HCS Board Meeting 8/19/21

001[Music] uh so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [ __ ] [Music] all right i'd like to call the meeting to order please ms ford would you call the roll chairman here that's chairman mcclendon here mrs hill here mrs jones mr perez here mrs robinson mr smith here mrs thurman here mr walker here mr macon interim superintendent dr towns here thank you all right i have the following request to amend the agenda under item roman numeral five our exemplars section we're going to remove recognition uh there we're going to do that at a later date and then under board matters item roman numeral number nine we're going to add item f dedication of sale creek football field as requested by dr leanne welch the principal of cell creek middle high school and we're also going to

002add item g which would be a discussion of tyner middle and tyner high school uh requested by ms carissa jones our board colleague and by mr mcclendon and then under item roman numeral 10 delegations we have a request to remove a amy jarrell and e angie nunley and then add philip mcgrath taylor lyons wendy proctor and then also jalen kalia and demetrius speaking regarding tyner academy do i have a motion to approve the agenda second okay mr ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman yes that brings us to our uh pledge to the flag and our meditation brought to us tonight by miss christy drake principal of east ridge middle school good evening please stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to

003the 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 to dr towns interim interim superintendent chairman wingate and fellow board members thank you for this opportunity to do the medication for this gathering today my name is christy caldwell-drake and i am the proud proud principal at east ridge middle school home of the pioneers now first i want to congratulate all of you all of you in this room everyone that's outside all students parents teachers administrators board members all leaders in hamilton county schools we made it through 20 2021 an unprecedented imaginable season with covet 19 which caused life-changing situations circumstances sickness and also loss but through those challenging hardships and struggle we continued to move forward there were

004days of frustration doubt fear and struggle but we moved through we state the course we maintain on campus learning throughout 90 of the 2021 school year outperformed the state in 24 out of 28 tested areas thus we're celebrating and i'm proud to say it was under the phenomenal leadership of dr brian johnson well as you know dr brian johnson resigned and yes now we're in transition we're in transition in 2021-22 school year yes transition can be uncomfortable transition can be difficult but i want to encourage you i want to give you some good news we do have good news the person and i made that a woman that is holding the baton the torch is quite quite capable of doing the job and that is none other than dr nakia townes and alongside her in

005leadership is the interim deputy superintendent dr justin robertson that's good news so be encouraged we're in good hands now we must continue to work together to continue to thrive to achieve and to continue the momentum of the great work here in hamilton county schools thank you and god bless you thank you mr stray all right next we will have a recognition of summer reach employees dr neely parker thank you hi i'm dr weiss who was our program director for summer reach and if there are any of our district leaders that helped us with summer reach we would like to invite you to come forward at this time for special recognition dr weiss it is my great privilege to recognize our teachers of summer reach we had over six thousand students who signed up for summer

006reach and they have done amazing or six thousand students that signed up our teachers who came did amazing work with those students and our site directors who worked tirelessly with me deserve much of that thanks as well they sent in names of teachers that went above and beyond for our students this list doesn't encapsulate all of our teachers but these are the ones the site directors chose to recognize tonight shane mcneese who worked with ycap kerry stidham who worked at udwall elementary jennifer hartley at spring creek adam foster at spring geek betty williams who worked with the urban league she was the after school site director there jan rogers carol austin at lookout valley jan rogers was also at lookout valley madison cartwright at wolf teamer creek shelby's donor at eastside elementary leslie booth at

007tyner middle academy rosa hines at tyner middle academy kelvin young at tyner middle academy liz fleming at east brainerd elementary school rachel hill at east brainerd elementary caroline mickey from east brainerd elementary kim johnson at east brainerd elementary by the way east brainerd elementary was one of our largest sites jeffrey mcknight at saudi saudi elementary kimberley stanton at east brainerd elementary and jennifer hartley at spring creek all of these teachers made an impact with our students this summer and we could not have done summer reach without them so thank you very much for all of your service this summer and all the good work you did with our students [Applause] mr chairman yes sir um i know all these guys did a great job and sacrifice for summer but i just got to say uh

008shane mcneese worked with us at end zone not y cap that's that was my former life and i mean it's just some belief i i know that he had a certain number of hours he was supposed to be there every day he always got there early to meet the parents before our day started many days stayed throughout the day went on field trips with us then obviously he didn't get paid to do all that stuff and i'm sure there's other teachers that did the very same thing at their various sites but i just can't thank uh thank shane enough and all you guys for sacrificing your summer for these kids so i just need to say that mr chairman [Applause] thank you all for all you did this summer thank you very much all right

009next we'll have a future ready 2023 update believe ms shannon moody's going to do that hey good evening i'm really excited to come here and talk to you guys about data we did a little bit of a public release but this is our opportunity to really dig into data a bit more i'm shannon moody i'm the director of accountability and research and as you can tell by the big smile on my face i love talking about this stuff right like you guys are going to be in it with me i know you will so we have a few slides to go through with you today of what we know with our data as you guys know during this course of time we get data releases from the state that continue to come out through the

010month of august so i'm sure that we'll be coming back to talking about additional data as we get it but for now this is what we have they've been able to work through and what's unembargoed at this time to speak about so if you oh no you you click okay um so we just want to kick off and thank you shannon for that introduction we always like to reset in terms of where we've been and shannon's going to dig into the details but we want to go back to where we were with this board at the beginning of dr johnson's administration and the vision that this board had for where hamilton county schools would be and one of the headlines that came out of that is that we wanted to be the fastest improving district

011in tennessee and we have proven ourselves to meet that mark with the help of next slide with the help of the future ready 2023 plan we've really focused around five action areas with accelerating student achievement being at the center of all those uh with all the work that we're doing and making sure that we're supporting uh children to reach their highest potential and we've anchored around these focus five performance targets and so we talk about them a lot you know we have kpis uh annual targets and each year we update uh those annual targets as well as talking each month about the work that we've been doing so with that uh we really were looking forward to the 21 uh spring 21 data you all know that in spring of 2020 we were not able

012to complete the assessment because we were all in quarantine for quote for covid so we knew that there was this opportunity that we had to try to make sure that we closed the learning gaps that students might have experienced from missing the entire fourth quarter of being in person for the 1920 school year and then coming into 2021 school year we all lived through the various transitions that we had we were able to maintain being on campus 90 of the time but we were certainly worried about what this disruption would do to our youngest learners and how we would navigate all the changes that we have and so because of the disruption that we have i think it's important to set the context this is a new baseline we know that we had lots of

013ground to make up for the commissioner has told us don't compare 2019 to 2021 we're going to do a little of that though because we always want to look longitudinally but we do know that there was this year that we skipped we do know that there were children who didn't attend in person for the entirety of the 2021 school year even with all that said i do think we have some really good news to report in terms of the progress and resilience that was demonstrated by our children and our families and led by the work of our teachers so with that i'm going to let shannon take us through the deep dive of the key takeaways around our data so we're going to be looking at tea and ready results very particularly we're going to

014be looking at just the achievement side of things right as we dig into this as well so before we look at the numbers i think it's really important to figure out what we're looking at and so we took the information that came to us about our test takers which students took the tests and how many tests they took and looked at that across the state in hamilton county to see what percentage of our test takers fell in different categories and so you see here anywhere there's a green arrow just to point out is a place where we had a larger percent of test takers in that particular category than the state overall and you'll notice we see we see black hispanic native american students if we look at that line we had 48 of our

015tests taken coming from students in that demographic whereas the state had about 36.5 percent of students so we're pretty comparable to the state but you'll notice in in most places we actually have a more diverse group of students that were test takers in our district we look down along racial lines too we see that uh we have a higher percentage of african american students taking the test a higher percentage of hispanic students we have a higher percentage of english language learners taking the test than across the state of tennessee so i think this is really important as we look at our data comparatively we are pretty aligned to the state so it's a it's a good look to look at where we compare to the state but recognizing that we're actually more diverse than the

016state as a district so we are a diverse district from the the chart before we actually know that the majority of our test takers 51 of our test takers are students of color we also see what we've looked at there as well that we have a higher percentage of those test takers being english learners than we see across the state and as we see that we also see that we're over performing as we continue to see this increase in diversity in our district and so typically right as you're looking at data and demographics in that way when you see a higher percentage of students in historically underperforming subgroups you would assume then that we would have larger gaps than we compare to the state but as we're going to look at we actually outperformed the

017state even with um are seeing our diversity increase in our district we also know when we're talking about the the future ready 2023 goals that the board set for us that these are the majority of our students are in subgroups and so it's going to take a particular focus on how we're performing in subgroups in order to meet our overall goals since that's the majority of our test takers and population in our district so as we dig in we're going to dig into each one of these areas but we have some key takeaways to frame here and so one which is what i think everyone's heard at this point that we're so proud of is that we outperformed the state in 24 of 28 tested areas and very particularly which is big for me a

018numbers person five of those areas were exceeding the state by five percent or more so when we're talking about large numbers of students this way five percent is a big as a big number when we look at it in that sense we looked at our youngest learners and we saw that our youngest learners actually exceeded statewide performance in every subject we looked particularly at our third grade ela and saw that that proficiency of of students increased compared to the cohorts of students in 2019 and even actually while we were implementing a brand new literacy curriculum in the district as well we found that math and particular subgroups of students our performance there were seem to be most impacted by pandemic disruptions and will require us to continue to focus and address learning gaps in those

019areas and then once we look at the data we really saw that our learning loss mitigation strategies right we believe those were really successful things like we just we just recognized summer reach remote instruction in person learning and particularly community partnerships those actually led to smaller declines in hamilton county schools than we saw across their peers in the state of tennessee so one thing we did see of course we outperformed the state in 24 of 28 tested areas and when we think about this in comparison we look back to 2016-17 at that point of time we were only outperforming the state of three areas so when you think about it this way right we were looking ahead at the state we were trying to catch the state we were behind them and this year as

020our data came out we actually saw in almost every area we're actually above or outperforming the state with those five blue areas being places where we were greater than five percent and all of those areas are listed on the right for you again anything in blue is where we were greater than five percent when we break this down by grade and grade band something really interesting to me pops out here which is that third through fifth grade those youngest learners right so we see in that category third fourth and fifth grade in every single tested area students were outperforming their peers across the state in those same grade levels and subject areas with particularly math as we look at it sometimes like our third graders almost 10 percent higher than their peers across the state

021when we look at and keep this comparison from 2016 to 2021 and we look at how we've increased in our comparison to the state we see that every single high school subject has actually increased in comparison so to point out something like u.s history up here at the top we started in 2016 with 9.1 below the state average and this year we're finding ourselves at 13.8 percent above the state average which is this 22.9 swing in performance when we look at ourselves compared to the state average when we're looking at third through eighth grade each grade level and subject we see a very similar trend we see almost every single grade level and subject having an increase in comparison to the state since 2016. particularly up here at the top third grade math right which

022went from about one and a half percentage points below the state we were kind of trying to get to the state to this year being almost ten percent above the state when compared to their peers so it brings up the question what we looked at before our youngest learners right and we saw that our youngest learners exceeded statewide performance in every subject and particularly third grade ela saw a proficiency increase so when we dig into third grade ela we see that the state actually dropped in proficiency looking at the cohort of kids that were third graders in 2019 we actually dropped about six percentage points which is something that the state is really digging into and looking at as we move forward when we look at hamilton county's cohort of third graders this year they're

023actually performing at a higher place than third graders in 2019. so we actually saw an increase while our peers across the state saw a dramatic decrease in six in particular third grade ela and again this is why we were implementing a brand new literacy program particularly in our district looking at third fourth and fifth grade in ela we see that our students really held steady honestly there were small small dips but really held steady across those grades but when you look at the graph that's showing the comparison again to their peers across the state this year so the blue bar is hamilton county and what we're looking at is our students in each grade level in english language arts are actually significantly above where other third graders are in the state this year as data

024returned and that's actually not just true for ela so these two graphs show us math on the left and science on the right and we see the same trend for our early learners our earliest test takers that they're actually significantly outperforming their peers across the state this year in terms of of achievement we did though see math and subgroup performance particularly as something that may have been most impacted this year with the pandemic and we're going to really be digging into our focus there and figuring out how we address those learning gaps as we continue through the years so here's our high school subject results and one thing that really stands out right here in the middle is math but very particular algebra one which is one of our our focus five goals and what

025seems like we um are able to see in these results that kids really struggled with the skill gaps that that occurred right particularly in math when we kind of look at this trend overall that occurred because of the pandemic and when we look at third through eighth grade we kind of see the same trend popping up with middle school math which seems to follow that trajectory as well where it looks like students really struggled with those skills gaps that may have occurred taking a look at our subgroups this graph particularly shows a subgroup performance again those four historically underperforming subgroups were measured by the state black hispanic native american economically disadvantaged english language learners and students with disabilities in that order on the graph and we see that um all of our subgroups actually took

026a bit of a backwards turn this year right except for english language learners actually where we saw ourselves hold steady but we saw dips which each one of our subgroups of students as we dig into the data but we also when we look at this comparatively i think it helps us understand our learning loss mitigation strategies you know hamilton county really jumped on a lot of strategies at the very beginning to try to mitigate the loss that we were hearing about and reading about and worried about for our students so these are things including a lot of community partnerships that came about from the pandemic that led to actually significantly smaller declines for hamilton county schools and so we talk about smaller declines here's really what we're looking at this graph on the screen shows

027you on the left side of the graph our english language arts all grades and subjects combined on the right side of the screen is math all grades and subjects combined anything in gray is the state anything blue is hamilton county and so what we see here is on the left side the state dropped about five percent overall in english language arts subjects where we're seeing in hamilton county our students dropped about two and a half percent we see a similar trend in math where the state our peers across the state actually dropped about 12 percent where in hamilton county we dropped about 8 so we believe there are a lot of successful strategies that actually led to mitigating some of the learning loss that could have occurred for our students we see this same trend

028kind of happening in subgroups but there's two things to really point out when we look at the data this way for subgroups again what we saw previously we see less declines for students in our historically underperforming subgroups than we saw in our peers across the state but in every single area right we see that we're actually performing higher than the state in each one of our subgroups and so again we're seeing that trend where our students are actually at an achievement level higher than what we see across the state even though there were declines they weren't quite as substantial across the state which i think really speaks to the resiliency of our students and the efforts here as well so of course this all leads us back to what i think is is what we

029take away from this data right now right that we've been on this four-year trajectory a historic trajectory of being the fastest improving district in tennessee and when we look at what that means year over year we started 1617 with just three areas above the state we were really looking towards the state to try to get there in 1718 we got to five areas above the state in 1819 which was the historic kind of banner year behind me right we got to nine areas across the state and then what we're seeing this year in this achievement data that's come out jumping from nine to 24 areas across the state and what the significance that is for us as we continue to move forward now being at a place where we're above our peers above our peers

030across the state and really where we take that moving forward so again just to highlight some of these key takeaways right we outperformed the state in those 24 28 areas our youngest learners were a really bright spot for us when we look at they exceeded the state in every area and we actually saw the gains in our third grade ela which is a focus area for us we don't want to lose sight of our subgroup performance and our math performance and how we continue to address those gaps and we really want to think through the successful mitigation strategies we had for learning loss and what that meant for us this year and how we continue those through so to close us out we've got a lot of momentum there's been a lot of great work

031that's been done and although we were definitely challenged by the 2021 school year i think that this is clear evidence that our teachers our families our students our school leaders we were more resilient and we were able to perform in a way that protected the academic progress of our kids and that we are uplifting their overall well-being and we couldn't have done that without the foundation that we had built in this community to collaborate around supporting our children and families shannon if you'll go to the next slide partnerships like what we were able to do with epb with the support of the city and the county and the blue cross blue shield foundation we were able to make sure that 14 000 economically disadvantaged students had reliable high-speed internet to their homes which meant that

032they were able to access remote learning when as you recall we went to remote from december and didn't come back until february and last school year but we were still able to have these learning results when you think about the work that we did with virtual learning centers that was highlighted in a national publication and it was with those community partners that we made sure that families who were choosing remote learning had a place for their children to go and be able to have support of adults in those smaller pods learning pods and that all children had access to that kind of support if the family felt more comfortable being in hcs at home versus being on campus and then the work that we did around summer reach you all recall that we actually did

033summer reach last summer people thought we were crazy in the middle of a pandemic i'm looking at neily they thought we were crazy in the middle of a pandemic that we were like we're going to in july launched three weeks of learning and we brought back our most at-risk learners about 2 000 children where we were really able to test our safety protocols not to mention getting kids back in school who hadn't been in school with us since march and this summer we doubled down on that with two of those three week sessions where we were able to serve the 6 700 students who registered and again this is all after our teachers had an exhausting year and they still came back to work with kids during this summer to make sure that we didn't

034lose that academic progress and so as we move forward as i highlighted in the community message yesterday i think in this time of transition our team is focused on three main points we want to maintain continuity we're going to keep working on future ready 2023 we're in the last two years of that strategic plan and we want to keep moving forward on that work we're also going to make sure that we elevate blueprint blueprint 2030. i think we're going to have some conversation today about some of our buildings and the state that they're in and we need to make progress on that we're going to continue to elevate this notion of closing the opportunity gap we've got great partnerships with the children's cabinet with the county mayor uh heralding that we've got now the city

035mayor with the community forward schools and seven schools where we're going to invest with those wraparound supports we've got student success planning that we've kicked off and we're now in the third year of that work in partnership with harvard and then we've got the board's educational equity policy that we will need to fully implement and we'll be bringing conversation about that in next month's board meeting and finally we've got to support acceleration and recovery we've got esser funds to help us do that we're going to make sure that we focus on literacy we've got to remediate around the challenges with math but we're going to braid funds as well to support our strategic plan and i'll end with this summary um esther 3.0 we have communicated to you all the board you have in front

036of you the summary of our esser 3.0 uh budget that we're going to submit and this is just the overarching uh the focus areas of esser and you can see what stands out that commitment to our facilities we've got 30 million dollars dedicated to facilities we've reserved 25 million dollars for a new tyner project and 5 million that's going to the csla project so 30 million is reserved for facilities but then the bulk of the rest of those dollars are to mitigate learning loss and to accomplish learning acceleration and so that's where we're showing where our investments are going and we're combining that with other dollars that we've received from the american rescue plan for students with special needs as well as public health and so we are well positioned to really build on the

037momentum of the last four years and dr johnson's administration but to continue to support our teachers who are doing great work and there's nothing against the rest of our peers in tennessee but i would say any day of the week any day of the week we have the best team here in hamilton county we've got the best teachers here so with that if you'll close as we always say we expect excellence every child deserves an excellent teacher every teacher deserves an excellent leader and our schools deserve excellent resources to meet the diverse needs of our learners so we'll open it up to any questions thank you all any comments questions mr perez and this then mrs hill um well again we we've said this many times and i think uh i want to repeat what

038you said dr townes which is um a great uh thank you to everybody who worked incredibly tirelessly the last year and uh and as a result we're able to at least push back on some of the learning loss um we said at some point last year we don't know what we don't know and before we distribute distribute ezer funds let's find out what we don't know and then distribute accordingly uh and as we will speak about uh some of those funds going to um facilities uh you know if they go to facilities they go away from mitigation right and so uh facilities ideally would be funded uh through other means but we're taking advantage of funds that are there to help uh increase the the uh improvements um when i look at that i also

039like data so i go i'm we're we're those nerds right we look at data but unfortunately when you're those nerds you look at data in a different way than most people look at data right and so unfortunately and i'll you know bring this in unfortunately uh there's two ways to become the fastest uh or the best district in all of tennessee one is to keep improving another one is to hope that the state keeps doing worse um which we don't hope right like if the state goes down we're the best all of a sudden um and uh and so you know as i look at the data clearly we've lost traction and we need to make up that traction uh and we need to get far above and beyond uh the the numbers that that

040we have uh and so again i think uh just a call to the to the you know regular population now i'm not regular we're all regular um to the to the population uh that uh we have a long way to go there's some areas where we're at 16 and we can say well you know we did better than the state but we're still at 16 percent you know that's not acceptable in any way and we need to we need to get beyond and that's why at one point probably in the beginning of the year i made a comment and i saw everyone's face like oh great we got one of those board members but um made the comment that i don't really care to be the best in the state because i really just care

041that we be the best right like we just keep driving forward and to me uh the use of esser funds we've said this before as well it's just important that we not use them to try to keep doing the same thing and see if we get different results but try to see is there anything creative that we haven't been able to do before to see if we can push those results forward and so i look at the ela sorry the the um ell students and of course that's uh you know we we always we data people we look for those uh numbers that don't seem to fit and and i'm deeply curious i'm sure you guys will do the work like why those stayed and i'm gonna guess it's because those have a lot of

042extra support um and and resources surrounding them so whatever it may be i just hope that you know i was really excited about these numbers so i saw how bad the state did but um but um but at the same time i'm very thankful because everybody really poured their souls into this last year and and we see that we were able to mitigate some of the losses but i but we now have a lot of traction we have to we have to uh pick up on so um so thank you and yet it's sobering right so it's a little bit of a thank you and uh and yet we have a lot of work ahead of us and if i made to your point too i think it's um what you're bringing out then what

043i saw as well is that um you know for for many reasons we see ourselves above the state this year and i think what that brings to me is like we are we are positioned and we are ready to stay above the state right and so um the ways we got there i think there's a lot about what we did to get there um it also isn't a pandemic year but it sets us up when we think about that quote as the baseline year in the reset year to say okay this is where we're at now and we're not looking back right we're not we're not going back to where we were and we can continue the trajectory to be above that state as we move forward mrs hill thank you chair uh shannon i

044i really appreciate your breakdown and walking us through this data um i especially appreciate that you have pulled out our subgroups so that we could see beyond the the overall average for the district i'd love to talk with you and and also with dr townes about the pros and cons of also having our non-subgroup students represented on the same graph i think that that for me and the other times i've seen the data presented that way definitely helped me understand the urgency of the work and not not not not just hopelessness feeling perhaps of the wor or or just how far we have to go but holy cow we figured out how to do it with some of our students and now we this is something we have to strive for without ceasing so thank

045you for that i know as we all know we have a lot of work to do and my colleagues on the board know that i know nothing about sports and that's because that is not a gift that my family has and so we learn to celebrate things that maybe other people don't celebrate and when my brother would swing that bat and miss my father would cheer and say good effort way to swing and sometimes that effort and knowing that somebody's there giving you a smile and a thumbs up really meant a lot and i think another thing another way that my family celebrates we eat blizzards dairy queen blizzards i think every teacher in hamilton county schools deserves blizzard [Laughter] and i think we need to take a moment and give each other a pat

046on the back and say we did that and it was hard and we did it and then be ready to take the next steps forward um it is good to celebrate celebration brings joy to life and joy makes us strong i believe um there was one other thing and it just floated away from me so perhaps i need to yield let me think it gets worse um oh the ela curriculum um it's interesting to me that we saw this the gains that we saw in ela you know we as a board discussed at length whether or not it was the appropriate time to adopt a new english language arts curriculum and it's it is a a rigorous program and i talked a lot with the principals in district 6 about it and talked a lot

047with the teachers and i'm very thankful that we as a board made the step to go full forward into that because it to me as i think about where our strategic plan has us heading it's a steep hill to climb and to know we've got a really good tool makes me glad and it makes me excited too that we're in an adoption process for math and final thing i was at normal park today and you guys the first graders at normal park appeared to me more mature than any first graders i've ever seen the way they were engaged with their math lesson was remarkable and i mean we're all in schools a lot but there there is some something wiser and more mature they were they were still happy carefree first graders don't get me

048wrong but there's a resiliency that will come out of last year and that will pay dividends um for future generations so thanks that's all mrs robinson thank you um shannon great job as always do a great job breaking down the data for us which is so important um i wanted to ask a few questions about the esser dollars um i had the opportunity to sit on our state call or on our legislation calls earlier this year feels like a lifetime ago so with our esr timeline to spend can you remind us dr townes on the timeline of these funds and how fast we have to get them out the door yes so sr3 runs through uh fiscal year in 2024 which for us would normally be june 2024 but the federal government goes through september

04930th so in our minds my guess would be we can encumber and use those funds through the end of the calendar year because typically we're able to encumber through the end of that calendar year 2024. okay and summer reach i believe is part of the legislation that required all districts to provide a summer program so are dollars for the reach program in our esser budget or is that funded separately so they it is in our esr budget so we have about 18 million dollars you'll see the after school and on the detail budget that you all have um the after school and summer reach dollars are there for the next uh two summers through 2024 right um to get us there and then this past year there was also some dollars that the state provided

050you know that came out of some of the um tanf dollars and some other uh buckets but we funded uh anticipating if we don't get any additional dollars from the state that we can use the s or funds to continue that work okay i am wondering if we'll come to the end of the school year and realize that we actually need a couple more years of this summer program or um especially the fact that we're already seeing quarantine situations and um it's tricky i'm interested to see what happens on the state level for sure with that and then yeah or every year i agree with you um and then we do have an annotation on the on the on this esser slide and it says the district received 2.6 million for ida and 12 million

051for public health and other arp grants which reduce need for s or expenditures in the areas of unique needs of special populations and public health coordination i was just wondering are we are we thinking about doing something different with that 1.1 million like are we are we shifting that money or is it still like do you know what i'm talking about on this slide yes so the the monies that are allocated on that slide are are budgeted in esser okay we thought just from a quick eye chart look it might look like we're not spending any money needs of special populations or on public health but in fact when we got this additional grant from the american rescue plan we shifted dollars out of the esther budget into that budget that could only be spent

052on exceptional education and similarly this 12 million grant that we got for public health we shifted all of those dollars into the 12 million dollar grant and there were a couple of other areas like the innovative high schools grant that we got that was 2 million so anytime that we find an opportunity for a different funding source uh really what it's allowed us to do is put more money into facilities in the essa grant okay and my last question actually is about facilities uh does esther define how we have to spend that money on facilities is this specific elements of facilities it's not just blanket yeah it's not and and we do have to connect it to the pandemic response um and we do have to get actual pre-approval around the facilities of projects that

053we have in mind and then there's a final approval uh the other point that we'll make is that you have to be in the building by august of 2024. so if we're going to use esser dollars we need to start uh the projects the csla of course is underway we easily make that time frame but for the tiner project we need to make sure that we're going to make that time frame and of course the argument that we're making is that tyner can't be renovated to support better ventilation to support physical distancing for the next pandemic that hopefully we won't have um so all of that said uh the recommendation from this facilities assessment is that that building needs to be a newly constructed building so that's what we're um proposing to the state so

054we would need to re we need to build that building in 27 months from now like have it open in 2017 correct it needs to be students need to be going to school in that building in august of 2024. i wish i had development projects that moved that fast right 36 is that 35 months okay that's even better that's good okay worried great thank you so much thank you mr walker thank you sir uh in regards to the esther funds and just something that i always want to say you know that i see that i've seen year in and year out as we get a grant or we get this or that and then we hire some positions and then in three years and and i notice in here we've noted some of these have

055a time frame on them and they're going to be done at 2024-2023 i want us to be cautious for whoever's on this board and whoever is leading this system that when we get to 2024 if we decide that we don't have this 20-something million dollars that we're making plans ahead of time versus the school board or the county commission being the bad guys when we say you know we're not increasing taxes or things like that i just hope the thought is put into there because there's some great positions in here that i believe are needed so i just urge everybody to be cautious that in 2024 we make plans that we're not sitting here with this big group of people that we may have to change around or let go so uh just hope that

056we're thinking that way it's a great point and i will uh point out that for the fiscal year 22 budget we continue to update our three-year strategic financial plan so uh there has been what we've communicated to you all you may have noticed this year when we did the three-year strategic financial plan we are bringing in funds and stepping down the reliance on ester funds and or sun setting some of these positions so we do have a three year outlook we're already planning in terms of with growth dollars that we typically experience from property tax and sales tax we've been fortunate in hamilton county that economically we've been growing and so with those projections then we're able to anticipate where we need to step down funds so to your point no fiscal cliff we are

057planning and looking out three years for when these funds have are going away thank you thank you and sorry just a technical question if the esser funds require a fulfillment of 2024 in the building do those go into a liability until that is fulfilled um and i'm just thinking i've never seen a balance sheet necessarily and i'm just thinking the fact that a future board or anybody if somehow we don't achieve some goal may be left with a with a debt to uh to pay and so that's oh mr perez what are you asking are we are we i'm asking about a balance sheet question here and that's why it's a little bit of a technical question i think what you're asking is say that we put this 25 million dollars into tyner in august

0582024 the building's not ready in the worst case scenario yeah then yes we're in trouble and i think that's why we're pressing and why miss jones because otherwise it's a liability that we have to pay off however the terms may be from that so and 35 months seemed seems like a long time but yeah planning breaking the ground and getting in it takes a minute and so that's why uh the amended item on the board agenda tonight asking to go ahead and go through the process of getting an architect on board so that when fun additional funding comes available we're shovel ready and can go i mean if we we've got 24 months it's a very doable thing but if we're at 24 months and don't have an architect and don't have plans then that

059that's not real and so for me just the note is that aspect that i mean i i i'm taking it the other funds don't become part of our assets until we are in the building no but with the that's our funds we can uh dr towns make amendments to it so if we get to the point where we realize that is not going to be ready we can take that 25 and put it into this accelerating student achievement okay all right that i think that i think you're also asking if it'll sit on our balance sheet as a liability until the building is open correct okay did you get that answer i feel okay enough yeah okay all right any other questions or discussion around this thank you miss moody thank you dr town all

060right before we get to our voting items on tonight's agenda we do have the board disclaimer statement if anyone feels they need to make that statement you could do so now go ahead mr press i declare that i have a spouse and sisters in law who work for the school system and the board's vote on many many things 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 mr walker this will be my first time i declare that i have a relative who works for the school system and that the board's vote on 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

061school system thank you mr mcclendon uh i declare i have a fiance who works 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 fiance a relative mrs thurman yes i declare that i have a relative who works for the school system at the board's vote on budgeting 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 mrs robinson i declare that i have a relative who works for the school system and that the board's vote on budget and policy may have an effect on my relatives employment even

062so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the school system okay do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second you got those misses four yes all right any items that we might want to pull and take a look at what mr thurman i would like to pull uh it is 5 a b or a 5 8 i guess a 5 b yes verification of grant submission approval okay anyone else and then i have one more okay i just have a question about the request for new position for the hcs foundation that is c two oh that's under board matters never mind so that's it all right anything else okay mrs ford mrs hill mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr

063smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes okay mr thurman okay i was just looking at the amount of this grant and this is a 50 50 matching grant uh i saw that it was had to be it had emergency approval which i always have a problem with when this is talking about this amount of money um and the money was moved around it looks like uh it says the grant requires a 50 match for 100 1 million 175 943 dollars and 17 cents each year for a three year uh performance period the matching funds will be repurposed from funding previously allocated to various teacher stipends and 30 held teaching positions this funding will aid in the district's ongoing efforts to develop great teachers and great leaders i guess my problem with

064this is first of all the amount of money uh just being moved around and then uh 30 held teaching positions where where were those 30 teaching positions that were taking the money away from am i reading that correctly um yes so for our grow your own programs we are looking to hold positions and so we might hold one teaching position but put two residents in that teaching position um and that's part of our opportunity culture model for grow your own well i guess the problem i have is i know that there are some schools that are told that they can't have another program because there's no we don't have money for another teaching position and then i see now there's money for teaching positions and we've taken it reallocated for something else so i just

065so let me make sure we're um clarifying these are positions that exist they're not new positions so in the opportunity culture model and grow your own um what uh particularly our partnership with project inspire what they've asked is that instead of us filling a position with a teacher we would take that position and instead hire two project and style project inspire residents so they get essentially what's the equivalent of a 12 000 a year stipend and it helps us to be able to hire the clinical instructor so what the schools who opt into the opportunity culture are saying is that they will volunteer to take one of their teaching positions to instead train two residents and so that just becomes a one-for-one trade so it's not that you're creating any new positions or that i

066realize that's what i said it says they're going to take the money from those 30 teaching positions uh is this money coming out of just our general fund where's the money coming from to pay for this our part it's general funding we we pay about one million dollars today in teacher leadership stipends um in various centuries from building you know uh building technology department chairs grade level chairs so those are all teacher leadership roles that we're redesigning what teacher leadership looks like as a part of this grant okay i said it was the do the uh it says emergency approval was received for this grant which is due august the 13th six days prior to the next board meeting uh i guess i have a problem this is another one of those things that it

067almost wasn't like we didn't get it in time uh we've done this on several things that we had to have emergency approval and it's just a lot of money to have to have emergency approval on that we didn't have some discussion about it it's already been done now so there you go but uh was it just not done in a timely manner was it we didn't get the grand total i mean i don't i don't understand how it gets to be so late in the game of something of this i mean this is a 7 million dollar deal here so i'm happy to see that um oftentimes what happens with these grants is that the window will actually open and close and and we haven't had a board meeting um in time and so this

068is really just approval for us to be able to apply for it um and and of course we're seeking your approval because of the matching funds um this isn't a guarantee that we'll actually even receive this grant so okay all right thank you all right do we uh mr sternman you want to take any action on that no just uh i'm i move that we added on since it's just to uh apply for the grant okay all right do we have a second second i think mr mclendon was first on the punch there all right mrs ford this is hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs simmerman i don't like getting rid of the 30 teaching positions no mr walker yes chairman wingate yes all right that

069should bring us down to board matters then our first item would be uh the disciplinary hearing authority do we have a motion to approve so moved second mr perez thank you all right any question or comment on this item okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes next item was the request for funding uh for athletics and performing arts do we have a motion to approve you know for people to be able to apply because i talked to talk to a music teacher today that seemed to know nothing about it so i don't know what we need to do but just make sure it's communicated that people are i'll get with uh cody tomorrow and see

070if we can send something out to every teacher right right now uh we're relying on school level administrators and athletic directors too right okay anything else okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman wayne gate yes next item would be the school resource officer program agreement between hamilton county schools and the hamilton county sheriff's department do we have a motion to approve so moved second any discussion or questions around that item okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman yes next item would be the request for one exceptional education pre-k teacher and two exceptional education pre-k assistants we have a motion

071to approve to approve second all right any discussion questions well mrs thurman is this the one because siskin was not going to do this i just want to make sure everybody understands what's going on siskin used to take care of this and now we're bringing it back in house okay anything else all right mrs ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs sermon yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes next item would be the approval of revisions to the memorandum of understanding between the hamilton county schools and the hcea do we have a motion to approve second all right discussion questions on that item so i think go ahead mr president i think it's uh valuable to uh because people will see that and have questions

072about it so just to give a brief explanation as to what it is that we're amending there sure um so we're actually removing the 15-year experience cap for experienced new hires into hamilton county schools we are adding the language that the board adjusted in the oji policy so that our employees are included in that piece um we're also adding the language of the waiver of the waiting period for certified employees for benefits and we also removed the sick leave bank to show that we now have short-term disability instead and we also notated and removed to indicate that sabbatical leave is unpaid all right anyone else okay mrs ford this is hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs sermon yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes next item

073would be the request for the h the hamilton county schools foundation executive director do we have a motion to approve second mr thurman yes uh did we approve this foundation did we have to approve this foundation i don't remember whether we ever approved it or not did it it's a separate it's a separate organization it's a separate organization okay why do we have to approve the director and number one and another question too while we're doing that is uh have they collected any money so far if we don't have a director who's in charge of it where is it is it is it in with our money or does it have a separate account you know i just don't know what's going on here i can answer the first question okay so um in order

074for the school system to pay for benefits for someone uh more a support organization like this they have to be employed tennessee law allows a support organization for a school system to exist and and share employees under under free tight circumstances so this is so this is proper that's that's why that this person is employed it enables the foundation to go out and get someone to maybe offer better benefits than if they were having to shell out of their own pocket just to answer the first question the other questions i don't know okay i think if i remember them the foundation was has recently transitioned under my piece of the organizational umbrella it was previously under dr jill lavine okay so is the money being held in hamilton county schools um no a board member

075or members have the the financial um you know permissions it's it's not anybody that's on our payroll so that we can keep things separate foundation board foundation board i'm so sorry yes yes yes the foundation the hamilton county schools the board has the chairman i've sat on that board they have a chairman but i mean director director yeah i'm sorry i don't remember the figure man one of y'all probably do but there's already some money yeah i know there's somebody yeah that's what i'm saying okay without a director i just wondered you know and that that director at the end of the day is going to raise their own salary you know when the grants and the fundraising and that so it's not going to be any cost to us at all that person is

076going to be valuable in a walkway okay i just i just wonder mrs robinson yeah i um i guess i mean just really like the logistics behind what we're approving is really that the foundation is gonna reimburse us for the person's salary monthly their salary and benefits okay and i just wanted to clarify with scott like we can have a inter-company transfer like that with a foundation like there's no there are no issues with how the federal government will recognize the foundation or any type of impact that we would see i've set up a foundation before and it felt to me like when i was setting it up like this was actually tricky i totally am relying you on guiding us through this it is tricky but there's actually a statute that allows the school

077system to to have an employee so specifically school systems can actually do an inner company will transfer basically you mentioned you know federal government issues i'll be perfectly honest when you start talking about taxes that that's that's it that's where we would need to have the foundation and the lawyers who set the foundation answered those questions as it concerns the the hamilton county board of education it's entirely proper under these under the school support organization financial accountability act for this board to have an employee who is working with the foundation okay if there are any tax concerns for the foundation that's something that the foundation needs to no what i didn't know was that there was us that there was a language for school systems to opt to do this so that that's helpful okay

078thank you yeah mr price so i've worked with uh many development directors and i have seen development directors that raise multiple times their salary and i've seen development directors that don't raise the water that they're required to right and so there's a lot of concern i didn't know until monday that this well until i got the the agenda that this position uh would come under uh hamilton county i understand the issue of benefits i understand the issue of protection around it but the oversight is is my bigger concern in that if for whatever reason it takes months by the way for for a development director to get the traction and so that usually even up to two years and so usually you don't find out till it's a little too late that the person may

079have been uh unable to uh to do the the job with excellence um so that whole thing knowing that we're paying it until we get reimbursed or or are we already guaranteed the reimbursement and we're just covering those expenses and then yeah if ever there's a lag what happens so the dollars are already at the foundation to cover this this full position for a year yes this year um and so uh and the foundation does have a board the chair of the board is actually keith fogelman who was our former chief talent officer and so uh we have a lot of confidence in him that he is going to manage this person to expectations um and of course you know we've already got some relationships that we're ready to cultivate and just don't have anybody

080who's full-time on the foundation development side so this allows for that person to go out and actually pursue some of the uh relationships that we already have okay so the other and i commented on this on monday and i think again it's just one of those things to throw on there as a as an expectation down the road um but and again i'm calling it a development director because that's being one person of a foundation that's their job is to go raise money all day long um my experience on those development directors that have been able to raise into the millions of dollars is that they ca paid very very well otherwise they get taken right away because everybody sees their capacity to get paid to to raise money exceptionally well and i think one

081thing because it will fall under hamilton county's uh payroll i think we need to keep in mind that it's very possible they'll have to increase uh even above i mean i know development directors i get paid above the executive director of their and even the pay structures can be different based on some metrics that they need to meet and so on so forth and all that to say that's kind of what worries me about this maybe not year one but down the road this can become incredibly complicated as we have an entity under another entity but we don't supervise that entity um there's a different board and uh and i just want to warn us about that down the road yes that's a great point and keith and i actually talked about this the other

082day and he's talking with other foundations to see how theirs is structured as well so that once this development director gets on board and is able to raise funds that they can move to another structure and maybe move them directly to the foundation but this just gives them a jump start mr walker yes just to be clear and i know it says new position so so this organization doesn't currently have an executive director and to make it more attractive we're offering to do the benefits and the salary and then get reimbursed by the foundation and then the main purpose of the foundation if you could just briefly and doesn't have to belabor it sure jen do you want to um it it's to obviously go out and as board member perez said raise funds in

083order to support our strategic plans so it's it's to um you know just wrap around certain initiatives um that we see as key to reaching those focus five and and the goals that we've laid out in future ready 2023 it was kind of a birth as a result of we really didn't have a mechanism for if i'm a some kind of corporation or maybe even an individual or a church or whatever that wanted to make a donation to the hamilton county department of ed there really wasn't a mechanism to do that and we have our annual i forgot the name of the group you like to help me the kids first that was a you know a system-wide fundraiser that's done very well but but other than that we really didn't have an initiative for

084people to come in and you know at the end of the year i want to save some money on my taxes so i'm going to give some funds to hammond county partner that wasn't it didn't exist so that that was kind of how all this was birthed and i you know i i don't see a bad downside at all and i think sometimes we make much do about things about nothing because i you know you got that board that's led by keith fogelman who we all trust and love and a lot of good people on that board i'd like to think i'm one of them and we're going to make sure that the person that we hire is is going to meet the expectations that we said so uh that's all i'll say this is

085it's a good thing mrs hill um i just want to share with my board member my fellow board members um i've they've already been doing some good work uh brown academy has been in the rock point learning community and it is part of district six and they had a reimagining of that school because you all may remember from the mgt report it is one of our best buildings it's the only building in my district that doesn't have a leaking roof yay yay for brown not for everybody else but in the reimagining of some of that approach to learning at brown academy there was a whole redo of their library area to make it a like a steam lab and they were able to raise funds to be able to get new furniture and oh the

0863d printers it's just a remarkable space and really encourage you guys to go take a look at it but that's because of the foundation so good things already and i would add to that too another example is that we had a donor that really wanted to provide some incentive funding for students for summer reach for the my minutes matter initiative so we were able to give out in attendance incentives to students for summer reach and then when students hit certain milestones for my minutes matter so that was a real success and that was um all because of the foundation i promise i'll shut up mr thurman go ahead no i i've just i didn't have a problem with foundation per se i just don't know what legally as we have heard about i don't want

087us to get hung in with something if they don't raise enough money one year and we they've extended like because they have no idea how much money they're going to make or anything like that i just don't want the board to have to be on the hook for any of that mr press so yeah kind of to repeat the same thing and i'm i'm all for the foundation i i think i've mentioned to uh to miss murray that like i can't you know i i can't go to target or walmart or any place without being asked do you want to round this up i can't wait till somebody says do you want to round this up for public schools and we have millions of dollars flowing because i'm sure the community will respond and say

088absolutely if it's for public schools we'll round this up and so i i'm excited and well no i won't say what i was going to say but uh but i think there's great things to round this up in our school search so there's no question about it to me uh this was new to know that they were still gonna be under hamilton county and just the just the logistics and and and direction and all that i want us to be very careful that we're not making any mistake along the way i also don't know personally yes i do i was gonna say i don't know too many foundations but they're usually family foundations that are already endowed that can run on one person because it requires a lot of little details to get that donation

089to register that donation to make sure so again we have to be aware that this foundation in order to get to that point where we're you know rounding up at every uh grocery store and convenience store in in hamilton county and beyond let's go um but uh in order to get there this has to be staffed well uh and and i years ago pulled all the 990s of our local private schools to see how much they were raising to see you know they're they're in the tens of millions of dollars and there's no reason uh why uh the thousands of alumni tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of alumni that have graduated through here many of whom have been incredibly financially successful shouldn't want to give to uh to support our school so i look

090forward to it i'm just looking at the logistics of the whole thing and my brain starts you know short circuiting in that process so keep that clear yep and i'll just reiterate what miss murray said that the long-term goal is certainly to have the executive director to be there an employee of the foundation all right anything else okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes next item are the classified salary increases yes ma'am at what point will we know whether they have enough money to pay or did you come back to the board and say they're now self-sufficient and and they're going to be their employee and not ours at what point we've been made aware

091of that as soon as that happens uh yep so i'll just reiterate that uh so long as they remain our employee the reimbursement would happen on the front end not on the back end um but then if so as soon as we're able to make them an employee of the foundation will of course update the board to that effect thank you thank you all right so next item there the classified salary increases do i have a motion to approve so moved second go ahead mr thurman yes i just want to be sure we talked about this the other night penny that about uh working on the pay scale i just want everybody to be aware that you are have someone looking at the pay scale because we do realize there are some of our employees

092who've been employees for 20 25 years not making as much as some of our new hires and that cannot stand so we are working on that i just want people to be aware of that correct our existing employees are at the top of the pay scale so they're maxed out so if they've been here 25 years they're not exactly making the same as new hires but they're not anywhere where they should be either um so we do have a compensation consultant who will be reviewing our classified pay scale and helping us readjust that because that's a priority we need to take care of it well i did have some that sent me what they were making and what new hires were making so anyway i can talk to you about that later sure yeah and

093each of those we've reached out to but everyone should have moved up to at least 13 dollars and this proposal tonight will take existing employees who have been here prior to august of 2020 up two steps which is an additional 50 cents for most folks okay thank you all right anything else there okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs silverman yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes next item is the coped leave for 2021 2022 we have a motion to approve some move second all right uh mr walker in this and then mr mclendon uh i need just a little more clarification i tried to watch the agenda meeting but just i want to be cautious that if we send teachers home uh

094for tracing or all of those things that that they are protected if they you know so i apologize for for not being here on monday to hear the details but i'd like to hear that one more time please sure so what we're proposing is at least five days of covet leave if an unvaccinated teacher is um quarantined if a vaccinated teacher um has symptoms or tests positive then they would also have to go home so this would provide five days of coped leave for them as well with some criteria you know as long as they contact the covid call center and they partner with them in regards to testing and other protocols as well so versus them using their this is them using their sick leave correct thank you mr mcclendon it's kind of in

095the same vein i'm glad that we're doing five days quarantine if i'm correct is 10 days correct for teachers if they meet that criteria that's that's listed yup so it's 10 days with the opportunity to test out of quarantine if you are if you receive a negative test result on day five or later and so then you could return on day eight which means you would be out for seven theoretically two of those days or a weekend so five days should cover it if you're willing to be tested test it out gotcha so i my issue with this um and it's kind of small but five days isn't really enough especially for our new teachers we have first year second year and probably some third year teachers that don't have enough sick days to cover

096this and it's no fault of their own if they have to quarantine or get covet or whatever the circumstance is and and if i'm a first year teacher second year teacher that kind of puts a burden on on them that i don't necessarily want them to have so um just thinking through this and kind of counting uh weekends and and how time frame um i i'm gonna make a motion that we make this seven days instead of five days and that should give us more cover especially for for quarantine teachers and gives them a little more room to breathe on that no the instead of having five days they would have seven days that they could potentially use so if they have to quarantine on a wednesday they're getting two extra days that they don't

097have to use their sick days from and i just think that that's fair to our teachers especially our i mean to all of our teachers but especially our new teachers that they have that kind of peace of mind that they don't have to burn through their sick days because life still happens in a pandemic and so making sure we take that that per that burden off of them so before we move forward here so mr bennett do we have a substitute motion here so that's a question to amend motion all right so we'll continue with our discussion here you need a second second all right so i had next um mrs thurman okay i need some clarification are the are the teachers being treated differently on this the vaccinated and the unvaccinated are they being

098treated differently in this so the cdc does treat them differently in regards to who's quarantined and i'm not i'm not worried about cdc this is our these are our rules uh so uh are the are they being treated differently if so how so we are saying that unvaccinated teachers if they um wish to utilize the leave that they would say that they would be subject to weekly or routine testing and also mr thurman vaccinated teachers might not have to quarantine at all depending upon the circumstances so so the the the status of whether you're vaccinated or unvaccinated may drive whether you need to quarantine in the first instance that's not something that we can help that's that's just cbc policy so even though people who are vaccinated can spread the the virus as we know

099uh so if once they're symptomatic they would have to quarantine right so so so what this policy applies to is in part if you reach a point where you have to quarantine forget forget with your vaccinated or unvaccinated if you have to quarantine pursuant to a cdc policy then this policy is going this board policy would apply to you and give you certain protected leave days so you don't have to burn your own sick leave days is that a is that a good simple way to put it ms murray yes that's correct so we're not worried how you get into the quarantine if cdc tells you guys to go we're going to take care of you that's that's how it's a layman's way to look at this policy i just don't want teachers to be

100punished whether they're if they're vaccinated or not vaccinated i don't i don't i don't like that because sure it's completely and totally up to them and if someone is vaccinated and they go going to quarantine they're entitled to the benefits of this policy and if they're unvaccinated and they go into quarantine they're entitled to the benefits of this policy now um as miss murray and miss murray you probably need to the length of time the amount of days they would have to take right but but which gets back to i think one of the points that mr mcclendon was making by extending the the board's coverage you're going to protect somebody who maybe isn't vaccinated because they can't be or they don't want to be you're giving them that extra time so that as ms

101bronson pointed out they can test out of the quarantine okay make sense so so mr mr mcclendon's motion's effectively trying to give those teachers room is that a fair way to put your motion yeah i've got i understand that and i thought about the same thing too except i was thinking six days you said seven so uh but uh that's that that's okay too and the teachers new teachers that don't have a bind of sick days and that's very important yeah that's right and then two uh something that joe brought up at the agenda session uh we have had reports of people uh it's supposed to be quarantining putting boats in waters uh well they're supposed to be on quarantine uh i say if a teacher is caught doing that that they get docked the

102pay or maybe even worse uh and i don't know what we do about that but there needs to know that uh there will be if if there are pictures that surface of a teacher that's supposed to be in quarantine because it seems like some teachers sometimes get quarantined more than others and uh if they're out doing other things besides quarantining like they should there has to be some recourse and mr that's a great point so so some of the bold language at the top of the second page talks about if you're on quarantine um and there's work that they can assign you you need to be ready and able to do it so if you're sick and you can't then you can't but if you're able uh i mean there's a lot of work that

103that can be done if you're a classroom teacher you have students with ieps there are all kinds of reports that can be filled out for those kids so to your point i think what i think what the administration is trying to do is make use of the downtime okay thank you mrs hill thank you chair um so so it's interesting i think the the perception of of this definitely could go both ways because to your point rhonda people who are unvaccinated likely will be in quarantine more often and could be putting boats in water to use your phrase whereas people who are vaccinated will likely not quarantine as often and therefore be in the building teaching students um so that there there is a there is a push there's a friction point here something that

104has been elevated to me from school staff is a concern about what if their child who cannot be vaccinated then has to quarantine and so you know there comes a point where we can only go so far with with what we offer to our employees in terms of benefits but given that um that tucker has raised this idea of you know adding some days to it i wonder and i'd like to hear from you penny i wonder if might we be able to expand this that if that they that that same employee would be able to use this if their student of hamilton county schools were required to be quarantined because you're going to have parents who are vaccinated who might not ever need to use this leave but it's sitting out there for seven

105days for them but they have to go home because their first grader got quarantined that was not able to be vaccinated what do you what's your thought on that yes and previously last year it did cover dependence this year when we first drafted it you know we were thinking um to protect the employee first um to make sure that they were covered in their situations but you know i'll defer to scott that's definitely up to the board as to you know any amendments of that nature so uh i could see how it could add substantially to the cost to the system to do that um but i i could understand how there would be teachers who might cry foul after this that listen i did everything i could to protect myself and my my ability

106to teach by getting vaccinated and my colleague that didn't gets time off and i don't sure you know because they're they've been asked to quarantine well i mean rhonda you're talking about boats and water so you know i mean i think that was a fact well i mean i'm not i'm not questioning that it is not a fact but i'm saying like to your like you're chuckling when i'm saying these things but you're saying the same thing just with different examples so um you know there's a friction point about this um so something that may perhaps after we have a little more conversation and we vote on tucker's we can think about if we want to do an additional amendment mr smith you know i said this other night and i got criticized on social

107media for saying that i know that 99.9 of our teachers would never do this i mean they just wouldn't but there's one percent that would and i've seen it some of you guys have seen it happen it's happening right now so scott help me understand what happens to that one percent or one tenth of one percent because nine percent of our teachers are not going to take advantage but there are those that will so what happens to those that do and their supervisor finds out about that what recourse do they have well it depends on the position that they have it depends on whether they've misrepresented uh that they were under quarantine depends on whether they failed to apply the quarantine rules if they've done that if they if they've failed to comply with quarantine

108rules or they've refused to perform work that's insubordination there's an entire section of the tennessee code uh on how how the superintendent can deal with that so if someone refuses available work there are consequences mr thurman uh yes about about uh teachers taking off for their children you know people all over hamilton county are having to miss work when kids are out of school and waiting more teen kids the parents are having to take out take off from work they don't get any compensation for that i mean if it's the employee it's one thing but we cannot do this because they expect the parents to to pay a teacher to be off for their child when they don't get any compensation for for theirs if it's the is the teacher being off it's one thing

109but i mean if it's their child just like everyone else in hamilton county if they have another job yes they just have to find the sitter or find someone to watch their children that's actually almost exactly what i said to the people when i uh when they brought it to me because yeah i feel this friction with it as well yeah and so i just uh understanding the cost i can't imagine what the cost would be or how many more teachers would be out of the classroom that we don't need necessarily but that's just my thoughts all right anything else there so uh right now we have a motion and a second to add mr mcclendon's amendment right correct motion to amend and been moved and seconded yeah and so we're ready to vote okay

110mrs ford mrs hill no mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs sermon yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes all right next item there would be board policies i'm sorry i need to move to the main motion so this oh we got to pay that's right so we need to go ahead and pass this also so we already had a motion in a second on that so go ahead mrs ford please mrs hill well if we can would discussion still be open for that because okay it would be okay so just for the purposes of just having the the vote i move to amend that this be that this leave seven days of leave potentially be usable by people for their dependents that are in quarantine yes all right

111we have second online a second all right um go ahead mrs thurman then mr perez that's going to be defined dependent i mean you could have an elderly person who listens to you that's dependent on you i mean but what is dependent you know uh am i right i mean there wasn't people who could be dependent it could be your dependent uh so i mean that just opens up a whole plethora of different things and really added a lot of cost mr perez so last year so we're still talking a total of seven days uh right whether they use it for themselves or they use it for a dependent um last year i just want to understand that i apologize that i should probably know this but you're saying last year they have that option

112if they needed can you tell me i mean we quarantined a lot last year too quarantined teachers quarantined students quarantined to everybody so can you just give me an idea of did everybody use up their time how like what was the no not everyone used the coveted leap of course i mean not everyone was quarantined thank goodness but it did last year we kind of followed the general ffcra rules um because initially we had that mandate until december 31st and then the board generously continued it through the end of the year and so that law did cover minor dependence at that time so and we could define it as such now the cost to us would be obviously the substitute teacher if they were unable to do any work the substitute teacher and then the

113the leaf payment so you know in addition to the sub also whatever their daily rate is for yeah but we're paying them anyway so that that wouldn't be so really we're adding the the substitute correct can some of those funds uh or do some of those funds come from us or as our funding because they are for covid uh mitigation needs but have we allocated mary ellen can speak to that every question i know that last year we did the substitute additional payment was charged i don't know if s or three do we if we put me in s or three or not we we hadn't put it in sr3 at this point of course we can amend the budget at any time um yeah as we said so if we see that that's an

114increase that this has become a need i mean we've got a reality of a variant that uh that seems to be uh hitting children and families uh uh in ways that that we wish it wasn't and that are already requiring a lot of did i see a thousand students quarantine um you know and obviously a lot of teachers have their own children in the in the school system um so in the event that we see a increase in cost because of that potentially we could amend the budget to cover that increasing cost okay that's all right mr robinson and mrs thurman i i had a clarifying question if i could um i know that federal law requires to cover for dependents through the end of last calendar year my my recollection was that the board

115covered employees through the end of the school year did we extend that benefit to dependents as well we did we continued the same coverage yeah i mean i was just going to point out i mean specifically why i i'm in support of supporting the change that janie's proposed is because at the end of the day whenever i mean you're going to cover you're going to have teachers are going to be out it's going to be the same cost to our budget for substitutes to be in those classrooms whenever they have students that quarantine and so i just it's just really simple to me like it just makes sense to go ahead and just create a bright spot with this um this policy which is hey also extend it to their either students or their dependents

116we could we could define the students i suppose a lot more like rhonda is um pointing out but i mean just at the end of the day we're gonna we're gonna face this and it's gonna be the same budget cost to us no matter what that's how i look at it mr thurman something's been lost in all this what is that going to be the cost to the students that are losing out on their teacher uh i mean that's this is why we're here as for uh the teachers to be in the classroom as much as they possibly can because this is what they missed out we keep comparing it to last year well last year we saw how the grades were affected by teachers not being in the classroom students not being in the

117classroom and yet we're going to try to make a way for teachers to maybe be out of the classroom even more what does that cost it's not just a monetary cost it's a because you know we're told how much uh a child misses a day of school how much learning that they miss and it's the same way when a teacher's not there when their classroom teacher's not there the students miss out and uh so that's there's another cost that has to be figured in there not just a monetary cost but a cost that for this what the students are missing um so here again i just like i said i don't have a problem with doing it seven days for teachers if they have to be quarantined but their students like i say everyone else

118has to find a sitter or a lot of them don't have any sick days either they have zero how do you use them all up last year they used all their vacation time up they've used everything they have nothing and so now you're asking their kids to miss out on a day's education plus paying a teacher to be able to stay home with their children i'm sorry i just if if i vote against it it will be for that reason it's not for this i would gladly give the seven days for them to be off but i don't know why we have to add this other caveat to it mr robinson yeah i i get it i get what you're saying how do i i can't find a sitter for my kids whenever they're quarantining

119though so only i or my husband can watch them because no one's i can't pay anybody to watch my kids whenever they're quarantining because those people don't want to be exposed so the parent is absolutely going to be the person that has to quarantine with their child i mean it's just going to happen regardless people are either going to just going to take time off or again we can extend an opportunity to now bundle it into these days and i think that that makes our teachers just a slightly bit you know stressed um i i mean i get it i totally agree with you that it it's unfortunate for teachers to be out but it's absolutely gonna happen like teachers that are parents if their child goes into quarantine who else is gonna watch their

120child i can't buy i can't pay anybody a hundred dollars an hour to watch my kids whenever they're in quarantine nobody wants to be exposed to someone in quarantine so i don't i hear your argument completely and i empathize with it i just don't know that it's even yeah and vaccinated teachers we have 70 percent of them are not out right and so yeah and so then vaccine teachers will be able to actually utilize this whenever they have a child quarantining and i feel like that actually creates a level playing field i feel like we're kind of getting a little i realize that the either the federal or state side says that you can or because cdc says that those people don't have to quarantine you don't have to make the same rule apply to

121every employee but i do feel like it's a it's a bit uneven and feels a little messy to me personally if we don't offer the same thing across the board to everyone but just saying i just don't know how anybody else is going to quarantine with your child other than the parents so all right this would also just to be aware allow them to zoom into their classes so they would need to agree to be able to do that as well so if they're sick of course and unable to do so you know we wouldn't expect them to but if they're quarantined and they're not experiencing symptoms then they should still be able to engage and zoom in with their classes it's true and that that was thank you penny that was actually one of

122the points that was brought to me today was you know if my child is quarantining and they they may or may not get sick and hopefully won't get sick but i would be able to continue teaching remotely so even though the district still has to pay for a sub that they could zoom in at that point so thanks for bringing that up but they wouldn't be taking that leave right they would have if we were to allow this to be used from for dependent miners like was in the previous year's standard then a teacher whose child has to be quarantined perhaps because they have are too young to be vaccinated at this point they would then be able to be at home with them and not take leave time and also be teaching their class

123from home if they chose to use the leaf time benefit if they didn't want to use the leaf time benefit and they didn't feel comfortable teaching from home then they don't use the benefit then they just they say thanks but no thanks i'm just going to take sick time same as you know a teacher who themselves is quarantining they could say you know what i i want to go out on a boat and i'm i'm don't want any kind of benefit and i'm i guess to that point willing to risk contaminating other people mr robinson i was just going to say i do think that defining dependent is really important in this though if we were to move forward with this so a minor dependent is what i would be supportive of yeah mr president

124yeah so i'm just uh probably won't affect the the amendment but if a teacher goes home and zooms into class is she taking or he taking this leave yes even though they're teaching full-time okay yes and that's a way for us to designate it so that we can get a substitute teacher and know that they were not present in the classroom because you still have to pay such two courses yeah again they got to still sit in the room okay thank you man this is complicated [Laughter] all right any other discussion or question about that so we have mrs hill's motion correct in a second okay i think we're ready mrs hill yes miss mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith no mrs thurman no mr walker yes chairman wayne gates

125no country all right five three motion uh motion to amend carries so we now move to the main motion all right we're ready are we ready to vote on the main motion all right let's go ahead mr ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs sermon yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes so that brings us to our board policies there uh these are all first read um so obviously we're not voting on any of these tonight anything that you'd like to talk about before we move on to our next slide go ahead mrs thurman yes the uh appearances before the board there's a couple of things here it says desires to address the board regarding an item on the agenda sometimes people want to address the

126board about something that's not on the agenda and then two if you make them speak at the last of the meeting if it's on the agenda it's already too late to address it so i don't know that that clause needs to be anyone desires to address the board regarding a concern or whatever might be a better choice of words there i don't know because not everything that people talk about something on the agenda and also down online 36 it says board meetings shall provide copies of these the person to address the board shall have the materials to be shared with board prior to the board meeting shall provide copies of these materials to the board secretary no later than 12 o'clock the day of the schedule board meeting you know if you're in cell creek

127and you want to address the board about something it's a long drive to drive over here to uh give out materials to just have to drive back and then come back to the board meeting and as we see sometimes even people that live in this building right over there don't get things in a timely manner to the school board so i think this is asking a lot i'm not sure that that is necessary to put that in there maybe give may say provide copies of the materials to the board secretary at the beginning of the meeting or something like that i don't know why it has to be at 12 o'clock the day of the board meeting i mean why is that necessary mr if i could comment on that so so we had put

128in there um i think it was like close of business the day before because then because the assumption was if they were asking to speak they might have something they wanted to present and so when when they're being contacted and said yeah be here you know do you have anything you want to share with the board yes here it is um but but ms ford's concern was the day before my thought was you all would want to see it as soon as you could right so if you're i don't know we get to the board meeting y'all start throwing things down here i had never seen well is that important exactly that's exactly right and so and so and so i i had originally put that that language in there because i thought you know

129if if someone wants to take the board's time and present something and they want the board to look at a document wouldn't it be a good idea if the board had seen the document beforehand so they can help digest what the speaker is saying so it was really to help the speaker be able to have a more informed audience with the board and to help you get ready for the speaker so i had thought wednesday at close of business ms ford thought that that was a little bit of a burden because maybe someone's trying to prepare their presentation they haven't figured out what they want to do so the thought here is they email it or fax it or carrier pitch in it and and then then she can send it out to y'all through

130email but if they because sometimes if the people that sign up to sign to speak right out here they haven't had that kind of that kind of time to to get everything prepared i don't know i just i don't i just don't say that this has ever been an issue i've been on the board a long time and this is never going to be i understand exactly what you're saying the goal here was to try to make the flow of information a little bit better but it's a new requirement and if it's something that that the board says you know i don't i don't know that's going to work we don't have to have it in there but but you're right sometimes people hand out things and y'all are seeing it for the first time

131well i voted on the raises for people before if you get into school board meetings yeah it's really an accommodation for the board and the speaker but we could take that out well i just i just don't think that that that is necessary maybe i'm good i presented to the board secretary but i don't know it has to be the 12 o'clock all right mr smith probably said the other night and i want to bring it up once again five minutes is a long and time in the format that we have we're not able to ask the presenter any question or ask for clarification and i've i've there's been many times when people have spoken to us that i wanted to say can you tell me where that happened and when that happened and we're

132not able to do that i do know that correct me if i'm wrong jenny but i think the city council and the commission last three minutes we talked about this some the other night i don't know how we got to five but if everybody tonight exercises their five minutes we're going to be here 75 minutes it's a long time so i i really want us to think about uh it's five minutes too long and looking at three minutes now i want to hear from everybody anybody's got something to say has a right to come right there and i want to hear from you but but i just questioned this five minutes is too long we haven't started yeah we talked also the other night on monday night about having a a session where parents could

133come and address the board and we could interchange with you all which i think is probably a really good idea maybe they could come and you know tell us what's on their mind you know at a school board meeting and then have another time where we could just interact with them absolutely and do that i think that's that was a great idea about you the other night joe mr walker yes son i think you're right there's there's some time when it's five minutes can fill up a long time uh but we have this meeting once a month this is for our parents and community members to come and speak and i know we'll get some i've been accused of rambling on a lot in my day sometimes but you know i think those that will

134come up and be succinct and get through their part in three minutes will help us out for those who take every second of the five minutes i think to limit a time uh i think five minutes is is a fair amount of time for somebody that gets one shot a month to come and speak to us and also in our forum when we were looking at this appointment we talked about the idea of maybe individually uh or myself going out individually in our district and have that monthly meeting where you can just have coffee and sit around and talk a little bit it may not be perfect for everybody else there has to be that piece but i think for our our purposes five minutes is uh is an appropriate amount of time all right

135was that taken out it looks like it's been marked through anyway on this am i correct scott on the road it's in the next paragraph it's in the next paragraph oh okay well mrs hill okay um i support um mr smith i support joe on that um i think three minutes will give us more time to be able to hear more people potentially um and it is i like having it at the end of the meeting um because that way we can get through the work that we need to do i think it's also really useful for the folks that come to the meeting to hear that work and and know what's happening but to rhonda's point if you wanted to talk about something on the agenda yeah we we need to open that language

136up a little bit also i think you know sherry you'll be collecting um the addresses i think it would be really cool if on our list of who's going to be coming if we could have the district noted um just so that we would be able to very easily follow up with people you know because um i i i'm glad james that you're thinking about meeting with people in your district because that to me is the most useful way i mean i i spoke with a woman for two hours last week about critical race theory and and other concerns that she had that had been brought up here so she's in my district she lives in lookout valley we we talked for a long long time and got to know each other and that was

137really useful time so certainly encourage you to do that james right anything else on that pause mr chairman could esco a question of the board since this is for first read i'm curious um you know mr smith's idea about having a time when it could be more open for discussion um i'm i'm i'd like to explore that with y'all if maybe i could what is is there appetite for maybe having two types of public comment so like maybe public comment at a business meeting to talk about things you're actually going to vote on so it's it's restricted to the agenda versus maybe having a designated work session sometime during the week when it's just wide open public comment and you can have that back and forth and i'm i'm asking because i hate to create

138another meeting for you all but you know the work the agenda session you'll have the the monday before is almost a better time for someone to ask questions of the board so that the administration can put it on the agenda for thursday does that make sense i mean so i'm kind of wondering i'm asking you all if that if y'all have the appetite for that because if you do i'll rewrite this for next time mr mclean that's kind of what i was just thinking through is um no reason at our agenda session we can't have a kind of a q a put some parameters on it five minutes or whatever but it's a q a and then keep all public comment on our thursday meetings to the agenda tied to the agenda to the agenda

139um i'm sure there's an issue or two there that will arise but i'm just thinking that would give the public time to address the board and for us to hear them out which is our job and then us to do official business and we have someone speaking tonight that's speaking to a pilot to a to an agenda item but they're speaking after we voted on it so that's there's a little bit of a double-edged sword there um in mind but i i'm i'm good with mondays if there's some kind of public comment q a session with the board um i mean some of those meetings are 25 30 minutes anyway i mean not that i want to be here any longer but it's our job and that's what we're elected to do so i would

140definitely be for that this is hill i would remind my fellow board members that the district offers us a lot of opportunities to talk with people in a in a s in a very um useful way with our learning community advisory boards i attend those and i'm able to have an advisory session with with teachers where i learn a great deal about what's happening in the rock point learning community and then right after that is one with parents so it's a time when we already are using our staff to engage with the community around our strategic plan around concerns that they have i guess if we were going to have a q a session at the agenda meeting we probably need some additional training with you scott on what we are and aren't able to

141to discuss or do i mean and that's not a conversation for now but i'd want to understand that better about you know where sunshine falls and how how things get if we're discussing things anyway i i'd want to understand what the parameters are mr perez um no anyway yeah i i for me um five minutes i i'm fine with that it doesn't uh i actually although five minutes may seem a lot to us when we sit here and we listen to uh many people uh it often seems too short for the people who are up there speaking to us so it's it's to me it's okay so and i get it but i'm i'm with mr walker i my family knows that not only do i take this thursday but i also come back sometimes

142in a bad mood so they don't talk to me the whole evening um so anyways that's just part of a part of part of our uh duties but anyways but that's fine i actually like the split if it's possible and it falls within but i i i like it um just because it allows us to inform some of the conversation and then to me it's not an either or it's it's you know i've heard out there i i saw one headline that said the board is trying to limit uh speakers and uh if there was anything that is the opposite to the truth is we are trying to listen there are weeks like this week where i receive over 400 phone calls i wish i could answer 400 phone calls and that phone call sorry

143400 emails and dozens of phone calls and texts i you know there comes a point where i just can't physically respond to those people with intention and and um and deliberate purpose but uh but i like that's our goal it's it's to listen to to the community uh and inform ourselves by the different stakeholders uh presence so all that to say there is no intention to limit the community there's an intention to ensure that it's productive and it moves forward in a way that serves the community better so um so for me i'm i'm good with as you're considering with figuring out i don't necessarily want to add an extra night not because i again this is my duty this is why i'm here but because i i don't know that it would add or

144take away from anything that we're currently so for me if it's on a monday night then we meet here on a thursday and if we'll have people speak to the agenda items that's all fine but i just at the end of the day i want people to feel that they had access to the board that they were able to to speak their their concerns to the board in a respectful manner uh my concern with the agenda thing is from my understanding the whole point of um a part of this uh uh part of this uh policy is that once they start speaking they'll have more access to say what they want to speak about with us without us shutting them down um if it falls so i don't know if there's a contradiction there did

145i make sense um so my understanding from this policy is once people start speaking uh and and approach the board we are uh we we are limited in what we can ask them to talk about or not talk about uh due to first amendment rights but basically yes you you can you can create once you give them a spot on the agenda that's their time and so the limited restriction you have is what are you going to talk about that's the literature so we can restrict yes yes okay so so but by the same token mr smith's point is a is a really good point they don't talk about something that's not on the agenda what is the vehicle for for them being able to address the whole board i mean maybe if mr perez

146is my board member i can give him a call you know i i know rhonda because she cuts me i'm speaking with that but she clearly doesn't cut my hair she doesn't cut my hair that's for sure so maybe i know a couple y'all right but if i want to address the board as a whole this is my one opportunity so listening to y'all talk and thinking i think that i think the vehicle for that is probably the work session where you ought to work where you can have the back and forth and you can ask questions and you know maybe mr smith is inspired by a concern someone has and mr smith says hey you know um miss murray can you look into that for us and get back with us or just send

147me an email so that's that that may be a way to put to deal with both concerns you have a you have an agenda-focused board meeting on on thursdays but you have a concerned focused work session on mondays i i'll take some time and think about this it won't be my close business tomorrow but i'll give it to you soon it's stern so another thing is the chair does have the privilege of moving the delegates if need be i've been at board meetings before when people want to speak about something and they're at the end of the meeting and they've made them to the first also i have been a board meeting before when we had them at tyner that a little girl was all dressed up to address the board of the board meeting

148with so long she fell asleep to get the address award that's always bothered me because uh you know she should have been able to speak at the first meeting she was a little five-year-old six-year-old girl whatever and so uh the chair does have the privilege of moving things around on the agenda if maybe if somebody wants to speak about something in there but at the end and move them to the front so they can be heard before we vote just no all right anything else on that item all right any other board policies there again these are all first read okay we'll move down to then the um approval of appropriation of the fund balance for capital maintenance do i have a motion to approve so moved second did you get a miss ford yes

149all right any discussion just quick hello mr mclean i just want to say um thank you that that we have been lucky enough to get this increased sales tax revenue and that we said what we were going to do is put it straight into uh to maintenance um so i'm just glad that we're we're back to that four million dollars that the district used to be a long time ago and we're making a tiny tiny bit of progress on where we need to be on that anyone else mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes and anybody that takes any money out here ought to be tarden feathered i'd like to make that amendment leave it alone mr walker yes chairman wingate yes next item would

150be dedication of cell creek football field we have a motion to approve [Laughter] all right miss ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs sermon yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes first home game september 3rd so that brings us to uh our next item which would be an opportunity to discuss current situation at the tyner campus so i think what would be appropriate is i've asked dr robertson to just kind of give us uh an update as to where we currently stand and then we'll have the opportunity to have discussion and ask questions so dr robertson so a couple of things just a little update on the 400 building that um you know has received some media coverage uh lately the the roof damage we've

151had someone assess it and recommend uh remediation for it uh estimated costs about 170 000 as you know you get in it could be more we also had a structural structural person come in and assess the rest of the building just to make sure that there was nothing else in it and that was completed earlier this week and so students are going to be able to move back in to portions of the building not the rooms that are affected by the structural issue on the roof it's one side of the building you've probably seen pictures of it so we have a fix in place for that in terms of i think this addition to the agenda it goes back to the conversation that we're having um about tyner and and where we are uh specifically

152also the 25 million in esser that we know that we have to have students in the building by august of 2024. justin wood and i have spoken about this a couple times over the last year in some ways we do things backward we get funding approved then we hire an architect and then we we submit proposals or receive proposals on on the plans um what this is suggesting is try to get the architect up front um and and have a better idea of what the cost is then we know what money we need to go after to get this project completed i'll bring up again tyner middle school was the lowest rated building in terms of just building score on the mgt report aside from csla which csla obviously we were already working on a

153plan to correct that so um i don't know that brings a kind of background and context to it but i think that's where miss jones was was coming in here this is thurman okay this is for both schools gonna put both schools in one building so we're looking at getting an architect for that that one building we don't know what's gonna happen to the middle school correct this is planning on getting architect for a tyner middle high school okay um this may not be the time to talk about it but it might be i don't know how quickly we can get someone to go in and start working on it since we are working on a timeline uh the kids at the high school the school will have to be completely torn down that's what

154we're looking at doing correct the mgt report is for both of them to be torn down yeah but i mean we're just going to put both are we going to put both of them in one building are we going to build yeah i think that's i think that's the architect to come up and we've got several examples of middle high schools that uh would be a one connected building but they're in separate wings that kind of share facilities like the the cafeteria and so forth so i think that's where the architect would come into play and um and discuss one one kind of side conversation we've had is talking with the city about the land that is behind tighter middle high school that they own if you recall if there's ball fields and and kind

155of preliminary conversations with them about the possibility of us utilizing that land to build the new building and then when it's done we tear down the other ones put ball fields that's why i was wondering i thought can the high school kids go to the middle school if we have to tear the high school down and then and then everybody move over to the new building i just wondered what we were looking at logistically yeah just gonna leave it up completely up to the architect yeah i think i think that's why we're asking these questions is to go ahead and get on the front end of planning so that we know what the logistics would be to make this happen and we also know what the cost would be but if you're going to tear

156down both buildings i mean eventually they both need to be torn down so there's no way we could get both buildings built by the time that yesterday there's no way this amount yeah that's the plan it's for tyner middle high school to be built before august of 2024. um so what do we need to go ahead and and somebody need to make a motion to go ahead and start do we need to do that for the next meeting or what what do we need to do in order to get to this business this this is uh you guys approving going ahead and hiring an architect pending county commission approval so we started having some conversations with the uh facilities people at county to let them know that we were going to be coming with this

157um and again just to get that ball rolling so that if the county commission would agree uh then we could go ahead and get the architect and answer some of the questions okay so we need to make a motion okay i make a motion to give you the authority to proceed with a looking at tyner high school all right mr perez so i said this monday i said i'd probably repeat it today um and so i think i want to be a man of my word um the uh the future ready update uh showed excellent uh mitigation of our district uh we are showing increase and improvement in many areas not that we're there yet and our buildings are not acceptable at all and uh i and i i will never take away people's rights

158to be angry about whatever they want to be angry about that's you know and i'm not saying it's a legitimate um but if there is something we should be angry about as a community is these buildings and their uh and their current state i mean i i applaud and i know many of us do our tiner students uh protesting the fact that they know as every parent in the area should know that they deserve better facilities than the facilities that they're at and they're not the only ones who deserve better facilities than the facilities they're at um and so for me uh it's it's not and that's why i said i saw a sphere i try to look at eyes now and see what i respond when i say you know we're taking it from

159us or of course we're taking from us because that's where we have funding um and and we're going to do that but this should be coming from us it should be coming from all of us recognizing that hamilton county schools students our students our children our grandchildren the leaders of this community deserve to be in buildings that are not falling apart um that are not dangerous to them uh you know we talked about uh monday i mentioned they don't mention again but with dr robertson i talked about the fire we had at east ridge due to a uh air conditioning unit um it was very small it was before students were there but i mean i reached out because i'm like this could be bad this it wasn't you know we're blessed by that that

160it wasn't but we can't be playing you know a building that starts crumbling can happen when people are inside and we can't accept that as a community we can't sit there and be like well oh well we can't do anything about this we have to act so so i don't you know we're taking money from federal uh funds to do this from covet funds which i i would prefer that we have been using this to mitigate factors but we don't have the choice because we have buildings that are falling apart and be angry about what you want to be angry about that's that's good that's your right that's our right we we can do that but this is something that is a community i think we should all be angry about this is not acceptable

161and we can't continue i'm not preaching for any applause for anything this as a community should wake everybody up and we should be doing whatever we can so of course i'm going to prove anything we can do to improve the situation for students at tyner for students at any other school whose buildings are completely below standards of any uh uh rights that students should have to to be educated in a safe place so thanks thank you uh dr robertson for the work that you guys are doing behind the scenes but uh but the only reason i bring this up now is the community has got to step up and say we we are going to fight for our students rights to be in excellent buildings from now on mr mcclendon um first off dr robertson

162i want to say thank you and and to miss jones um for thinking ahead on this and so um we are operating on a tight window with those federal funds um and so i'm glad we're kind of getting the ball rolling um on that um it's no uh stranger to anyone in this room that facilities um have become very near and dear to my heart while we've i've been on this board by the amount of times i call justin during a week i sit up here and i'm ashamed that we have kids that go to a school that's like tyner high school and tyner middle school and csla and barger and the 19 other schools in our district that are unsatisfactory not even failing or poor unsatisfactory folks 40 to 50 percent on a scale

163of a hundred um that this district this county um that's often you know named best place to live or this and that we have kids going to school in condemned buildings i've said it often we are in a facilities crisis and that might fall on death ears to some people but this county is about to pay the price for years and years and years and years of neglect to our buildings and our children our students are paying the price and not to draw contrast to the federal government but they're probably going to have to pay for the new schools once they get out of high school it's unacceptable it is unacceptable none of us would walk in there and go to work in tyner every single day yet we have uh students and teachers that

164go in every single day while the roof leaks on them they can't eat lunch because they have water on them and so yeah they're fed up i'm fed up and i commend them and i'm proud of them for what they did yesterday because someone's got to listen someone has to listen to them and we have to do better we've made those steps we operate within our means but folks this isn't getting any better this is getting worse the average age of our buildings is nearly 45 years old think about your own house if your house is 10 years old or 12 years old or 20 years old it starts getting worse and you got to put funds into those um so we i've walked uh buildings in every district in this um this county um

165and it's everywhere it doesn't matter where you live you look at that mgt report it is everywhere um and so i just i hope um and pray and i don't know the words that that this situation is a wake-up call to this county that we have to do something and we have to as a board this isn't this isn't not on us we have to look outside the box on how to do it the most efficient and financially responsible way because there's ways out there um to do it and we have to look at it but i just think i i i just we're in for a world of hurt if we don't change the how we treat facilities in this county it is going to come to a head a lot of people don't

166see it every single day i didn't see it before i got on the board except for some of the schools i went into but folks it's scary it is scary these buildings that our school or our kids are going into and the talk the clock is ticking it is ticking every single day um so i hope this county uh hears this alarm going off and we have to do something we have to [Applause] all right um so we had a motion for miss thurman right to go ahead and start that process any other discussion here before we put on that all right mrs ford mrs hill yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes mr walker yes chairman wingate yes all right that brings us to our

167delegations portion of tonight's meeting yes ma'am maybe maybe maybe after the delegations or whatever maybe might be a good time but i just want an explanation of i don't know if you need to be sent to us in writing or whatever about the quarantine policy for schools i have a lot of calls about that is it by school the principals get do they have autonomy to kind of do that or do we have a set policy about how we do it is it the same one we had last year because a lot of people seem to be quarantining in groups that like a whole fifth grade class or a you know a whole ball team or something like that because of one person i thought we had like a six foot rule around somebody for

16820 minutes six feet away and that kind of thing so if we're not going to discuss it tonight joe i know we have a long meeting maybe we get all that in writing and send it out so the parents will understand and we will understand what the rules are because a lot of parents don't understand and sometimes i don't understand well i think it's right it's addressed and you're rhonda because i'd ask for that same thing and i hadn't got a chance to really look at this thoroughly but i've already found an answer to a couple of my questions already in the in this thing they just gave us yeah and so mr smith to that point um and miss thurman we sent out we're sending out a weekly community update we just sent it

169out on thursday night it's linked we sent the first one with the link to that last thursday the first day of school it's a real-time live document so folks have on their email that document they can hit our website go to our covet 19 landing page it's at the top um so that people can access in real time our reopening guidance i i just hope that uh excuse me it's being done consistently across the county because i'm not sure that it is with regard to how we're quarantining kids and i know probably in your principal's meetings you're stressing that i'm not sure that's happening it's just just a thought that's right and i apologize don't belabor just just my limited knowledge and what i'm hearing from from parents and what what we all need to

170be very careful with and i'm certain that we have it in here i know we have our chief health officer that is a state employee but my limited knowledge is that only a state health official can quarantine someone y'all can correct me if i'm wrong we have to be very cautious about teachers telling a student they're quarantined or principles i don't want us to have that liability for any of us so i i'm really i'm not going to say limited education about that i'm really almost a thousand percent certain that only a tennessee state health official can quarantine someone now again our chief health officer works for the state but just putting his name on the bottom of a letter letters that i've received and emails that i've received we got to be very cautious

171about who says who is quarantined so i think that this is something the public health department has designated us to complete our contact racing so they um we are working with them and they have actually said that their name at the bottom of that letter through our contact tracing process is that authority and so it's that you may want that that's correct our public health department has absolutely designated us and in fact yesterday the commissioner of health for the state of tennessee and the commissioner of education sent out a joint memo to that effect saying that once again the the tennessee department of health is going to have to rely on local boards of education to do that kind of that kind of leg work thank you all right can we yeah go ahead greatness

172yeah i i did just want to say that unfortunately i will have to leave a little early and i won't get to listen to all of our delegates but i am absolutely willing to speak to anyone one-on-one this is unusual for us to do this at the end and so it's unusual to have to leave early but it is my son's 10th birthday and so i will have to leave shortly but i want to let you know that is i will talk to any of you one-on-one so and i appreciate your time dr robertson already used the birthday excuse me i wasn't here for that because i was late and i'm leaving early so is it your birthday if you're about to speak if you would please give uh your attention to mr mcclendon yeah

173if you have signed up uh miss smith mr daughtry miss class miss o'markel howard miss chandler uh mr or mrs hall miss tolis uh miss madreaux miss cole miss popply mr mcgrath miss lyons miss proctor and then our students from tyner if you will pay attention to this short statement thank you for your interest in addressing the hamilton county board of education during your presentation please address the board as a whole not individual board members or administrators also please do not present complaints or concerns you have about 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

174when you have one minute left and i will raise a piece of paper so i don't interrupt you and you may begin when you're ready i will start with miss smith good evening to the board and dr townes my name is mari smith i'm a parent of two children in the hamilton county school system i've also served on the pta and a huge supporter of public education i am here on behalf of students who do not feel safe speaking in front of this board so i ask you to put yourself in a different position than you are in today imagine being a student who is afraid to go to school each day you worry that just by being you you will be harassed and or physically harmed this is the reality for many non-binary transgender

175and queer students in our county school is a place for learning and growing making friends it's a place where you should feel safe and cared for i know that the board agrees with me on this because i've watched your meetings and i know that you care that's why i feel that it's important for you to hear from two trans students that did not feel comfortable speaking here today quote at school as a trans non-binary teen i'm scared to go into the bathroom in case of being beaten up and i'm uncomfortable going into the girls bathroom as i no longer am one however there is no easy option at 8th grade graduation my friends and i were walking and a boy in front of us saw me and loudly said you here it comes i'm going

176to kill myself there's only one teacher and one guidance counselor that i would have been comfortable reporting this to soon i will be starting high school with a new set of teachers and kids and i'm nervous of hostile attitudes that will impact my school life end quote so let's put aside personal feelings that people in this room may have about the queer community i'm not here to tell you how to think but i'm here to tell you that no matter what you think about trans and non-binary students they exist they attend our schools and they deserve respect safety and kindness just like all students here's another trans student who wanted me to share their thoughts quote my school's always been bad about trans and lgbtq youth i bought i got bullied super bad i got

177notes in my locker telling me to kill myself people used to throw rocks at me when i was getting off the bus people would make dresses and put them in my locker it was terrible i would come home with bruises on my back and when my parents went to the principal about it he said your kid's allowed to express himself and these kids are allowed to express themselves it was enraging hate crimes in school are bad with and without these anti-trans laws that have been implemented recently the people making these laws don't know anything about transgender people and they don't know anything about homosexuality or lgbtq youth still i think we should approach them with peace and kindness and explain to them that one in every four people is part of the lgbtq community and

178for all you know it could be your sister your brother your girlfriend you have to be careful who you hate because it may be the person that you love most end quote so the question i would like to post the board is this what can we do as members of the hamilton county school system that will support trans and non-binary youth how can we make them feel respected and safe because shouldn't that be our goal here's one solution i would like to see this be a topic of conversation for the board moving forward i know that diversity trainings for the board were on the table and i'm not sure where we are on that but i feel that topics regarding supporting queer and trans youth in our schools should be part of that training and

179it's not enough for just the board to respect these students teachers and staff need training too it's not a matter of not wanting to change the language we use or make the school safer for queer youth many people in our community just don't understand how they can be more inclusive of all children we've all been conditioned to speak and act a certain way and we need to unlearn problematic and harmful behaviors teachers and staff need the tools to teach teach and nurture all students queer youth included another solution would be implementing a zero tolerance policy in our county regarding hate speech against queer students using slurs against queer students should be equated with using racial slurs against students of color language matters and this kind of treatment can't be tolerated there are numerous queer-led organizations

180in town that would be wonderful places to start having these conversations this needs to be addressed the lives of many students in hamilton county depend on this board taking action and i will be waiting to hear what is discussed and decided thank you thank you mr daughtry good evening uh i'm doug dougherty i'm the president of a local non-profit called hamilton flourishing thank you chairman wingate and the entire board for this opportunity to appeal to you um years ago um several years ago we were moving our house and i had some teenagers come over to help us and one of them was 18 years old we just graduated from a high school he was looking at some of my books and he said what's what's that and i told him what it is i said

181what what's the can't you read that he said no i can't read and he just graduated from one of the high schools so that started me years ago being concerned about the whole area of literacy and yesterday dr johnson i think was his last day and i think you all are going to get to choose the next superintendent and i'd like to address that opportunity as an organization we reach about 50 000 people in hamilton county a week through newsletters um yeah we're trying to do everything we can in our perspective to make the county a better place but i'm particularly concerned about literacy rates for the rising third to fourth graders or the rising fourth graders in the urban schools i couldn't get data last week on the new scores i didn't just saw

182on the presentation here but the last year that i had data there were five schools in hamilton county that had literacy rates proficiency rates of less than 10 percent for the students from graduating from third going into fourth grade so literacy proficiency in urban grammar schools is a big problem and these children and this has been going on for year after year and to put it in context this is a national problem it's not just a local problem um so these schools last one of the things that we tried to do is we tried to put together a program where we could provide literate literacy tutors to one of the little uh schools we were trying to find a hundred tutors to come in and uh we got kind of the principal loved the idea

183this community loved the idea but somehow it got lost in the uh i don't know in the administration illiteracy affects all areas of life those with low literacy skills are far more likely to live in poverty face health problems because they can't read prescription labels or instructions and grow isolated in a world increasingly dependent on computers now this is interesting in one study i read more than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate penal institutions records show that inmates have a 16 percent chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help as opposed to a 70 percent chance you receive no help this data is staggering as staggering as tyner high school falling down i think this is the number one issue in hamilton county is the literacy rate in the urban

184school it affects the child it affects the family it affects the taxpayer it affects the criminal justice system it affects the future employer it affects the whole community so i want to just not even take five minutes joe so um i'm here tonight just to plead with you uh when you choose a superintendent he will make early literacy their number one priority not number five number six number number ten number one when these children don't learn how to read it affects them the rest of their life going back to my first story they did change the rules the way they teach reading in mississippi and mississippi went up 16 points it was the only state in the last year they did the national report card that went up so please make members of the school

185board when you make your choice make sure that the next superintendent will make early literacy in the urban elementary schools his number one priority in my mind is an educational neighborly fiscal and moral imperative thank you all very much miss glass members of the school board thank you for taking the time to listen i know you're under a lot of pressure right now especially i'm short especially as you make decisions with regards to the physical health and safety of our students this school year my name is lynae glass i have three children and my husband is a teacher for hamilton county schools i just want to take a moment to say these meetings are one of the few chances we have to really be heard publicly in a room where we stand alongside people who

186may disagree with us we don't often get the chance to voice our concerns in a space like this and for many of us this is a valuable opportunity thank you for taking that into consideration now to address what i really came here to talk about during one of the first meetings my husband attended this school year along with his fellow teachers he was discouraged from broaching political or controversial subjects around students these subjects were deemed too political which were deemed too political included critical race theory black lives matter vaccines and coven 19. now i'm not here to stand in front of you tonight and pick apart what material is included in the curriculum i'm here to ask some questions when did telling the truth become a political stance when did encouraging children to wear a

187mask to reduce their chances of getting a virus become controversial when did telling black students that their lives matter become too polarizing when did affirming the queer community become indoctrination let me be clear i know critical race theory is not being taught in hamilton county however to many parents crt has come to be defined as any type of material that challenges students to think about racial inequity the desire to keep students safe from a virus that is quickly spreading among children should not be considered a controversial political stance but it has been turned into one by the same parents who believe that they can opt their kids out of learning the truth about our nation's history parents are reacting out of fear to these popular terms being thrown around pleading with school boards to revise

188their curriculums and asking that they reject anything they categorize as too divisive or agent-appropriate however by doing this i think the intelligence of our kids is being undermined through their actions many parents are showing a deep distrust in the education system and in their own children implying that as soon as their kids hear a new point of view they will suddenly become indoctrinated with an agenda i want to challenge my fellow parents to give our kids some credit they are capable of learning about these controversial subjects even if we shut down these conversations from happening in a classroom environment they are still happening but instead of taking place in a room where they have a teacher to help guide them and support their curiosity kids are having these discussions on the bus in their text

189messages and on the playground i believe that by sending our kids to public school we are making a statement that we trust our educators to do their best at facilitating these conversations about tougher subjects and we trust our kids to take the information they hear in the classroom and decide what they do with it it isn't our job as parents to cover our children's ears when the truth comes up in conversation it is our job to hold their hands and walk with them as they learn all this said my hope for the school year and future years to come is that we do not get to a point where teachers are not allowed to truly teach their kids anymore i do not believe that a teacher's sole job is to teach addition and subtraction while

190remaining quiet about racism and a global pandemic i believe good educators stand on the side of justice and truth when politics come up in the classroom taking a stance shouldn't be seen as a threat but as an opportunity for teachers to model what it looks like to be honest and inclusive and a world that is often divided and unjust thank you [Applause] miss omar kell thank you chairman wingay daughter towns and board members for providing an opportunity for me to speak tonight i want to begin by thanking you for approving the covet leave i know that was that was a tough decision in some ways it is something that was not on the table as we thought the need for it was behind us and this small gesture helps your staff feel valued and it

191is appreciated thank you for adjusting the classified salaries and your ongoing efforts to raise them to an appropriate level although we can no longer conference for them we support them one hundred percent thank you for approving the sr-3 planner they're looking through that this plan will provide the funds to help move our students forward as well as address other urgent needs in our district we are at a critical time in the journey of hamilton county schools an hcs staff board and community can proudly look back at last year and celebrate the victories we kept the schools open we kept our people as safe as possible through our mitigation we had some gains in spite of the disruption of teaching and learning as evidence in our data from benchmark testing as well as tcap we are

192now at a crossroads as we look ahead we are facing many unknowns this year how will the delta variant impact us who will be chosen as our new superintendent how will these changes impact our students and our working environment i encourage you to take time this year to visit your buildings to talk with students and talk listen to the teachers and your staff beyond the administrators they can't always come to these meetings it would be amazing to see you in their classes even taking time for them and teaching in the class for them we need subs it could work to our advantage we need to be aware of the stressors that can take our focus off of our priority which is teaching and learning one of the things that is on your agenda for looking

193at tonight for a first read was the code of professional conduct i think that this is going to cause a stressor if you if you pass this policy we wholeheartedly agree that educators are held in esteem by the public and should conduct themselves as professionals deserving of such respect but we feel that this policy is unnecessary as there is already a state law in place that addresses the expectations for educators on and off campus it is very clear and outlines thoroughly the level of behavior expected by school system employees why is there a need to have this policy as well you could just affirm that hamilton county will follow the law instead of creating a policy that is already addressed in law we could start by making sure all are being we are doing all

194that can be done to educate the employees on their expectations hca already has access to training available for ethics professionalism and social media that has been supported by the state for professional development points we already offer it to our members and we are happy to partner with you to provide this as an option for training for employees our training is not a video presentation it is either in person or blended to allow opportunity for clarification and understandings through questions and dialogue we know from our experience with students in the past this past year that asynchronous learning alone is not enough allow us to support this need please vote to create a not to create a policy instead validate the law that's in place let us focus keep our focus on teaching and learning and our

195children because our children don't have the luxury or time for us to take our focus off of them thank you uh mrs baures all right good evening um i am here in response to my speech from last month uh some board members boldly bluntly did say that components of critical race three were not being taught in our schools so i always in leadership i've been in leadership managing people for about six or seven years i have this phrase that i use is trust but verify so trust what our school members are saying trust what your constituents are saying but also go ahead and just verify the information just in case so that's what i did not only myself but other mothers and parents as well went and we went through hours and hours of teacher

196materials books curriculums even websites that are being used for curriculum as well in hamilton county schools and found that there indeed are components of critical race theory being taught in our schools of course the term critical race theory is never being used and there's all sorts of different terminology that is being used and again coming from the state of washington i've experienced almost every single term that they've used so today i'll be focusing on social emotional learning um i have for you today an example of a book that is it's pretty harmless i read it in fifth grade maybe fourth grade it's called um esperanza rising by pam munoz ryan and it's about a girl and her mother that legally migrated from aguas calientes mexico to the united states the book takes place a little

197bit after the mexican revolution and teaches readers to never be afraid to start over especially when you're migrating from one country to another that's that's a pretty huge change and you definitely have to start your life over in the book there is a character named megan and he is esperanza's friend and he always tells her that in the united states if one works hard enough they will get to places he also says that in the united states a servant could become rich and move up in life as well and this story it's such a wonderful example of the mentality that the that the hispanic community holds because we truly do believe that the united states is the greatest country in the world and that hard work absolutely pays off at something that my parents taught

198me at a very young age they taught me patriotism even when i thought that i was from mexico i wasn't born in mexico with morgan stanley california my parents made sure that i was always very loyal to my country because they were able to come and like esperanza had absolutely nothing and be part of the middle class and raises in that class as well so what i discovered when i was going through the material the teacher curriculum and the assignments is that they are not at all aligned with the book's overall themes in fact it's pretty hard to believe that the curriculum is for english language and arts you think that this is for like world history or maybe social studies uh the curriculum focuses on taking specific quotes from the book and making connections

199to human rights threats using the universal declaration of human rights that was written i want to say in the late 1940s maybe 1948 after the nazi regime and the awful things that they did so this for example students are to take a quote on page 102 and i don't have the book for you all but i do have a quote where um it's in uh one of the chapters called la cevoyas and the description event in quote from the text that is being used is um esperanza they will only give one cabin for each man in his family there is no housing for a single woman this is a family camp so we must have a male head of household to live and work here and they ask the students to take this specific quote

200and connect it to the ud udhr article 22 which says we all have the right to affordable housing but mama esperanza are not being given that right and although i'm not against teaching history you know it's very important that our children know about this history it's also important that they know that islam is no longer as prevalent as teachers might make it sound or maybe not even teachers but curriculum and make it sound i i recommend that this curriculum be removed from our schools i also recommend that hamilton county focus on academic excellence instead of teaching children to view the world solely on feelings that's exactly what social emotion emotional learning does and that's a component of critical race theory um and i make this recommendation because i um like i said i've been managing

201employees for six or seven years and one of the things that i've noticed is that they have a hard time understanding the basic structure of a sentence in english they also have a hard time understanding simple um english sentences and that makes it very hard to produce very good employees in the workforce so thank you miss howard thank you i have a senior in hamilton county schools he's in the mechatronics academy program fabulous program appreciate that i have a 10th grade daughter who was in hamilton county schools and has been withdrawn after we saw what was being taught and how it impacted her i hadn't planned to say it but i feel like i need to we spent several years as foster parents i was adopted out of foster care we fully believe in loving

202children we've never put any qualification on that we have welcomed black brown native american children into our family they shared our home our bedroom our my daughter's bedroom my son's bedroom we love those children my kids love those children after her time at the east hamilton high school the the deciding factor for us to pull her out was when my daughter looked at me and said mom i never used to think about it but now i see someone with black skin or brown skin and i'm afraid they will hate me because i have white skin so parents are coming to you and expressing concerns about what children are learning in our schools parents have mentioned anti-police anti-american hyper-sexualized content have you asked why why are parents concerned will this district i ask again will you

203call for an evaluation and honest assessment of the materials what is causing this i've heard the board say you don't have authority over curriculum choices i understand the state sets the standards creates a list of curriculum that the district gets to choose from the buffet as i heard it called then a committee within the district takes that list makes a recommendation to this board about what should be implemented in our district so using that same analogy the committee chooses what items to put on the plate and hands it to this board and the board decides what is actually going to be consumed that is why parents are asking you and coming to you for help at the work session i heard someone mention that concerned parents need to talk to curriculum folks we can do

204that we will do that but they're district employees they're not officials that were elected to represent us that's why parents are coming to you we understand that you are our representatives we're still learning so using the process described hamilton county school district chose open up resources curriculum by a company called el education that's used to teach k through 5 english language arts el education's company documents say things like they embrace a vision of education as a powerful engine for disrupting structural racism they're dedicated to the power of student leadership for social justice they state that they subscribe to author ibrahim x kendy's ideas kendy has been called critical race theory's chief marketing officer so how does that belief system that they state affect the curriculum they create and our students are taught listen to parents

205and they'll tell you or read it read the material you'll see it for grades 6 through 12 hamilton county schools have chosen to use my perspective curriculum created by savis ninth grade student book page 14. in here it says it defines wasp wasp short for white anglo-saxon protestant but then it goes further typically refers to a member of the dominant and most privileged class of people in the united states are we supposed to be teaching about privilege different groups of people i have to say same page what is the point of this splintered hole what is the point of a nation in which arab cabbies chauffeur jewish passengers through the streets of new york jewish cabbies chauffeur arab passengers too yet speak in theory of hatred one for the other what is the point of

206a nation in which one part seems to always be on the verge of fisticuffs with another blacks and whites gays and straights left and right poll chinese puerto rican and slovenian other countries with such divisions have in fact divided into new nations and with new names that does not sound i i had to skip over the anti-american part i can share it with you separately that doesn't sound pro-american and it does not sound unifying i want to be clear this is not it's a material problem not a teacher problem ms chandler [Applause] miss chandler [Music] i'm kind of bouncing off of the curriculum that moms for liberty has been reviewing and i'm here today to read from and do a quick review of one of the hamilton county high school's recommended reading suggestions the book

207i'm reviewing is called more than we can tell by bridget kimmer published in 2018 bridget kimmer is described as an author of dark and alluring young adult novels it was recommended by a librarian at saudi daisy high school this book contains many inappropriate subjects for a school system to be introducing to students age 14 and up children these days are being hit with sexual and violent content from all sides cable television music and all over the internet parents are spending massive amounts of time having to review content being streamed into our homes i would hope i could trust our schools at the very least not to recommend books that glamorize these subjects i'm now going to read you some examples chapter one page one you suck and that's what i'm gonna say when i find

208you and shove it in your mouth gross at least this guy didn't include a dick pic chapter one page seven well i don't want to play with a douchebag and let me tell you i'm so excited about having explained to my 14 year old what a douchebag is when she asked me after reading this book uh chapter five page one don't make me find you [ __ ] chapter 8 page 74. i can do this all day baby tell me do you charge for sucking chapter 22 page 184 i think it's a crime you know you think it's a crime to think about hurting someone you could walk up to any kid at high school and i guarantee you they've had a violent thought in the last 24 hours and i'm just going to stop with the

209examples there while i realize these students are not all saints and most have heard this type of language it is not okay for a school to be recommending it does anyone else review these books after they are recommended there are millions and millions of well-written enlightening novels that our children are missing out on only to be placed with this [Applause] [Music] thank you jamie hall [Music] all right my name is jamie hall i'm a mom of four children all of whom have been in the public school system at any given time up until last year i had at least two in our district district three and tonight i just want to talk about the fact that first of all it's mine and my husband's job to care for protect encourage teach guide our children and

210so much more i began homeschooling my children last year because it's what i knew was best for my family and during this past year my eyes have been opened to so much and i now know that many things must change before i will ever consider putting my children back into the system i realize that not every parent has the opportunity to homeschool like i am so i'm here to fight for those children and for those families and hopefully for the future of maybe my children re-entering the school system tonight let's focus on some concerning issues with our third grade language arts curriculum my youngest is eight years old she's in third grade so this hits really close to home for me as we begin i'd like you to consider your perspective your thoughts when you

211think about peter pan when you remember hearing peter pan as a child or watching the movie what are your memories i would venture to say that for the most part we as a whole or at least in majority see peter pan is a story of fantasy of flight of fun some excitement as they encounter a pirate seeking revenge leading to suspenseful sword fights and this is a family of children that gets the opportunity to fly away to neverland escaping into its fantasy land where nobody grows up and they eventually come home to a loving home where they were happy um while the reading material provided to the children is the story of peter pan the teacher talking points and the lens through which the children are guided to analyze the books is where we raise

212some flags before the children get into the story they are introduced to the author and historical context but the historical context is presented with a negative viewpoint and this is where the text and the teaching begin this is where the teachers begin leading to a different interpretation of peter pan so we we meet the author the author is james matthew berry in the beginning this is actually the children's el education book it talks about how he met a family of five boys and their mother these children inspired him to invent fantasy stories about a boy called peter pan who had adventures which barry would tell the boys to entertain them so right here it's telling us that the author's intentions is to entertain these children with fantasies and adventures all right it goes down it

213talks about the historical context and then there's a subheading of stereotypes and it talks about some negative viewpoints about social interactions and stuff but i want to talk about where it leads in one of the later paragraphs as we meet the author in the history at this time society considered women to be physically and intellectually weaker than men many thought that women should not work outside the home and that only men were responsible for earning money to support their families as a result a lot of the literature from this time portrays the stereotype of women and girls as maternal and motherly um for the most part we are maternal and motherly so i don't know why we have to look at that in a negative viewpoint they are also depicted as doing jobs in the

214home like sewing socks while their husbands are out working all day so this is where we're starting and then the the teachers this is their speaking points the overview of what's being taught students are asked to analyze this book through the lens of the time period it was written which we just looked at you know women and what they think about that this includes the analysis of racial and gender stereotypes again this is the teacher's guide of how to discuss this um i never considered in peter pan any racial and gender stereotypes i don't know about you this is with the goal of encouraging students to critique familiar and popular stories rather than to not recognize or ignore the injustices presented again there's some leading there i don't even that's not something you get out

215of peter pan students will critique the textbook this is third grade in a book review and rewrite a scene from the text to write the wrongs now i put a star by this talking point the teacher is to consider providing background information and discussion on racial prejudice women's rights and stereotyping we are leading right into a whole crt discussion here all kinds of things that we don't need to be talking about this gives free rented teachers in their classroom that's your time where there's no accountability right now because we are not allowed in miss tolis [Applause] hello my name is jeanette tulis and i am a parent also a private tutor and i'm a lifetime lover of history especially american history um when i was a little girl i used to beg my mom to

216when she went to rummage sales to bring home every history textbook she could find because i just really really enjoyed reading them and today i still enjoy history very much i enjoy teaching history reading history books and seeing children have a love of history so it's very disheartening and concerning and disconcerting to see how the script in the el education book tells the teachers to instruct their students to view the declaration of independence oh i have to correct something i know that it said that i was going to talk about um the incomplete revolution but um i'm instead talking about the lesson on the declaration of independence this is in the fourth grade um el education book on the american revolution so again i'm speaking on uh how the declaration of independence was viewed so

217it is not viewed as a document in which brave freedom-loving men declared their independence from a colonial power that viewed them as a way to pay off their debts via heavy oppressive taxation of the colonies but instead in this book which we're using today it is the declaration of independence is is viewed as a foundation for racism the declaration of independence was a document which started with a wonderfully articulate preamble which was a vision of freedom and then it listed the grievances the colonists had against the crown who was of course king george iii now when i taught the declaration of independence to my students i emphasized the courage of the signers who knew the danger into which they were placing themselves their families and those who valued freedom from tyranny over their own personal

218safety we need to remind ourselves of this kind of courage in these times in which we live but el education which is very upfront as someone just said about their goals on their own website they're very upfront about it they use the now familiar language of diversity equity and inclusion which are pretty much known euphemisms for critical race theory which is racist in its core marxist and its origins and seeks to divide to create mistrust to create classes of americans where one is the oppressed and one is the oppressor and this book takes a completely different approach to the declaration of independence they create an entire unit based on the last of the 27 grievances of the colonists against the crown here's how the grievance reads in the actual declaration of independence he has excited

219domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless indian savages whose known rule of warfare is the undistinguished destruction of all ages sexes and conditions so in this document the signers were pointing out that the british crown and its representatives were encouraging using money whiskey land protection other inducements the native americans to attack the colonists the signers were saying that the british knew how the indians fought and that their rules of engagement were of the native and north american indians it was that they attacked men and women and children and the british were exploiting this pagan cruelty to harass and massacre the colonists especially those at the outpost so it's very sad to me that the script that teachers are given when they explain this part of

220the declaration of independence that they are blaming the signers of the declaration for the mistreatment of the indians in future years in american history did the americans treat the indians fairly no they did not but was this because of what was written in the declaration of independence no it was not um but that's what this material teaches so the text that the teacher reads and this is directly from the instructions what the teacher should say how would you say propelled into action in your own words and from this what can you infer about the treatment of the american indians and the correct answer is they were probably treated badly because the people thought it was fair to do so as a result of what the declaration of independence said i mean that is just not

221at all what was intended in this document so from what the declaration of independence said the colonists saw the native american as a victim of british exploitation there is no evidence the declaration of independence was a foundation for later mistreatment to allege this is a terrible twisting of the truth to attempt to make our students our american students view their founding document as an instrument of racism against native americans why would a curriculum company do such a thing only because they have an agenda which they're very upfront about a set of presuppositions in which they must fit their facts to the pre determined assumption that our founding fathers were racist so this may be interesting that's your time oh thank you um just do what you can to find a different curriculum thank you miss

222madreaux [Applause] [Music] hey mr smith i was listening one page um good evening school board members my name is heather madrow i am a teacher at eastern elementary congratulations mr walker i am in district 9 as a resident um today i am bringing fourth questions regarding policy 5.60 which is on the agenda tonight for first read but nobody even discussed it which i find quite interesting the code of professional conduct so my questions are why do we even need a separate policy we already have the teacher code of ethics 49-51003 that was updated in 2019. hcs's new policy refers to this tendency code in that new policy in the legal reference footnotes why create a redundant policy secondly the policy states it's about public trust and confidence by holding staff to the highest professional standards

223in both our professional and personal lives there are two issues that i have with this one trust and confidence from the public are subjective based on the topic we witness this every time at the board meeting number two why does it matter what i do on my personal life if it doesn't impact my students learning why am i not afforded my personal freedoms when i'm away from the school and my students additionally this policy changes language from make a reasonable effort to protect the students from conditions harmful to the learning or health and safety in the tennessee code to employees must protect the health and safety of students reasonable effort to protect must protect in a pandemic how can you require teachers to protect the health and safety of students when our hands are tied

224by the state with an opt-out order executive 84. what are the legal ramifications for staff if a child becomes seriously ill are we going to be sued this certainly is a heavy responsibility a statement right out of the new policy why is this policy even necessary it is redundant and subjective it was tabled last year in november it should be rejected again and stricken as tennessee has provided us with a professional code of conduct that's what we need we don't need another policy thank you miss cole good evening my name is shannon cole and i am a here as a parent from district 3. parents have been trying to sound the alarm for you and what is actually going on in some of the classrooms across hamilton county have any of you been reaching out

225to those parents from your district for a better understanding or insight into the claims being brought to this board the bill that i'm bringing today is a book recommended by the librarian at east ridge high school called on the come up by angie thomas published in 2019 it has won seven awards and film rights have already been sold so why is this the claimed book on my radar it's dangerous it's rough with anti-cop rhetoric white hate speech and criminally accepted lifestyles being introduced to students in district 8 our county's highest crime area is a disservice to that community by that librarian this harsh accusation is based on my own personal experience as a survivor of child abuse i never read that type of material because i lived it this book validates a way of life

226for many in east ridge children are presently being lied to and used in a political tug of war as displayed in this literary garbage with this anti-cop rhetoric such as page 23. it's supposed to be on some hi i'm your friendly neighborhood cop who won't shoot you top ship but it comes off as them we're keeping an eye on your black asses top ship page 51 not that the garden was ever a utopia hell no but before i only worried about gds and crowns that's how i gotta worry about the cops too seeing the cop get away with murder probably make their invincible that's been our nickname for malik since the riots malik x he's been on another level always talking about social justice reading up on stuff like the black panthers he's not a

227cop he doesn't have a gun but i don't want to end up like that boy this is like that talk she gave me about the cops do whatever they tell you to do she said don't make them think you're a threat basically weaken myself and take whatever's thrown at me so i can survive that moment sometimes the rules are different for black folks baby you've got to play it by different set of rules last page for the copywriter now that armed police officers have been brought on honestly many of us fear for our lives now let me also show you a few examples of the white hate speech in this book page 24. unfortunately to some people in the garden it's nerd [ __ ] or as some fool at the swap meet said it's white [ __ ]

228do they do the white girls who make slick comments get sent to your office every week too page 102 says jay says which is her mother sounds about right you mean sounds about white says aunt gina page 140 how about you free these nuts for you and your clan sisters sonny ask holding his crotch according to granddaddy i jump to conclusions faster than last jump between white kids heads so drugs and gains are portrayed as an old friend our family and brings life these snippets speak for themselves on page 23 metal detectors at the neighborhood club are perceived as normal yet not at her mostly white school page 56 school pride turns us into gangs page 81. yeah they're gang-bangers and they've done all kinds of foul [ __ ] that i don't even want to know

229about but i'm enough to them so frankly they're enough to me page 110 you think i'm a thug will i claim it page 218 that's how it goes though the drug dealers in my neighborhood aren't struggling everybody else is the last reference he makes it sound like she's dead around here though folks in jail get t-shirts in their honor just like folks in the grave so using this lens of marxist ideologies this blatant example of crt condemns america's political social and legal systems as being embedded in racism crt is an academic theory that emerged more than 40 years ago my job as a parent is to alert you your job as a parent is to remove it thank you miss popple hello all right good evening i taught at two different title one schools in

230hamilton county first of all i want to start by saying that i am grateful to live in a state that gives guardians a mass choice especially when the science unfortunately disagrees on whether they're healthy for children i am here today to ask you to vote no on virtual learning aka zoom and busy work if it comes up this year if our purpose is to give children the best learning environment possible then we must think of all children especially the ones that i used to teach in title 1 schools i am here today advocating for those kids every professional development that teachers attend reminds them that worksheets don't grow dendrites we've been told this our whole our entire careers busy work is okay for practice but kids need to be engaged in rigorous hands-on learning activities

231with peers to promote maximum learning virtual learning or busy work is not a best practice for our kids and everybody knows this let me tell you about some of my title 1 school kids because school is a safe place for them many of them were eager to come to school on monday an uneasy feeling going home on friday we fed and supported them and made them feel loved i had many students ask me if i could be their mother i would like to emphasize that some of these children do not live in safe environments if virtual learning comes up please remember all of these kids especially some of the ones that i used to teach and reject virtual learning and relentless quarantines because school is a safe place for those kids [Applause] mr mcgrath uh

232i'm super nervous it's my first time speaking in a large group um board members who answered my phone call thank you and uh joe i'm sorry i yelled at you a bunch but it's still going to happen so the teacher who just spoke said a lot of what i'm going to talk about the quarantines and and everything that comes down or unfair the kids who do get quarantined do not get proper education they get workbooks or they get emails from their students they're just not properly educated if that be the case then we do need to have online learning but i don't want that to be the case and nor do i think a lot of you there's a clear-cut line being drawn in the sand from the letters that i received that if you're

233vaccinated you can attend school and go properly and if you're not you don't have that opportunity i don't trust a vaccine all right anything that comes out within eight months when prior to that four years was the fastest vaccine ever in history i just don't trust it i might be wrong in two years and at that time my oldest will be 16 years old and maybe we'll revisit this conversation it either works or it doesn't and if you believe it does why does it matter if i get it or not mass work or they don't why does it matter if my kid wears it or not they either do or they don't there's no like gray area in this stuff and by you mandating and following these policies and their recommendations because i called every

234single level of this government from the state down that said that it is only recommendations right now even the cdc is only saying its recommendations so this recommendation that you guys are putting on to my children is giving them an unfair education and it may only be 14 days my kid is strong he'll persevere past this but what about the kids who don't have the opportunity to be at home and to have a safe place answer i gave three minutes so you guys can answer me give me an answer i didn't think so miss lines i'm taylor lyons i have two students at west view elementary members of the board thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you this evening again i know you're tired and frustrated and quite frankly i am as

235well i am frustrated that i am here to respond to a number of non-existent issues but that appears to be the state of our nation and our community at present so here i am not only is book banning and critical race theory not on your agenda for discussion this evening not only did our governor recently pass vague legislation banning the use of critical race theory in our public schools but i posit critical race theory was not a term that most of the people opposing it even knew a year ago yet here i am defending our children's rights to be taught honestly and accurately and reading books that reflect diverse life experiences i wish that we were coming to you united as a community to talk about real pressing legitimate issues like for example the student

236who brought a gun to one of our county schools last week or how about for example and i'm glad you discussed it the horrible conditions at tyner which are so bad that students organized a walkout protest yesterday we invited several of them to join us this evening you'll hear from them directly after me or perhaps we could talk about the fact that we have almost 2 000 students right now out on quarantine because of an explosive huge surge in covet numbers and as it has been made abundantly clear by our state leadership by our local authorities and by this board that you will respect the wishes and the rights of the parents who choose not to follow the advice the near unanimous advice of every major leading medical expert those rights will be respected we

237would like to know how our rights to feel like our children are safe and their health is being prioritized and the faculty and staff's health is going to be prioritized how those rights are going to be respected those are the conversations that we should be having this evening yet here we are again debating the importance of the telling somewhat uncomfortable truths in our classrooms so my words are going to be brief tonight i don't want to take any more of your valuable time i just want to show you if i can a piece of artwork that my eight-year-old did in school last year you see it says black lives matter he wrote we the people and i believe on their shirts i show this as an example that it's entirely possible for a kid to

238love themselves and to love their country and be proud of their country and have difficult conversations about our nation's past to dive deep and talk with their students about how to solve the issues that currently face us and to have hope for the future this gives me hope and there's nothing particularly exceptional or enlightened about my kid we just live in a house where words like diversity equity inclusion love compassion and empathy are synonymous with one another just like when i told my kids they had to wear a mask this year again to help protect their teachers and their fellow students they said sure mom it didn't say another word about it that's because our kids are amazing human beings they're loving they're smart they're capable of having hard conversations about difficult subjects and somehow

239they are the ones who are demonstrating to us how to live through a global pandemic with care and compassion for the most vulnerable in our community i wish that we adults could look to them for our encouragement to dig down deep find our love our compassion our humanity for each other and refocus on things that matter these students from tyner deserve all of our attention thank you for letting me speak tonight [Applause] our speakers from tyner i know there's multiple good evening everyone i'm jalen sims tyner academy was first built in the year 1907 and since that time the world changed significantly we split the atom we put a man on the moon and we created the addiction of social media but while the world was changing tyner stayed the same as a representative of

240the whole school of tyner academy i can say that our school and our students have broken barriers that no other school in the county has in 2021 our senior class earned over 5 million dollars in both in-state and out-of-state scholarships our students have secured internships at companies such as epb wdef and airlinger that will put them well above their peers in college that's why today i am making another demand for you the board members to pressure the city commissioners so that we can get our funds although tyner is small our potential is big i will now yield my time to miss kaylee moore according to hamilton county's department of education board goals they are committed to success for all students through increased student achievement parent and community involvement safe schools and accountability they also strive

241to enhance and strengthen the programs that promote good citizenship teach character education and value diversity safe schools stood on me to me the most because my school conditions at tyner academy are nowhere near safe ceiling tiles are following a power there are mold and asbestos on nearly every wall and every time it rains tire leaks good evening ladies gentlemen and of course the member of the board of education i am kaylee moore a senior at titan academy and on behalf of the students at tyner we just want better for our school tyner is crumbling day by day and students are in distress since the closing of our freshman building containing nine classrooms freshman lockers in our library teachers have to share their classrooms and carry their belongings everywhere and our freshmen who have little to

242no knowledge of our building are scattered this makes our hallways crowded and getting the education more difficult we shouldn't have to worry if we have a classroom to learn in or if the ceiling is going to fall on us at any moment turner has one of the oldest buildings and with that hasn't received any renovations in 83 years alumni walk through every day and say everything looks identical from when they attended 10 20 30 even 40 years ago just more dirty and rotten when i walk the halls it feels as if they place kids in an abandoned prison with posters to make it look like a school if our school is y'all's top priority then why don't we see any change safe schools are a goal for the board of education but for five years

243has been known our environment is unsafe i know there is only 25 million that we can work with and i thank you so much for getting that approved so let us let's use this as a first step and get the commissioners on blood to fund us as well please be on our side and give us either a fixed date or a specific timeline for our building although tyner is small our potential is huge [Applause] good evening i'm demetrius lansin i'm a 16 year old senior at tyner academy for some for quite some time now i've been thinking why am i fighting for a new school what is this what is the reason for this but then i figured out why i am not fighting for a new school i am fighting for a school that

244has been promised to us i was in eighth grade when i heard about the new school building in december of 2017 they were supposed to start the new school building and it's supposed to be finished of january of 2020. when is our time we are tired of going to school and seeing our school building crumbling when i first started i seen this warm welcoming high school now i just see a prison that we just go to school and learn it has affected our learning and it has affected our environment i ask you at the as the school board members to help us get our school fixed thank you [Applause] all right so that uh thank you all uh for your time and uh that will bring us now to uh our events and announcements so

245um you'll see there that wednesday september the 1st is a remote day monday september the 6th will be the labor day holiday for our schools and district office monday september the 13th will be our next agenda work session and then our next board meeting will be thursday september the 16th one thing that i do want to just remind you all of before we go we've had many requests here in the last month or so amongst board members to find a time to have a retreat or be able to have a more intensive work session so just be thinking about that i know we got a lot going on i know we've already got multiple dates here in the next month that we'll be seeing each other uh as we've got much work to do and

246uh just again be thinking about that and i'm gonna bring that back up here you know in the next week or so as we uh a couple weeks as we see each other uh when might be the most opportune time to do that okay meetings we have meetings on september 2nd and now as well that's right all right if we have nothing else i'll go ahead mr sturman football game new stadium [Music] all right meeting adjourned you