HCS Board Meeting 11/11/21

001call the meeting to order roll call please miss board here thank you for that um only amendments we have the agenda night are under uh delegations um we'll add uh jamie hall audrey ramsey and reid uberman do i have a motion to approve the agenda so moved second roll call please yes this is robinson yes mr smith yes yes with that we'll uh go into our pledge to the flag and meditation by uh miss pharaoh principal of east lake elementary oh good evening i'm jasmine farrell principal of east lake elementary and i'm melissa caulfield assistant principal of east lake elementary today is november 11th and i'd like to share with you a statement from nelson mandela i learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it the brave man is

002not he who does feel afraid but he who conquers that fear a veteran whether active duty discharged retired or reserved is someone at one point in his life who wrote a blank check made payable to the united states of america for an amount up to and including his life that is honor i ask you to honor our veterans today by pledging allegiance to the flag 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 for tonight's meditation i want to speak briefly on the topic of going back to normal so i think we shouldn't go back to normal because normal just was not good enough so right now we are at the

003cusp of pre-pandemic living many people are hopeful to return back to a sense of normalcy but in light of this possibility i would like for us to take a moment and reflect on a few things that have been awakened in the last 20 months creativity innovative ideas strategic problem solving empathy prioritization a strong value of time and a focus on mental health hamilton county schools have been a shining example of operating outside of the norm i have become a better leader and a stronger advocate for the eastlake community by operating outside of the norm so at this unique time we should not strive for normalcy rather we should strive to be an anomaly we should stand out from the rest be set apart from the crowd that's looking to go back to normal and rather

004we should continue to look for new and innovative ways to push forward for the students of hamilton county thank you [Applause] move into our exemplars of excellence with our recognization of blue ribbon schools with dr robert sharp and dr neely parker good evening chairman mclendon interim superintendent dr towns and members of the board it is a great honor to stand before you today with mr jeff paulson to recognize thrasher elementary as a national blue ribbon school the national blue ribbon schools program recognizes public and private elementary schools based on their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing the achievement gap and every year the united states department of education seeks out to celebrate great american schools demonstrating that all students can achieve at high levels just recently in washington dc thrasher elementary was recognized

005by the united states department of education for the excellent work that they've done for students so mr paulson it is my great pleasure to recognize you tonight for being a nation the principal of a national blue ribbon school thrasher elementary [Applause] oh thank you um i didn't i did not prepare anything to say but i do feel compelled to speak if that's that's okay yeah being veterans day i do want to to start off by saying that we are so grateful to live in a country where our veterans have provided a freedom for us that we're in a place where we all can pitch in to provide a public education for every every person and of all of america i am grateful to to be in tennessee and of all tennessee to be here in

006hamilton county and to be part of hamilton county schools this is um the leadership that we've had these last several years has taken i think extreme talent in our schools and focused them all in one direction at a target that's about making having children thrive or they experience a future without limits i mean these are the words that we have at every meeting we start off with and i know that when it comes to my own school what i would say as a principle is what every principal will say but i do want to say you know our kids they work joyfully and they work hard they give their very best every day whether it's in relationships with each other or or their academics our teachers have taken on every challenge head-on and been innovative

007and and work to provide as normal of a experience as possible and our peer our parents god bless our parents what they've had to do the last 18 months and they've done it they've backed us up they've supported us they've sought you know support from us and the relationship we've had has grown has been amazing so this is um this is part of that out of like what seventeen hundred some schools that there are in tennessee the state was able to nominate six and there's a there are other schools in hamilton county that met the criteria and could have been nominated so um while i'm proud to celebrate my school i would like this to be seen as a representation of what hamilton county schools have done if there's a blue ribbon county it should

008be hamlet county so i want um thank you all for this and for recognizing the school tonight [Music] thank you and congratulations next we'll go into the recommendation of the t double s double a af bridges award winners by dr justin robertson and mr jackson our district athletic director is going to present us but embarrass him for a second and wish him a happy veterans day former united states [Applause] thank you very much dr robertson on behalf of the operations department and me being the campus support specialist for hamilton county schools i thank the school board chairman mclendon interim superintendent dr townes and dr robertson for allowing me to present these awards today this award or the af bridges division awards are presented by the tws double a this award is given in honor of

009the tws double a's first executive secretary bridges served as an executive secretary from 1946 until 1972. under his leadership athletics in the state of tennessee reached a level of excellence and competence that earned the respect of all people according to the tws double-a bridges was a person of high principles who displayed firmness and fairness as well as the high ideals of ethics and integrity as he and many other school people establish the foundation of the tws double a across the state in total there are seven af bridges award winners given out each year to each of the three athletic districts across the state of tennessee the award is given for the school system administrator of the year principal of the year athletic director of the year female coach of the year male coach of the

010year and the official uh and the in sorry and the contributor of the year at this time we are lucky enough in hamilton county to have four of these distinguished honors at this time will the following please come to the podium principal of the year steve henry who is now retired but he received this from saudi daisy high school the athletic director of the year michael bumper reese from signal mountain middle high school female coach of the year miriam arnold from the chattanooga school of the arts and sciences and the contributor of the year david kellman formerly at east hamilton high school [Music] and at this time i'm going to present them with plaques from and i'll read this in recognition for your accomplishment in receiving the tws double af bridges award for district three

011hamilton county schools and the hamilton county school board want to thank you for your leadership and commitment to our school system which this award signifies miss arnold [Applause] thank you very much for allowing me to present these awards thank you mr mcclendon yesterday soon real quick yeah mr winkett so i wanted to thank all four of you uh i know three um mrs arnold i haven't made your acquaintance yet but thank you for for what you've done coach henry thank you for your many many years of service soddy daisy uh bumper 41. [Music] bumper thank you for your many years of service at red bank and signal mountain and mr kellman thank you for all that you do for the east hamilton community that most people do not know and i know you like it

012that way so i'll i'll keep it that way and also we need to recognize mr brad jackson because he was inducted into the national wrestling hall of fame last week for his contributions for wrestling and many many many talented folks in hamilton county schools not just in our classrooms but on our fields our mats our courts not as lean not as mean always a marine that's right thank you next we'll move into our presentations uh by interim superintendent dr townes okay thank you thank you very much so uh we have the pleasure tonight of uh updating the board on our future ready 2023 plan and tonight we want to focus in on whole child supports we've spent the past couple of months really talking about academic press and the things that we're doing around academic

013achievement but personalization is also one of the frames that we lean into particularly around culture of care so as we always want to start we really lean into our just cause that is all children thrive and experience a future without limits and we know that thrive is a big word it goes beyond academic outcomes and it's really about how are the children doing midtown dr sonya stewart lifted this up that if you ask how are the children or do how are the children doing we want to answer that the children are well and so this is how we confirm that the children are doing well of course the board our mission is that we will try to create those pathways to bright children uh to bright futures for all of our children to help them

014realize their full potential and we do this around these five action areas of the future ready 2023 plan we've talked a lot about how we're going to meet the goals these focus 5 performance targets are future ready 2023 and even with the disruption of the pandemic we are still making sure that we're focused on trying to meet these goals over the next couple of years one of the things we've been elevating is that in order to meet those goals in future ready 2023 we've got to focus on all of our children and particularly our children in the historically underserved groups and so we've elevated this slide before when you look at our district 70 of the tests taken in our district are taken by children who are in one of these accountability subgroups and the

015thing that we've noticed is that students who are not in one of those subgroups are performing at three times three times the level as our students in those groups and so that means to meet our future ready 2023 goals we've got to be able to support those children to high levels of achievement and one of the ways we're going to do that is by making sure we look at whole child supports so we're going to focus on two areas tonight and we have a few people here with us to really talk about all the work we've been doing we'll focus on accelerating student achievement one of those strategies was closing the opportunity gap and we really want to give you a deep dive into all the ways that we're doing this and focusing within school

016on how we integrate those multi-tiered systems of support and then of course we have to connect the school efforts to the community to families as we know we have the children for 20 of the time but 80 of their time is spent outside of school so we have to build strong connections to families and communities so you're going to see that tonight as we've been working over the last four years in hamilton county we really have this continuum of integrated student supports that we are going to highlight and so we've had several strategies that we've been doing in hamilton county schools and now we're really scaling up and expanding those strategies to be able to support uh whole the whole child in our schools and so the agenda for tonight uh we're going to have

017uh uh some of our leaders talk to you about social and emotional learning and counselors uh we're gonna really define and talk about this culture of care that we want to create we're going to talk about the work of our student supports particularly social workers and truancy specialists and and then we want to highlight our work with community forward our community schools framework and then finally we'll talk about the overarching effort of family and community engagement so with that i want to hand this off to ms patricia russell who is our director of social emotional learning right thank you dr townsend good evening uh board chairman mr mcclendon and to the board members and um again to our fierce leader and advocate for students interim superintendent dr townes it's a pleasure to be here to

018talk about all of the work that's been done to support not just our students academic success but their non-academic success as well so i have the pleasure of being the leader of our social emotional learning department our team is composed of mental health and behavior resources k-12 school counseling student success planning and college and career at bosbury in our department our belief is that we're determined to move from a one-size-fit-all educational approach and to really focus on individualizing success and education for our students the way that we're doing this work is by using a multi-tiered system of support system if you notice the model on the left the multi-tiered system of support system has three different tiers the very first tier is considered to be the universal tier and it's the tier that 80 to

01985 percent of our students fit into now we all know that all students are not going to reach the goal on tier one so we also allow students to to receive targeted supports which is tier two it's roughly about ten to fifteen percent of our students will fit into tier two and then that last here is tier three where three to five percent of our students will fit into that intensive supports so keep this three-tiered uh model in mind because you'll hear it as we go throughout our presentation today we also align with castle's framework around social emotional learning which includes the five competencies you have self-awareness self-management social awareness relationship skills as well as responsible decision-making skills these skills are operationalized into the work that we push out in the resources that we provide

020for our schools if you notice we have four components in which we support our schools and our students we focus on classroom practices school practices sel supports for adults as well as we elevate district supports to go out into our schools support our principals our students our families as well as others that might need um support one of the strategies that we've highlighted over the last couple of years or that we've implemented was a tool called a panorama screener or we use it as our student well-being measure at the beginning of the year when our students enter it is our goal to assure that we know where they are developmentally and we provide the supports needed in order to elevate them or to help them thrive so our social emotional learning screener allows us to

021find out where student development skills are around the five competencies it also helps us to create a safe environment or learning environment for our students an example of a question that will be on our seo screener will simply be you know how can how do students poor excuse me how often can our students pull themselves out of a bad mood as you notice we have roughly about 36 percent of our students that can and 64 that says they don't do so well with that so we would know that this was an area that we would target for our kids all of the work that i just described funnels into a bigger system of work that we call student success planning now i know a lot of you are familiar with this student success planning again

022gives us an opportunity to assess students and to become aware of their successes as well as their challenges it also gives us an opportunity to connect them with resources inside as well as outside of the building and then we take these plans that we create these individual plans and we manage them for student success this work is done by a collective group of individuals it's often school counselors social workers teachers principals we all come together and we discuss individual kids again we look at their successes as well as some of their challenges and we prepare them or excuse me we uh place them um or give them interventions as well as preventions that they need to be successful this is how plan is built again we take data we use this data to build a

023plan around students academic social emotional learning future ready which is college and career and then family and health supports we build a plan for a student we pair them with interventions again as well as provide preventions to help them be successful in the classroom as well as outside of the classroom so this piece here is really exciting within the last past few weeks we've been able to add a student success planning link to our class links which i'm sure you all are very familiar with shannon moody and her team along with john cunningham which is here today they've worked really hard to make student success planning accessible to all individuals within our district on next school year we're looking to expand student success planning for k all k 8 schools this year currently all teachers

024have access to student success planning through class links are single sign-on this is what our platform looks like this is it has our components the academic domains it has social emotional the health domain the family domain again we look at each area for our students and then we measure and we find out what their successes are which are the assets as well as their challenges and then we provide the individualized support they need to be successful we have scaled this uh process over the last two excuse me this is year three we started with eight schools we are now up to 22 schools that are implementing student success plans and i think currently we have roughly about 5600 plans that's been created for students i want you to be aware that ssp or student success

025planning is not a program it's not just a platform but it is the way that we will do business for students in hamilton county schools quote dr townes so i'm going to transition just a bit to talk about a culture of care you know as well as we know over the last several months there's been an increase in behavior and we're really focusing as a district to be proactive while creating a culture of care or climate of care in every school i'm going to invite my colleague karen glenn to come up because we're going to transition in just a second but this is a picture here of the students at orchard not middle school some of the things that they're doing to create a culture of care is that they're really focusing on peer-to-peer relationships

026they're also focusing on excuse me teacher to peer relationships while elevating that social emotional learning one of the things that we do to find out how to create a climate of care or a culture of care is that we go to our data so this here is the school climate survey and one of the questions that we just kind of looked through to get a feel for where our kids were when it comes to bullying or behavior is we ask excuse me the survey has students this school year how often has someone made fun of you or called your names as you notice for our elementary students 22 said at least once a week for our secondary students 13 said at least once a week now we really want those numbers to be zero so

027even though that's not a high percentage we don't want any of our students to be insulted or feel like they're being bullied last question before i hand it over if another student was bullying me i would report it to a teacher or another adult at the school of course we want all of our students to report if you notice on the left you have your part your pie chart that shows where elementary students indicate being more likely to report bullying than our secondary students again that's something that we want to change because our goal is to create a safe atmosphere for students while they're in our school buildings karen glenn is going to talk to you a little bit more about the bullying report thank you patricia as we focus on maintaining our culture of

028care we absolutely want to make sure that our school climate is such that it prevents bullying so the graph that you see here is some data that we compiled from 2019 through the first quarter of 2021 and the information that you see here reflects the confirmed cases as reported by principles the disciplinary action that was taken by the administration and the students that were trained after dramatic climb in bullion incidences doing the pandemic and the return of the pre-coveted levels indicate a need to accelerate student training in peer mediation and move to stand so as patricia said all of our schools have a rti behavior team and so we're focusing now on reinforcing those positive behaviors and highlighting those so that we can maintain what we need to maintain to help our students to feel

029safe and that's going to begin by promoting kindness on world kindness day which is just next week november the 13th and that is going to be led by the social emotional learning supports so as we transition to begin to talk specifically about the school social workers and truancy specialists we know that unmet needs can prevent students from being present and prepared and so that's a great segue into the role of our school social workers and our truancy specialists to more specifically talk about their role they're both using that multi-tiered system of support and for the school social workers they are advancing the district's mission by supporting the mental physical and emotional well-being of school-aged students by connecting home school and community with our truancy specialists they are ensuring that the guardians of school-aged children are

030adhering to the tennessee department of uh education attendance mandates and so the goal there is to prevent reduce and intervene with school truancy so this graph here talks about our attendance and our truancy data and one of the things i think is really important to highlight here is when we began the first year of implementing the tiered intervention which was in 2018 and 2019 chronic absenteeism was reduced from 16.3 percent to 12.6 percent currently 91 of our school truancy's numbers are trending below pre-pandemic totals so as we think about what the tiered approach looks like for our school social workers and our truancy specialists tier one for the school social workers is all about education everybody in the school needs to know how to access the service how to send referrals how to identify a

031student that is in need of additional support and so our school social workers are providing that information so that they will know how to do that as far as the truancy specialist they are collaborating with the administration in creating a attendance team so that they can effectively pass through or respond to those cases of unexcused absences for the tier two for the school social workers they are focusing on facilitating or co-facilitating topic-specific small groups this can be on grief it can be on behavior it can be mental health or what the situation may dictate for the truancy specialists they conduct a needs assessment with each individual family that has been truant so they can determine what the issues are that's causing the absenteeism at the tier 3 level with that individualized support they will the

032social workers will respond to the individual referrals and in that they may do home visits or they may connect with homebound services or educational medical or vision services with the truancy specialist they will be involved with the community attendance review board and this is a board where there is a school social worker the truancy specialist along with juvenile court there's also dcs and some of our service providers so that we can ask the families this is what we have provided from the needs assessment what have we missed so we have the partners that are right there that they can make that service so the collaborative support includes data driven decision with the related stakeholders the one on the left side of the in-house stakeholders the administrators and all of the personnel that will help to

033drive the decisions that's best for the student the list on the right those are the community partners that we align with connecting that service and so at this time i'm going to pass it over to dr caitlin stewart who's going to share with us community forward thank you karen so we have the privilege of serving 45 000 of the best and brightest students in our district despite the resilient and capable nature we know that they face academic and non-academic barriers to their success so it is our responsibility and our privilege to equip schools with strong structures and systems that positively impact how our students learn and how they develop so our vision is to see students and families thriving we're going to accomplish that by strengthening the connections between students and their families their schools

034and their communities so community forward is our district's framework for the community school model we focus on four different pillars the first is integrated student supports the second is enhanced learning opportunities the third is active family community engagement and the fourth is college and career readiness the function of community forward within our district is to create and strengthen partnerships that support our schools in providing wrap-around services that align to these four areas we know that our schools maximize operations by focusing on two main buckets the first being academic press and the second being personalization academic press refers to all things teaching and learning and personalization refers to our culture of care community forward schools are going to live on the personalization side of those buckets and i like to think of community forward as a

035bridge that closes gaps by coordinating specialized services providing out of school enrichment and remediation activities as well as promoting engagement among all of our stakeholders specifically our families in our community and ensuring that our students are prepared for post-secondary opportunities the partnerships that are being developed support our district's vision of fostering environments that encourage students to thrive and experience a future without limits community forward support teams work collaboratively collaboratively to assess and identify student needs as well as to develop interventions that address obstacles to student success everyone has a seat at the table all stakeholders because all students deserve really strong teams so northside neighborhood house is an organization that has been leading the community school initiative within our district for years rachel gammon and yang matthews i'm sure are names that you all are

036familiar with they are passionate and effective leaders within this work and it's evident in the relationships that they've built with their stakeholders in the rock point and north river communities so one of the major focuses of community forward and student success planning is to really improve the exchange of information between stakeholders and so the shift to intentional collaboration and the focus on those four pillars will allow us to expand the reach and caliber of the wraparound services that we're providing to our students i'm going to pass it over to rachel eamond she is a member of the face department specializing in community engagement thank you everyone so i'm going to talk to you a little bit today about how our family and community engagement team partners with community to support student achievement so first and

037foremost we did recently restructure to be able to better serve our parents schools and community partners um we'll be we pulled our staff up to district level uh to really be able to focus on these three areas and we'll soon be onboarding a new family resource center facilitator to specifically focus on building the capacity of parents to be stronger partners in their children's education so over the last three years we have worked with over 150 partners to provide 215 programs that support student success in the district and we determined this through our district asset mapping project that we worked on with united way and several other partners as well but united way was our primary functional partner throughout this program so this asset map was developed for support staff in schools to be able to

038use to better serve families and students as they're connecting them to outside resources in the community and it's also the process that we relied on to identify the partners we want to bring into that student success planning platform as we work on what that referral and connection process will look like moving forward the frc facilitator that we're bringing on will be responsible for keeping this map updated so that it's truly a living document for our support staff to be able to use so now i'll talk a little bit about some specific programs that we've been running of course you all have heard about this program already but can't forget about it so since august of 2020 we've connected over 15 000 students to free wi-fi services through our partnership with epb and the enterprise center

039and our outside funding partners as we continue signing up families for this program we are partnering with the enterprise center to provide grants to staff and schools for their efforts on getting the remaining eligible students signed up so through that partnership we'll be able to provide over sixty thousand dollars to schools and staff to reward them for the work on this program which is really exciting um first day ready is one of our family and community engagement teams most successful community partnership and integrated supports programs so this past summer at our back to school bash we were supported by 58 partners to provide 2 800 backpacks full of school supplies to students before the school year started through the support of the creative discovery museum we developed a kindergarten readiness booklet that was district branded

040which was really great we printed a thousand copies of this and it included information on the skills that students need to be ready for the first day of kindergarten and then beyond for the first 100 days of school so those 1 000 copies went to all hamilton county schools rising kindergartners and our pre-k programs and also several of our surrounding pre-k partners as well and then on our better together day of service we brought 87 volunteers together to support 10 projects throughout the district beautifying campus different campuses throughout the county to get them ready for the first day of school parent university is another program that our team coordinates so this program offers both on-demand and in-person training this year we're really excited to get back to in-person training so we've got a couple coming

041up on powerschool which is really cool and our new youtube channel which is another new feature of parent university this year provides playlists based on learning needs and specifically features two new series on family literacy and home literacy skills and then also on college readiness our team works with several community partners to also be able to provide parent university trainings at school buildings so we work with partners like family justice center tech goes home in the urban league just to name a few to provide different skills trainings in school buildings we recently recently hosted our first ever district-wide family literacy festivals in the harrison bay and missionary ridge learning communities um so we worked with 10 community partners and several district educators to connect over 150 over right at basically 150 students to literacy skills

042and super fun literacy activities through the help of some of the public libraries in the area we were also able to provide them with healthy meals and community resources like siempa and signal centers at these events as well and we'll be hosting several more of these throughout the year i think the next couple of years to come actually so we've already started working on planning the ones that we'll be hosting next semester and then just a little bit more about what our family resource center does so their primary focus is connecting families to systems of support in the community so that they're empowered to be active members in their child's education but also to be self-sufficient beyond that one of the things that they worked on recently was working with the united way to get

043their two-on-one access on the classlink single sign-on so that all students and staff have direct access to this through that program which allows for quick and easy confidential access to hundreds of resources in the community and the next major endeavor for the family resource center as we onboard that new facilitator will be a physical frc location and then last but certainly not least our team collaborates really strongly with our esl department to serve families through our new international welcome center so this center was launched on september 24th and since has served over 15 families and these families are specifically newcomers to the country and to the district and we're very grateful for the work that diego trujillo and carly richardson have done to be able to serve newcomer families in this way we hope to

044have a grand opening with community partners soon but you can see in some of these pictures they've got great spaces for families and their kids as they as we welcome them to the district with that i'll turn it back over to dr townes thank you rachel so i think unfortunately mr perez isn't here but i remember last board meeting he wondered about are we paying attention to the joy in learning do we make sure that we're concerned about those non-academic needs of kids and i think you can see from the work that's been highlighted we've invested a lot of time and resources and thankfully because the board has helped us to be able to finance investments around those whole child supports that we have in the district you're going to continue to see a scale

045up of all of those avenues and i think that this is a part of our vision of excellence in terms of making sure that all of our children have the resources that they need to meet those diverse needs across our district so with that i open it up for questions or comments any questions or comments where is this family resource center going to be located or do we have a location for that yet i don't think we have a location rachel we're we're working through where we might be able to locate it we're looking for space and that's some place that it's got to be you know on a public transportation line all of those things so we haven't identified it yet anything else on the uh i'm particularly interested in the parent university i

046don't know where she went yeah just a quick question if if you could get a bunch of parents together would you guys be willing to to come out and meet with those parents and yeah absolutely okay yeah we're definitely looking for more we engage with our family community engagement members who are in school buildings so family partnership specialists and parent volunteer coordinators all the time to figure out what parent university trainings they're looking for and what they need um so like i mentioned we have several different community partners who can provide really specific stuff we have educators at the district level who can provide specific trainings for families um but yeah i mean if you haven't put you to work hey we'll take it miss hill thank you chairman i appreciate the work that you

047guys are doing and it occurs to me how many resources like parent university the district has created over the years especially in the last three as we've focused on having the community be involved and making sure that we're working with parents but so many resources that you have to know that they're there to go get them right and in the work that i do i talk to a lot of people who know a whole lot about a lot of stuff that's happening in chattanooga and yet just this week i had a colleague on the city council say well are you doing it would be great if you would tell people about this and i said well we do tell people about this but it's a challenge so something um perhaps we need to be contemplating

048what other communication partners we can link up with yeah i mean frankly the fact that you know the the library has the world at its fingertips right but when's the last time i went and found out you know what the gdp of belgium was like i don't know but it's there right so i i wonder what radio stations might we be able to partner with what you know where does pbs fit in this conversation they've been a wonderful community partner to us because the more that families know that these things are there the more impact that they can have so i appreciate all that you guys are doing and also the the sophistication in particular of the student success planning i know that what you're building is something unique in the nation and i think

049that we will learn a lot and i know that our our colleagues all over the nation will learn a lot as well thank you just have a question uh it says that all teachers have access to students health mental health information did somebody say that make that comment um it was the student success planning platform and we do protect particular information so uh it's uh the user access controls one of the reasons we had to build a customized platform is because we wanted to be able to restrict it in alignment with ferpa so if i'm a teacher i can only see students that are in my class and then i can only see certain information about those students and then of course if you're a social worker and they're part of your caseload you get

050to have more access in terms of seeing what their notes are and who you're trying to connect them with so it's not their mental health data it's actually the student success planning platform which was the screenshot that we showed that just kind of showed strengths and challenges across all the domains that's what every teacher has access to be able to see that planning platform how do they collect the data a variety of ways i don't know if of miss russell if you want to speak to the process but some of it is the survey that we do so students actually tell us what they are thinking about their own uh well-being and mental health we ask parents for feedback and information this year we tried to integrate some of this conversation into parent-teacher conferences at

051the schools that are in success planning the academic domain we actually push all of the information that we have around benchmark data and state assessment data so that's the neat thing about the platform is that it brings together a lot of different information about a student to help build that profile and that plan to prioritize action steps and that's in their permanent student files most of it is in their permanent student files like in our student information system what we've what we're doing is uh feeding that information from like a powerschool platform into the student success platform so you don't have to go looking multiple different places are parents asked to give their permission to do that in terms of the ferpa data that they have the access but this is all things that are

052still in the power school platform so it's all we're doing is really repackaging it but it's not something that um is new or different information we're just making it more accessible for our team i'm just not really sure how i feel about that i'll talk to you more about that later we'd be happy to thank you okay we will move on to uh delegations and i will hand it over to vice chair robertson all right thank you okay um looks like we have five delegates tonight i'm going to just go ahead and read this once um and but i'll call your name when it's your opportunity to speak thank you for your interest in addressing the hamilton county board of education during your presentation please address the board as a whole not individual board members

053or administrators also please do not present complaints or concerns you have about an individual employee of the school system if you wish to voice those complaints and concerns you should contact the central office and ask for a meeting with the superintendent since the superintendent is responsible for individual employees please limit your remarks to five minutes i will tell you when you have one minute left and uh miss uh janette o'markel is our first speaker let me get you set up okay feel free to begin thank you chairman mcclendon dr townsend board members thank you so much i come to you today with sharing exciting news the hamilton county education association has been given almost ten thousand dollars in a planning grant from the nea foundation to work in partnership with hamilton county schools i've been

054working with dr drake to write a grant proposal to develop an early career educator support program focused on mentoring support and retention of our early career educators and particularly our educators of color if awarded the nea foundation grant will provide almost two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year for three years to assist us in developing a program to address the retention challenges faced by hanoi county schools and will promote student success by ensuring access to diverse educators the program will be open to all first through fifth year educators in harmony county schools the planning stage includes focus groups of administrators educators college students and educator prep programs and students in our future future ready education prep program we have twelve hundred educators in years one through five in hamilton county this is a high percentage

055studies indicate that many educators leave the profession during these early years we have a significant need to provide support and professional development to new educators to promote the retention and increase the overall experience level of our workforce the need for this support is especially critical with regards to educators of color in tennessee over 36 percent of students are students of color how many county schools percentage is over 50 percent however only 12 percent of our educators are educators of color low levels of educator diversity is problematic for all students for students exposure to an educator who looks like them can change the way they experience education educators serve as strong role models and raise expectations for learning through relationships with students and their families just this week an educator was asked by one of his

056students if there was a hispanic music producer in the area he wanted to know if there was someone who looked like him in the field he wanted to pursue studies show that students who are exposed to diverse educators are better prepared for life in a multicultural society diverse educators expose students to different perspectives and experiences pushing them to consider the views of others preparing students to interact with a diverse society is increasingly important as our country becomes more diverse contact with more educators can help break down barriers and dispel stereotypes in 2021 the tennessee educators of color alliance facilitated focus groups for educators of color in hamilton county to identify opportunities for improvement participants expressed feeling racially isolated at their schools they seldom experience pd's led by other educators of color they appreciate the district's

057willingness to engage and address issues regarding equity but they felt the lack of productive conversations about racism and they rarely get the chance to connect with educators of color in their learning communities and across a district the grant project activities focus 100 percent on supporting early career educators by establishing a comprehensive support system in their first through fifth years components of the project will include the establishment of social and affinity groups for early career educators to establish that sense of connection and boost their morale mentoring by experienced educators to encourage the adoption of best practices providing access to diverse professional development opportunities including national conferences and developing a very clear guidance for appropriately addressing relevant issues in class including tennessee's recently passed legislation that places limitations on classroom discussions of racism and its role in

058society we are very excited about the development of this grant and the possibility of being awarded the funding this will provide hamilton county with a comprehensive professional support and career growth initiative plan for years to come do you have any questions okay thank you okay our next speaker is jeanette tolas let me let me reset the timer real quick for you okay you can start so my name is jeanette tulis i'm a mom of four adult children i'm a private tutor but most people who know me describe me as someone who loves books especially children's books i love books so much i have my own private lending library at my home in saudi daisy with thousands of books any family is welcome to visit and borrow books for free i also manage a library for

059a local tutorial one of my greatest joys is connecting children with really good books i've seen over and over again how a good book can light a fire how it can feed a mind with ideas how it can expand one's view how it can send the reader on an adventure when a student loves to read they are well on their way to becoming a self-directed learner and that's the best kind of learner for it is a lifetime learner at last month's school board murder meeting i heard three things which kind of troubled me bothered me the first was an idea that we should just be glad when our students are reading it doesn't matter what they're reading we just should be glad they're reading it all and i think the application of that idea does

060a terrible disservice to our students i'm a registered dietitian but is it true that it doesn't matter what a patient eats when they're ill or even when they're well as long as they're eating it just isn't true that's not true and the human body feeds on ideas the mind feeds on ideas the same way that a that a body feeds on food so should we not offer students ideas which will truly nourish them why not ensure that the books we offer to students are full of ideas of courage of doing the right thing even when it's hard ideas of championing the little guy being loyal to family and friends being innovative creative should we not make book make sure that the books in our school are inspiring the second idea that kind of bothered me

061was that when you remove an offensive book from a school shelf you're censoring books but we're not making these books totally unavailable any parent can give their child any book they desire to give them but as public educators principals librarians i believe you're being entrusted with the responsibility if a book is found on a school library shelf it's assumed it has the approval even the recommendation of the leaders of the school and that's a serious trust that the parents are placing in the school exercising discernment as to what's good for a child's mind is not censoring it's taking our duty as educators seriously as parents we put filters on our child's devices on our home technology we carefully choose video games and movies by looking at ratings for age-appropriateness and content parents should be able

062to trust schools to do the same and not be working against them the third idea which troubled me is that we should be choosing books that mirror the students life experience thus since they hear obscene language every day it's fine even good for the books they read to contain that kind of language but if the prevailing culture is sexually promiscuous then their reading should reflect that as well school libraries and classrooms should follow the culture i'm sorry but i beg to differ to begin with the books we read aloud in a previous board meeting featured main characters who are people of color these books contained obscene language inappropriate sexual situations are we saying that such scenarios are common to people of color that all students need to experience that that seems demeaning to me especially

063to people of color and even if these books mirror the minority experience in some way wouldn't it be better to try to lift students up rather than sink to the level of the culture would it not benefit a student from broken home to read stories of families who are intact loving and supportive would it not benefit students from dysfunctional families to read stories of families of all colors and backgrounds who overcame difficult situations with loyalty with cooperation and with respect for each other a good book is not just one that tells your story rather a good book can take you into other worlds other times in history into the lives of people who are not just like you one of my favorite books for parents and teachers is anthony esslin's 10 ways to destroy the

064imagination of your child of course the title is written tongue-in-cheek several of these ways however are very instructive when choosing books number five is cast aspersions on the heroic and patriotic number six is cut all heroes down to size number seven reduce all talk of love to just narcissism and sex number eight level the distinctions between a man and a woman number nine distract the child with the shallow and the unreal let us not do those things which destroy our students imagination i would like to challenge this board with an action point to get a real hold on how books are selected for the classroom and for the school library we need a process in place your time is up to review books thank you thank you [Applause] our next speaker is jamie hall you

065may be good all right good evening school board members staff and fellow attendees it seems we've moved from bringing awareness of our different concerns in an effort to work together to bring a solution into allowing an open floor for name calling finger-pointing people shaming and somehow an assumption of racial discrimination i'm not sure how we arrived at this point but let's get back to our concerns that have focused on found language explicit content and extreme violence those are some of our major concerns that many parents and guardians have with the content of the books that have been in discussion as parents and guardians we are responsible to raise our children in the best way possible this means we must have standards for the content of movies music literature photos etc that we allow into our

066children's minds we aren't naive to think they won't hear and see things we believe they shouldn't we understand everyone's standards are very different however my job as a parent is to protect my children from certain content and to have open discussions with them when they have been exposed to something it is also solely within my discretion to decide when is the best stage in life for each of my individual children to be introduced to different life lessons it is not the school's job it is not the teacher's job it is not the librarian's job or even the children's peers job to expose them to foul language sexually explicit content extreme violence or anything else along those lines these concerns are even acknowledged in the movie industry in the parents guide where they rate the content

067based on the following categories sex and nudity violence and gore profanity alcohol drugs smoking and frightening and intense scenes because parents should choose what is acceptable or unacceptable for their children because parents are not generally with their children inside of the school the classroom or the library it is very difficult for parents to guard their children from whatever content they find unacceptable and it would add an extra burden upon teachers to have to play the guardian role for each individual child keep in mind that every single person is different and matures at different rates so we couldn't just say all third graders are ready for certain questionable content and and so forth while i can't agree with some of the comments from our last meeting that the story lines of some of these books can

068open eyes and hearts to those who have faced difficult circumstances in life that our families should be aware and caring and loving the strong language sexually graphic content and violence are unacceptable there are other ways of teaching our children those life lessons so i offer a solution to this issue at hand how can we handle these books since every hamilton county student receives a public library card why don't we create a section at the public library locations across the county for these books to be shelved this way the parents who desire for their children to read these books can freely check them out with their children at any time and however often they prefer and the parents who do not want their children exposed to this content will not have to worry about their children

069unknowingly checking out and reading these books please take this into consideration as we continue to move forward for the betterment of our children and the school system as i close i have to ask you school board members a question because you have each been elected to represent an entire district which is an honor have you been conducting yourself with integrity while maintaining a high standard of conduct and ethics inside and outside of these meetings i hope you can honestly answer yes and that you're continually working to be better and do better that is my goal as an individual to strive to be and do better daily to live my life in such a way that my testimony is strong and is good i'm nowhere near perfect i mess up y'all don't even know me is

070this allowed crowd please she has the floor i mess up all the time but i work towards making things right and even better i hope you live your life similarly you are in a leadership position thank you for your time [Applause] audrey ramsey is there an audrey ramsey okay thank you [Music] we have a we have a speaker that has the floor you may begin thank you um and good evening to our interim board superintendent dr davis or i'm sorry dr townes and to the members of the hamilton county school board my name is audrey ramsey i reside at 3131 mountain creek road and that's here in chattanooga tennessee i stand before you as a representative of the equity alliance a nonpartisan voter advocacy group i stand before you as a voice for the vote

071both voiceless in our underserved communities and as a concerned citizen regarding the quality of education and equitable distributions of resources across the board regardless of how many school board zoning areas are created now that the county commission which has jurisdiction over the public school board system has adopted a resolution approving an 11 district map which includes the city of chattanooga on the sense as a based on the census results i would hope that the board members will employ a conscious leadership with a collective mindset of equality and not partisan politics when it comes to the quality education with equitable distribution of resources across the board of all of our schools only then can we ensure the holistic development of the child and operate in communities where the society is built to work for everyone i

072recall being on the front lines of integration back in the 70s here in chattanooga i graduated from brainerd high school back when we were the rebels and a handful of black students at this predominantly white school at the time made it known that they were offended by wearing by the band wearing of course the confederate soldier uniforms and playing in dixie every time a african-american and our first african-american quarterback and running backs for the team were scoring winning touchdowns the administrators saw fit to put an end to this practice now times are different after being away for almost 30 years and returning three years ago from my perspective and my observations brandon is now a predominantly black student body and the students and their families are living in fear lack and separation the time is

073now for a radically strategic 21st century plan that meets the needs of the students and their families in the communities where the high schools and feeder schools are located and as you go through your zoning processes these high schools and feeder schools should remain intact within the districts drawn up by the county's remappings process we live in the 21st century and the curriculum and instruction in hamilton county is antiquated and definitively and definitely not progressive in hamilton county not since 1956 and the ruling of board versus brown have we seen any attempt at policy making that sets the stage for equality in the free educational public school systems if you are truly committed to the equitable distribution of resources to all schools that would be no need for vouchers charter schools and the likes education

074and our environmental attitudes are the paradigm shift you must forge ahead in implementing an inclusive plan with urgency if and this is a big if if our children are to achieve their highest potential and thrive in communities that are built with them the students and the families for them to live in a society that works for everyone let me just leave you with this quote from the author richard shaw education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it or it becomes the practice of freedom the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively keywords critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world again this is

075a new age is calling for a conscious leadership can i have one more second it's calling for leadership your time is up thank you man your time is up ma'am your time is up your time is up as a christian i do hope that you all ma'am your time is up everyone gets five minutes our next speaker is read thank you our next speaker is reid uberman is reid here okay all right you may begin thank you um i just want to say thank you all for the work that you do here i know it's a lot to uh listen to some of us drone on but um i'm going to be really direct and straight to the point i'm a resident of hamilton county in the east brainerd area i have two elementary school

076age boys five and seven and my kids are my responsibility and anything that threatens them has to go through me so critical race theory certainly fits that bill and anything that supports it its tenants such as propaganda that espouses narratives that the police are systemically racist or any literature that stokes resentment and hatred for this great exceptional country specifically the racial essentialistic lies crt promotes gives children low self-esteem and a false identity of who they are based upon immutable characteristics i'm a father of two racially mixed boys however because they have light-colored colored skin this racist vein ideology would most likely label them oppressors and inheritors of white privilege so you can imagine i'm alarmed when i see books that echo these ideas but i want to be fair here i've heard the excuses and

077i'd like to address them so there's zero confusion i've heard the claim crt doesn't exist it's just a white supremacist thing that people say when they don't want history taught in schools unfortunately i'm a historian and i know the kind of history taught by critical race there is life the laughable 1619 project which is nothing more than a pseudo-historical revisionist nonsense document that has been rejected by reputable scholars and historians all over the us for its lack of facts so ridiculous that the new york times had to revise it some say well crt is not taught in hamilton county schools there's no crt classes in the whole district now there you are right but also dishonest because you and i know you require reading and allow books into your library like ghost boys and the

078hate you give that does nothing but confuse kids and stop racial animosity just like crt does so no there is no crt classes to speak of instead it slipped in through the back door some contend that crt is just an analytical tool but we know better crt is a world view that comes with loaded presuppositions they stoke racial animosity and there's a rejection of biblical truths founded that founded this great nation some say don't even talk about crt just say history all we want is comprehensive history there's not a single person in this room that doesn't know that american whites owned black slaves or that some of our founding fathers owned slaves like thomas jefferson we're teaching this kind of history in schools already so it makes one wonder what are we really after one

079can't help but wonder why k-12 k-12 kids know nothing about the single bloodiest century in human history the 20th century and most likely because it was perpetrated exclusively by the kind of communists that endorse crt you don't teach how marxism is responsible for the death of some 30 million people at the hands of stalin 60 million by maoist china and the tens of millions more by paul pot and others there is no whitewashing of history but there is a red washing of history so when social justice organizations rise up steeped in marxist ideology you can expect parents like me to refuse to allow them to issue propaganda in our schools i want to give you and others in the district the benefit of the doubt i don't think any of you are marxist i'm not

080saying that but i assure you some of the authors of these books are so i hope you are watching what happened in virginia i hope you see it as a reminder that this board has one job and that is to serve the parents of this county period white and black people alike in every race in this city deep down knows this country gives us all the greatest chance of success than anywhere else in the world yet i don't see that being taught very often and i'll just say this at the end of the day our kids are our most precious resource and you make mistakes i make mistakes i do things all the time where i realize i've got a great big learning curve ahead of me and if that's true of us as adults

081it's certainly true of kids and we cannot be too careful what material we place in front of them i believe that there are multiple books in the library and also in curriculum that violate governor lee's order i've talked with the american center for law and justice and i believe we have standing to go further if we need to but i would just humbly come before you guys and say let's not go there let's not do that let's realize our kids are precious and be careful with what we allow them to have in their libraries and in their school classrooms thank you [Applause] we'll move on to our uh board member disclaimer statement we'll start with miss rhonda thurman the board disclaimer statement we're just going to go that way down the i thought i'd done

082dice wrong it wouldn't be the first time holly won't be the last [Laughter] okay i declare that i have a i have relatives who work in the school system and that the board's vote on the budget and policies may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the 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 relatives who work for the school system and that the board's vote on budget policies etc may have

083an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the school system i declare that i have relatives who work for the school system and the board's vote on budgets 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 boards vote on budget policies etc may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the school system all good on that okay we'll move down to our approval of the consent agenda do i have anything

084that needs to be pulled motion to a motion to approve first removed second now anything to pull all good i've done just a minute i'm just i just can't remember yeah the open enrollment i just uh i want to pull that just to have a discussion about that you know the number 22. there you go anything else okay roll call please yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes mr wingate yes chairman mcclendon yes mr thurman yes i just like some clarification sensors of parents here and more people are probably watching us tonight than were watching us monday night when we had some of this discussion uh explain about the open enrollment when is the deadline explain exactly what is going on here so parents will will know where they

085can find the list of the schools that have openings in them and that sort of thing if you don't mind please absolutely sorry about that i am happy to so the application opens on monday november 15th it'll remain open through the end of january parents can select up to five options for the for the options listed which will include magnet open enrollment futurity institutes if we have more applicants and seats available in that program then we'll run a lottery um so i'm trying to think of what other relevant details if you're trying for an open enrollment seat you have to be willing to provide your own transportation the dates i said november 15th it opens january 31st it what is closes okay uh also another quick question and i'm not sure who can answer this

086uh i've seen and i'm not real sure how this works in magnet schools did they get preferential treatment to uh alumni alumni's children no only current staff will get a preference so if you work at that magnet then you get a boost and you're standing in the lottery i'm sure it does seem funny that people who graduated from certain schools always managed to get their kids in just just an observation here for the last 20 years i just have a little bit uh i just wonder about that no alumni don't don't have any preference in the lottery how long have you been here i've been here a long time yeah it's hard to fool an old food uh but anyway i just want everybody to be aware of what's going on uh with open enrollment

087uh that if you want if what what she's talking about uh where can they find a list of the schools that have open enrollment it's all on our website so if you just google hcde school choice um you'll see all of the available seats listed by school and grade okay so if you want your child if there's a opening you can apply for your child to go there i just want everybody to understand that miss jones at the bottom of said policy though it says the policy isn't applicable to begin until 2022-23 correct right so for it it will go into effect for next year okay so that's why this this round of lottery is four seats for next week okay i just want to make sure dude second roll call please mrs hill yes

088mrs jones mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes mr wingate yes chairman mcclendon yes that moves us down to uh board matters the application for amendment to the charter agreement for chattanooga prep i have a motion so moved second i'm sorry miss jones uh so i don't have a like i'm not in disagreement to approve the amended charter i just have a question about um i guess it's probably more to the executive cabinet how are what are we what are we doing or what are our plans um to address the deficit and student population in our traditional schools that would normally service the students that are now attending the charter schools in particular chattanooga prep and uh chattanooga charter school of excellence i know that we have two um two

089schools in particular one that's in district five that has had a significant um loss and enrollment due to um the enhancement of grade levels at the pres uh the charter schools so once again i mean i i get school choice and that's fine and those schools are doing great things i'm just wondering what are we going to do to support those communities those schools in the community where students have are not able to attend or get accepted into the charter system i mean i would hate to see schools begin to close or we start i mean you know i just i will and if that's the case you know we have to address that because we want to be good stewards but i'm just wondering what is the plan um or if there's been discussion

090of a plan as to what we're going to do to address that that loss my response would be that i think our whole choice program is that what we're really doing is elevating all of the good things that are happening in our schools and i will tell you that at delaware middle mr williams and at orchard knob middle miss irvin they are actively making sure that families are aware of all the things that they're offering and what's happening inside of their schools and all the programming that they're doing and all the things that they're doing to support great learning outcomes in their schools so our first and foremost is to make sure that families know what we have to offer and that we continue to provide robust programming i think your broader point about facilities

091and utilization of buildings is one that will continue to be a conversation uh if we have buildings that are at 50 or below in utilization so we are actively recruiting we had a staff roundtable um the other day at dale wood middle and this came up there was a question that was directed to chairman mcclendon about zoning and should we be doing something different about zoning that would impact those schools in particular dale wood had some very specific uh concerns about how zone lines are drawn right now so i think all of those things are in play but first and foremost we want families to know they can get a great education at dalewood middle and orchard not middle okay and also to i guess to piggyback off of that or to echo her sentiment

092i do know um as it relates to dalewood and this is this is historical like for years since back when i was in middle and in high school there is a population of students and families that vote in district five they vote for constituents in district five but they get on a bus and go across the river to hickson middle school in hixton high school and i know initially when i first was elected to the board and we had that discussion greg martin was the district three representative at that time and we were talking we were rezoning actually at that time and we had some discussion about that and i know there was discussion about was it fair to um zone students who were not in a low performing school or underperforming school to um

093their zone school you know trying to change that dynamic i think that is something that we as a board should consider now that we know that dale wood and archenob elementary i mean archanav elementary and middle and brainerd are performing very well and with high um expectations of coming off the priority list just as one more has that we should when we're looking at zoning after redistricting that we think about what that looks like to bring that population of students back to their community school what does that look like for them to come back to dalewood to come back to brainerd um what does that look like and change the trajectory the socio economic diversity um in in those buildings what does that look like to bring those children back to their schools because most

094of them just go to school over there because they get on a bus but they go to brainerd high games deal with games they go into brainerd center they're going to tyner center i mean they're doing things in their community because that is their community the only thing they do outside of their community is go to school so i think that is something that we need to look at when we're rezoning um because that will i believe change the culture and climate in those schools as well and enhance what's already going on there we had our motion second correct yes roll call please mrs seal yes mrs jones yes excuse me mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs sermon yes mr walker yes mr wingate yes shannon mcclendon yes uh that will move us down

095to the uh pekka special question committee do you have a motion to approve so moved second roll call please mrs hill yes mrs jones yes mr perez mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes mr wingate yes chairman mcclendon yes um that takes us down to the legal services report which you have in your agenda um and then we have some events and announcements um you have the dates for the tsba convention the thanksgiving holiday for schools and central office um one note that next month's school board meeting and agenda session are one week earlier due to the holidays so agenda session will be on december 6th and the board meeting will be on december 9th two more announcements we have have done our board liaison positions so we have miss

096robinson with facilities ms thurman with student discipline and curriculum mr perez with human capital and personnel uh mr walker with policy miss jones with community engagement and equity mr smith with transportation mr wingate with finance and miss hill with our class representation also to continue on our conversation of monday night for our superintendent search uh we have dates for when those candidates will be in town we'll be putting more information out on our website under the superintendent search tab on there dr jim mcintyre will be in town next week november 16th and 17th dr chris christopher bernier will be in town november 29th and november 30th dr jermaine dawson will be in town december 1st and december 2nd and then dr justin robertson will be in town or here december 6th and december 7th any

097other events or announcements yeah what about when are we going to publish the graduation schedule tomorrow okay so we don't have we don't vote on that right i mean we no ma'am i just gave it to you as a courtesy because somebody messed it up last year [Music] um but we'll put it on the website and send it uh out tomorrow okay i just wanted to know i've been asked about it and i just didn't know if it was a official when it be published okay thanks um yeah i have a quick question um uh for the probably maybe for you jen um if you're still leading the task force um i've had a number of questions from parents regarding their student like their younger student receiving the vaccine and the question is if a

098student has been vaccinated do they have to quarantine if they're exposed or is there a different rule for younger students versus the older students and then what the guideline is for adults something's impossible my knowledge it's once you're fully vaccinated you're two weeks out from your second dose then you would be following the same guidelines as our staff which is that you would no longer need to quarantine if you're considered close contact okay i thought that we weren't allowed to quarantine am i wrong well that is i mean yeah that's a that's a whole another thing but i don't know has that gone into effect so um to my knowledge the governor hasn't signed that yet yeah even in but we know he's going to we also know that the department of health is trying

099to fast track some some regulations to to pass this down so that the boards can keep doing what they've been doing within that gap what we're what we're telling people to do well i shouldn't speak for ms bronson but my understanding is we're going to tell them this is this is what has been advised and strongly encouraged um establishing our expectations right so basically the local health department establishes no but by statute the the general assembly has now required the commissioner of education to establish through formal rule making authority when someone is or isn't in quarantine and so if the what we anticipate what we anticipate is that the department of health will make a determination about about whether school boards can continue doing basically what they've been doing now for 20 months so they're

100still quarantined like we've been quarantining some of these kids have missed 40 days of school i mean it is getting to the point that it is if we're worried about the whole child where we need we need to deal with this well and if we don't have to do it i don't know why we continue to do it well literally this is this is something we have no control over so well it sounds like we do that's what i'm asking and we don't so so that's been the frustration here because but that's been the frustration because if you go back to to before the the coveted build we were getting guidance from the department of education which has total control over the administration of the education program in tennessee and so the department of education

101was saying this is what you have to do and so we've saluted smartly and carried out their instructions the general assembly has said now the only authority that can quarantine is the commissioner for the department of health which is why the local health department is has been completely removed from the equation unless the commissioner of health decides to put them back into the equation and likewise unless the department of health decides to put us back into the equation so literally the only thing that we have any latitude to do is uh well it's really not latitude it's to follow the instructions that were given by by the people who are in charge that's that's it i charge it i mean well so they haven't so so right now there is no one has any authority

102right now to issue issue any kind of quarantine so think about that literally no one right now has any authority to issue a quarantine um not sure that was necessarily intended but that's the practical effect if the general i'm sorry if the department of health passes through its rulemaking authority um regulations that establish how covent quarantine could be applied in schools if then we would follow those regulations to the extent that we play any role and and it may very well be that those regulations don't have any role for us to play it may very well be that the commissioner says no all the local health departments will handle this right now i i'm in i'm in the dark to tell you what might happen because there are an infinite number of possibilities i'd have

103to guess but what i'm hearing you say mr thurman is you know it's it's frustrating and you'd like some clarity i agree with you i i i despise parents with like some clarity because some of these parents are tired of their kids being out of school 40 days and i don't blame them i can't and i can't give the board or the administration clear advice when the law isn't clear so that so the best that i can do is to tell ms bronson and her team we understand that your child is a close contact here here are the rules that we have followed to this point um and then and i guess the rest of that message is this is the expectation but but there's there's no enforcement if you will okay another question children

104who have had the the virus as my grandchildren have uh do they get treated differently i mean why why would kids would who have the vaccine get treated uh better than better for the lack of a better word differently thank you than others when really they probably have more antibodies than someone who's gotten the vaccine so uh well they still have to continue to be quarantined anybody that has confirmed positive in the last 90 days does not need to quarantine if they're last 90 days in the last 90 days that's that's per the tennessee department of health's guidelines that's correct the the department of health guidelines i i realize there are a lot of folks who have taken issue with the department of guidelines but we can't ignore those guidelines well i'm not saying to

105ignore them i'm just saying that sometimes the vaccine doesn't last any longer than that either obviously and and people that have had the vaccine can still spread the covets so you're exactly right and just at a loss about why we continue to dance around this well so it boils down to um we've said this before we're kind of building an airplane ended flight and i think we've done a pretty good job all things considered i mean after all hamilton county schools did stay open more than than any other district in the state of tennessee uh and managed to have some pretty good academic games god you know what it means to do excessive uh celebration in the end zone we've done this we've played this out we've done this it's over we've pat ourselves on

106the track we did a good job to move on so all we can do all we can do is is is in the moment make the best decisions that we can we've we've followed the guidelines those guidelines haven't been updated that's the problem and i understand exactly what you're saying we did it we're in a different uh a different chapter right now but the rules haven't changed for us um so when the governor signs it that's when the rules will change well with the governor signs that no one will have the authority to issue a cobia quarantine until the department of health adopts new guidelines and what those are going to be i can't tell you that i could tell you if i knew um but but i simply don't know so if it takes

107a couple of months for them to make that decision then for a couple of months nobody can quarantine is that where we are that's correct okay with that nothing else on the agenda we will adjourn