001[Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] hey [Music] oh we will call uh our school board meeting to a session uh can i have a roll call please chairman mcclendon here last year robinson here mrs hill mrs jones yes mr perez yes mr smith here mrs sermon here mr walker here mr wingay okay we have the uh following uh amendments to the agenda under the consent agenda uh to re uh move um item number eight signal mountain middle high school uh 90 members of the high school band will travel to london england uh for the new year's day parade that's removing that field trip and then under board matters removing the request approval of a one-time bonus uh after talking with dr robertson
002um this week and on our the board discussion on monday we're gonna continue to look at that and how we navigate these times and try to address that in the budget process coming up do i have a motion to approve the agenda so move second mrs mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs sermon yes mr walker yes chairman clinton yes okay with that uh we will move to our pledge to the flag and meditation uh miss jane phillips from the great east brainerd elementary if he would please stand 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 thank you you may be seated hello dr robertson school
003board members and to those of you who are in attendance i'm jane phillips one of the assistant principals at east brainerd elementary school i've chosen a poem to read to you tonight one with few words but delivers a very strong message it is entitled rise and was written by sigar yahi i will rise after every fall i will rise and stand tall i will rise over the wall i will rise above them all like the sun which never dies those sets every night every day it does rise like the ocean whose tides many times they are down but invariably they rise like the trees from seeds they arise and heights great they rise and rise after falling once twice and thrice again and again i will rise and rise i will rise after every fall
004after every fall i will rise it is inevitable that all of us will face adversities and struggles both personally and professionally as you are well aware east brainerd elementary has had struggles that that were never anticipated when we were faced with these struggles together with the assistance of the hamilton county department of education the community and our school family we did indeed rise we rose above the damage caused by the tornado that ripped through our school in addition like all of us we push forward through the pandemic with a focus on what matters most our students our community and how to continue with the highest level of instruction so as to meet the needs of the whole child adversities and struggles they often time present opportunities we might otherwise miss it is through these difficult
005times that we can learn the most important lessons in life and build resilience most of you in this room are familiar with this quote from michael jordan he said i've missed 9 000 shots in my career i've lost almost 300 games on 26 occasions i have been entrusted to take the game winning shot and i missed i have failed over and over again in my life and that is why i succeed the true secret to success is the ability to embrace adversity as a chance to create alternative paths to dream bigger and to take even larger leaps tonight my wish is to encourage each of us as educators to pattern our responsibilities after the message within this poem i will rise after every fall i will rise and stand tall i will rise after every
006fall after every fall i will rise thank you very much thank you miss phillips we'll go down to our exemplars of excellence the 2022 teachers of the year with dr parker and blake freeman good evening chairman mcclendon dr robertson and members of the board the tennessee teacher of the year program sponsored annually by the tennessee department of education recognizes and honors outstanding teachers in tennessee the program promotes an appreciation for excellence in teaching in grade bands pre-k through four five through eight and nine through twelve it is my distinct pleasure tonight to announce the teachers of the year for the 2022 school year for hamilton county in the following categories and i've asked that they would come up as i call their name and then their principal to say a word about our teachers of
007the year and i would also like to just take this moment to say thank you to all of our teachers as they have served this year we couldn't do what we do without them and i'm so grateful that they show up for our kids and do amazing work and amazing things every day so it's an honor tonight and also if when we call your name you have family with you we would love to recognize family as well so starting out i'm gonna go backwards i would like to begin by recognizing at our high school level miss kristen burris who serves students at the stem school of chattanooga and her principal mr tony donan to come forward now [Applause] [Music] all right so uh pretty easy to talk about amazing people right and kristen burris is
008extraordinary um if you've ever been around kristin you know immediately she is the right person to be around kids but she doesn't just impact the kids she has she literally impacts every kid at my school she'll work with every kid across what she does she is open also which was a dream the global center for digital innovation a co-collaborative space between chattanooga state and the stem school that's not just open to our kids but every kid in the county she works across the county with teachers she's been working with kids you name a school she probably had somebody she's impacted and it doesn't stop there she will continue to do that she is truly extraordinary and we're just lucky to have her in our system so amazing [Applause] now i would like to invite our
009representative miss brittany white for our middle school level and her principal miss lindsey hagan she teaches at red bank elementary so come forward if you will [Applause] thank you good evening it is my absolute pleasure to introduce brittany white as red bank elementary and hamilton county schools middle school teacher of the year naturally receiving this honor miss white is a strong teacher but what really sets her apart is her determination to be a champion for all students each and every day she couples intentional planning with best practices and strong relationships to create layers and layers of support so that each student experiences a pathway to success her colleagues and parents agree her leadership and collaboration has a significant impact on our school culture earning her respect and trust as a mentor thinking partner and friend
010i am proud to call miss white red bank elementaries and hamilton county schools teacher of the year for middle school grades because she truly embodies our mission to help all students thrive and experience a future without limits miss brittany white [Applause] and finally representing our elementary is james cunningham teacher at clifton hills elementary and his principal lindsay hagin will be joining him come on down mr cunningham [Applause] i'm proud to introduce james cunningham this makes the second year in a row that clifton hills has had teacher of the year for elementary so we're on a roll uh james i was privileged enough to hire him he's a project inspire graduate um and so uh we are just blessed to have him at clifton hills he is energetic enthusiastic and [Music] kids don't even know that
011they're learning when they're in his class because he makes learning so much fun he's just helped the culture and climate of our school as far as our staff and our students and it's just a joy to be his principal and to be around him so congratulations to james and thank you all if i may we would like to take a picture so brittany and lindsay and james and i'm sorry kristen and tony if you guys will come back we'd like to get your picture and just to let you know we're going to still continue the celebration for you next week at a luncheon so we're so thankful thankful for your service um [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you all for what y'all do and congratulations on being uh teachers of the year uh with that will
012go into our presentation for the night uh effective and efficient operations update with dr stewart and mary ellen i just realized i don't the clicker there it is thank you all right we're excited to to share with you tonight the budget priorities we're just going to provide a high level summary of the priorities from 2122 that have been accomplished and then we'll bring you some information about some of the feedback that we heard during our our budget sessions so you know that everything that we do always aligns with future ready 2023 and so we'll be looking at our goals and our accomplishments against each of these priorities so first starting out with the 22 budget priorities so these were the things that were brought to us a year ago that we just want to give
013a little bit of a report on uh in terms of things that we've accomplished so uh just to highlight a few of them so focusing on whole child supports i think we were all really aware of the needs that our kids would have coming back into this school year and we have done a lot to wrap around them with counselors and social workers and truancy specialists but also professional learning in our in our schools with our our teachers and our leaders to ensure that we're able to to meet those needs you guys are aware that we expanded summer learning from the summer of 20 to the summer of 21 and increased our participation with our students to over 4 000 kids there you also know that we had a increase in pay that we were
014able to offer a one percent raise last year as well as a step and that uh initial bonus that we had plus uh we continue to hear rave reviews from our expanded benefits and our one-to-one partnership so that has been tremendous um as you kind of go down that list we talk often here about the need for us to continue to invest in facilities we did make investments last school year we're still committed to that this school year as we continue to look for new and innovative ways to ensure that our facilities are meeting the needs of all of our kids and then focusing on on school safety we know that that's not just physical safety but but mental and emotional well-being as well and we've we've made a priority to do that work this
015year in these community meetings we've had five virtual meetings with over 230 participants these are parents community members students we enjoyed that student feedback they will tell you exactly what it is that they need in their buildings and they've been very verbal and so that's been fantastic i think it's important for us to note that while we had five virtual input sessions that were specific we're listening all the time to the priorities of our community and noting the things that they're bringing to our attention so these next few slides are going to detail against each priority some of the things that we heard and i'll just highlight a few of them that first bullet around academic press and personalization we really heard from our community that they want us to stay focused on instructional excellence
016but they want us to pair that with that culture of care they they are clear that we need to make sure that kids whole whole child needs are being met and that they're experiencing that sense of belonging so ask us to continue to focus in that space there was a commitment and a articulation of the need to really focus on k-12 literacy and continue to double down in that space we all know we experienced some some growth in our 3-5 literacy but making sure that continues across the continuum has been important you've heard uh certainly from dr robertson but just want to reiterate that it really is in response to the community wanting to see extended supports around our exceptional education students and our ell students and you've seen us take quick action on that
017with that opportunities and access space going down thinking about classroom supports teachers and students were really specific about the things that they need in the classroom and making sure that we are continuing to provide those resources whether they be just standard resources or human resources making sure that those things are staying in our classrooms and then also the differentiated training for students student behavior support again knowing that this year as we brought students back to school full-time there was a lot of needs in our building and making sure that our teachers were prepared going on to future ready uh looking here one of the priorities was around that middle school transition programs i think you've heard us talk here and accelerating student achievement we've certainly brought to you that real focus that we intend to
018have on middle schools and we were pleased to hear from our community that that is a priority that they have as well making sure that our kids rising into our middle schools are having a good transition and a smooth transition that we're really connecting to elementary and middle together so the kids are prepared to be received going further down there and continuing on the middle school space early exposure to career pathways there was a real um discussion about kids being exposed to career exploration earlier and not only in those middle schools but also seeing some of those pathways that are going on in the high schools expanding the student success plans we are excited um about how we've launched student success planning we really see it as a strategic approach to meeting the needs of
019our kids and we'll continue to expand on that work increasing act support being a high school principal myself often we think about act as a as a high school situation but we really know it's it's a k-12 um initiative and so continuing to make sure that we're providing the uh supports at the elementary and middle schools to ensure that when we get into those high school grades we're ready for the act and the arts the kids and the parents really really communicated the desire to continue to see all of our kids and all of our schools have opportunities to access high level arts programs moving on to great teachers great leaders continuing to to expand those teacher supports i think this board has been very diligent in communicating how important teacher morale and recognition is
020to you and and certainly to us and that was definitely articulated in our time together also um this this conversation around teacher retention you know it's going to be an ongoing conversation and one of the things that was articulated from the teachers in particular were the pathways to teacher leadership that have been promoted from hr and are being expanded by hr as a priority and great teachers great leaders additional planning time came up i think that's probably something board members have gotten phone calls on themselves we know the gift of time is invaluable and so that was certainly articulated and we're looking for different ways to provide for that you know the priority on diversity around teachers and leaders and that came up through the time and then also uh engaging the principles in unique
021ways the principal boyce has been really important to us i think as a district and dr robertson has really articulated this commitment we know the listening sessions that he had right there before christmas break um he started with the principles to let them know how important their voice was and that came out in these listening sessions as well um that they wanna they wanna have more access to the senior leadership team and more influence there and so we're thinking through a committee structure there where the principal voice will will be elevated more frequently and more more intentionally there as we think about exchange engaged communities just a couple of highlights here the collaboration with chattanooga 2.0 we know that they've experienced some leadership changes and we're excited about that work and how it's going to
022move forward i'll point to kindergarten readiness i think all over the city we're hearing a commitment from the city council to the mayor's offices uh that that we really want to make sure our kids are showing up in school ready and so some partnership there and then continue focus on our parent advisories and our community forward work there was lots of energy around that that level of engagement there and then finally effective and efficient operations what these uh these groups shared with us was continued focus on the strategic strategic utilization of our finances we talk often about breeding resources our community is keenly aware of the esser dollars and sort of how they've been spent they've been big in influencing those decisions and want to continue to see us utilize those strategically and also just
023just a call for a budget efficiency and transparency i know mary ellen you'll hear from her tonight but has continued to really want to make the budget accessible uh to all of us and that we would see that there would be that efficiency and transparency and then last that there would be some additional resources around recruitment and compensation for our support staff which again was something that this board mentioned on monday night as a priority and and the community is conveying that uh as well so those are the community priorities that you will see reflected as we go through this budget season that we will be focused on as we head into into next school year and i'll hand it over to mary owen thank you well good evening so we'll start with the other
024funds summary so that is that are the things that are not the general purpose funds um and you'll see the capital maintenance one kind of focus there that that we're keeping that flat although that is not the intention on what we'll actually be investing next year so we're gonna be looking at what we might address through fund balance we want to make sure operating budget we're going to focus on that kind of first through the process um but we know that we're you know again we've got some sales tax and some other extra funds coming in so we're going to look at what's the best way to do that look combine that with our look at projects you know we're working on tyner um and just in the overall plan like we've been talking about
025how do we address our ongoing facility so we we know that three million dollars is not enough um but that's that's what we kind of put as the initial transfer and that covers i think really just kind of the ongoing you know standard maintenance that we need to do is kind of extra projects come up but we need to look at a longer term plan that we'll do on capital maintenance on school nutrition uh you know that we've we've been doing the um free lunch for everyone that i think they're thinking it's going to shift back but of course there's still a lot to be seen on what they'll be doing so they're projecting just the regular increases in that in that budget on self-funded it's it's pretty similar to what we've had in prior
026years just uh kind of reflecting some expected if we do a salary increase in the gp budget that would be correlated that makes up most of that and then federal programs we left esther out just to not kind of distort that budget but it actually gets combined when it's combined overall but we do have two major significant grants that make up the big difference for the changes and that's the tennessee all core and the innovative high school grants so those are different than they were in there last year and just pointing out too as we you go through the year we bring their budget request so that number actually increases as we get additional awards or depending on the carry forward is on some of those grants then that will be reflected during each year's
027budget amendments so we wanted to provide a kind of an update on esser and and how that would look next year so we're expecting um with the rest of the encumbrances to finish up sr1 this year so we'll we made a lot of great use with that again part of that went to charter schools and private schools and you'll see that private school money i think that went directly if they got funds that went directly to them not through us for us or two and three so sr2 that budget will be um all allocated next year that remaining and again we'll figure out exactly what that that number is once we finish the spitting um and then for sr3 that represents two years of of spending plus tyner so that's why that number is so
028so high because i know there's uh you know folks out there are asking when you're not spending your money well we are but we also there's things that we've done we spread it over year three years to get investment um it's tied into summer learning that's a big yeah a big requirement of the so3 funds was to go to summer learning so that will cover um i think this summer and next summer so moving on to the general purpose revenue so i want to kind of give you an update on where we are year to date on property tax and again they're they're strong we haven't gotten this month's property tax which is too much i was hoping to get that but we won't get that until probably next week um but it's still been
029continued to be strong for the first six months we've collected about uh six million dollars more than we did last year um i do think we might see some slowing it's it's kind of balanced like you know we know that costs are going up but then we'll spend and go down so it's that balance and i think the state economists are saying that too well that will spending you know people start controlling that a little bit more so we're trying to kind of take that in into consideration um but again we think it'll be strong through the rest of this year and then property tax it's pretty much in line i think um and i got this noted again later but um while we are still seeing growth the impact of that growth because of
030the the reassessment where they actually bring the millage rate down we don't get quite as much as we would have gotten before that adjustment when they did the revaluation last year so in past years we've had seen it growth around two and a half percent it's really kind of tracking closer to two percent with that impact and so we've put together initial proposed revenues now we're going to keep working through these numbers so they may change when we bring them with the final board presentation for the budget but this is kind of where we're looking now so over our current year budget would be about a nine point uh three of additional revenue um you know we don't get our bep estimate until april and we approve the budget before we get that um so
031we we've done some numbers i've talked to some other districts just to make sure kind of where we are and make sure it seemed like a reasonable expectation of where those would post um you know we are seeing about six million in with the local taxes and we've done two percent for property taxes um and sales tax i don't think about three and a half percent um over this year um and then the other funds are pretty much in line um so the state education that's where the bep is that also does include pre-k and so we expect some increase with that as well but again i think that's where the teacher salaries would flow into there um so again i just kind of summarized a few of the key points um you know i've
032worked with we work with the county to get projections so i've run these all by them to make sure it kind of is in line because we do have to keep in mind the maintenance of effort and so we've done that calculation to make sure we're in line there um in a sense the sales tax is one of those real real unknowns um and i think kind of the approach we've been taking is we don't want to budget money that and budget out in case we don't get it so we're budgeting money that we feel confident that we'll get if we then collect more than we budget and that's what we're looking to redirect funds towards facilities and other one-time purposes again we're watching i do want to talk about the new funding formula so
033we're spending a lot of time digging into that we do think there's a lot of opportunity there and i think hamilton county looks very positive for us it's not always consistent for all the different schools but for us it does look like we provide some significant resources to help and really what's i think exciting for us is that a lot of the priorities really align with our priorities um so some of the things that we'll be looking at and it may be that we bring some stuff that we think is going to get additional funding in the formula for example nursing we really feel like there needs to be a nurse at every school that funding will help support that we we've already done that through esser funds so we're looking at how do we
034bridge this year to get to next year when we get the bep funding but we don't want to lose those great resources that we've already got in our schools so that's one thing we're kind of trying to balance out as we work through this budget so with the timeline i just wanted to kind of point out to you so we've got this meeting tonight and then on the fourth what we plan to do is we will bring you a budget book with lots of great spreadsheets which i love hopefully you guys love them as much as i do but maybe not but um you know we're we're working through and we'll present um we'll give you kind of an overview along with a three-year projection and then let you kind of dive into that and
035then we'll have two more opportunities um at the 18th and 21st to dig into that the budgets we'll actually have additional conversations with you just to make sure we've addressed everything again tying into the priorities that we've heard um looking at the things that are rolling off of esser trying to balance out so it's really looking at all that we've spent a lot of time working on our positions this year and with our new system and we have a lot more visibility into our position control and our position model so we've really been digging into that to make sure we really can clearly see where our resources are so we've had probably two or three conversations a week with senior leadership and several of us have been like a daily been working on positions because
036that again that's the biggest portion of our budget so with that again just remember why we have our resources it's to support our priorities in our schools which is helping all children thrive do we have any discussion or questions mr smith yeah thank you just a quick question i i i understand we won't know our vp allocation until late april but we're going to be working on the budget how much of a challenge is that going to create being that we don't know what our revenue is going to be i mean i think we again i mean those budgets are our plans um so we you know try to get as close as we can to the number we're usually fairly close and again even what the governor's budget depends on what gets through the
037legislature so i think you know we there's room in our budget to adjust if it you know hopefully it's over we get more than we project uh if it's under then we've got ways that we'll where we have contingencies in our budget to adjust if it comes in a little bit lower does that help well it just seems to me it's going to be challenging yeah i mean it doesn't know how much i expand if i don't know how much i'm going to be yet right and that's yeah that's i think that's how it's been i'm not sure why there's such a delay i will say when we've gotten the information on the new funding formula they've got in there a 23 estimate and so i kind of backed in to make sure our numbers
038are kind of in line with that number so and we're we're and i think we've actually got a little bit when i go i'm gonna scrub it some more so we might actually have a little opportunity to budget a little bit more but i feel confident that we're gonna be right in the same ballpark of what we should get mr thurman i have a suggestion since we don't know how much bep money we're going to get and we're probably going to get more why don't we just not spend that money and put that toward the race how much ever additional we get let's just don't worry about spending it because we don't certainly don't need to hire any any more people uh why don't we just take the money that we're going to get in
039the bep and put that toward a raise for all of our employees why don't we do that okay thank you mr press i asked this a a while back but as we're coming back to uh to this question and through the discussion we had monday uh i understand that we have a minimum required uh a fund balance of three percent or something like that um but i don't know what a healthy fund balance should be and uh and in many worlds having too much is also not positive because it means that money is not being invested when when it should be invested um so as we're going through this um i would like again i i know we have what 9.5 or something like that i think it is um i would like to know
040if that's the right number or if maybe we should reduce that fund balance because there's no point in having money that we can't invest in in our school so i'll just you know and you guys forget that yeah in the next presentation we do include a fund balance analysis so we'll be sure to address that specifically just like i'm ahead of the game yep miss robinson um thank you for the presentation um i had some questions on the on accelerating student achievement um so i i think i've been on the board probably around like five years now and probably twice that i can think of we've talked pretty extensively about middle school and kind of a vision and so really the last conversation i remember having around middle schools and the transformation of middle schools
041was really whenever dr johnson was here so i wonder if you could kind of update and or remind me of the vision that we have for the middle school piece and i do think it's excellent that we are focusing on that i no doubt think that middle school is some of the most important um um you know it's some of the most important time of a student's life but uh you know and i think we need to be like leaning more into our middle school program so yeah i'd love to hear more if you don't mind yeah so you guys are familiar with the soar grant process and that innovation around middle schools prior to that that grant going out there was a robust team that came together in partnership with with the mckinsey foundation
042to try to reconsider reimagine look at the best practices all over the country around middle school i think what what they discovered and what they're discovering everywhere so hamilton county is not unique is that one of the largest gaps we see in middle school is that lack of personalization lack of sense of belonging it really is the priority for middle school kids i think sometimes as a district we get we focus so much on the academics that we we neglect that and so the whole culture of the soar grant is rooted in the ability for us as a district to to bridge connection and belonging really cultivate that in our middle schools leading to the academic performance that we're really looking for so the sort grant was was awarded i guess a week and a
043half ago now we have representation out of all five learning communities which wasn't actually um part of the way we wrote it it just really is what happened which is fantastic and the goal now is to utilize those as sort of pilot sites and think tanks together and to use those to kind of role play and share the best practices across across the county again rooted in that personalization in that culture much of those grants has that side to it as well as this deepening engagement so time for exploration time for creativity time to build things and to move into to do things together and so each of the schools has sort of a unique pathway towards that but all with that goal of more concretely connecting kids to each other in school and then
044kids to the adults in school and to the school community okay the other can i add one more thing oh yeah the other thing that i think is really contributing is the student success planning work you know there's a robust plan that rolls up we're rolling on five more middle schools in that last year elementary schools that have ssp work going on that'll roll up and so we think it'll really help in that fifth sixth grade transition because there's a lot that can be known about a child coming through those plans in advance and really preparing our middle schools to receive those kids knowing kind of well in advance what some of their needs are to be able to put plans in place to respond to them okay great um so i think of howard
045connect whenever i think of this okay is that the right thinking i should okay um and then can you name those five middle schools or well it was not a quiz i was curious so hunter dalewood hixson okay and the other one i'd like to phone is it how is it howard connect or howard connect just i mean just is already operating yes okay great that's awesome i kind of think what the other two are okay thank you those were part of the pilot though weren't they the ones that's what i meant yeah they're the ones that were just awarded we just awarded well that's great and i can't wait to hear more about that work um and i'm sure like as we start thinking about our next five-year strategy i'm sure we'll be incorporating
046more on middle school fronts that's great um one other question um you had support for act on that slide i know that in with the tisa plan the bp relaunch there actually are dollars allocated for a ct support are we thinking about aligning that piece of our budget to that or okay yeah i think the different i mean we've got to we want to get started on that now understanding that you know won't come for another year and a half but uh you know to the point that dr stewart made priors what's exciting about these is everything you're seeing in terms of their priorities almost i would say 95 percent of them already lined with the priorities that the board has said absolutely yeah yep so it's tisa all right i gotta remember that thank
047you mr prez just one last question um of the money we receive there's also money that goes back to the trustees right uh how much do we send back with the estimates i think it's around 4.3 million okay and that changes it like it's a percentage revenue um no more questions i had a quick question on one of the slides that had our capital maintenance budget at 3 million did we not move that up to 4 million yes we did thank you mister so we did yeah and and again i mean to mary ellen's point uh we always we've been budgeting at three or four million we end up spending much more than that because we come back with budget requests to use um you know as sales tax dollars come in at higher than
048what we expected we can take those funds and use them for you know one-time purchases we are going to come back and either in april or may with a pretty hefty request to spend some fund balance on some urgent needs around roof repairs hvac and some other maintenance we took a million dollars last year to go up to four and did a pretty massive painting project uh and we'll plan on doing something like that again any other questions okay with that we'll move down to our board member disclaimer we'll start mrs thurman and work our way down okay i declare that i have one relative uh who works for the school system and that the board's vote on these agenda items may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that
049i 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 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 uh who work for the school system and the board's vote on pretty much everything may have an effect on my relatives employment
050even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the school system i declare i have a relative who works for the school system and the board's vote on budget policy 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 family member who works for the school system and that the boards vote on budget policies et cetera 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 good there that will bring us down to the approval of the consent agenda anything that needs to be full move to approve
051hold on hold on we have to approve it first and then we'll pull do we have a motion to approve i'm like i move to approve second now um i do want to pull the school piece again do you know what number that is for i'm sorry d4 sorry uh eight d four the school phase thank you anything else okay mrs jones or i'm calling her oh i'm sorry cause i was like i thought he pulled i thought that was gonna talk i'm i am exhausted i apologize yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman mcclendon yes mr perez so i know this is complicated i'm not going to ask for this this year because it would be too complicated but as we look into next
052year i will ask this next year and i kind of want to say it out loud because it takes every school to do it i would like to know how much we're collecting in school fees around these extracurricular activities because i would like to see whether we as a school board next year can consider investing in uh supporting these uh activities as our school maybe we'll look at it and say no we can't but i want to at least know what it would cost us to invest in having our students participate for as low of a cost as possible in activities that will help enhance their education so i know i'm not going to ask it right now but i am going to ask it next year please that was all i wanted to say
053any other discussion okay do i have a motion to approve so i moved have a second second roll call please mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes cameron mcclendon yes that brings us down to administrative business matters uh first item is um update to the 2022-2023 school calendar do i have a motion to approve so moved second any discussion mr perez we mentioned this monday we all really really really need a spring break like three weeks ago um and so i'm actually gonna vote no on this i know it'll pass but we need a spring break so long ago um and i don't think that putting it so late in the calendar again next year is uh is for the benefit of everybody look
054i even got miss jones just for clarity um we didn't just decide this year so you know we just i want to make sure people understand that the calendar is done years out we do them in segments of years out and based on the um staff vote and parent um comment that this is why it is that way and it changes everything shifts you know it shifts from time to time so this time they're saying you know we're hearing something different so when we get ready to look at it for the next three four years out we know what to do but i just want to make sure that everyone understands that we do these um several years out so that people are able to plan accordingly um and know when the holidays and vacation
055times are up miss thurman can you explain to the audience exactly what we just did i mean we know what we did because we talked about it one day well no i mean i'm talking about what we're changing about it the update the update while we're doing it yeah that's fair yes oh yeah that's true i mean we know but do you want to address it yeah so um we're adjusting the last two days of each semester to full days instead of half days and it has to do with you know some requests that we got from the state to update the calendar to reflect the accurate number of days and use of stockpile days so instead of being half days they're going to be full days i just want everybody to understand exactly what
056we just voted on so if you have a calendar at home you'll know what we just voted today they're going to be full days now instead of half days so everyone knows roll call please mrs jones yes mr perez no mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs sermon yes mr walker yes chairman mcclendon yes okay that brings us down to um the orchard knob middle school turnaround plan do i have a motion to approve so i'll move second any discussion yep um yeah i just wanted to kind of bring up and and kind of let the public know more about the plan for this plan uh there is a separate committee that i'll also be engaged in so i wonder if you could give us a 30 second high level overview just to kind of
057bring people up to speed on what's going on absolutely so part of what the state requested was that we would put together a turnaround committee that would stay engaged over the life of the plan that committee includes teachers it includes the building leadership it includes community members it includes you board member we all know that orchard non-middle is a part of the partnership network some of those board members will will be actively engaged and i think one of the things that's most important about the way this plan is designed is that they'll be they're in on the creation of the plan and the execution of the plan and the iteration of the plan over time so um that committee is being assembled and will be part of the monitoring process and how long is this
058pilot in place it's four years thank you roll call please mrs jones no mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman mcclendon yes um that will bring us down to the cigna property located at 7555 goodwin road any conversation on that discussion miss thurman yeah here again i think the public needs to be aware of what we're talking about uh would you go over that yes ma'am so i think there's been some misconceptions about this so uh currently empire who is a company out of atlanta they're in a due diligence period to purchase this property they've um expressed interest in selling uh the existing building and about 23 acres of property around that building we've been in discussions with county mayor he's been in discussions with county
059commissioners they've expressed a willingness to purchase the building and the surrounding acreage with the understanding that the school board would be responsible for renovating the building for future use as a school and so this is basically uh before the county commission commits to buying us showing that we're going to be willing to do the renovations that you know estimate somewhere between 7 and 10 billion and again this is an efficient use of of our facility funds uh this uh is something that was in phase one of the mgt recommendations of having another elementary location on the east brainerd road line and so that's why we're bringing it to you yeah just uh so to be clear for everyone we had talked about building another school on the old east east brainerd elementary school property which
060was going to be csla a csla yeah i'm sorry yeah it used to be okay but csla property building another elementary school there which was going to cost us probably around 25 30 million dollars sometimes was that 35 about 35 million and so uh this school is this property is located directly across the street from the east brainerd elementary school now so there's talk of maybe splitting the school up and putting part in that building part another but for seven to ten million dollars if we can get that building that will really save a lot of a lot of money and that will still leave us with the property that we have at the ocsla building so i just wanted people to understand what was what was going on in the county we'll be buying
061that property we hope from and leaving it up to us to renovate it and the building's in really good shape actually i've had a lot of people tell me it's in really good shape and already has a cafeteria and everything in it so anyway i just wanted everybody to know what's going on mr perez all right based on that i just have a question do we still own the east brainerd the oldies brainerd or i don't know we sold that property um okay and i'll just mention again and i'm really just using this uh to mention that uh i am concerned that if a law eventually passes that says we have to give up our properties that we will lose um our property i get it's for educational purposes but building it at csla to
062be quite honest with you as soon as kids come out of it we need to make a decision to uh go ahead and tear that building down something whatever buildings or properties we need to sell or tear down or do whatever we need to in order to be able to use that money for future uh purpose i'd rather we do that so but that's down the road mr smith let me just say dr robertson you your staff everybody involved in this what a what a excellent initiative idea saving the taxpayers a ton of money and i just think it's great i i encourage you us moving forward as we're looking at this facility's nightmare that we've got to attack that we'll look at more opportunities like this to to repurpose uh buildings whether it be
063retail commercial you know i think maybe we had an opportunity like that some time ago that that we let slip by us and so i just think it's excellent let's continue to do that i've got another i think facilities question but it's a whole different matter so chairman after we vote on this you come back to me i have just a facilities question mr thurman i move that joe don't get anything else he got rid of the buses that's all you get this i haven't yet okay but but anyway um yeah the uh uh facilities um joe made me forget what i was gonna say uh joe made you forget what you were saying yeah uh yeah i'm like you joe maybe we'll come back no i would like to see a list of our
064the buildings that we own and are not being used when we do our facilities uh we used to always have that but the i looked at the one i had and it is old and i don't think we have that many more left i think we don't have any buildings that we don't aren't currently using um i didn't know the old harrison elementary is actually owned by the county yeah the county does on that one okay so uh okay so i don't say i think we just we i know we were going through a few years ago and sold a lot of things and and tore some buildings down so i didn't think we had any okay i just want we just need to get an update thanks um i've worked closely with dr robertson
065on this like i said um saw the property listed send it to dr johnson that said this could be a new school and here we are you know getting that groundwork running um we're looking at you know hopefully if everything goes well building elementary school for 15 to 20 million versus 35 to 40 million which is just an efficient way of how we tackle our facilities crisis and there's been a lot of moving things i want to say councilman darin lefford from city council chattanooga he's here tonight he's been dealing with the planning process from the developers and helping move that process alone along so say thank you to him but um hopefully the county will will purchase this and we'll be able to renovate it um and really help with the growth out there
066um and help us uh tackle some of the facility needs so with that uh roll call please miss sport mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman mclennan yes mr chairman before you go to board matters if i may just i'll get a little beat up that's okay uh dr robertson can you give me a status report on the uh the build out of the bus depot where we're at with that yeah the last report that i got was a couple weeks ago i'm sorry i would have anticipated you asking i would have gotten more up-to-date information but they're surveying putting stakes in the ground and getting ready for the planning aspect of it so we should be moving forward pretty quick now so
067we're so it's probably safe to say that we're on target mr smith i would not say there's anything safe to say about it so i i would second this thurman's motion that you can't say anything else about it well they're either gonna be in your yard or in ronda's yard we're working on i'm optimistic that it will be solved by next year that's all of the buses okay that will move us down to board matters the book review committee report from mrs thurman okay i think everyone has a reader's digest condensed version of the book or review committee report we had our first meeting on i think it's february the 8th we were given the task of looking at policies 4.402 which is a selection of instructional materials and policy 4.403 reconsideration of instructional materials
068and textbooks each one of the board members appointed two representatives and there were 19 members of the committee including my including me uh the committee held its first meeting on february the 8th at that meeting we looked at policies 4.402 4.3 to see if any clarifying language could be added to ensure books with obscene language and sexual content did not find the way into hamilton county school library shelves at the end of the february 8th meeting after much discussion and i did put an asterisk there because all the meetings there's no way i could tell you about all the discussion they're all online on at this hcde.org website it became obvious the task of taking on both policies would require too much time it was decided to narrow the scope of our work to reviewing
069policy 4.402 to each member was asked to bring their ideas for changes to that policy to the next meeting which was scheduled for the 22nd on the 22nd jamie parris and becky covington answered questions about the administrative process for review and selection for reading materials placed in our libraries there was a discussion of how books with central content and profanity were currently on hamilton hamilton county library shelves the administration was adamant they were following board policy 4.402 some of the kitty committee did not think there were problems with the language or content with any of the books currently on our in our libraries it was also discussed that books donated by outside organizations would have to go through the same vetting process as those on the library's shelves the committee was asked to present the
070recommendations to sherry ford by monday feb february 28th so they could be compiled and given to scott bennett our school board attorney the next meeting was scheduled for march the 8th at the march 8th meeting after reviewing committee recommendations scott bennett presented his draft of a new policy 4.402 he answered questions as to the legal aspects of what we could and what could and could not be included in the policies he clarified the legal definition of some of the wording in the policy after much discussion the committee was told each committee member's recommendations as well as scott's updated policy draft would be presented to the school board the board will send the information to james walker the policy committee chair after the policy committee reviews the policy it will come back to the board we
071will discuss it and then there will be a vote on it and it will require two votes because it will be an entirely new policy scott is also looking at policy 4.402 which uh is the request for reconsideration uh i think that that four point three four point four three i'm sorry the request for recommend reconsideration we think that that form needs to be put online to make it easier for t for parents to be able to access um also he's looking at a more simplified form so it's not as cumbersome as it is is now i think you've looked at them from different states if i'm not mistaken scott um and also i about the outside groups that put uh we did a little bit of discussion about this or maybe i can't remember
072scott i can't it's hard for me to remember the things i've talked to you personally about the things we talked about in the committee uh about whether we needed a policy or whether to add in this policy about outside groups coming in and putting things in if there's going to be one group allowed there needs to be it needs to be opened up with everyone but the board they need to be approved by the board if they're going to do that and if we're either going to do it and let everybody have an opportunity or we're going to have to let nobody have the opportunity so that's one thing i think that we need to look at is as well so um also all the language in here that was referring to the ala was
073taken out and the library bill of rights was taken out because that is not a legal document um so scott anything else you'd like to add oh wait it's scott scott i don't you're still working on your draft he's had his draft and it's it's quite a task to do a new policy so i think you're still working on it simply put um mr sermon that that's a good synopsis what i've done is i've taken some of the thoughts from the committee that that were verbalized in the meeting and i've i've i've edited my edits and now i'm going back through some of the the handwritten some of the written things that were sent to ms thurman by the committee members to be sure that he captured everything that is consistent with with what the
074board wants to what the board may want to do at the end of the day it's the board's discretion to change the policy or not change the policy what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to be to give clear guidance because the board uses its policy to speak to the administration to the administration can implement um i think the policy that you have is is is is good uh insofar as it goes i think that there's some language that needs some clarification um but we're but we'll move in that direction and i would like to think that i'll have something in final form before the next policy committee meeting i don't know when that will be mr walker but if you tell me it's on a date certain i'll get it to you a
075week in advance okay yeah i think that uh the committee did a lot of work i think there are a lot of people found out a lot of things uh people are a lot more aware of things now about how the process works and that's one of the reasons i'm i'm really glad that we did have this committee that now a lot of parents are are like i say just more aware of the process of how things how boots get on shelves and and the process to go about reconsidering some of the material that is there um also there are and we talked about this as well uh the uh senate bill passed and it's back in the education committee i think when it passes there then it will go to the the governor's desk
076for a signature uh that that bill was to take away the exemption for schools in the obscenity laws even though scott and i did have another discussion that the obscenity law is a very very high mark so we're going to have to change i think some of the wording in our policy because uh it seems that obscenity is almost impossible to um meet that very you say it's a high bar i say it's a low bar it's a stringent standard prove that something's obscene but with the conversation that ms thurman and i had is that in a public school library your standard can be that that your books your books can be better than just not obscene does that make sense you know the standard for taking something out isn't well that's an obscenity um
077i think we can agree that there's certain things that are age-appropriate there are certain things that are topically appropriate and obscenity is something that that under supreme court authority has literally no substantial value whatsoever there are not a lot of things that that meet that standard so conversely the supreme court also recognizes that that public schools have the job of inculcating values and concepts with their students that notions of decorum inappropriateness you can't screen out ideas you can't have orthodoxy of ideas but you can establish certain expectations of behavior and such and so there's a fine line to draw there uh everyone agrees that that there's a line people don't necessarily agree who should draw it or where it should be drawn and that's why i think you have seen some impassioned debate on this
078yeah well i appreciate it so james we're handing it off to you from here good luck we'll get together scott yeah mr perez um i actually i checked the law today so my understanding was it was when i read i'm not an expert on how this works so i saw something about move to march 23rd so did the i think it's right yeah that's what that's what i am the obscenity bill was referred to the senate education committee for march 23. okay that's my understanding so so i said this on monday i think it's important um for for whoever did it wasn't on monday because everything i say is so important um no i said this on monday uh we need to understand that we are under the direction of the state legislature right so
079if a bill passes we have to rewrite a policy in order to adapt to that bill we don't have a choice to dismiss that or or undo it and i did read the bill um and uh and they themselves admit that in the state of tennessee zero people have been um uh accused of breaking there's two levels of the law the first level in 10 years and 2.5 people a year on average to the uh so anyway so whatever this law is stating it's clearly a law that hasn't applied to anybody in the state of tennessee for for a long time or to very few people um but again for those who want to reach out to elected officials beyond the people here we will have to write a policy that complies and we don't
080have a choice about that um my uh i mean i think we're already all i hope ready to move on somehow on this subject and and so the only thing that i'm concerned about is that i don't see value you could correct me on this but i don't see value in working on a policy until we know for sure if we're going to have to rework that policy to comply so what i'm what i'm working on is an anticipation of something similar being passed either this or something very similar to it as ms thurman was mentioning obscenity is a really high standard or low standard depending on your perspective it's hard to prove that something is obscene because you have to prove that it has no and the acronym is slap serious literary artistic or
081or political value you can make a case that almost anything has some kind of of value in that category um so if it has some value it's not obscene i think that the policy we have uh would arguably comply with the statute even if it is uh even if it is enacted the current policy or the policy the current policy is arguably in compliance because it does reference the obscenity definition now that said what i'm working on actually takes the standard from another supreme court decision that talks about um well it doesn't matter i'm aiming for i'm aiming for another first amendment case that provides cl better clarity to the administration i think our policies are actually okay i think what happened some time ago is when there was a question raised about a particular
082book and as it was working its way through the review committee someone also wanted to speak to the board about this and so the administrative review process which your policy says should come first kind of grown to a halt and so the forum for reviewing these books shifted to this board and this board is not really well equipped to review i'm not saying that that this is not an appropriate forum for people to raise their concerns but this board is not a book club and you're not well equipped to to go through a book and judge its literary merit at a board meeting your policy actually says that should happen in the administrative process and for whatever reason when when people started thinking let's come to the board about this the review process just stopped
083so part of what i proposed to do is to make the review process a bit more accessible and i've also put something in there the board may not want to do it but i put something in there that says the board won't hear complaints about books until the administrative process has been exhausted that that may be a little further than the board wants to go yeah yeah so and and that's the conversation yeah so one more thing because i do think i yeah so we'll talk about that you know i i will always favor people speaking to the board when they can um one this is separate i want to thank everybody on the committee who was willing to put themselves out there because it is one of the most as any of us can
084say exposing yourself to public scrutiny and public attack is not uh for uh everybody and so thank you uh to everybody who whatever wherever you stand thank you for that uh thank you for serving our community i think it became obvious to everybody that weirdly we all have different opinions and that and that those are hard to reconcile on the job of the board and the difficulty of the board is often trying to come together on some of those desires to to reconcile uh what's in the best interest of our students uh we've got to go through the process we got to see what where the law lands we got to decide whether we're going to review a policy or not review a policy or whether the policy was fine but we just need to
085let people know how the policy works uh we've got to make sure that you all are the ones who then set the the procedures and uh and how this will apply in the real world and not in in a hypothetical world um so there's still more to go i encourage us as a community to uh look at things that will continue to affect our students on a daily basis and so um and so i'm not dismissing this uh it's anyone's right in my opinion as as i believe to to state their concerns or their views but i think we have a lot of really really really important things to help our students grow and achieve and succeed and thrive without limits and so if i can encourage us to move in that direction i want
086to move in that direction but policies are policies we got to write them we got to work with them thank you scott for all your work behind the scenes um i'll just say as far as timeline um and me and mr walker will get together on um kind of policy meeting but we have a we have a budget discussion and board agenda session on the 18th of april that starts at 4 30 um so we could probably this is kind of my time frame do it then do another one in may first reading may june kind of pushes that a little longer but just to ensure that we're for the state general session assembly should be wrapped up in june i mean uh by the end of may so it gives us a little longer
087just to make sure so we're not doing double work on on seeing what they do and if we have to change policies but we'll get those dates official and send them out and when me and mr walker talk about that calendar so any other discussion on that nope okay if i can find my agenda again that will move us down to delegations um we have 15 people speaking um if you are one of those 15 people miss robinson had to step out uh she will be back but i will read the delegation statement so if you are one of those 15 people please pay attention to this we'll read it once and we will continue thank you for your interest in addressing the hamilton county board of education during your presentation please address the board
088as 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 for five minutes and i will tell you when you have one minute left um this is the clock over here uh which will be to your right our left is your clock it has five minutes miss ford will do that i will ask um just since we do have a large number of uh people speaking if you know you're speaking next if you just want to prepare yourself to get up and come and also
089i will ask that the audience please refrain from interrupting them if they are interrupted we will pause their time and they will get it so you are doing no good if you're trying to do something to what the person speaking we've got problems with that in the past uh so just please be aware of that first up we have brandy howard next up will be taylor lyons so as i said just please be prepared thank you my name is brandi howard i'm the mom of two children one of which is a student in this district and i wanted to clarify that because i consistently hear that who are these people who have brought this concern forward do they even have students in the district yes i do and i even heard that comment at the
090work session on monday so i wanted to clarify that my kids have been avid readers this is important to me right and i understand the value of reading and i understand the value of books my daughter is such an avid reader that when she was in middle school in south carolina her the vice principal called her nicknamed her belle from beauty and the beast because that child always had a book in front of her i valued my school librarians and my public children's librarian because i would go to those ladies miss price and miss beauhealer would give me a list of books to recommend to my children i would go check out those books and hand them to my kids i can tell you i never even thought to vet those books myself because i
091trusted what those librarians gave me to hand to my kids especially if they were books that came from a school library surely they had been vetted and deemed safe right we all have kind of a standard we thought and like so many parents i have been surprised and disappointed to find that that's not necessarily the case i appreciate this board taking the time to look at policies and what might be done about that and the committee that met i heard some of the people on the committee were adamant that policy changes aren't necessary there's already a process in place for all of this and they're referring to that 4.403 request for reconsideration process which by the way we didn't know existed so that's why we came to the board first and as i researched that
092process i wanted to point out the american library association provided that process and much of the hamilton county librarian handbook which by the way i did read three times reflects the ala ala is an organization that advocates and lobbies for the benefit of librarians and libraries it isn't a government agency or a legislative body their goals and guidance do not necessarily align with our community or our parents this association created their library bill of rights and in it they say school librarians resist all effort by individuals or groups which would probably include you school board members to define what is appropriate they object to that they say that major barriers between students and resources include age grade level reading level restrictions limiting access to electronic information and even requiring permission from parents or teachers is
093called a major barrier by the ala i don't consider parental permission to be a problem in the ala's interpretations of the library bill of rights they further clarify their policies they say that library policies and procedures that deny minors equal and equitable access to all library resources available to other users violate their bill of rights the american library association opposes all attempts to restrict any access based on age of library users so clearly they support free and open access to all information regardless of whether or not it's age appropriate i would propose that that does not align with what most parents believe or what most people act on parents provide different books movies games for their children based on those children's ages and in fact this district already has demonstrated they've got policies that say
094they don't agree with unlimited access to everything all the time right we already have limits on their electronics so those limits just haven't applied to library or classroom library materials so knowing this it helps us understand better we've had a lack of criteria lack of boundaries so the 4.403 process that the ala published in hamilton county currently uses is not an effective tool for addressing obscene or objectionable materials in school as it's currently written that does not provide any criteria or guidance by which a request for reconsideration will be evaluated that's like trying to decide whether or not someone was speeding before you've ever set a speed limit right or grading a project without having created a rubric so we need this board to clarify criteria and boundaries for the material am i done that
095is your time thank you thank you taylor lyons members of the board dr robertson thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you this evening i'm taylor lyons with moms for social justice i'm also the mom of two cool little kids who attend west view elementary not to worry there's no need for children to leave the room during my remarks because i am aware this is a public forum so i will not use the language that i might use at dinner with my friends i certainly won't use the language that i use in the bedroom with my husband and i will not be using the language that's prevalent in the books and the shows that i love because language and its proper use is entirely about the correct context it would greatly serve our
096civil discourse were we all to remember that while in this room i wish i were not taking your valuable time i wish i was not taking time away from my family including my newborn daughter to be here once again defending intellectual freedom to defend our teachers and our librarians from these particularly outrageous and disgusting attacks if i am to be honest it pains me to even dignify them with a response but such as the state of things so please hear me when i say no one i repeat no one is putting pornography on our library shelves or grooming children with books that is as absurd as it is offensive that assertion is intellectually lazy and it is a disgusting attack on our educators who work so hard and organizations like the one i represent who
097at this point have logged hundreds of hours volunteering in schools across our county while those making these complaints have never darkened the doors we do not as a general society categorize every piece of visual art and written word with sexual depictions within the context of a greater dramatic narrative as pornography if we did then practically everything we read and watched would fall under that label including the bible now we can all agree that depictions of torture of rape of genocide are disturbing and challenging right those reads are designed for upper grade reading levels but as those high school kids know and we might remember you cannot write a book report if you didn't actually read the book and that's the problem with cherry picking salacious excerpts from books you haven't read or tried to understand
098to prove a point you miss the point entirely that's the beauty of a library isn't it it's not a monolith of thought the freedom to go into a library and choose a book that speaks to you is one of our most sacred individualistic practices that is a deeply american freedom it's one not afforded to many places in the world and it's a freedom that we denied to certain people in this country for a long long time that is what i find obscene but can we be honest about what's really going on here for just a minute because challenging books and labeling them as filth is a tried and true tactic for people who have a general hatred of public education they've been doing it since the 50s and here it is right in front of
099you and black and white prominently featured on their website these folks who claim they're for liberty except the liberty to read apparently tell us their overarching goal is to encourage as many kids to leave public school as possible there it is they don't support our schools they don't support our teachers and they sure as hell don't care about our kids at least not the ones who fall outside their definition of normal this hateful little document that they supplied to the book committee would tell our queer kids you don't exist you don't deserve representation it would tell our black and brown kids your voices don't matter in this conversation we're going to take books away from you while you're already staring at empty library shelves that is what we find obscene in closing a member of
100this board told me recently that expertise no longer matters in this conversation sadly and to that i say respectfully you are wrong because it matters to some of us some of us still respect and appreciate our teachers and our librarians for the experienced professionals that they are we will continue to stand with our educators believing in their infinite value because despite this circus they show up every day because they believe in the infinite value of our kids and for that we flat out don't deserve them but we appreciate them nonetheless thank you we will go on to reverend uh brandon gilvan uh next up after that will be levi jones greetings friends uh my name is reverend brandon gilvin i serve as senior minister of first christian church disciples of christ and i am also
101the author of two books on faith and popular literature i have watched this conversation with great interest around the book review committee it came first to my attention last year when i saw a conversation that the board was having in which it was mentioned that there were books that were considered troublesome and i believe the words abbreviated as gd and mf were in particular mentioned as problems as i continued to watch this conversation it occurred to me that maybe the policy that has been introduced that has been reviewed doesn't quite go far enough and that's why i would like to suggest that this board immediately remove and ban all copies of oedipus rex also known as oedipus the king by sophocles because this play though it may not use the in the english translation mf
102or gd the main character literally embodies the word mf and i think that that is inappropriate we cannot trust the classical greeks with our children now admittedly i've been a little absurd over the last couple of seconds but that's because i believe that we have found ourselves in a completely absurd situation we could be having a conversation with folks from across this community we have an incredible children's hospital with child psychologists and pediatricians who could talk with this board and this general community about what age appropriateness actually is we have a great university and small liberal arts colleges across this region where we could engage about the ethics of depicting violence particularly gender-based violence with professors of creative writing but that's not the conversation that we're having and i think that we really need to
103have a conversation that looks at this yes we need to protect our children everyone in this room would say yes to that but we also need to prepare our children and part of that is stem part of that is literacy but part of that is also cultivating what i would call a moral imagination and that begins with the deep empathy and understanding of people who are nothing like you and the best way to enter into building and cultivating a sense of moral imagination is by engaging difficult challenging and sometimes uncomfortable fiction because it opens up the possibilities of answering the question what are you a fellow human being who is nothing like me like what is your dream what are your challenges what are the things in your community that you would change if you
104could we don't cultivate moral imagination by taking books out of libraries or by telling young people that they can't be trusted in order to cultivate their own moral imaginations instead what we are telling them and i've said this a couple of times this week we are telling them that we are the ones who cannot be trusted so i encourage you to be thoughtful to look to the whole community this incredible diverse multicultural multi-religious community of chattanooga hamilton county as you carve out the best policy for all of our families and for all of our children as we think about what it means to teach kids to read and to teach kids to read well not just for the sake of literacy but for the sake of engaging and solving complicated problems in a complicated world
105that they will face as adults if they're not facing that already thank you for your time next up uh will be levi jones after him will be caroline mickey good evening my name is levi jones i'm a proud alumnus of the saudi daisy high schools 2020 graduating class and i'm here today to discuss the policy written to establish committees with the intent to censor books these committees which were said to be comprised of faculty and administration of the schools are to use a balancing test to determine the book's offensiveness to its academic value however there is a huge flaw with this pro with this system this entire argument is entirely subjective having this committee determine what is or is not offensive or worthy of academic value completely ignores the beliefs and views of every child
106in that school just because a student is underage doesn't mean they are not worthy of access to these materials as a political science student at east tennessee state university one of the first lessons taught in my judicial process class is that all speech including hate speech is protected by the first amendment and for those of you wondering why it's because once you allow anyone to determine what is offensive or not worthy of protection you open up several opportunities for the first amendment to be infringed and for speech to be censored even at the last book recommendation committee meeting it was quoted that constitutionally there is no way to determine what is offensive and there is a reason for that we should not be giving away the power to censor books and literature based on a
107relative scale of offensiveness and academic value also even though these books may be hard to listen to or read doesn't mean that they should be ignored and i'm not gonna stand here and spend my entire time citing inappropriate lines from books to try and sway your view on them but i would however like to give a statistic from the rape abuse and incest national network their statistic states that one in nine girls and one in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult if our children are old enough to experience these graphic and horrible things they are old enough to learn about them and learn how to process and stand up about it and even if some parents believe that these books are inappropriate or
108offensive that does not mean that they have the right to deprive another child of access to these materials that's one of the great things about living in this country we have the right to choose if you see a list of books that are inappropriate and you don't want your child to read them don't let them but don't force another parent's child to not have that opportunity to read those books we should not be allowing the voices of few to determine the future of many but if we allow these voices to win and ban these books from our schools he will also be putting children from lower socioeconomic classes at a higher disadvantage for some these school libraries are the only means of of reading these books that are not inside of in classes and not
109all students have the means of transportation to go to the public library and check these books out or buy them themselves hamilton county prides itself on the opportunities offered for its children and creating stricter policies will strip this county of that title personally i can gladly say that this county has provided many opportunities for me and has shaped me into who i am and i would hate for this county to make national news once again in the state of tennessee for the banning and censoring of books this counting has done so much good for its students and that is not the publicity that we need plus as seen with the book maos the banning of books only makes them more popular knowing that books are banned makes people more inclined to buy them so if
110you want to encourage students to go out and read books like oedipus the king be my guest but overall these committees and policies will be inhibitive to what they are trying to achieve board members i stated in the quote behind you all children thrive and experience a future without limits but if we are actively limiting access to books because of their content how can we ever say that as a county so board members i'm here to say that our county should be the leader in spreading the new ideas and beliefs uncomfortable as they may be to ensure that positive and impactful members of society come out of this school system thank you [Applause] next will be caroline mickey good evening members of the board my name is caroline mickey i was born and raised about
11125 miles from this very spot and i am a product of cleveland city public schools i moved to chattanooga at 18 graduated twice from utc and once from utk this is where i met my husband where i'm raising my children i am a southerner a tennessean and a chattanoogan i am an hcs librarian but i come before you today only as a reader i often tell others i have been reading longer than i have been talking and while i know it isn't logically true it certainly feels that way in my soul i am going to share with you the role books have played in my life one of the first i remember loving is grandfather's journey i connected strongly to the author's japanese grandfather coming to the united states and falling in love with the
112country but also missing his homeland it was only as a young adult i realized i was the grandfather not stuck between two countries but two homes as a child of divorce i would love being with my mother and stepfather but miss my dad a classic i adored was corduroy i loved that the little girl shared my mother's name lisa uses her own money to buy a bear that is just a little bit broken seeing corduroy for the friend he could be not the missing button that made him less than the other toys and she is black her race makes no literary contribution to the story but the representation of it matters it was a window reinforcing that just because someone is different from me we are both just searching for friendship and belonging in miss
113davis's fifth grade classroom i found number the stars my introduction to the holocaust and the dutch resistance movement it was the beginning of a lifelong journey of learning how people stand up in big and small ways against unfathomable bigotry and hatred middle school introduced me to my first local author lerlene mcdaniel she wrote about first crushes and love but also what it meant to be dying or loving someone who was they were some of my first lessons in grief and resilience books were an escape not because my life was bad or boring but because i only had one in books i could lose myself in different worlds because that is their power some adults are afraid of that power because they do not realize how to harness it in my teens my stepfather gave me
114go ask alice a novel about a girl's descent into drug abuse my stepdad knew that if i had questions i was comfortable in coming to him literature is a safe neutral ground to discuss uncomfortable topics in an objective way i was fortunate to reach high school when young adult literature was finding its stride when i read the perks of being a wallflower i learned literary techniques like the unreliable narrator and a postulary style but so much more than that i was introduced to hard things like sexual abuse gay bashing and struggling with mental health things i never experienced because i had the family i did i was so privileged i had three parents who loved and supported me who bought me books and answered my questions who trusted my librarians and teachers to fill in
115the gaps my parents and educators were a team and i trusted them but most importantly most crucially they trusted me trusted that i could handle the responsibility of my education school was not without its challenges but never not once can i remember a time when i was discouraged from reading about difficult subjects exploring uncomfortable topics and discovering for myself how i felt about the world we are all trying to live in a world that changes almost moment to moment struggling in a sea of opinion and choice never fully knowing if we are going in the right direction so we chart a course and sometimes we get so focused on that course that we forget that we can be wrong and that it's okay to be wrong to admit we made a mistake it is hard
116it is uncomfortable it is necessary we cannot grow without discomfort we cannot learn unless we are willing to admit that we don't know and in order for tolerance to flourish we must be intolerant of intolerance i heard once that fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist children already know that dragons exist fairy tales tell children that dragons can be beaten we have the opportunity to show our community that we stand up to dragons we have the responsibility to teach our youth how to slay their dragons i'm willing to stand in front of that fire are you angela good evening chairman and the board i'm angela favaloro i'm a parent a product of tennessee public education and a fierce advocate for students and families and tonight i'm speaking on behalf of my own i
117was recently given the privilege to serve on the material review committee and as a member of my district to review the policy in regards to its function and purpose and response to parent concerns over content last year and part of this year i've been part of the redistricting process all also and part of that i've been able to meet and hear from hamilton county communities of interest these communities range from school communities work communities faith communities as well as historically and culturally relevant communities and all of these communities live within the hamilton county school district when we talk about these differences and these communities i think it's easy to say that based off our individual lives and circles we may all picture different things when we talk about these when we talk about changing policies
118regarding access of opportunities for our students we have to be incredibly mindful of each and every one of our communities of interest i as a parent of two have two kids that their interests and needs fall all over the spectrum they've aligned and conflicted at different stages of their development and are impacted by their school communities they're in just as much as almost nearly as much as our family's traditions and values in this process i think of the roughly forty five thousand students we were charged with reviewing policy for how many communities of interest do you think are included in our student population how many face how many historically relevant communities how many cultural differences do we need to account for how many communities are there that don't always get counted when we talk about
119community i know during our committee meetings i was one of many who had lots of questions during and after our meetings just like our students who are taught to ask questions and analyze the information before presenting a solution i was thinking of all of these students and their families how do our policies give the most opportunity for literacy for all of our students and still meet them where they are as adults do we make hasty generalizations about what is relevant to other students and their families in almost every facet of education offered our students there are always choices even during a public health crisis choices were given when it comes to literature one student selection doesn't directly affect another student's opportunity or compromise their learning environment i struggled with some of the vocabulary used like
120saying pornography was being accessed by small children because we keep talking about subjectivity and being able to define the word obscenity but i think we have to look at intent pornography is intent is for one thing and the books that we have been presented with none of them sole intent has ever been anything below the belt i understand that some of our communities of interest take issue with different things but do all of them do we prioritize one community's level of offense over the choice of everyone else's i'm not saying it's wrong to have concerns about what your child is privy to or want transparency because i don't know a single parent who doesn't care about what their children have access to we just have different ideas of what narratives and storytelling are for and
121their overall value some people have a notion that's very offensive to my family that any reference to the lgbtq family community is somehow harmful or sexual my child is queer and very supported and loved in his communities being gay may be called a sexual identity but as a kid at school it's more about love and life than sex does anyone else's community get to decide if a book that the main character story is intertwined with the challenges and victories that my child experiences doesn't get to be there when they just have the choice to not read it the same goes for some of the other communities that get left out of the all-encompassing word community standard as we typically use it like those who face challenges and triumphs with skin color or gender stories of
122joy excellence struggle and challenge may all have bits that are tough to digest just like that of the lives of our students and all of these communities of interest i can promise you that not one of these communities stands alone we all overlap and please make sure that your policy reflects the consideration of every single one of our communities of interest not just those that you're interested in right now [Applause] that's prepared right there thank you meg day is next i'm sorry deanna haggard well after yeah you were already up yeah after you my family and i moved to chattanooga a few months ago in january my eighth grade son began attending red bank middle school soon after he started saying how much he hated it there when asked why he never gave us a
123solid reason last month we celebrated his 14th birthday and that's when we knew something was seriously wrong he's usually very excited and happy on his birthday this year he was miserable he said it was the worst birthday he'd ever had still would not say why i continued to press him on it desperate to know why my child was so miserable he was scared to tell me the truth knowing that we would act he was scared of retaliation i had to make him promises that i wouldn't make things worse for him begged him to trust me that i would help him that he he would be glad that he told me after about an hour of my reassuring him he finally reluctantly told me the truth and i'll tell you i've never seen my son so
124scared and so miserable in his 14 years i found out he can't use the bathroom at rbms he was told to stay out or get beat up he became quickly aware that the bathrooms were a dangerous place and so he stayed out the recurring message he received daily was he'd be beaten up if he were to tell the teachers of any of the rule breaking going on there he saw kids cheating by copying one another's homework he witnessed cheating during tests by kids googling test answers using their chromebooks i asked him which classes these things were happening in and he said all of them how can we expect our children to learn in this environment in science class kids took that opportunity to vape during class and offered him to partake again threatening him with
125violence if he told all around him were constant threats he learned to keep his head down and say nothing about the lawlessness that he saw my son felt threatened by the physical fighting happening all around him when these bullies made good on their threats he said the kids fighting would get suspended a few days then they would return and fight again this what's it called again restorative justice seems to do very little to deter this violent environment that our children are enduring every day and i think it's time we find another approach my son's 14th birthday was his very last day of public school he was being spit on by the kids sitting at his table while the other kid at the table laughed and cheered it on and threatened my son not to tell
126once again despite being threatened my son finally grew sick of being spat on and finally brought it to his teacher's attention when she was walking by their table her response okay and kept walking and doing doing and saying nothing to address it next this boy began attempts to snort mucus from his nose aimed at my son to which he eventually succeeded and sorted green mucus onto my son's homework that lay in front of him my child has spent years in public school and has never experienced the lawlessness threats and harassment that he experienced in sadly one month at red bank middle school i have spoken with three different school officials based on these encounters i have the distinct impression that they feel their primary role is to refute disavow and minimize reports of bullying i
127pointed out to one school official a newspaper article where a young girl told her story of being bullied in the bathroom i was told that this story was quote factually inaccurate a great deal of time in fact was spent denying this child's own account of her traumatic experience i asked another school official how many reports of bullying he has taken this school year and he didn't know i said would you say it was a dozen or more and he said yes but after investigating those reports many turned out not to be true bullying so let me see if i have this right a middle school child like my son comes forward about the bullying deeply scared of the consequences the child's parents reported to the school the school investigates and then on quote many of
128those instances they conveniently found it not to be true yeah my son was right to be afraid as a parent i feel obligated to warn other parents about the risks their child may be facing i've asked the school to send out a letter notifying parents of these potential risks and what they may do about it it is my hope the school will honor this request as the first of many actions towards improving the safety of all children i know my child was not the only one an ambulance was called to look out valley middle school for an assault in the bathroom yesterday last week a child at brown middle school had his arm broken by another kid who not only had been bullying him prior to this incident but i understand this kid's parents had
129been asking the school for help i wonder if this was one of those not true bullying reports i asked the school board to support this note initiative to notify all parents with rising suicide rates among middle schoolers ma'am that's your time we can hardly afford to allow things to get worse can we that's your time i'm through meg day you are next after that is elizabeth harris [Music] hey i'm meg day and i came here about a year ago to talk to y'all about concerns around technology and since then there's been a technology advisory board formed and we've met twice and will continue to meet and i just want to let you all know i'm really thankful for that and i'm excited about that work so thank you also would ask that anyone who has
130a power would prioritize this work as we look at technology i've been working with students and families for 20 years and a parent for 12. so i've seen the technology landscape really change and i pay attention to the pediatricians the mental health professionals church groups people who talk about technology and what we need to do as responsible adults for our children and then i have the schools and it feels a lot different as i see the school shifting from 3d to 2d testing and education so i just asked that you would help prioritize as we look at that that's all i want to say about technology i want to take it just a couple minutes to thank y'all from my family so i have a kid who is really behind in literacy and he has
131just a lot of support at school so i'm going to talk about those he has a teacher that has learned his personality and what motivates him and how to encourage him he also has an rti teacher who also knows him and tries to find fun ways to engage him when he's um working on literacy he's in speech and his speech teacher was telling me a game that she does and i was able to take that home and work on sight words doing that game and then this summer he's been invited to participate in summer reach and that's just a lot of support services that public schools offer that i feel doesn't get noticed enough and i want to thank y'all for all those extra things and for all those extra people who are pouring into
132our family and then we're not a super academic family but another child of mine on the way to school i want to tell you some things he's told me about school because they're just really great on the way to school a few weeks ago my child said i'm really excited about today because i have math and i haven't had math in six days and that's like not something our family says so that was really striking to hear from a child the next day he came home and he said um mama listen to what we did in science we did this really cool thing and he went in detail and recounted like a fun day he had at school and then this week he told me he goes oh i have spanish today i love spanish
133because i learned so much now again we're not like the learning people we're not like super academic but it's great to hear these from my children and this is not like an exhaustive story it's just the stories i have from now so i just want to thank all y'all and for everything you have to offer um because my my family my little family is just we're benefiting so thank you elizabeth harris after elizabeth it's blair house first i want to say thank you for allowing me to speak today my name is elizabeth paris and i'm here today to stand up to bullies and fight back on my son's behalf what is bullying according to policy board policy 6.304 bully includes the active substantially that substantially interferes with students educational benefits opportunities or performance bullying is
134unwanted aggressive repeated behaviors that involve a power imbalance that places a student in reasonable fear and causes a hostile education environment the types of bullying are verbal physical and social my son has been bullied by one child since the seventh grade my son has been a victim of every type of bullying he has been threatened multiple times and taunted every day in the school halls and classrooms my son was warned of an attack by his bully and the other students in the school i've reached out to the school several times begging for their help the dean of students promised me that the full staff who would be notified and would handle it i learned later by the day that the dean of students never followed through with its promise from the principal fast forward to
135march 7 2022 my son is seen walking off the bus at 2 34 pm and he begins to walk home the child is seen getting off the bus at a bus stop that's not his own and the child follows my son with intent the bus footage shows my child that the bully makes himself known to my child and then the bus drives away as the bus drives away the child yanks my son's book bag and demands my son to take it off he tells my son that there's going to be an attack my son begins to speak to the child to explain he didn't want to fight and then he just didn't want him to talk about his mama my son said i'm not taking my book back off and he tried to continue walking
136at this time another individual starts to record the interaction in the video you hear the child state don't walk away and he proceeds to tell my child come on full you might as well take your stuff off stop trying to talk your way out of this this child then holds his fist up for a fist bump and as my child sits his book back down he slowly and reluctantly raises his fist then my son raises his hands to protect his face and the aggressor swings and misses my son backs away from the swing to protect himself further the aggressor then pegs my son up slams him against the ground on the concrete road and begins to repeatedly hit my son in the head as my son lays on the ground covering his head with his
137arms the aggressor begins to verbally attack my son and continues to hold him to the ground and attack him my son tries to kick his feet at an attempt to free himself from being attacked the aggressor then grabs my son arm and yank it you can hear my son scream ow and begs to let him up the video ends the aggressor then stands and tells my son that he respects him and then yes as he runs away he tells the person to send his video and later publicly post the video stating and i quote eli got his rocked in this video my son never lays a hand on this child the only thing you see my son do is desperately try to defend himself and break free from the attack as a result of this
138my son had two procedures with the possibility of a third in his future the first procedure didn't work they had to just sedate him and re-break his arm and then they put it in a cast and sleep then he had to have surgery to rebuild the space between his hand and his arm he longer elongate his arm back to normal length and then put external pins to hold the bones from moving this child is a habitual repeat offender with sexual and physical assault charges the child just recently returned from alternative schools and quickly resumed his normal routine of attacks there seems to be racial injustice and discrimination here my son was suspended for 10 days and not allowed on campus yet the aggressor has been verified to be on campus many days since the assault
139and battery took place just recently the aggressor was seen at the end of the r road reenacting what he did to my son the zero police tolerance policy states on page 12 that staff and administrators are protected from such an attack and without question the student would be expelled for one calendar year but nowhere in this policy are students protected if this happens to them and that needs to change today my son's bully gave him no other choice but to stand and face him this bully is a danger to all students it's time to take a stand and get this boy out of the school for the rest of the year you say you commit to a future where all students thrive who's gonna pretend stop protecting bullies and start protecting our children and victims
140like my son thank you [Applause] thank you uh blair house thank you board for allowing me to speak to you today my name is blair brown but you call me blair house the past seven months my baby he is 10 years old has been an attack on a boy seven months he has a door a busted nose he's indoors this boy pushing him down and hitting his head on the floor my son has been bitten and scratched by this voice i have done everything i have changed his classes i have talked to the school the schools like oh i promise you there's there's separation and that they can't get to each other but yet it's still happening and yet now that believes that baby has his friend bullying my son how much more can my
141family take my 10 year old's on anti-depressants because of this my 10 year boy is suffering emotionally physically and mentally he screams in his sleep begging for this boy to start hurting him what is it gonna take for you all to step up and do something enough is enough no it's time for y'all to help my baby and all these other children that are a victim of bullying my husband wants to say something thank you my son's name is gilbert and i tried first going to the teachers to get this to stop didn't work tried going through principles didn't help either they absolutely assured me that they would be separated not separated at all tried to go through the superintendent we got the brush off absolutely nothing happened about that i have to get up
142with my kid at least once or twice a night because he's screaming and crying and asleep i've had to go get him just the other day he was pushed face first into the basketball goal on purpose nothing done about it it's my job as a father to protect my child i'm doing my job it's y'all's job to protect my child whenever he's at school and nobody's doing their job i don't say that to be rude but it needs to change today i'm i'm a fed up father i've had enough thank you miss jones do we know the schools because i know that we i know we heard that i heard red bank middle i didn't hear i didn't hear the school for the broken arm and then the school with the ten-year-old okay thank you
143sorry jeanette oh markell after uh jeanette will be loretta lowe okay i'm here this evening to speak to a comment that was made last week that hca no longer represents teachers hca has been represented and advocating for teachers in public education for over 100 years and is not going anywhere are we the only ones who advocate for teachers no we are a member organization and other groups and teachers themselves are speaking to you and to the district but hca is still here represented advocating and we're not going anywhere to clarify for the community the reason we represent navigate for teachers has not changed it is even part of the district's strategy strategic plan great teachers great leaders that equals great schools high student achievement and a strong community but it must prioritize great teachers and
144great leaders hca represents and advocates to assure that we can work with the district to achieve what is best for our students hca is here to continue speaking up for the needs of the teachers so they can focus on the teaching and learning of your students hca is able to provide this support because we have access to resources from our state and national association aca has been a support to hamilton county schools by providing resources and providing financial resources to support programs and training over the years over the past 20 years we have supported and partnered to bring in almost three million dollars in grant money from the national education association to support the middle schools initiative new teacher induction national board certification stem education and we are currently waiting for a response from nea
145on a grant which will provide three quarters of a million dollars over three years to support new educators hca has been chosen for all hamilton county teachers for over 75 years in contract negotiations and now collaborative conferencing we have developed a very positive collaborative relationship that works to recruit and retain staff in hamilton county great teachers great leaders requires great compensation and great support from the community the board and the administration the memorandum of understanding helps solidify that support we help shed a light on areas that need strengthening in our collaborations we know that students thrive when their environment is one that is positive and supported hcs as a whole strives for this on a daily basis teachers and leaders also thrive in a positive and supportive environment this translates to lower staff turnover in
146schools and higher district retention which we know is best for students as you are starting the budget process and watching what is happening at the state level hca will be here to speak to the need for increased compensation for all certified and classified staff we will continue to speak up for respecting teachers as professionals we will continue to speak up for respecting teachers time we will continue to speak up to stop the test and punish culture that has been created in tennessee we will continue to speak up for what is right you may not see all that we do as much as behind the scenes and in conversations with district leaders but we are here and actively advocating on a daily basis again hcas were still representing teachers in hamilton county we're not going anywhere
147we are here to support public education we are here to support what is best for schools we are here to support what is best for children great teachers great leaders equal great schools equal great student achievement equal a stronger community thank you after loretta will have josie madison um my name is loretta lowe and i want to thank all of y'all for letting me address the meeting today i've got a few concerns and questions um some is fact and some is what of what i'm about to say is my opinion participating in sex is illegal for anyone under 18 in tennessee that's fact sex is meant for adults that's a fact talking about sex reading about sex so basically basically anything related to sex is not needed in the lives of children and certainly not
148appropriate in school so i'm confident that the new policies will remove the grooming from the schools including the sex clubs like the gsa club at hunter middle school audience please the gsa club i'll continue there the gsa club that stands for gay straight alliance which is a club that's advertised at hunter middle school on posters in the hallways that tells when and where their meetings are being held schools must stop promoting sex as it is illegal for kids audience i had two issues but i think hbo hb 1944 will address my first issue about obscene and poor materials in our schools so and i am today formally complaining and bringing awareness to sex clubs whether it be gay straight or whatever it's sex clubs so now i'll skip down to part two of my concerns
149it has to do with tennessee law code 49-6-4503 and code 49-6-4504 which are the bullying laws according to chairperson of hamilton county commissioner's office sabrina smedley her statement's not mine quote gangs are introduced to kids in elementary schools and then middle schoolers are joining the gangs end quote knowing this and with the policies that we currently have are our kids really being protected at school from violence do we have gang units currently in place that identifies these gang members that are in our middle schools or high schools are the disciplined policies really addressing the level of violence that is happening gang activity is allowed six offenses before on the seventh offense it becomes a one-year suspension yet a bully victim faces up to 30-day suspension if they defend themselves according to a policy of mutual
150combat filing recently we've had cases of bullying that have addressed this board even today and after going through all the channels required by hcde policy they have called students to be removed from school and now our home school are forced to change schools is it possible that we need to adopt new or change some of the policies to address the bullying and the gang activities so that the punishment reflects the violent crimes this is where it's going to get personal from me recently my granddaughter was a victim of blood the bullies threatened her repeatedly at school and she reported it repeatedly staff physically walked her to class at times she couldn't even use the restroom without being harassed or threatened to being beaten up this group went as far as to make up a fake
151tick tock accounts where they would pretend to be heard and then get used those account bank accounts to post racist homophobic comments on other students tick tocks this is a very dangerous and it can be and it can cause a victim to become seriously hurt or killed if by chance one of the gang members decides to attack thankfully she is now out of hunter middle school where this was happening but sadly she was forced out because of these bullies this is not hall chatter anymore this is not school drama i'm sure the bullies have a new victim by now it is some and it's also my understanding that there's a teacher at hunter middle school that has also became a victim to this very same thing of a fake tick tock account made up and
152then commenting on other students post as if this teacher was racist and or homophobic this behavior could end this teacher's career or get students seriously injured so i respectfully ask that the policies be revisited about bullying and be taken more seriously what starts his bullying or harassment most often turns to assaults on a victim i saw the video of the young man at brown middle school just a couple of weeks ago that was assaulted near his bus by boy the mother the mother had already reported to staff that her son was being bullied by this young man yet the victim was suspended the same exact same amount of days as the bully because he defended himself sadly the staff have have stated that their hands are tied because of policies and protocols that are required
153to use via policy of hamilton county department education any student that commits aggravated assault that's your time ma'am i gave you 10 extra seconds for the interruption next we have uh josie madison after that we will have heather madrow hi my name is josie and i'm here to tell you what i've experienced with bullying throughout schools i've seen all kinds of bullying bullying throughout my school years and my younger sister who is now in high school in middle school well throughout middle school and her high school career whether it be people calling us names or talking about my weight or trying to start physical fights everybody i was always reminded that teachers would take care of it and that schools do not tolerate bullying and quite frankly they do tolerate i haven't had an encounter
154with a girl in eighth grade and i had been fed up with her making fun of me i took it to the sro officer at brown middle school and was told that i would be suspended if i brought it up again if i had came to them with the matter 10th grade at central high school i was minding my business and came across students laughing and making fun of a special needs student in my choir class i didn't want to cause a scene so i went down to the guidance counselors and had brought it up to them they said that it would be taken care of and it was not it was continued that whole school year they had sat there and made spun fun of a special needs student and that's why i'm here
155today to ask why is it always said that it's going to be taken care of why is it that y'all are based on telling kids that they have a safe learning space when reality speaks we actually don't why is it that kids are having to deal with this in school because no one actually will stand up and have it taken care of and it's not just students bullying other students the teachers are just as much bullies as i've had even had a teacher tell me and the rest of my class that we would amount to nothing i was always told to do and go to teachers and principals about this and it was never taken care of and i'm sure that she's still telling students that they will amount to nothing how do you expect
156people to grow up learning that they will amount to nothing just because a teacher says so it's disrespectful and it needs to be taken care of thank you thank you uh next will be heather madrow after that we'll have mallory hollingsworth wow that's really hard to follow a lot of the bullying um i'm going to switch gears with budget season upon you i want to tell you about my students and their needs i teach exceptional education with a wide variety of abilities and disability labels including autism special learning disabilities including dyslexia intellectually disabled hearing impaired vision impaired and language impaired their iqs range from 47 to 147 i have a twice gifted child if you are thinking about how to prioritize the budget please think about what these special students need to have a great
157education and what their teachers need to provide it i was going to talk about the 500 bonus and honestly i don't need that i'm okay and i can't speak for everybody 500 isn't going to support my students i would rather have that money go into a different way and that's what i want to talk about i need more supports for my students no matter how hard i try i have not figured out how to be in three places at once my direct service students need me to teach them how to break the phonetic code so that they can learn how to read i am and it's working and i can prove that with my data my students need me to be in the general education class to give them the necessary supports to be successful
158with the core curriculum of reading writing and math my intensive support students need me to teach them basic life skills in a self-contained classroom which we don't have anymore my students with behavior issues and their teachers need me to be on call when a student has a meltdown or a major behavior crisis their teacher needs my me to like basically drop and run try as i might i haven't figured out how to clone myself instead i have to prioritize which student needs what at that exact given moment that means that we place more priority on the general education teacher to meet the needs of students with disabilities which takes away from teaching and learning time in that classroom would i want the 500 sure who wouldn't but what i really needed is to better be
159able to support my students they need the educational assistance to support them in the general education classroom they need more behavioral supports so that some of this bullying won't happen they need a place to go when they are in a crisis they need me to be able to teach my lesson plans so that students are able to decode and read they need a properly staffed self-contained classroom i'm doing it all their needs are not being met when staff are stretched so thin over the seven years that i've worked at my school we have lost both ex-head teachers and assistants but the number and intensity of the students with disabilities has increased please explain that math to me i don't get it we need more educational assistance my assistant does six math inclusion classes for third
160fourth and fifth grade she teaches alongside with me for a reading group she does bus duty and pretty much everything if we had more educational assistance our students would get more than 30 minutes of support a day but she's given me permission to tell you this she makes 570 dollars every paycheck two weeks eleven hundred a month please tell me where she can live for 1100 a month we need to help these people we need them to stay with us they are an asset for our students we need to hire more and we need to pay them better they deserve it having them work for 1100 a month is poverty shame on us if i got that 500 that's who i would give it to my assistant i can't do my job without her my
161students need her and i need her and we need more just like her thank you next will be mallory hollingsworth hello i'm mallory hollingsworth i am a mom of a 15 year old girl in hamilton county school and a registered nurse with 11 years of experience eight of which have been in mental health positive mental health is important for a functioning society it is crucial for youth to begin to establish a strong sense of self in their developing years in order to become strong functioning adults the us department of education reports positive mental health promotes success in life mental health is important at every stage of life from childhood and adolescence through adulthood unfortunately not everybody is able to establish a strong sense of self when they are young according to the national institute of
162health and cdc suicide is the leading cause of death in the united states suicide rates in 2020 were 30 percent higher than in 2000. in 2019 suicide was the second leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 10 and 24. the mental health crisis for youth has reached a critical point 13 to 22 percent of school-aged youth experienced a mental health challenge associated with formal diagnosis researchers estimate that 80 percent of those children have unmet treatment needs the escalating mental health needs of our youth are largely unmet due to insufficient capacity multiple barriers to care and disparities across populations while the most recommended solution for mental health issues today is pharmacology and therapy this may not be attainable for a significant portion of the population rising healthcare costs and lack of access to
163affordable insurance only increase that difficulty according to psychology today the average therapy appointment costs between a hundred and two hundred dollars per session typically a psychiatrist would recommend a minimum of once per month visits for medication management plus two to four therapy sessions per month this can cost upwards of five hundred to a thousand dollars per month per child even those who can afford the extra expense likely do not have the time to commit to such a demanding schedule in this area there simply isn't the supply of psychiatric professionals specifically geared towards children to meet the demand because of this suicidal youth may not have the access to the professional support or coping mechanisms necessary to win their battle one of the simplest quickest and most direct ways to fill in the gaps for youth
164is the ability to find themselves in reading materials provided at school where they spend approximately 30 percent of their waking hours a book in your school library that talks openly about suicidal ideation and coping can be the representation a struggling youth needs to feel seen connected and most importantly not alone to help them through such dark times parents of children within the school system have the ability to petition for review of books they feel are inappropriate or opt out of a particular book that is being used as education material for their child as the policy is parents who do not have children in the public school system do not have this ability the problem with a few people attempting to ban books they feel are inappropriate is that they are making a decision for many
165without the experience of many the fact is children are always going to have access to materials and ideas that parents don't like or approve of attempting to control and or limit this access generally only brings more entry to the subject i prefer a child to reach this material under the safety of a school library where it has been peer reviewed and approved where there is the option of many different adults and classmates that they can reach out to as opposed to alone if a child is shielded from an appropriate channel for materials such as a school library they would turn instead to material they have found on the internet that isn't approved by anyone and can cause more harm than good there are many benefits to having reading reading materials available to kids thus it
166is very difficult to consider banning materials that have already been cleared as appropriate i argue that not only do we need to step forward with tremendous caution regarding removing difficult materials but actually add to it so that our youth can find their life-saving connection when everything seems so lost it is our ethical responsibility as members of this community to fight against such a significantly devastating outcome as suicide with all available resources if you are really concerned about protecting our kids you will support providing valuable reading materials that could save someone's life and if you or someone you know is struggling please contact the national suicide prevention lifeline 1-800-273-talk thank you to everyone that uh spoke uh you have the legal services report um in your uh agenda packet um that goes down to events and
167announcements any events or announcements from the board you have into the third quarter march 18th report cards march 25th no students on march 21st to teach your professional development budget workshop which will be our next meeting on april 4th then we have spring break april 11th through the 14th april 15th spring holiday and central office is closed we have another budget workshop on the 18th of april along with agenda session and that will probably be our budget policy uh meeting and then thursday april 21st another budget work session and then a regular board meeting if you have any policies you want to pull outside of the ones we've talked about tonight please send that to mr walker and we can bring those up at the next meeting any other announcements okay with that we will
168adjourn you