was substantially different from our prior policy and so while it probably seemed reasonable to to give us months lead time we were busy
102during that lead time developing a policy that we thought we could implement and so i think it was very reasonable for dr robertson and his team to say you know we know we have to get this implemented by by early august but in good faith august 31 is probably the best we're going to be able to do i think if we get a complaint about we still have certain books in the school before august 31 or that we're not fully implemented i think we can say in good faith we're doing the best we can we've got we're pursuing good faith compliance with the law that the general assembly of the state of tennessee adopted i do want to speak to a comment that was made from from the podium there's nothing in this law that
103requires teachers to go through their their their classroom libraries and make a call on their own you have to do a list and and then from that list if there is a complaint there is a process that is triggered but no one has to go through and ask the question well is this right is this wrong now certainly if it's your classroom library and you look at something and you think you know what i'm not sure that this is an appropriate book for my classroom given whatever a teacher has that latitude so i'm certainly not saying the teacher can't do a cull maybe maybe there's limited space and and it's appropriate to put other material in there but there's nothing either in the law or the policy that puts that on us on the teachers
104right now right now it's a matter of taking inventory seeing what you got and posting it to the website and can i add that another couple questions but um to to the deadline it technically the law states it's what's available to kids what we don't want to have happen is books being boxed up and not putting out there now uh you know i've heard some strategies by teachers that i think are really good strategies one is if you know you know the this first quarter here the books you're going to need scan those in and then you can do it throughout the year the list just has to be of books that are available at the moment and so that's my way around speaking to lawyers right and so yeah there's there's strategies like that
105that can be done um you know we do have volunteers but again what uh what what i would say we believe as an administration is this law should not prohibit access to books and and what is what i'm afraid is happening and and you know not to speak to anybody specifically but that we have situations where books are going in boxes and going in the the closet for good and that's not what we need to happen if it takes us longer and we've got books taken off the shelves for a minute and as we can scan them in we're making them available that's reasonable i also think that the last point that scott made is important the part of the reconsideration is not saying like a teacher has to make that decision make the book
106available and then if someone requests for it to be reconsidered that's where that part of the policy kicks in um i think we're all nine of us sir seven of us here know kind of how the state hands things down kind of half baked um in unfunded mandates um they like to do that a lot to us and i think that's kind of where we're at with this i know a lot of teachers are doing that they're boxing them up because i was i heard today that someone way higher up than anyone in the sport said well why didn't they start earlier and my response was they don't work during the summer and if they are who's going to pay them um and so i mean i emails about it you know best thing i
107can describe is we're between a rock and a hard place on this and um you know i don't know if it's something this board can do moving forward where you know teachers if they want to go on a saturday or whatever they stay after they're compensated for it because i mean at the end of the day i know of language teachers that are spending they spent the last three saturdays doing their their books and you know they want all their books to be available and they're scanning all of them and some are just kind of doing what dr robertson said well the first nine weeks this is what we're doing and then we're going you know i'll scan those and then the next nine weeks we're doing this um so i wanted to make it
108clear from a district is we're doing what we're told from the state happy to comply wish their thought processes weren't as half-baked because if we did something like that to them we would probably be reprimanded if we sent them something half-baked like they have us so i just i want our teachers to know that and i hope dr robertson and your team will look at how how can we make it easier for our teachers um one through time and and one through compensation if that's something that that we can do but uh miss jones well i just had a question because i i'm late to this party literally um but i have a lot going on in my life so i think it's fair that i'm late to this party but i'm late to this
109party i did see somebody talking about it on facebook and i actually i think i asked the question like well how many teachers needed or whatever and then once again because the way my life has been recently i'm not as active on social media so i don't know that question but now i do i mean i didn't know the answer but now i do know the answer all of them need it um but i think my bigger question now is what was the information given to the teachers because it sounds like um i don't know to me sounds like um [Music] some percep i don't know if it's a perception issue if it's an interpretation issue if it's a non-clarity issue i mean i'm not sure because some people are have come up with a
110process like what you're saying well we're just going to do it nine week by nine week and others are like well you know and and i get they don't have the time um they just box them all up so i guess i'm just kind of wondering what is that what was handed to them for direction second to that is i i get the state and all of their glory always giving us half-baked things or homegrown things so i get they did all of this and i know what we're what we're doing with an august 31st date but is there a grace period with that like is there a grace period with this guy like is there some type of reprimand if it's not done by the beginning of the 20 because what is the 2022
111school yeah i mean some kids just went to school for the first time in the state of tennessee today are you talking about public kids i mean you know me i like i mean is it a way to what does that mean there's not a penalty provision in the statute right now but we're bound by the law so we can't say well what are they going to do to us and we're bound by the law um and i think the the the bigger concern obviously is if there's some book in someone's library that a that a parent funds legitimately offensive and that goes through the process and you know someone is there in front of the podium and complains to the board you know there's this book here and my kid brought it home this
112board's legitimately going to ask the administration why did how did this slip through the cracks so there's not a penalty so there's not a beyond this date you know we're going to we're going to do this to you the law is kind of self-enforcing because there's a public issue here right um now some of this is going to change come december 1 because we know that the textbook commission is going to hand down some rules about the implementation of this note that by the way the general assembly wants us to comply by the start of the school year but the textbook commission has until december 1st to write the rules for how this is going to be implemented that to me is a little ironic but anyway um so so to answer your question ms
113jones what it boils down to is what dr robertson said about good faith compliance about giving a a date i think that's a that's that's honoring the spirit of the law and that's what we need to need to shoot for i'll also mention something uh dr robertson didn't mention but there so there was some dispute about how to interpret the statute and whether it applied the classroom materials um toss the tis organization school superintendents had taken the position that it doesn't the department of education had taken the position that it does and even within the tennessee council school board attorneys there were various interpretations christy ballard the general counsel for the state department of education issued an opinion on the 11th of august so we're looking out you know a week ago saying definitively it
114does apply to teacher classrooms so understand there was an awful lot of rational let's wait and see what the state school board department of education attorney is going to do with this before we start potentially upending a lot of the teachers so because you can only imagine if if we had started this process and had really said you've got to do this right now and then the state said no you don't can you i mean you can imagine the human cry so there was there was a certain amount of time spent trying to develop the process and figuring it out but last week the state said yeah this is this is going to be our position so so please understand the administration has been has been kind of building an airplane in the air so
115okay so now that that's answered part two because they are doing this like how are we compensating them for i mean are we compensating them or because their salary they i mean like i mean i get it i mean you talked for a long time you probably got a lot of books to be collected now i probably would take the nine week approach but i'm i'm one person yeah we haven't had discussions about that um and that's something that that we can um that's not we're not administration's not opposed that would take action on the board for us to you know provide that so i mean that's something we certainly can look at mr robinson um yeah i did want to just check in what month did we pass that policy was it in june
116or july it was july okay that make i was not here that makes a little bit more sense okay cool um do we have an idea of how many classrooms still need to catalog their books like do we have an idea of how many teachers out there actually need need help [Music] it's a lot to me yeah well i'm aware that that's the answer yeah but and personally as an individual i'm thinking through how i can help and so that's why i ask so like is the district at least like are we talking to principals to say how many of your teachers have had time to do this or have been able to you know achieve yeah and again i mean to to comment made earlier a lot of schools are having volunteers come in
117yeah i mean you saw a news story that spoke to a volunteer that was in uh classroom yeah you know logging in books so you know we talk about community engagement this is a good way for the community to engage with their child's teacher to come in and help through this process um i would say you know if you're asking individually how can you i would say the same thing to you your your child's school yep english teacher that has a large library yeah you've got a minute go help yeah i know i totally agree but i mean you know so you know i just want to be really clear to like the speakers i mean like again like we've done what we've had to do as a board when it comes to this policy
118we have no control over it it's a state we made that really clear but i think that this board can also encourage the community to get involved in this issue and go help um do support the idea of paying creating some form of a stipend or something for this work um i don't know unfortunately but you're welcome to talk to us after we're about to adjourn so we'll be here mr pres um i mean i think i think we can all see the concerns of this regarding the volunteers call to the public obviously please figure out how to get involved my concern with that is some schools as was mentioned have incredible engagement uh and will have no lack of volunteers in some schools due to whatever reasons it may be have less engagement and
119therefore the teachers won't have the capacity interestingly oftentimes those are the same schools that require a lot of extra work from our teachers um and uh therefore they're gonna find themselves um you know uh doing things as we heard tonight you know well i'm just giving it away uh or i'm boxing them up or as i know has happened i'm covering them with a big black veil which to me is deeply concerning when i think of kindergartners going into a classroom and the books are prohibited and what we're trying to do is educate them about the value and love and passion of reading right and uh and anybody who's ever had a kindergartner knows that uh visually that is already impactful that's something scary and untouchable and so all that to say this this none
120of this in my opinion in the way that it's been executed uh is is gonna favor an increase of uh much of what we're doing it's one of those things that we were going in one direction uh we got hit by covet we were going in one direction we got hit by a tornado we're going in one direction uh and we are hit and i'm i'm going to be generous here with half-baked laws that don't really understand that it is few books especially kindergarten through fifth grade that some people find uh questionable and offensive and 24 20 398 others uh that people uh would have no problem with um and yet we're finding ways to have to figure that out so so my concern is again the disparity of this uh where in some cases
121boy i'm sure those parents activated and are just surrounding those teachers and being supportive and in other cases because of the realities in the life of many of those parents or many of those students we talked about homeless students we talked about many other things recently those parents have no engagement with the school and the ones who suffer are the students in the midst of that so um we press on and hopefully uh we'll see a change in the next couple years despite of some of these things so thank you i mean i will say that i think that there are a lot of parents behind this movement right like to see books cataloged and so there's transparency where where are the parents like where like where where is everyone that wanted this i'm just
122putting that out there because as a parent who felt like the way that we were doing doing it was fine truthfully personally i'm still going to go help the schools in my district catalog so i just want to really encourage the parents that were really vocal like in making this happen like come on like let's all go together and catalog books together that feels like actually good activity to me nothing else you have information only the legal services report there uh no events and announcements yeah they're i'm sorry but they're in the agenda i want people to continue to talk to some of their office personnel get some information about the salaries and things so we can take that to justin yeah schools and central office are closed on september 5th for labor day um
123half day for students on uh september 7th board uh board the board work session and board meeting will be on september 15th caught that one uh and with that for the final time we'll adjourn any new incoming board members don't leave