001so [Music] foreign [Music] what's up i'd like to call a meeting to order please um all right so i have a following request to amend the agenda under consent would be item roman numeral 8 d1 under bids and contracts it would be to remove item 1b contract school psychologist 2122 then also under item roman numeral 9 boyd board matters please add one acceptance of dr johnson's resignation and number two appointment of interim director also request to add the following speakers in our delegations section angela favaloro thank you esther hart john baker and stephanie hinton you'll have a motion to approve the agenda okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mrs jones yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson mr smith yes mrs sermon yes yes next we'll have our meditation and pledge to the
002flag by mr greg wilke principal of east side elementary mr wilkie dr johnson chairman wingate members of the board my name is greg wilke i'm principal of eastside elementary school it's my pleasure to be here tonight to lead us in the pledge and meditation would you all please stand i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all before i begin i think i need to make a comment about dr johnson's recent announcement and let him know that you will be missed and your inspiration has been felt by many people in this community and the school system so sir thank you for your service it was a pleasure to work for you all right
003before i begin you may see i have a stool in my hand and the stool is a part of my meditation tonight so i'm going to read a little reflection i wrote recently about what i learned during their pandemic and the stool here is what prompted me to write this piece this past year i spent a lot of time on that stool it began as nothing more than me in the hallway monitoring multiple classrooms to provide teachers a lunch break do your free lunch so i would sit on the hall on this stool and i would watch classrooms but as i sit there i began to notice the changes happening in the school fear began to replace enthusiasm isolation began to consume collaboration facial coverings masked smiles and muffled laughter people vanished behind walls and
004behind dividers trust eroded teams deteriorated confidence disappeared i remember how i felt on this stool day in and day out i lost faith in myself i gave away a lot of my power and a lot of my influence as i struggled to survive i was lost most of the time and i absolutely hated it as a school leader the responsibility to maintain order fell on me the decisions i had to make suddenly affected a lot more than just school operations now i had to make choices that truly were critical in nature i carried the safety and the well-being of hundreds of people on my shoulders every day the weight was enormous and it almost crushed me but it didn't i'm up now off this stool i'm standing strong while staring at a fresh new horizon
005i'm very optimistic guardedly as i plan for a brand new school year but i'm taking a much different approach i have no desire to return to normal because normal is not always what's best for children or adults normal is too often confused with comfortable or convenient i'm embracing those changes that came with the pandemic i learned way too much we all learned too much to forget it i'm moving the school forward with a renewed sense of relationships what was destroyed can and will be rebuilt with time effort and commitment i will seek more advice i fully understand that no one has all the answers i need help and that's okay i will um i will listen more intently everyone's voice matters i will speak softly but with conviction because my tone affects the entire school
006i will model my expectations i will take back my power by sharing the responsibility of my leadership if i truly want a collaborative climate of balanced leadership it has to start with me i'll be more patient i'll be more empathetic i will not be quick to judge sometimes we learn and grow the most when we least expect it when i began sitting in the hall on this stool just to do lunch duty i had no idea the journey i was going to take as a leader as a human being i'm keeping this stool i pray we never forget what we just learned thank you [Applause] all right that brings us to our delegations portion of our meeting first up here will be taylor lyons and before you all come if you would give your attention
007to mr mcclendon thank you this will be for all of our speakers tonight thank you for your interest in addressing the hamilton county board of education during your presentation please address the board as a whole not individual board members or administrators also please do not present complaints or concerns you have about an individual employee of the school system if you wish to voice those complaints and concerns you should contact the central office and ask for a meeting with the superintendent since the superintendent is responsible for individual employees please limit your remarks to five minutes i will tell you when you have one minute left by raising a piece of paper and you may begin when you're ready we will start with uh miss taylor i had so many lyons i'm kidding members of the board
008dr johnson thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you this evening my name is taylor lyons i'm here representing the chattanooga moms for social justice we hope to be here last year to give you a progress report on this project but covered through those plans out the window so i'm excited to be here this evening to give you an update on the classroom library project which we began back in the fall of 2018. so to give you just a little bit of background on the project throughout our organization's existence we've had the opportunity and privilege to work in a number of schools throughout our county most of which our own children do not even attend and that has given us a unique perspective into areas such as resource distribution facility disparities as well
009as given us the opportunity to get to know dozens and dozens of our counties amazing teachers in school administration and to assess some of their needs one of those needs that we heard is that teachers often new teachers were having difficulty stalking their classroom libraries now as many of you know classroom libraries have become an integral part of literacy education because it gives kids access to reading materials every day of the week as opposed to the one day a week they visit their school's main library so you can imagine if a teacher is having to buy her own books their own books it can become very burdensome so msj set a goal to put a classroom library into every school in what was then known as the opportunity zone we did just that and then
010some i'm very proud to share that we have installed 15 classroom libraries in schools throughout hamilton county from elementary schools to high schools we have six more to complete this fall and we will continue this project so long as we have the resources to do so we crowdsourced and paid out of our own pockets for the first few libraries and then we were very fortunate to secure a twenty thousand dollar grant from the osborne foundation which allowed us to go wild with book purchasing in addition to the thousands of books that moms for social justice was able to provide hamilton county students we also would come into the classroom over the weekend with the teacher's permission might i add we would paint the walls bring in new bookshelves comfortable chairs comfortable rugs soft lighting etc
011we wanted the kids to not only be excited about their new books we wanted them to have a comfortable and inviting place to read those books now listen we know there are many organizations wonderful organizations in our community who give books to our students we've had the pleasure of working with many of them and trust me if word gets out that you're working on a project that involves acquiring books you will have no shortage of people calling you up offering their used books and donation which is very kind but we politely declined and i'll tell you why what was important to us and what we did was work with literacy advocates and experts in our community to finely tune and curate a diverse and inclusive reading list according to student population and grade level you
012see it's not enough that our kids know how to read our kids need to love to read and we learn to love to read when we see ourselves and our lives experiences reflected in the pages that we read we know that representation matters so together with our partners we put together a beautifully diverse array of books with protagonists of color authors of color women-led spanish titles lgbqt titles you name it we wanted all of our kids to feel seen and heard with their reading choices now we know that there is a national conversation going on in school board meetings throughout the country based on misunderstanding and quite frankly fear fear of what it means to honestly discuss and look at the ugliest parts of our national story and how it has deeply affected the lives
013of so many but we know that fear is not necessary because we know that our kids are fantastically capable of critical thinking they are capable of reading challenging books that challenge their perspective and ask them to think about hard questions further we trust our teachers to facilitate healthy nuanced conversations around tough subjects if you will allow me to end on a quote by up-and-coming american writer dante stewart literacy and liberation go hand in hand we know this the world we desire to live in is directly connected to the worlds we have the ability to explore our children's worlds do not need to become smaller they need to become bigger msj will continue our commitment to making our kids worlds bigger and on a personal note dr johnson may i say our organization is heartbroken to
014hear about your resignation your loss will be deeply felt and we thank you for your service to our children thank you scarlet valderes oh this might be a little bit too high sorry [Music] okay all right um thank you so much for the opportunity to speak my name is scarlet valderrez i wanted to start off by letting you all know that i'm i'm a mexican-american very proud mexican-american from two very hard-working parents that did everything under the sun to give my sisters and i um every single opportunity that we've had um i'm brand new to chattanooga my family and are brand new we moved here two months ago and let me just tell you all chattanooga's culture has been such a fresh a breath of fresh air everyone's so nice here people hold doors for
015you they say hi to you they have conversations with you don't even know who you are and you're like oh okay hello um so yeah you got to be ready for a long conversation here in chattanooga that's what i noticed yeah but i do want to tell you where i am from because i think that's very important part of why i'm here so i come from a place where having a different opinion is dangerous and in fact it can cost someone their livelihood i come from a place where having a relationship with jesus christ is not welcome and it can get you persecuted i also come from a place where skin color dictates one's abilities i come from a place that teaches children that there is a superior race and segregation is unfortunately welcome i
016come from a place where children are taught to hate their bodies i come from a place where children are taught that friends come in all ages and those friends may express themselves physically and that's okay i come from a place where public schools are not safe for children unfortunately our children are taught to segregate themselves by skin color and ideology this is done under the guise of diversity equity and inclusion sometimes it's called social emotional learning sometimes it's called racial justice and sometimes it can also be called social justice i found that the name evolves pretty quickly and pretty often so sometimes it's a little bit hard to keep up with i come here today to respectfully warn parents that this ideology does not work it's actually pretty harmful you so you may wonder where
017i'm from i'm not from cuba i'm not from venezuela i'm not even from mexico i'm actually from washington state i come from a small town in bellingham washington where culture has been hijacked by political extremists it's very sad that the victims of this ideology are our children and people of color if that's how you like to address people i ask parents and sculptor members to reject this extreme ideology and to not allow it to plague our children's minds and our children's schools you as public servants have a duty to the parents and children of chattanooga so please i ask that you take it seriously not that you're not but please do take it seriously our lord and savior says that anything done in darkness will come to light and the parents will always be here
018to hold you accountable and i would also like to end in a quote from a musical extraordinaire by the name of ice cube better check yourself before you wrecked yourself thank you thank you [Applause] ashley k hello everyone thank you for having me speak tonight um i would like to start by saying i am not speaking tonight out of fear but i am speaking out of a very concerned place for the children who are the future of our country i am not a parent or an educator but i am a member of the community who realizes the importance of speaking up about the disaster that is happening in our education system because the children are our future and currently in my opinion that future is not looking too bright um i want to reference during
019i was here for the may board of education meeting in this room and that was the one about the mask mandates that one got pretty exciting there was a member of this board i'm not going to call names i know i can't do that but that stated um i haven't seen you guys here before this and i'm not going to see you guys after that and so that statement is what i'm responding to tonight in regards to you're right you hadn't seen us previously but i want everyone to know that that has changed because we the people for years have been asleep we wrongly thought we can trust you guys to have the best interest of our children and i know we were wrong it's clear that we were wrong and that's very upsetting to
020me as someone who moved here from california to get away from that ideology that only allows one side to have an opinion in the public realm um so i want to serve notice tonight that we were wrong we're not asleep anymore uh sorry my notes here in regards to um the mask that we were here for the protest there was also a comment made that night where someone on this board said they were afraid to unmask our children because the adult teachers may be too scared to show up to class really i want to address by saying it is not up to our children to alleviate the fears of the teachers that is not burden is not placed on our children our children come to school to learn and to be educated i don't know
021where things got confused but that is not how it works the children are our future and we need to start acting and teaching like it is patriotism has been taken out of schools and replaced with socialist and communist ideologies you are confusing our children by pushing transgender ideology onto them even though they are too young to even understand what that means why do we have to sexualize our children it's very disturbing to me we now have children who are pressured to question their god-given gender and by the way there are only two genders according to the science you are pushing abortion and planned parenthood on our children and telling them it is okay to murder innocent babies in the womb for women's health this is only a drop in the bucket of what i feel
022is satanic ideology that you have been brainwashing our children with while we were asleep but i'm here to tell you again tonight we're not asleep anymore i understand why you thought you wouldn't see us anymore after the mass mandates were lifted because you're used to business as usual you're used to us being busy with our lives while you quietly indoctrinate our children with your in my opinion trash that all changes here and now if parents want to teach this ideology to the children how about teach it at home leave our children out of it why does the entire education system have to cater to your idea ideology and your political views how about we get back to teaching basic education such as math english spelling [Applause] and if i might add we should keep our
023personal political beliefs from both sides of the aisle out of the classroom and let our children learn what they're here to learn and that's get a great education we the people are no longer going to sit back quietly and let you destroy our children with your anti-american and anti-god indoctrination we are paying attention we are watching every single move you make just in case no one on this board realizes we pay your salaries we pay for everything in this building anything we spend our money on that is no longer working in our best interest must go so to anyone who's sitting here not acting in the best interest of our children enjoy the seat while you have it because you will not be sitting in it much longer to the students to the parents educators
024and patients and patriots around the country fighting the good fight to secure a future where our children can thrive and not go through life thinking in themselves as a victim to society because of the color of their skin or because they don't identify a certain sexual way i want to encourage you keep fighting and showing up we are the majority we will never back down we will never surrender the children are our future and we will make our education system great again thank you mrs hill first i'd like to say thank you so much to the moms for social justice for your long-term commitment to the students of hamilton county schools and spending time since 2018 on a project that is important and not necessarily fancy but that really matters to kids and i appreciate
025that um miss valdarez and miss kaye i don't know what school in hamilton county you've been in where you have heard our teachers teaching anti-american anti-god kill unborn babies indoctrination as far as i know that's not happening in a single school in hamilton county schools i don't know what community you are talking about and you're able to stand at that mic and say what you want for five minutes but i do think it's important for us here to rebut the fact rebut your points and say what you have said is untrue you may feel concerned but what you have said is happening in our schools is not happening in our schools and i would ask you to stick around because what this board really likes to focus our work on is academics and student success
026we have a very detailed strategic plan that has five key areas of interest that includes improving student performance making sure we have great teachers and leaders in every single school ensuring that our community is fully involved with that process making sure that we have efficient and effective operations these are things that we focus on day in and day out this is not a sexy place to sit this is not a place where any one of us got up here and said we want to do this for the power we want to do this for our children and i'm glad that you care about your children and your friends children i guess so i invite you please stick around and hear our year in review because while people have been talking about a whole bunch of
027junk that they say is happening in america which i would argue i don't know how much that's happened in america because it's not happening in hamilton county schools while people have been talking about just hype we've been talking about getting our kids an education and we've been talking about how we keep them safe and we work toward very very difficult academic goals because you're right you are right the people of hamilton county have been asleep for a long long time and when dr johnson joined our school system four years ago we woke up we woke up and we started getting down to basics and dr johnson has shared with us the concept of expecting excellence and if you turn around and you look at those banners behind you you will see five after five after
028five after five it does not mean we are perfect it means that we are the fastest improving school district in the state of tennessee and that is no small thing and that is not because of an anti-christian anti-god anti-american no patriotic let's kill babies mantra that is not happening in our schools because we're too busy doing this so i welcome all of you to come up but i will not sit here and allow blatant misinformation to be shared repeatedly from this microphone without saying something and i have a feeling my colleagues will no longer do it either mrs robinson yeah i have nothing else to add thank you jenny fallon clark hello good evening everyone i just wanted to start out by saying thank you for the opportunity my name is fallon clark and i
029am representing black tennessee i'm just gonna hop right in so crt for such a complex controversial topic i have a very simple question why what is the purpose what does it solve what does it actually teach imagine two childhood friends jenny and sharon they've been friends since they were two years old sharing everything birthdays sleepovers and a number of firsts they grow up and enter the public school system where crt is being taught jenny is reminded she's white and learns about the atrocities committed to maintain her white privilege and sharon is reminded she's black and every shortcoming and challenge she faces is because of jenny's white privilege tensions rise hostility creeps in and just like that the friendship is over now perhaps my example is a little extreme but not too far-fetched it actually sounds
030familiar children don't see race until you and i show it to them so i can tell you what crt teaches critical race theory does nothing but perpetuate the same narrative it plants the same seed of divisiveness so why do you want to keep telling the same distorted and divisive story and especially to our children in the form of education i ask again why does it help our lagging test scores does it equip our children with the tools needed to enter the real world and by real world i mean workforce and making a better living financial literacy and proper decision-making making does it teach our children to value one another regardless of skin color does it teach our children to take pride in our country a country where a man can be a slave come from
031nothing yet give birth to a generation of children that have everything i remember conversing amongst a group of black friends and we all reflected on our own childhood and how black history was a small section in a history book comprised of only slavery jim crow laws and civil rights slavery ended in 1865 146 years worth of information since then and yet it's filled with nothing but slavery trauma inferiority and that's all the history anyone ever shoves in front of us again why what is the purpose crt is not an accurate account of black history or american history for that matter and it is imperative we do not allow it to pass as such i'm sure everyone here is aware of the 2018-2019 state report card that's the only one i could find available online less
032than 33 percent of hamilton county students were found to read at grade level when critical race theory is mentioned the average individual cannot define it and our children most certainly cannot define let alone comprehend its complexities i value teachers tremendously my own father is an educator but teachers are teachers and they do not and nor does anyone on the board replace the parents many of you may be thinking crt is banned in the state of tennessee this is not a problem in the hamilton county school district well i do have with me an assignment given to my son directly following the banning of crt in our state he was provided with a banning article with a writing prompt what is the importance of crt in the public school system this is a problem and i
033would like to note it the focus should be our core subjects subjects that are not excelling in language arts math science and social studies with the addition of trades work readiness and financial literacy and let's be clear the fact we are not excelling in these subjects has nothing to do with race my son is in the gifted program he has a 4.0 he scored a 25 on the act as a sophomore with absolutely no prep that leads me to the importance of school choice and is highlighted in the hcde mission statement the environment of our schools and how all of this correlates with critical race theory i grew up in maryland tennessee graduated from maryland high school at the time i attended blacks made up 15 of the school population whites were dominant as i
034reflect on my experience not once did i feel inferior as crt suggests not once was i oppressed the bar and expectations that were set at the time were for all students regardless of race i left the public school system in my family knowing i could accomplish anything and my skin color was the very least of my concern fast forward to having a child who attended orchard night middle and currently attends brainerd high school in both instances he has been stereotyped bar lowered viewed as being at a disadvantage and evil even labeled with phrases like he's not like the rest of them by an actual teacher ceo would do nothing but reinforce this culture of inferiority and further alienate our black children we must not teach children that any challenge we must not teach black children
035that any challenge or burden that they may face comes from white people we must not teach white children that they are the cause of of the plight in black america we must teach all children regardless of color you are the writer of your own life in any system set in place that threatens your dignity and freedom you have the power to eliminate one voice and one vote at a time i urge you not to let crt into our schools stand firm on the tennessee banning of crt and hold every single educator accountable who has the audacity to take matters into their own hands thank you [Applause] next we'll go to angela favrolo hello everyone thank you chairman wingate and board and dr johnson for granting me time today i'm angela i'm a parent a community
036member a volunteer and recent graduate of leadership hamilton county schools there are a few items i'd like to address from today's actual agenda this evening first if i'm allowed i would like to extend a tremendous thank you to dr johnson on behalf of many parents educators and community members for being a sound and productive leader over the last four years we're excited to see the siege you've planted flourish and we hope your successor nurtures our district well enough to bear bear the fruits of that labor we wish you well on your next venture and you will be missed onto the agenda section 983 normal park zone edition while i'm in favor of this unique addition as this edition isn't accessible through any other school zone and and doesn't only expand this school zone because of
037its pro the access to the property i do encourage the board to discuss how as a district we can plan to keep the integrity of our school communities in light of gentrification in these areas and rapidly increasing congestion as well as proactively thinking about other areas handled headed in the same direction in other districts how to navigate zoning and listening to community members and their recommendations and how to partner with city council and county commission and their processes and how they can impact and benefit the communities as well moving on to sections 984 985 and 986 regarding to pay for school nutrition and school-aged child care the increase on 984 i fully support and request to hear the time frame goal in which these pay increases reach their livable wage or above 15 an hour
038i didn't see where the goal of time frame in order to reach that that wage especially in light of heavily competitive food service jobs in our community and the newly announced benefits from fast food chains they have clearly outperformed years past and retention of top performing teams is vital to our district moving on to the one-time bonus for sacc out of esser funds i absolutely support this one-time bonus given the additional loads these programs took on over the last year and would like to know how much they did do this last year 986 we'd like to or i would like to make note that their wages are for lack of a better word pretty embarrassing um and this increase is a start but those entrusted with the care of our children should be paid competitively
039and substantially more i would like to address some of the topics brought forth tonight by some of the other groups that haven't really been active in hamilton county schools or social media influencers i would urge them to learn the roles and goals of our school board demanding curriculum to be removed that doesn't exist is a waste of our time that should be afforded to our students the law surrounding this is clear discrimination by race is protected federally under law if someone feels their child has been discriminated against that's an hr issue that should be presented to your school's administration and the department of education as i believe we just say every meeting over and over that those complaints should be addressed directly [Music] the policy created that dictates the curriculum is topic for state legislator
040later that our school board does not dictate they work within the confines of those policies and ours are currently heavily regulated regarding this topic comprehensive history isn't crt it's simply our past and as the old saying goes those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it friends these times are very reminiscent of those past and i hope we always strive to give our kids the liberty to learn more than we have and to think outside of the boxes we have built thank you all for your time esther hart good afternoon my name is esther i'm a mother of one he's a rising first grader and i'm grateful that he'll be entering the hamilton county school district this fall especially after all the hard work you all have done in our county in the
041past four years thank you so much i'm grateful that we'll be able to benefit from some of that um i just wanted to share an analogy that i kind of think will demonstrate um sort of an emotional space that a lot of us are holding right now and i want to start with a quote from james baldwin not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced so if you will imagine with me that you're at home sitting on your couch feeling depressed and exhausted for some reason you glance over to your left and you notice a large red wine stain on the couch cushion when did that get there you think to yourself surprised that you hadn't noticed it before suddenly you become aware that the tv
042remote in your hand is a mess it's so sticky and greasy that some of the buttons don't even work a feeling of disgust washes over you as you look down at the sticky remote in your hands you notice that the throw rug beneath your feet the hand woven one that you love so much is absolutely filthy wow when was the last time i vacuumed you wonder aloud next your senses are overwhelmed by an unpleasant smell that makes your eyes water it's coming from the kitchen reluctantly you follow it all the way to the stinky kitchen garbage where old food is rotting not far from a sink that's overflowing with dirty dishes even the coffee pot is growing its own little mold colony how long has it been like this you ask yourself shocked and embarrassed
043that everything is in such a state you work your way around your whole house and find similar conditions in every room dead plants sticky surfaces mounds of dust your entire home is in far worse of a condition than you knew how could you not have seen it before and then as if a switch has been flipped in your mind the idea of keeping things the way they are is more unbearable to you now than the idea of making a change you take a deep breath and leave to go get some cleaning supplies when you return later that day lysol sponges and mop bucket in hand you're surprised to find yourself walking into a nearly empty house you try not to panic as you question your sanity am i in the wrong house did i really
044see the things that i saw the dishes are gone the coffee pot is gone your favorite rug is gone even the tv remote and the wine stained couch cushion is gone and here in this moment you ironically find yourself desperate to find all the things that just moments ago you'd been dreading to see for all the mold and the dirt and the rot these were your things and you were ready to face them and clean them and take better care of them where did everything go you slowly walk through what's left of your house feeling the weight of the emptiness surrounding you turning the corner your nose once again encounters a whiff of that unpleasant garbage smell you recognize from earlier relieved and surprised by your relief and smelling this stench you follow its scent
045all the way to the end of the hall to a closet door firmly shut and locked your housemate is there almost finished installing a padlock to the outside of the door she notices you there and beams with happiness and pride as she proclaims i fixed the mess perhaps she expected you to respond with gratitude and maybe that's why she now seems so annoyed with you when you stare back at her blankly unsure what to even say you reach for the closet door and she quickly jumps in front of it to block you you cannot open that she says it will all fall on our heads and crush us to death you look into her eyes and you recognize her pain and her fear and her shame you recognize all that because you feel the same
046way you place a hand on her shoulder look into her eyes and respond plainly i'm scared too it is a lot but i know we can face this together we'll wash the dishes do the laundry scrub out the stains and revive the plants we'll vacuum the rug and mend the broken things and we can even use the garbage to start a compost pile in the backyard we'll take it one step at a time piece by piece so i want to leave us there in that little story standing in front of the closet door together because it feels like that's the moment we're in right now we can't just keep shoving things in closets whether it's about teaching sex ed or critical race theory or anything else that comes up we have to just be willing
047to face it in its entirety especially the mess taking ownership of all of it not just the pretty parts thank you thank you john baker good evening my name is john baker this is going to be kind of a couple part presentation because of what was said from the board earlier i have been taking classes at utc and i can tell you this that the things that i hear in those classes are not what i remember learning in school they are changing the facts to fix some sort of political agenda and i can say this that this didn't come from steve engel this didn't come from the nashville this came from the teacher and the idea that you think you can hold the reins on 3 000 teachers is going to be a tough call
048unfortunately many of the teachers that we are getting now are coming from left-leaning institutions and so if the student is with the teacher long enough they become like the teacher so they're producing more and more so i that that is my comment about knowing what's going on because uh earlier uh one of the other delegates talking about putting books in the schools have any of you had a chance to review the books in these 15 libraries that they've installed have you got any idea what these books are i would highly recommend you just go in and randomly grab a few books and see if you think this is good so just keep that in mind the primary reason i asked to speak tonight uh is to issue a notice of liability i have copies here
049addressed to each member of the board and the current superintendent thank you for your service sir um this is uh concerns vaccines administered to minors 18 and under this is your official and personal notice of liability you are not a medical professor a professional and should therefore you are unlawfully practicing medicine by prescribing recommending and using coercion to insist on this experimental medical treatment whereas the nuremberg code prohibits forcing or coercing anyone under any circumstance to participate in a medical experiment and the code states the voluntary consent of the human absolutely essential two all the treatments being marked marketed as covid19 vaccines are still in phase three clinical trials until clinical trials and hence qualify as medical experiments people taking these treatments are enrolled in clinical trials three none of these treatments have been approved
050but only granted emergency use authorization hence cannot be mandated nor can informed consent be dispensed with 4. most vaccines are trialed for at least 5 to 10 years and covet 19 vaccines have been in trials for less than one year less than one year five no other corona vaccine mers sars-1 has been approved for market due to antibody dependent enhancement resulting in severe illness and deaths in animal models 6. numerous doctors scientists and medical experts are issuing dire warnings about the short and long term long term especially if we start making kids get shots we're going to look at this for the next few decades long-term effects of covid 19 vaccines including but not limited to death infertility miscarriages bells palsy blood clots cancer inflammatory conditions autoimmune disease early onset dementia convulsions anaphylaxis and antibody
051dependent enhancement leading to death now this is a two-sided page so i'll dispense with the rest of it because it doesn't get any better the point is is that this is a country based on liberty and we claim to have responsibility for our own health is that it that's it okay then i did that right thank you mrs robinson uh sir [Applause] okay mr baker i just wanted to ask a point of clarification sure are you saying that we have required or enforced coveted shots on students or teachers it's not clear i'm not saying that you're requiring what i'm trying to do is head you off at the pass so that you're not entertaining these kind of ideas i got it i got it i got it because school starts in a couple weeks and
052you can make a motion on it make it happen so yes got it i don't possess that amount of power and neither do the other eight people sitting here we don't have the ability to require shots for students or teachers and we don't um but i just wanted to point to clarify what you're saying because the way that i was receiving it is that you are making an accusation that we have and so i wanted to clarify for the public what exactly you're saying so i appreciate that thank you this is not an accusation that you have this is just a notice so thank you i encourage i encourage you i encourage you to speak to state legislators with the same note because at the end of the day our state legislators are who would
053enforce something like that and so and really i give you all the same advice that if you are worried about um curriculum and um what is being uh required to be taught or ultimately how and where it's coming from our state legislation is the right place for you to be and we also spend a lot of time trying to get answers from them on a number of questions that may or may not coincide with your questions too so i highly encourage you to call your state legislators if you're concerned about things in regards to where funding comes from i highly encourage you to call your county commissioner it's just really important that if we're going to receive information and hear opinions there are a whole lot of other counterparts that have more power than us
054and that also play in the same education field that need to hear your concerns too and i truly mean this i'm grateful for your voices and for you to be here i've been thrilled to see more parents here than i've ever seen in the last five years but i think it's really important that if you want to get real work done we got to be strategic together and we got to have solutions i didn't hear a lot of solutions today i always want to know solutions if i had more time i'd ask you all come to come back to the mic and tell me what solutions you're looking for because it's all that's all that's running through my head whenever you're speaking whether i agree with what you say or not it doesn't matter because
055i want to know your solutions but more importantly there are other people that are making really big decisions bigger decisions than the nine of us have the ability or the opportunity or the power to make and they should hear your voices too so i just want to put that out there mr thurman just a point of therapy clarification to that the state does the standards we pick the curriculum a matter of fact we're getting ready to do a math curriculum so yes we do have a lot of power about what's taught in hamilton county schools this does not come from the state they just make the standards and lay things out but we choose those we vote on them every time they they choose they choose the standards and we have a list to choose
056within that standards so they create the buffet and i have a plate and i decide what food i eat from that buffet that's the best metaphor of how the state and school boards work together at the end of the day the state creates the the buffet and we go and choose what food we want do i want chicken or do i want steak that's all the options i get if i'm a vegetarian i have no options yeah and and and um board and community as uh as curriculum is selected uh for point of clarity uh they choose they they identify the standards but they also have an approved list of curriculum and so you approve you you select from the list of curriculum options that are there uh you can find the ones that were
057available for literacy uh that were approved uh the same with math it's the same with you know all the all the rest of the content area so as school districts you can ask for you can ask for a waiver to be able to select something else but it comes from that list that's approved by the state the standards and the curriculum both are approved at the state level thanks stephanie hinton good evening to dr johnson um chairman wingate and the others gosh it's with great pleasure that i stand here and i'm not concerned about what anybody says i'm retired [Laughter] uh because it's always been like a nervous thing to come in this room and that kind of thing but i have i do not have that fear anymore and i want to say what
058i want to say okay so it's very refreshing to be here and i number one i'd like to give all the accolades to dr johnson the senior staff for the best years that i have ever had in hamilton county i retired after 45 years under multiple superintendents multiple directors multiple everything and i'm so glad to have been a part of a winning team so let's get [Music] so i guess i'm the unique person here maybe i'm not i have visited and sat in classrooms in every one of the schools in hamilton county as director of teaching and learning so there are some things that i would like to say regarding remarks but that's not why i'm here tonight but i'll come back too um but i i technically have visited every school and visited every
059classroom so there are a lot of things i could say but i'll hold that off what i would like to say i was glad to hear you mention dr johnson's strategic plan there were so many good things that happened uh when dr johnson came and once again thank you for allowing me to be part of that team and and i just hate to see you leave but i left so you know what can i say so anyway to to uh so i mean you know i'm a real i'm a realist here i don't play games with people but anyway uh as i said i was around for 45 years and during these years um you know it's going to get a little sticky board there was always talk about that school board most of you
060are not even a part of the board as like as i've said before i've been around more than 45 years but the rumors still persist then we didn't always believe that decisions were made all about the kids or about the teachers and i hope your decisions will in the future i'm before you asking that you respect the process and not once again change the process as we move forward to look for a new student superintendent because it has happened before i think we all know it the community knows it the public knows it some people change the rules to get their people in what i would like not to see happen is for that to happen again so there's really no point in talking about fair or unjust if there were no conflicts obviously there
061are but i would like for you to consider the children the children as you go through this process um and not lean towards your own perceived bias i think one of the other other ladies mentioned earlier to let go of your personal and political beliefs when you begin to make decisions we know or believe that what is fair or just what is fair or not doesn't just happen uh we would like for you to remember the character character traits that we have emphasized with our kids over the years and uh we would like you not to just do things just because the positions in which you sit i mean just be honest and fair and kind and just and righteous and all that stuff so there is a succession plan i know hope you all
062know that just follow it there is the superintendent the deputy superintendent the chief follow the plan why are you looking for a new superintendent while you're determining a transparent process so we're not asking for any favors we're just asking you as spike lee says do the right thing so let's work toward the change uh and change uh the perception that the public has because as i said i've been around 45 years a lot of people mentioned things to me that i wouldn't i dare bring to your attention here but hamilton county residents need to know that it's all about business and not about any bias against who or what or where you came from and i would just like to end once again thank you so much dr johnson for allowing me to work on
063a winning team have a great day everyone thank you all right that brings us to uh presentations portion of our agenda and i will turn it over to dr johnson absolutely well thank you board appreciate the opportunity to share uh as normal at the end of the year we do a uh kind of end of year review uh of where we've been at this point of the year and uh and that's what is before you so uh to to give some updates uh around some of the work uh that's there and i'm gonna see if i can get this uh clicker going all right uh so in 2017 when we started and i'm not uh you know i i think the important thing to give context around for some that may not have been um
064uh may not have many of these slides are gonna be familiar for our school board for those that have been really engaged because we've brought them back every single time i'm not bringing them today because it's my last formal school board meeting uh these are what we've come back to since i've been here and uh and and it's been the hallmark of the work and this was set by uh by this school board as we worked through what we wanted and what you wanted the headlines to be and what you wanted our work and our focus to be and i appreciate the work that you've done with that and that vision i guess we can go next slide i don't think the clickers clickers clicking oh i've got it off sherry ford so i'm i'm
065ready to retire with steve highlander your tech challenge person uh here but that strategic plan involves at the center of it uh the acceleration of student achievement that is the heartbeat of this school district that's the heartbeat of uh the work uh you know and it is a passion if i um if i was like talking about what i loved and have loved the most in public education it is the acceleration of student achievement and it's making sure that our students are prepared for the next trajectory and i'm so proud that's been at the heartbeat of our work i know the results of 2018 and 19 were mentioned uh one of the things i will take note and you'll see as i go through that literacy is still a challenge will continue to be a
066challenge it is a statewide challenge it is a national challenge but in 2016-17 uh before we arrived as a team you know hamilton county had five schools that would have been an a in 2018-19 which is the last academic year that there were results we had 32 schools that would have been rated in a and that that type of forward momentum moved the district from being 130 of 147 school systems to the second in the state of in the state of tennessee but as greg wilke mentioned last year was immensely challenging we had obviously a global pandemic that disrupted so many of the things that we see as normal our own community was hit with a tornado and we've had political and civil and racial unrest at an all-time high and unfortunately it's come to
067the front door of the schoolhouse and i'm an academic i love teaching and learning unfortunately those challenges have come to the front door of the schoolhouse the schoolhouse for which my son goes to school and i do hope that we can focus on the focus and you'll get to see the focus as you spend time with us through the rest of this presentation we had a challenge we were able to go to school 90 percent of the time last year mass not we were able to go to school 90 of the time and there are very few urban school systems that have an urban subset that were able to go to campus in fact as recent as last month i was sitting with a group of superintendents from across the country not sitting i was
068zooming that's what we do now uh zooming with the with some stupid across the country and they were still trying to determine what the reopening and re-entry to school looked like and to be able to say our kids were on campus uh is something that we're very very proud of and that was recognized and so i you know i think the the purpose of this board as we take a moment to talk about this last year is to really elevate the fact that yes we had a pandemic and we had real challenges and we have real challenges recovery from the pandemic the civil unrest those things will remain challenges but the truth is we accomplished a lot of amazing work and we have an engaged community everything from the virtual learning centers we recognize that
069although given the option about 35 percent of our our families chose or our students chose to be in a virtual environment and in that environment we knew we had some students that uh that that weren't accessing coursework or what been pushed along because they did not have that accountability structure and so many in our community stepped up and those things were featured at a national level our work in our uh our hr department uh was featured at a national level uh we had a case study that was done on us uh at again at a national level about how we were tracking and monitoring the really the hallmark of us operating in the pandemic was to be transparent we were probably the first school system in the country to publish the positive cases and to
070publish our positivity we we wanted our community to know exactly where we were and those types of things were were shared we did share i want to go back i know this was mentioned earlier we did share that vaccines are an option we did try to make vaccines readily available for our employees because that's important that's important that if they want access to the vaccine that they don't have to go here there and yawn to get it we want to make sure that it was at their fingertips and they could take advantage of that again our our community continue to be recognized uh you know we we can really be proud of the fact that again we have a great resource in epb and philanthropy in the business and industry and we're able to make
071sure that every student as we saw the digital divide being a challenge every student that was economically disadvantaged can be connected not just this year but for the next nine years for the next decade in total our students were able to be connected and our schools continue to achieve hamilton county collegiate high was a blue ribbon school this past year we also have thrasher that's up for blue ribbon this year very selective process and you can see only a few in the state of tennessee get that get that opportunity and uh miss yang gets signal mountain middle high school was a presidential scholar and one of across the country we had not just schools do amazing things we had students do amazing things our our student artists were highlighted and our students again continue to
072win whether it was art our teachers led whether it was in the arts band and you can see our teachers continue to support as well as curriculum associates recognizes brandi adam at red bank uh for her amazing work and we talk about planning our i mean our teachers want a national lesson plan uh award and we're just so amazed at the work that teachers continue to do as mr wilkie said this last year was exceptionally tough and i'm so proud of the way that our teachers leaders and this board allows us to respond to this uh to this pandemic so uh digging into the focus i think the the road map ahead that can go either way but just to highlight some things that are still the work uh that will continue to be the
073work summer reach is going on right now in the second session of summer reach about 6 700 students have been a part of that summer program we actually um we actually were the pilot for summer for for summer programming we had 2 000 students last summer at in the height of the pandemic that were on our campuses mitzi delk was here we were trying to provide service for special ed students we were we we just we we stepped out there because we felt like it was the right thing to do for students and this year statewide you know every school system started summer programming and we have continued and expanded as a result our principles have been hard at work we brought our principals in for a couple days for retreat our retreats don't look
074like uh many business retreats our retreats involve water and box lunches and a lot of work but we spent the first day really reconnecting really making sure we hadn't been together everybody had been zooming and so we got opportunity to reset uh the second day really digging into the important work and have spent some days uh since making sure that operations and such are aligned it's important to note that in our district about 70 of our test takers are in a subgroup that means they're black hispanic native american a student with disability and english learner or economically disadvantaged and it's important for us as a as a district to be intentional about how we support that 70 percent because you can see the disparity in the difference in academic performance academic performance is our focus
075not because it's not not just because of the number uh i would share openly here our senior leadership team just got done reading simon sinek's infinite game we've really been focused on beyond the finite and really pushing uh to the to the next level so it's not just about the number what the numbers represent is our students are becoming better positioned for post-secondary and that our students can thrive we want all of our students to thrive and that's that's really what our work is about and so a couple of years ago jane bronson only was involved several others our team really worked to make sure that we could stand up student success planning because as we look at our diverse learners which that's just what they are diverse learners we know we need to support
076them wherever they are however they are and we have the fortune of being in a community that has and does uh does provide resource and we want to make sure that whatever resource they're providing that we align it really really tightly to meet the needs of students and so we rolled out student success plans to 14 of our schools they're individualized plans for every student that makes sure that the needs are met that their needs are met and we're aligning community resources identifying areas of deficit and that is expanding this year but we continued this work even in this past school year as we talk about literacy we know that 89 of students that enter our schools off track remain off track in third grade by third grade and that is just the truth so
077that early learning work is going to continue to be critical uh as we move forward and we're looking at partnerships with the county and the city to really make sure and and philanthropy as well to really make sure that our early learning the students enter they are even more prepared our teachers have been hard at work in uh state training reading 360 that's based on phonics really uh really uh resetting how we do our work uh we started that last year with curriculum work and expanded it this year and again our teachers continue to respond after being you know exhausted uh they just have continued to show up and that's what uh that's what so many so many teachers do in regards to future-ready students i mentioned this but we are probably the only community
078in the country i know we're long-term in the country that has a decade commitment many school systems took an approach and communities took an approach of providing hot spots in a temporary fashion again because of the great resource we have with epp and you can see the cross sector partnership here the city the county philanthropy uh you know we were able to stand this up and obviously our school board and their direction were able to stand this up and continue to expand digital fabrication and opportunities it is about opportunities and closure of the opportunity gap for all students and making sure they have access to everything uh that's there at their fingertips so they can be whatever it is they want and desire to be as students we continued our focus on the trades this
079year again in the midst of a pandemic in the midst of a pandemic this is the work that went on in your school system uh and in partnership with the county mayor and city mayor and the association of general contractors and many others in the next year or so there will be opening uh the and scott bennett uh we spent a lot of time helping us figure out how to get garber uh facilitated uh you know the next year there will be an opportunity for our students to get vocational training in the construction fields and whether it's electrical or framing this work is so critical and important in the midst of the pandemic we were able to continue to move that important work uh forward work brace learning continued i don't know if we probably
080haven't done enough and i'm pushing on cody a little bit here uh as he's sitting there uh but south tree and iron works you all know about the stomp but south tree and iron works uh we have students from uh howard and east ridge who are able to go there for a part of their day uh for a full day and and do teaching apart not doing do learning a part of the day and work a part of the day and earn a wage uh and get hands-on a hands-on opportunity unlike any other so this is a model that has taken uh really taken great root and we hope that continues to spread in the midst of a global pandemic we saw our uh our students uh unfortunately i know these numbers as a screen
081would black but uh we saw our students continue to get credentials and certifications so in 1617 before we arrived we went from about 60 60 uh certifications and credentials to over 1100 this year last year you'll see we had 316 we more than tripled that this year and that's a testament to the work of teachers leaders staff john maynard blake freeman neely parker our community superintendent so many folks that understand the importance and speaking to that strategic plan what does it measure doesn't get done right and uh and and this was an area that the board challenged us to measure uh and we were able to get done and everybody's turning their screen they're nice to you when you're leaving uh and so i'm just messing with y'all they've been nice to him the whole
082time uh and so uh and so we're very proud of that and uh you know again all this is your update in the midst of the pending because all we've been talking about is the pandemic i think in a lot of regards and other things i want you to know as a board that the work has continued in the midst of the pandemic we are launching micro colleges and actually we should put this in here received two million dollars in state grant that we applied for for innovative high schools uh innovative high school approach which this is a part of that allows us to make sure that our students in hamilton county your students in hamilton county have an opportunity to get access to more advanced coursework more dual enrollment and advanced placement coursework by
083really taking a focus on two things which teachers do we have that are better or are ready and equipped to be able to teach those courses but then secondly what courses do we have that we can pivot and flip to dual enrollment dual credit types of courses and so we're very excited about that in regards to great teachers and leaders penny and her team continued to dig in with making sure that we were preparing a pipeline of leaders one of the things uh three or four years ago as i arrived four years ago we knew that all of our leadership development so much of our leadership development was happening externally uh and and great work great partnership with pef but we really believe that with 82 ish of our budget being people that we need
084to invest in our people uh mick i spent yesterday with a group of our not necessarily senior leaders but leaders in our district that are leading big areas like transportation and school nutrition that you sometimes don't see but they're doing big bodies of work and so uh we really want to make sure that we developed our leaders uh and to the school from the school standpoint uh had 18 aspiring assistant principals that came through the pipeline and eight aspiring principles that came through the pipeline and so again in the midst of the pandemic we saw it important felt it important uh to stand that work up uh board you've got you've done an amazing job of trying to really push on compensation i think to answer one of the questions that was posed tonight about
085how and when do we get to fifteen dollars an hour we've had a goal of increasing a dollar each year uh and as the budget allows uh we love to increase it two or three dollars a year we're able to step back this year and move it but we want to continue that and we've continued the investment in our uh and with our employees had a chance with uh jeanette and collaborative conference in the day to to really talk about how we continue and the district continues to move that important work forward and then again in the midst of global pandemic we've been committed to growing your own one of the challenges in our district and it's because it's measured at the state level and it is reported on and the state board has identified
086that it is important and made school boards across the state of tennessee adopt uh educated diversity policies uh that we know that educator diversity and representation is a challenge it's a challenge in the field it is an absolute challenge in the field it is a challenging educators are a challenge in the field getting other educators to teach is a i talked to a social studies teacher today and he asked the question how do i teach history and i said i don't know we're gonna figure it out but um but education is a challenge for our teachers right and uh it's in particular challenge to get diverse teachers uh that uh that students can see themselves in and so one thing we know is that we have many classified employees that have degrees we were astonished
087by the number of employees that that are classified that have degrees that are very skilled at working with children penny and her team and again because of state grant and opportunity we're able to continue this or really rev this up and put some put some fuel into this uh partnership and be able to grow our own which again is a commitment to growing our own talent in our district and then again our partners with one to one we've been able to do whole teacher well teacher uh whole child um whole teacher wellness and really making sure whether it's one to one or wellness wednesdays that were stood up uh i clicked on it one day and i think you all were cooking there was some kind of cooking meal and doing some other stuff but
088again the stress and challenges that are going on externally our teachers struggle and have challenges with those and we we have to support our people and that's just a belief something that you won't see but you will see and if you miss it you'll know it is your paycheck and uh and our um in our finance team with hr and with i.t underwent a major major transformation and you know what i'm proud of you didn't hear pete uh and that's the work right and so a major major uh shift in our platform with icms and munis uh that uh that really is gonna position them to be able to grab data you know and and be more nimble and more responsive uh in regards to uh the software that we're providing to to our systems
089and a big challenge that we know remains is our facilities you all seen this slide again many many times over and over again that we're 7.5 million square feet with an average building age of 40 years old and our facilities report 51 percent were not what we wanted to be they were fair poor and the state of some of our facilities is extremely poor in my humble opinion and uh but we also know that we can do amazing things when we dig in and do the really important work and so you see here pictures of harrison and pictures of east hamilton which opened this year in the midst of a pandemic and very very proud of that and uh and then again he was a board of proof csla and uh they've got a fence
090around it so i know something's going on uh over there at uh at lakeside and uh and excited about that project as it uh comes to comes to fruition uh in the coming weeks uh i hope to even share more meat around blueprint 2030 uh and provide for you uh some ideas uh around where you might head and and as the next leader takes the reins uh try to do my part in really strengthening this area as it's an identified area that uh i want to be as helpful as possible as i as i transition if y'all let me transition tonight uh and uh and then uh and then in regards to the engagement of if you can't have fun in the midst of like challenging times uh and then in regards to engaging community
091i think to the point right um i hope this community harnesses this season of engagement but also gets aligned i see several faces that are familiar that are a chance at the last board meeting i don't remember your name or remember but i see someone facing our chance to spend some time with after the school board meeting and i hope that the engagement of the community uh remains and that we uh you know and you as a community can coalesce around what's really important but you saw that the reopening community survey more respondents than we've ever had to to surveys and we just put out another survey uh which we'll provide even more feedback on it's just now come in uh survey feedback around esser and and the third uh really toronto funds that have
092come from the federal government and you can see kind of the top six and there really wasn't much variation between the six but these are the top six areas that people challenged us to look at investments uh in and uh in and for and so uh i just said with this these are three of our uh of our amazing recent graduate scholars uh you see this macy tidmor who sat uh down their next miss thurman and kobe rivers and uh and lay hannah who is uh and toby is a student at brainerd and lay as a student at east hamilton uh mace well they were students at those schools macy was a student at collegiate high uh but they've all gone on to do and are going on to do really really amazing amazing things
093lay is uh the first student from east hamilton to uh to to be accepted and i believe like of his his schooling was paid for at harvard university uh and so just there's so many great success stories there are so many challenges as well uh but so many things that our children our teachers our religious community did and our hope is that we continue to do the work to make sure that all children thrive and experience a future uh without limits so again in the midst of this year that's a that's a bit of an update on the work beyond uh the the pandemic and beyond the other stuff we still were committed to moving the strategic plan and the strategic direction of the district forward thank you we'll take any questions mr stern kobe
094is he the one with the middle tennessee he is i need a contact info for him mrs hill can i just say that's a heck of a body of work brian dr johnson thank you so much for leading our system through an unprecedented year um frankly i think that's what we should all be standing up giving people high fives and ovations four is the way that our teachers and our students and our leaders have persevered this year so thank you very much go ahead mrs robinson okay um my hope is that for the next school board year we up upgrade to lights again where we can um hopefully the new superintendent maybe our new superintendent will get us lights get that done [Laughter] um you know it feels surreal to look back at the 2021-2021
095school year because to be frank it feels like it was 10 years long rather than 12 months but as a school board member i just want to tell you that i don't think i could have been more pleased with how our school year went it was not perfect especially in the middle of it the middle is always the hardest part um the day to day but gosh looking back like man we won 2020 and early 2021 now my the rest of my 2021 is like not going that well right now but that's not y'all's problem so um but actually speaking as a parent dr johnson i just want to tell you thank you for making incredibly hard decisions decisions that were not always popular and to the other seven of you i say the same
096thing we made hard decisions this past year that sometimes weren't popular but as a parent my son got an excellent education last year in the midst of a time where most students his age were primarily at home doing virtual learning or maybe missing learning in general so i just wanted to congratulate the leadership team and dr johnson on a great school year and by far you cannot say that i mean at the end of the day it's got to be the hardest battle that we've ever fought right and so like everyone should put last year on their resume and definitely highlight it and remember it as lessons learned so thank you mr perez so i'll wait for your item to give you your accolades but at this moment i want to thank publicly all our
097staff really in what has been an excruciating year where you have poured uh double time i won't say overtime because there could be implications to that but um you've really uh doubled down with the work that has been uh asked of you uh here present in the administration central office but those teachers some probably in the audience but some um uh listening or or watching that uh just exhausted themselves uh for the sake of our students none of this was easy none of this was expected none of this was planned for and and we really pulled it off and and did an incredible job and i i want to thank everybody who who participated this dr johnson if there is one thing i'll say about this regarding you is one thing i always appreciate is
098you've always been publicly uh public about your recognition that this isn't you this is a team of incredible people uh that surround you and uh and of course the team has a leader but we'll talk about that later but um but truly personally as a father as a husband uh us many different uh family relations to to um to the students here in community relations i want to thank everybody out there this uh this has been difficult but we have really persevered and been strong and resilient and i cannot wait for normality and i hope next year we get to enjoy as much of it as possible so thank you all who who really made it happen this year mr smith just amazing thank you for the report you guys are amazing there's just a
099part of me even though i don't always agree but uh unless you're comatose you can't help but see the progress that's been made and uh as a dad a granddad and uh so immersed in kids lives every day and will be as long as god gives me breath i just feel like i need to wash your feet i do and we got a lot of work to do we do we got a lot of work to do we're not where we want to be but my goodness you guys dr johnson you guys are amazing they're just amazing thank you all right any other questions comments about uh i'm saving my crying for later so all right thank you all right so um before we get to um approval of our consent agenda um uh if
100anyone needs to read the disclaimer statement let's please go ahead and do that at this time go ahead mr perez i declare that i have a spouse and sisters in law who work for the school system and that the board's vote on so many things on this agenda 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 thurman yes i declare that i have a relative who works for the school system and that is some things on the board agenda 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 jones i declare that i have a relative who works
101for the school system and that the boards vote on budget policies etc may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the school system mr mcclendon i have to read this now yay um i declare i have a fiancee uh who works for the school system and the board's vote on budget policies etc may have an effect on my relatives employment even so i hereby certify that i will cast my vote in the best interest of the school system all right mr smith do you need to read that i'm sorry i don't know you just had your cup out there i'm sorry all right sorry i do i thought you're just going down the line go ahead mrs robin i
102declare that i have a relation or a family member in law who works for the school system and that the boards vote on everything 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 okay do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second yeah i don't know what happened sorry i don't know who got the second there mrs ford all right mr perez all right do we have any items we'd like to take a look at anything we need to pull nothing i'm going to go ahead and pull uh what we let me i held it out there long enough didn't you did um but just to make a comment but i'm not sure
103if it's here but the the or if it was later the um yeah it's later i'm not gonna pull anything all right mrs ford mrs hill yes mrs jones yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith mrs thurman yes yes all right so that drops us down to board matters first item there would be under uh chief operations officer we would have the battle account academy in brown academy zones to have a motion to approve move to approve second second i'm not i think mr mcclendon was the second he got it all right any discussion on that item okay mrs ford mrs yes mrs jones yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith mrs thurman yes chairman yes next item would be the harrison elementary zone do
104we have a motion to approve move to approve second got those all right any discussion around that item okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mrs jones yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith mrs thurman yes yes next item would be the normal park zone do we have a motion to approve move to approve second in discussion go ahead mrs carmen uh i'm gonna uh approve this with the understanding that we will have discussion later about the normal park school situation i'd like us to have discussion about all school facilities as part of that i mean it's highly complex topic all right any other discussion there okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mrs jones yeah mr mcclendon yes mrs robinson yes next item there is uh the recommendation for school nutrition raises do we
105have a motion to approve second mr perez and then mr mcclendon all right any discussion on that item go ahead mr press miss jones uh i just wanted to make sure that we um don't forget about the request during open comment to review the time frame for what that would look like so i guess we could put that in the um on the list of things we'll discuss in the work session so i think there's two time frames to speak to penny can speak to uh the time frame for this which is just a matter because they've done all that work with uh isims now and uh and all the other stuff it may make it even quicker but uh they'll be able to expedite that uh as soon as the board approves and get
106it into paychecks now there's a longer term discussion you'll need you know you'll need to have support about the 15 an hour goal yeah correct um we will work with the teams to expedite it as quickly as possible as you know we are transitioning with the systems but we've already been in talks since far as how to work through that so mr mr president sorry thank you i i mine was very similar so i thank you um mrs jones um but uh let me ask a quick question regarding benefits for for school nutrition people what what are the situations there so our full-time employees have access to the benefits as any other full-time benefited employee also during the pandemic we enlisted telehealth through one-to-one and all of our employees have access to that and one
107of the primary reasons for that was specifically for our school nutrition employees who didn't have access to that one other thing that we've opened up is that new hires when they have their new hire physical they can go to the clinics for that service now because before that was an expense that they had to incur and it was very expensive for many of them so we are working through that so just uh as we one day review this one one dollar a year by the time we get to where we need to may already be out of uh the wage that we need so um to the comment that was made by by ms robinson um the we're we're part of a large group of people who make decisions and and so we do want
108to encourage people this isn't a fight for for growth of inflation this is the fact that we are going to lose valuable people because as as i said i'm repeating myself here for monday but you can recruit people on passion you can't retain them things cost money and and when uh when some of our local fast food restaurants quick service restaurants start offering better wages than anything we can even come and close to we will lose people who have an incredible heart for our students an incredible love for our students a passion for our students but just can't afford to say i'm staying here and that to me is is is heartbreaking and shame so and it's by the way not just nutrition nutrition is one of them but but there's a lot of uh
109positions that fall within that same range so so i i i'm saying this literally just for the public because i think we all know it but the reality is is we end up every year looking at a budget based on what we can afford and and we should but um but if if people want their voices heard they need to also make sure their voices are heard elsewhere i think we all want everybody in hamilton county to thrive uh including uh those employees thank you mrs thurman uh i would say are we on uh are we back at work we're still on nutrition we haven't gone through that that's correct that's why i took my thing down okay okay all right any other discussion there except that these people deserve a raise they deserve it
110as hard as they work this summer it's just anybody that helped get those food out this summer i've said it before i felt like lucille ball on the chocolate line i just wanted to stuff things in my pocket they were shoving food at me so long to put in those boxes but uh it was really crazy i one time had to stop and laugh but anyway uh i definitely agree with this okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mrs jones yeah mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs simon yes yes next item there would be the one time one percent bonus for uh sac program employees from the esser funds to have a motion to approve so second mr perez all right any discussion on that item okay mrs ford
111mrs hill yes mrs jones mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes yes and then item number six school age child care employees one percent pay increase to have a motion to approve so moved second okay mrs hill there's a question about how much uh work the school-aged child care folks had put in i believe that the timing for last year was 4 000 hours i think is that what was noted in the documents yeah that's that's probably right but it's probably well beyond that now i mean they've they've worked the entire summer and uh had programs the entire summer as well as obviously last school year and um and again done amazing work and even during the school day for the captions as we were in hybrid
112schedule and and you know separate part you all know this this year was a little abnormal because i don't think we had any inclement weather but um but normally you know they're even sometimes they're during incoming weather days and so they they are a major um saver of of or support for parents and very cost effective as well mr thurman uh yes i think uh one thing joe we also need to do at a work session is to explain how the child school-aged child care works i think by law we cannot take any money out of the general budget to sustain this program uh it has to be self-funded and so when we lost a lot of money this summer this is why i was so upset to see some of our major schools did
113not have child care in them this year well i know one of our largest elementary schools did not and that really cut into this program parents for different and sundry reasons uh chose uh other things this summer a lot of it was because there were no field trips no anything for the kids to do so hopefully hopefully this will catch back up and we will get back into giving the children more things to do at school-aged child care than just going and sitting in a room and getting on to them every time they share their devices with another student a lot of that thing played into the reason that it's really like we talked about the other day the budget for that has really been underwater i think and uh but i would love to
114see them get a pay increase as well but until we get the program beef back up we can't do that so uh that's one thing i think we need everybody needs to understand how much money that program used to bring in and what we can do to get it back up where it needs to be and i just think that's something that the board needs to understand thank you mrs hill but we are voting tonight to give them a pay raise yes yeah so yes yes after started saying that i wish we could give them a little more people were asking about it and i just want people to understand that's a self-funded program we can't take money out of the general fund to do that for them right anyone else on that item okay
115mrs ford mrs hill yes mrs jones yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs sermon yes yes all right so we'll drop down there under uh items under b the first item for consideration number one teachers eligible for reinstatement of tenure do we have a motion to approve so moved you upset okay all right any discussion on that okay mrs ford mrs hill yes mrs jones yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith mrs thurman uh yes yes item number two pharmacy benefits management services request uh a request for proposals do we have a motion to approve so moved second all right mr perez so here's uh just the comment that was made monday and i'm sure everybody tunes into all the meetings but for
116those who are unaware those teachers or staff this is an incredible benefit um and uh and it's not the most convenient because there's less sites and you know well you may have a pharmacy around the corner but often i won't say always zero uh dollars that in addition to that saves the county money um when you go pick up your medicines uh is is an amazing benefit so i just want to encourage one it's something that i don't know that happens anywhere else or if we're unique or or whatever but but so i repeat uh my story which was seeing my own daughter who had had wisdom teeth removed and i went to go pick up a bag of medicines that comes with the process and i i was shocked that you don't pay anything
117and then i was more shocked to learn that we saved money as a school system through this uh through this opportunity for our staff and our teachers so it's amazing thank you mr mcclendon yeah i just wanted to to kind of piggyback off of that that this is thank you for your team penny um this is something that i think is kind of small and the grand scheme of things for like this board but like mr perez says i mean this is a great savings for for our district and a benefit for our employees and um just wanted to say thank you for for doing this and looking at this process anyone else okay mrs ford mrs seal yes mrs jones yes mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs
118sermon yes yes all right so that brings us to our final uh amended section here item one uh would be acceptance of dr johnson's resignation do we have a motion to approve move to approve second all right mrs robinson um it's difficult um to say anything that i'd like to say without getting emotional and the good news is i know that the rest of you will operate the same way so dr johnson when i ran for the school board in 2016 my desire was to join this board and make a difference that would massively impact this community and all i wanted for my children and the children of district 4 and of course the rest of hamilton county was to see our school system become the place that every parent could be excited about sending
119their kids to i hoped for every parent to be excited about the zone school that their child was zoned for for every parent and every student to feel that they had options and that their kids were going to be successful from the education that they were receiving and in 2016 that was a really big vision because it didn't feel that way here in hamilton county at least from from from as long as i've been here for 14 years even before i had children i couldn't wrap my head around why the the narrative around hamilton county schools was so poor and i guess then it was hamilton county department of education but your leadership created made that vision come true and i know there are other board members here tonight that had that same vision and
120that same desire and so i want to tell you thank you for making the last four years of my life on this board not only worth every single second but making the job of being a school board member and a leader in this community frankly really damn easy no it wasn't easy every second but man you made life on this board so much easier than what it could have been and i thank you so much for every second and every breath that you've given this school system thank you to your wife for standing beside you because i know that was so hard and thank you to your children too because you have sacrificed so much time and energy and given to us into our community in a way that most people will never give back
121even if even if they were to run for office or run an organization they will never experience the level of leadership that you have and i'm so grateful to you i did want to also list out some of the ways that you've impacted district four um we can we talk all the time big picture about hamilton county as a whole but district 4 um is a really special district and it's not just because it's my district um i have really if you count every single one of them i think i have like 16 or 17 schools in my district so there's a lot of students in district four and in the past i would argue that district four has been overlooked and that the level of leadership that you've brought to this school district your
122leadership team the teachers the principals in our schools the staff have been exceptional and district 4 has benefited from it so i won't remember every single thing that you did because you've done great things and unfortunately only gave me 48 hours to come up with this list i do have 31 more days you're right but i'm going to go ahead and say this now because he's not but he won't be here because this is his last board meeting i'm just saying go ahead go ahead go ahead well if you're not going to say anything that's okay but i'm using this as my opportunity to publicly like give him accolades so first i want to thank you for bringing the howard high school football field to life the beautiful football field and the beautiful facilities that
123howard high school has is top notch and it's beautiful and district 4 fought for that for a very long time specifically the alumni of howard high school and i know that they thank you and i thank you that the future ready institutes at howard high school has put howard high school at the top of the list of a great place to be and a great school to attend howard connect academy by far the most innovative middle school you've ever seen in your entire life it's where i want my children to go to middle school i'm praying that my upcoming fourth grader will um will follow me and and take a tour with me and say yes mom i will i will go there so or i might just force them to who knows um the
124welcome academy um for our latino students not only at the howard high school but also throughout the district it's an it's out of the box innovative approach you've accelerated the literacy and the math scores of district 4 students district 4 has always been seen as one of the lowest performing areas of hamilton county and some of the lowest performing schools the students in my district have received top-notch education and parents the last four years have shared that the recognition of that and shared their just thrill of being able to send their children to their zone school with me and i am just i'm just so proud of that um you know even opening up more magnets these seats at csas through building csla csas is a district 4 school that is huge more options for
125more families the partnership with our state and the partnership district the relationship that you built the the negotiation skills that you use to build that contract and that relationship with our state partners will forever change this district and i'm so grateful for that the garber school the construction school that's coming along that's in my district and i get to sing the praises of that the future ready institutes not only throughout the entire county but in district four but probably most importantly your ability to recognize leaders and placing great awesome leaders in district 4 schools i have seen more families opt in to district 4 schools than i think the the the attendance level of students in district 4 schools is higher than it's ever been and probably the most important thing that i hear from
126teachers and leaders in district 4 is that you have changed the culture of hamilton county schools people want to work in hamilton county schools and i think that if there is nothing greater as a ceo to walk away with is to know that you created a culture that is going to live way beyond you you've created a legacy and you truly have played the infinite game and i thank you mr perez thank you um as i said this is the moment of of really uh giving thanks to you uh i am the newest school board member uh by next school board meeting no longer probably and for me uh it's an honor to watch your leadership uh and see your capacity i mentioned even tonight a good leader doesn't speak about themselves and what they've
127done they speak about their team and i've seen that from day one it's the team that has surrounded you it's it's the people that you uh have around you and i i have said that uh in the last also 48 hours or whatever it's been um we have an incredible team and and and uh i said to you you know we we hire the best we can and there's no doubt that by hiring the best we can people will reach out to them and give them opportunities and my hope is always to hire beyond this the best we can and to prepare them for that next opportunity and hope that that the door will be uh wider uh and and that is my hope and my prayer for you and i i sent this to
128you by email but i will say it here uh going back to one of my old lives the lord bless you and keep you and the lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious gracious to you and the lord lift up his count count countenance upon you thank you peace dr johnson you've impacted this community i'm sure you will continue to impact it i'm sure you will continue to serve in many ways i only bless you as you move on and thank you for the work that you've done and uh and i look forward to seeing what's next in your life and and what happens and i thank you also for giving us uh such an incredible vision and team to to continue to work with so thank you mrs jones um
129dr johnson i um i i sit here and i now realized that along with rhonda i'm probably one of the senior members of the board steve left us um and i have been a member of this board you're my third superintendent um i guess fourth if you count the one when i was in high school here um but i remember us beginning the process for selecting a superintendent and i remember how tedious the task was and i remember us scott sending us all of these emails with these resumes and portfolios and i'm going to say this because dr johnson knows this this is no secret i was vying for dr kelly because he was homegrown and i just felt like it was a representation of um being an accepted prophet in your hometown right you
130worked your way up nevertheless dr johnson was always my second choice because it's encouraging i told you this at starbucks in 2017 like this ain't nothing new but he was always my second choice because dr johnson was impressive on paper when i saw his resume i was like how old is this i mean like he's done a lot in a short i was i was just like wow not knowing that he was at that time you were 35 34. he was young like i didn't know that at the time i just saw his resume and was like whoa i'm 104 now right right it does until you hear it right um but nevertheless he was impressive on paper and then we did the first zoom or skype interview and he was impressive oh via skype
131cause i kept saying i don't know he giving dr kelly for me he's giving dr kelly a run for his money and i went home and actually told my husband that like huh whoever this this johnson guy is tough and then i remember us um having the face-to-face interviews and i remember him you sitting right here in front of us um and i remember coming in it was like this projector up and it was like this presentation was up and i was like who got this presence hey who is this and it was dr johnson and it had the we r hamilton at the bottom and he handed us these notebooks and we are hamilton in his first 100 day plan and i mean he was he walked in owning it and here we are
132four years later and we are hamilton and along with being we are hamilton we expect excellence and i always add in there because we are excellent and i remember sitting face-to-face with him one-on-one when he accepted the job and we met at starbucks by the mall and i told him he was my second choice that's always been our inside joke um but i also told you that as long as you do what is right for children that i would always support you and have your back that looking back four years from now i am grateful that you made me keep my promise because for four years you have done what was right for children in hamilton county not just a child or a certain population you did what was right for children and in doing
133right what was right for children everyone in hamilton county benefited i bet if we look across our economic mobility here in hamilton county we're probably in a better place because our district was improving and people will move to places when schools are good that's just what happens i mean look at the houses popping up around here so i'm saying all that to say that i am going to miss you being our fearless learner leader leader learner you know he always says that he's learning right along with us as he leads but i am excited for whatever journey that you're about to embark upon because it would be selfish of me in any of us and none of us are thinking this to not encourage you to continue to learn and lead in whatever capacity you
134have been called to do and i will close with this what he said to us in his skype interview was that education was his calling it was his ministry and he felt like in obtaining this job if given the opportunity that he could do ministry and i believe without a shadow of a doubt that that is what has happened here and if you are a spiritual being like myself i believe and you probably believe too that when god calls you into a ministry it's not always a lifetime commitment in certain areas and so i believe that his ministry for us in hamilton county schools is up and that you're being called to do something else and i am excited to see what that is about and i want to go back really quickly when dr
135johnson interviewed with us face to face we did not know this either and he talked about this in his letter his resignation letter but dr johnson came in here and owned hamilton county schools and all that he could do for us in the midst of a tremendous loss in his life but what we have saw from him that day until today and i'm sure we'll continue to see this is who mrs johnson was an amazing mama because you don't get stuck like this if you don't have something good pouring into it his dad is an amazing man he's he's such a sweet man but you have to know that mama's and i'm a mama now to a little boy so they they play a special place in your heart and so i thank you for
136coming to us and sacrificing your life as such a precious time to be as impactful as you have been we are all the better for it i thank you for your team that you have placed to work alongside you you all have done an amazing job and are doing an amazing job working beside dr johnson the morale is at an all-time high our students are excited about learning the community is trust majority of the community trust us and they're continuing to build that trust and that is because we have come together as hamilton county schools and are on a trajectory to do amazing things we were the fastest improving we will continue to be uh working to be the best if not the best in the state of tennessee and that's all because we have
137this foundation so i just want to say thank you dr johnson and i want to say to our staff and to our executive cabinet leadership the momentum is set we believe in you all keep it going if not he'll probably come back and get you because he'll be like y'all let all my four years of work go going vain um but i am very proud to sit on this board and it has made these last seven and a half years the last four have made the whole seven and a half worth it because i have seen a true change in our schools and on this board and in this district whether we always agree or not mrs thurman well dr johnson i know you're waiting on this i just want to say this then i
138that i've i appreciate the fact that you always answer my phone calls even though you have caller id i do appreciate that you always know who it is and you answer anyway uh i do want to say that i appreciate that and i also appreciate a lot of our conversations some of them have been heated at times some of them have been eye-opening both for you and me sometimes but i've always been frank with you always and i expected you to be that way with me and so i for that i i am thankful uh but the one of the things that uh oh and i also know that i'm always the last board member you call when you have something to say that you that you don't want anybody to know because you'll say
139now rhonda i'm telling you this and i'm going to put out a statement and don't you know i appreciate you keeping it quiet for a while and i know senator get off the phone with him then somebody's texting me rhonda it just came out on twitter that dr johnson blah blah blah and i'm like i just hang up the phone so i always know i'm your last call uh i don't and and uh i don't i guess you don't hear what i have to say or it doesn't really make a lot of difference whatever but that's okay uh but i do appreciate the fact when you came uh here that what you were just appalled the celtic didn't have a football field and we immediately got to work on it we're going to get to
140play our first football game there this year and so i'm inviting you even though you're not going to be the superintendent to please come to the opening game on the field and i do expect to have a flag pole up by then too by the way that's that was the thing that didn't get done so put that uh in your pipe right there and smoke it and you make sure it gets done uh but anyway but but like i say i i do appreciate uh just a lot of the things that you have done i appreciate like i say the fact that uh you never took anything personal i never took anything personal i do hate the fact i never took you to eat all these people taking you places to eat i never took
141anywhere to eat hey i hate it you got 30 days no well it probably won't happen but that's okay so go ahead and buy your own dinner it's probably not going to happen but i don't even take my own husband to dinner uh but anyway i do appreciate a lot of the things that have happened to school system i have seen some things that have gone very well and i do appreciate that but uh i hate that you're leaving i hate that you're leaving right here especially with the school's starting but that's the way it is and uh we will move on and we will carry on and build on from where we are but uh i do appreciate like i say the fact that we've always been able to i know when you go
142to superintendent meetings i say oh my god you're on that board with rhonda thurman they do i know they do don't they yeah and you you know what i say to them where i didn't have a great relationship y'all just don't understand that's right they just don't understand that's right but anyway i appreciate it and godspeed whatever you decide to do mr mcclendon um i kind of have a unique perception me and miss hill my first vote on this board was future ready 2023 um and i remember and i think jenny as well me and her kind of kicking our feet because we were trying to say what are we what are we doing here um we don't have time to sit here and digest we got elected we just got sworn in um and
143basically dr johnson said just just believe in it and we're gonna do it um and and we are on pace to do it and we have done extraordinary things um and it's uh because of your leadership um you know i one thing that i guess more or less i i struggle with this um on a personal level because of someone that is younger and starting career i've i've looked at you as um what type of leader do i want to be um and and you embody and embody that and um i i respect you a min immensely for what you've done for the school system being a public school product uh out of our school system i've often said and a lover of chattanooga that this city is one puzzle piece away from being great
144and it's our education system and that puzzle piece it might not be complete or it we might be trying to wiggle in you know to that missing spot but it's it's getting there um and that's because of you and the team that you've put around you um you know it just always the board gets updates constantly um and i thought it was fitting today i was on a zoom call with um the worldwide leader of education technology at apple and i said hamilton county and she's like your ed connect program and it just kind of put into focus of what we have accomplished we accomplished that in a pandemic and we've seen you know what we've done with being a top five or a level five school district um so i just i just want
145to say thank you um to your family to candy to brian jr your daughter uh for giving up their time with you to be a servant for this county i know how much time i give up to do this and i can't imagine how much time you've given up so i hope you'll enjoy time with your family enjoy the baseball field um and to me to whoever takes this job i'm going into this like i've had coach saban uh and whoever has to follow up has a high bar because we do expect excellence as a board and i think that needs to be our our focus moving forward because that's the standard you have set thank you mrs hill thank you chair i still don't really get the football references it is football right [Laughter]
146but i know i know this because i've lived it brian you can't see his face lean back joe sorry you are uniquely gifted you are uniquely gifted by our father god in a way that few in a generation are i believe that and i am thankful that we are part of your story and i'm thrilled for you for whatever's next and i hate it that you're going i've said it many times i've said it here tonight before you were here we didn't know what the heck excellence was our trophies were tarnished and dusty and i pray that this board will maintain healthy habits and will do our work with fidelity and that we will hold ourselves accountable and that we will pursue excellence even when it's hard because you've shown us that hard things are
147possible and this work that has been accomplished over the last four years did not come because we got lucky there was no magic there was process and intentionality and something i want to point out that i think is especially important that you have accomplished is you have equipped and supported our teachers to help them do their jobs in the midst of a changing industry our teachers made such progress in terms of the grading from the state to become majority highly effective teachers with the exact same group of staff for the most part and that that changes life for every kid in every classroom and i thank you for that i'm going to miss you i'm glad you're staying in chattanooga you better stay in china and i look forward to working with you in many
148other capacities in the future mr smith when you gonna get them buses moved be [Laughter] good i think there's already a plan and just should talk to you about it so yeah sure that's an easy answer i want to come back to answer that again sometimes it's bits we like to mask our feedings so i just did probably dr johnson i don't think you've ever been given the credit in this county that you deserve i just don't think you have you haven't and i know that uh uh four years ago man you inherited a mess and you did you just did and uh the progress that's been made and uh i i i think what's uh most is sounding to me and the older i get i get some more melancholy maybe that's the word
149i get and one of my peers up here accuse me call me an old man this week i won't meet you but she's right and uh but the reality is we're all old me all of us because this ain't home say no for none of us ain't home for you young tucker it's not we're just passing through we're passing through and uh we hadn't always agree dr johnson and we'll you know we talk and uh i i think what's been most impressive about you is that uh you know over the years man i've worked with so many kids and and then you get disappointments and they you know they just don't turn out the way maybe you had hoped and you pour in and and and and it just doesn't turn out the way you'd
150hoped but but what i've learned is man i i'm not responsible for the outcome i'm just not but i am responsible to show up and so i i guess uh if i could say anything about you and candy johnson as y'all just showed up you just showed up and manny anytime i had a need and whether it was one family or a few kids and i called you and y'all just showed up y'all just showed up and how many count even my peers here on this board don't know about all those things and uh yeah i guess when it's when it's all said and done that i i hope somebody will say that uh well joe he was just a good man he was just a good man and you've been a good man and
151uh this system is this school system is so much better off than we were uh four years ago and uh you uh you understand you understand that we don't keep what we have unless we give it away you understand that so we're going to miss you i hope that uh you and candy and your family will choose to stay in this community because this community needs you and what i asset you guys are and can continue to be and uh i just uh not just on a a professional level but on a personal level i just thank you for uh somehow god's seeing fit that uh you just pass through this old man's life god bless you brother well um he already knows what i think about him and uh you know i think back
152to uh 2016 and and uh you know it it is disheartening to uh for for anybody for all of us uh in whatever walk of life that we're in to be criticized uh for the job that we do or for what people perceive that we're about or not about and that's fine that's that's part of it that's part of it and you know i uh when i decided to get involved with this um i i really believed that um needed needed some folks to lean in to to adversity tough times and and what i've noticed uh as a as a coach of a long time is that you learn a lot about people when it's tough and really you learn more about them when it's tough because when it's tough uh they either lean in
153or they try to find somewhere to hide wherever that is however they can just just i just gotta get away from this because it's tough and uh when i when i met with um brian um we we talked a lot about that about um the challenges that existed here and um like many of you this is my hometown so um but i had disengaged for a while because i didn't believe anymore and i was ready to believe and i was ready to partner and i was ready to work and and and uh what i always enjoyed about um dr johnson was that uh i never saw him um flinch in the face of tough and uh that says so much about somebody one of one of my favorite um uh stories in scripture and you
154guys know i can't believe you're going that's so well known but most people don't know this you go back and look it up when david got ready to fight goliath i'm telling you most people don't recognize this goliath is ready for battle david had already selected his stones and his weapon and scripture says that after goliath had tried to intimidate david with words and presenting himself as a much larger opponent that he stepped towards david does anybody know what david did when goliath stepped towards him david ran to meet him that's guys that's a small percentage of people there was no hesitation there was no flinch there was no hey it might be time to figure out a better vantage point he just took off dead sprint and you guys are gonna say well you're
155romanticizing that i don't know you guys tell me of a time where you've seen the man that's led uh for the past four years flinch i hadn't seen it um the one thing he said to me um the night of his interview that karitza spoke of earlier we finished an absolutely impressive uh in-person interview and he hung around for a little bit you know to chit chat with folks candy was working the room she was working her out no it's good it's good it's good i'm just giving her a hard time but but you know brian started to mingle and talk and uh he came up to me and uh all he said was i want to serve that's what he said and uh that's all i needed was all i needed um because uh
156leadership contrary to what folks might believe it's not the title on the door it's not the the diploma or the plaque on the wall it's just not leadership those credentials are written on the hearts of who you lead what i love love about a true servant leader is when you walk in the room you don't have to guess who the leader is the leader gets there before everybody else the leader leaves long after everybody's gone the leader works exponentially harder than anybody else so much so that people won't want that job and whatever the leader says you can take it to the bank that's that's a true leader and and he has exemplified all of that can't tell you how many times i've gotten a text message at 12 30 at night in an email
157at four in the morning uh because this job is it's a meat grinder if you're gonna do it well and you're gonna pursue excellence um it it's it's it's not for everybody um and it's a very unique position and uh he's he's done it well um candy thank you um i know how frustrated uh my wife gets when i come home after a long board meeting and i'm still on the phone i've gotta do this or do that and in in in my life uh engaged with the school systems not even a drop in the bucket compared to what um his day and his weeks and his months and years have been um i will end with leaders got a lead don't they and they got lead because it's tough i'd love to take off
158the robe of responsibility right now i'd love to but we don't get to guys the leader's got lead so i'm not done we'll we'll we'll we'll get together again and uh uh we do have 31 days and we we i i know i am i'm going to be a part of whoever wants to but we're going to celebrate your time here we will uh not let it go um unrecognized um we're gonna we're gonna celebrate so um thank you for your time thank you for your energy your effort thank you for your uh passion for seeing families and children gain opportunities um that they might not have otherwise had and i'm thankful that the lord has allowed us to be a part of the time that you've been here and the blessing that's come and
159uh and i look forward to as has been said earlier the foundation that you've laid it's more than a foundation it's much more there um and i'm looking forward to how your influence impacts a decade from now so thank you all right mrs ford mrs jones yes unfortunately yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes mrs thurman yes chairman i know this is a formality so now [Laughter] consistency yeah well tonight it'll be my my son has gotten into watching some of these school board meetings you'll get a kick out of this uh he said he he pretended like you know a couple months ago we were having a school board meeting and uh when i got home and he said i'm rhonda thurman no don't do things just so everybody smiles and
160thinks you're cute that's right what's right that's it that's exactly right so so i just want to say thank you all for allowing me to serve it has absolutely been uh the um the honor of my life professionally to serve as a superintendent the honor of my life personally is to be a husband and a father and my faith is extremely important to me i thank the teachers and the staff i think the teachers and the staff in this district for the work that they do every single day it does not go unnoticed this is a team that is an exceptional team that i've been fortunate enough to serve alongside i think the leaders of this district at the school level i think senior leaders of this district that have put up with so much
161to support me i thank you for putting up with me all of you have gotten used to putting up with me and uh and and i thank you for dealing with my my quirks um i don't have a lot of comments out there by saying this i i in my resonation letter um i shared about my mother uh you all know very well my my mother i was a mama's boy uh but i had an exceptional father as well have an exceptional father as well who was in the navy and uh he taught me how to take showers uh so my son will say you already have the shower and i'm like yeah i learned great i learned how to take showers by somebody that was in the navy so you learn how to you
162know you you you get in and you get out um but my father always taught me um that if you have an opportunity to stay over somebody's house if somebody's kind enough to allow you to stay uh in their home uh and you sleep in their bed when you get up the next morning you don't just remake the bed uh but you find something else to do within the room you want them to know that you were there and that you made a difference during the time that you were there so i i thank the community for allowing me to reside in the superintendency my hope is that i have not just made the bed but that i've made it a little bit better such that as you look towards the days ahead you'll see
163the difference has been made i said that was my last thing but i will end with this i see somebody in the very back tammy baxter who started with me uh way back when and uh and got me out to the saudi daisy band reveal and it means a ton that you're here tonight back in the back and you don't even have a kid anymore in our system but you've had kids that that go through that have gone through the system so i appreciate you being here but um thank you all for being in the fight with me i could share so many stories i remember the the first two battles i won't call them fights that we went after um uh was uh signal mountain secession i don't know if you all remember that
164no no uh and uh and and and and the state department uh and uh and some of our highest performing schools we were battling the key and some of our lowest performing schools were battling to keep and so we wanted to keep everybody and uh and that's really the the truth of hamilton county schools we want to keep and serve everybody so thank you for allowing me to serve and i look forward to seeing you out in the community uh if any of you know how to fish or golf let me know because i'm not good at either one of those but it's been it's been my it's been my pleasure and if you don't mind i'll i'll i'll step out now because uh you all need to have me out of the room as
165you have conversation about the selection of your your incoming uh interim and next superintendent that search thank you [Applause] give me a hug no no she has a heart i also have stunts that's most important uh yeah all right i'm gonna wait just a minute for uh mr smith that's alright on facebook you all right so as we get to this item here appointment of interim director i just want to remind you all um of a couple things two or three things one um and we placed this item here as a placeholder because we can choose to do various things here tonight so had it there as an action item so that it could be an action item if needed but also as again a placeholder for our discussion so again i want to say
166a couple things to that number one and i think you all all received an email from mr bennett regarding board policy 5.801 um and in that board policy it states that the the interim shall not be a candidate for the position of superintendent um that again that individual would be a placeholder um now the the board can make an exception to that um which did happen in uh 2015 um but again according to board policy that's not how we would operate i also want to say you know i've been a big proponent of as i've sat here for five years gosh you hear a lot of misinformation you get to hear sometimes when delegations speak you get to hear it sometimes when you tune into news you get to hear it sometimes out on the
167street and and i get it when you're not intimately involved sometimes uh with everyday workings you don't always always know it's just part that's just part of it but one thing i will say is that there there is no succession plan there's no plan there's an organizational flow chart to this organization and there is process and policy that is developed and used by this board so i want to make sure that that's clear to everybody um and i would like to take this time uh to make a recommendation to you guys uh my recommendation to the board as a whole as to how we go about uh the selection of an interim would be to determine which internal personnel which individuals in our system have interest in serving in the interim role by having any
168and all of those individuals submit their interest via email to ms sherry ford by 8 am this coming monday miss ford would then take that list of individuals who have communicated to ms ford that they understand that by serving in that role they cannot be considered as a candidate but they wish to serve in the interim role she would then distribute that to the board as a whole for our consideration we would then convene in a special call meeting on tuesday to vote in an interim and then proceed and go about the work of finding our next leader it is my opinion that um we need to get about the work of finding our next leader so i pose that as a recommendation uh if someone wants to make a motion to that end that's
169fine if not i'm here to hear all other recommendations and discussions uh mr mcclendon i'll make a motion to that suggestion second all right we have a motion and a second i'd like to make a comment all right hang on one second so i believe i don't know it was either miss jones or mr perez which one go ahead mrs jones no i mean i don't know um so if i'm understanding your recommendation then whoever is interested would the the the interest is that a letter is that like what is the format for that they they can simply submit they can simply submit which is an email it doesn't have to be a formal letter okay i have it i mean they're already internal candidates um it'd be clearly recognizable who they are by their
170email and by their signature that hey i have interest in serving in the interim role okay i just was asking because you know just to make sure that people understand if that's going to be the case how they would do that second to that is um any any individual that would do that um understanding that of course it's not for the permanent superintendency um if whatever position they are in what happens there do they take a leave of if they're elected will they take a leave of absence from that position does their position become like what happens there so like say if say if it was uh i'm just going to say it was a principal or whomever like if they want to they wanted to do it and then that was who selected who
171becomes principal of mosley high school well it would depend heavily on who we're talking about so if uh for example if it were a principal hypothetically the principal comes the director of schools then the director of school the new director of schools is all the authority of the director he or she could then appoint a new principal to that position now what becomes difficult is when that interim is up there's no position for that principle to go back to back to okay that does happen uh on the other hand if you're looking at someone who is maybe in executive leadership they just take on additional roles and maybe they could roll back into their current position okay or it depends on who you're talking about quite frankly okay and i think i was thinking more
172so outside of executive cabinet or in central office or something of it i was thinking more if there was somebody outside of you know they had a little more yeah so hypothetically if you had a a principal who who wanted an interest and if this board hypothetically had an interest so that you could preserve the current leadership team intact then then you could choose to do that but there has to be a principle at school right and so your new director or superintendent uh would feel that would backfill that position but because you don't know how long the interim is going to last there's there's no guarantee that your interim can roll back into that school-based position okay mr perez all right so i i have questions right and and maybe again to the public
173i i i think like all of us if or i assume like all of us found out about this change on tuesday morning right so there's no assumption that anything's been in the works on our behalf uh for a long time uh and today's thursday so so uh to me it's it's very quick uh regarding the role of the interim i heard you say and i just want to be clear on this the interim functions fully as the director of schools for as long as that role may take that's great correct okay um the interim uh are there any limits to the decisions that the interim can make from an operational or or no fully functional as us the only difference between an interim superintendent or director and a permanent one is a permanent one
174operates under a contract for up to four years and an interim is month to month that's literally the only distinction um the timeline uh can i ask uh those who were present uh how long the search took uh the previous time i mean i was present on the outside yeah it was it was too long but we also we we began that search you guys helped me don't let me don't let me be wrong on this but we began that search in the fall late fall and then we had the woodmore bus accident and i'm i'm not certain if that put us 30 i know it was at least a month behind but i'm not sure if it was it might have been 60 days behind so we did not complete that search until well
175obviously into the summer months so it was an extraordinary long search it should not have typically it would not have been because that's one of the questions i have is are we assuming and and the thing is so one of the comments i've seen a lot is those are hard shoes to fill and one of the comments i made is we're retiring those shoes in my opinion you know they they were great shoes but i want to make sure that whoever either on an interim basis uh we we establish understands that they will have our our our full board support during that period of time but it's hard to know what that period of time is right like i don't necessarily want a one month interim coming and changing a whole bunch of things and
176then you know now we're we're going back and and so the continuation is important of of the work that we're doing um but i also want to respect the role that the interim as a director at that time and and we'll you know we'll we'll see that mr president mr truman if i could backfill the timeline a little bit you those of you who are here will recall that some of the times spent identifying a search firm right so so so while we started working with coleman lou and ernest after woodmore before woodmore we put out a very extensive rfp to to try to find the right firm that was that was positioned to find the right candidate because i think we all recognized we were looking for a unicorn and so this board interviewed
177several different search firms some had a state-only presence some had a a national presence uh ended up selecting coleman blue out of out of charlotte so i can't remember how long that process took but i feel like that itself took about two or three months that's right and uh mr smith and i were just commenting on that and so ideally we would have shaved you know a few months off of that process if there had not been delayed so potentially the the new uh superintendent that we that we select through whatever process we go through which i have a million questions about that but they're not for tonight um the new superintendent could start sometime in the fall if if the process was shortened and and ready to go and and all that or however
178long it may take for them if they have to resign for their current precision or anything like that but we could potentially start conceivably yes um another question uh what evaluation process is there uh for an interim um and and you know we've selected somebody uh how do we how do we determine it might be six months it might be a year how do we determine once they're selected how do you determine if you're going to renew the contract not renew uh but how do we how do we evaluate their progress how do we um you know just because they're not looking at this long-term evaluation we're just determining for the short term yeah i i don't i'll let mr bennett speak to that too and i know mrs thurman and mrs jones have been
179here um longer and and seen a little bit more but i mean the reality is uh in my mind that you know your your your interim again is on a month-to-month contract and at the at the end of the deal uh our goal is to uh effectively and efficiently find someone you know and so i don't know that you get into um so i know that you get into an evaluation process i mean this is like i said i just yeah we didn't um it was it was month to month how long was dr kelly the interim was it a full year i think it was a full year it was it was a it was about nine do you remember mr bennett it was i think it was like 13 months there was there
180was two months where you had uh dr mcdade and dr kelly that's true um that's true as a stop gap and then this board actually went through an extensive interview process to select the internet yes because there was community push to hire someone from outside the system right here for the interim okay so he would i think about a year yeah yeah all right well last last statement i'll make and and and then i'll i'll think about your uh your emotion um but i think uh beyond the excellence that we achieved and perhaps because of the excellence everybody knows the cliche culture eats strategy for breakfast right we had a great strategy but i think what has been built from my perception is an incredible culture and uh and culture in my line of business
181studies and whatever is usually why mergers and acquisitions don't work it's usually like in the midst all those clashing cultures uh can can create a tremendous tension and in the continuation some of the things i want to make sure both interim and and and long term that i believe dr johnson did phenomenally well was uh transparency communication you said it i mean 12 30 at night four o'clock in the morning i'm finding out what's happening the reason i answered the phone right away when it rang on tuesday morning was because if dr johnson calls it he's letting me know something bad usually he doesn't call me right away to say hey let me tell you what's going on it's great um and and so that level of communication both personally to the board but also
182to the uh community to me is deeply important both in the interim especially in the interim and beyond because i think we built a great culture and then the passion and inspiration the reason i like your proposal is i feel i'm not sure that like monday we're gonna get some some uh emails tuesday we're deciding i'm glad it's short i want it to be short whatever we do but i feel um we just found out tuesday and choosing an interim for me tonight is stressful the one thing i do want to point out is obviously the media is around everybody has opinions we're getting phone calls and emails and texts and that's fine we serve we serve the public but but i hope we can also be protective of those who are being considered in
183this process i think and i'll say this personally i'm all for transparency i get that i'm a public servant and everything that we discuss is public and should be public but we are talking about people's lives we're talking about people's futures we're talking about people's careers uh and um and even we're talking about people's longings and desires and and all that and i wish we could protect them from that unfortunately being a very public opportunity they put themselves out there expose themselves to the scrutiny and and attack of of the public and we as a board like i always feel the same hey i signed up for this ask me if i do it again but we'll figure that out down the road i shouldn't have said that publicly um we'll figure that down down
184the road our staff team members they they signed up to teach and educate and and uh and we have a tendency to attack those who are who are there to serve so i hope whatever we do we as a board are protected i think we are protective um but we we remind the community to to remember that these are all good people excellent people who deserve their opportunity to share their their desires that's it mrs thurman i think that we need to wait before we do anything district 9 right now is not represented at all i think the district nine district nine is one of the largest districts in the system and right now there's no representation for them and i think they need to have a voice i know at times we have put
185off voting for things uh you know until elections are over until the new board is seated because they're the ones who are going to have to work with the new superintendent and right now we don't have a district 9 representative and i think that the commission is supposed to vote on august the 4th and we still have a superintendent until august the 17th uh and very ironically dr johnson's initial contract would have been up july the 17th which is saturday and uh when we extended the second when we gave him the second contract the date on it was february the 20th 2020 and at that time we gave him a 42 500 raise and the last year and a half that's been sixty three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars additional we've paid him uh
186and he got a ten thousand dollar bonus last year in february so that's seventy three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars so we still have a superintendent and he's been paid to do this job so i don't know why we're in the big rush this is very fresh to us uh i think it's very wise that we wait until uh like i said if we had the initial contract we wouldn't be having this conversation we would have already he could have already told us he was leaving and it would have been done but as it is like i say i don't know why we're in a hurry uh we still have time to do this and um all we need is 15 days to uh let the public know that we're going to vote on the
187superintendent or what we're going to do or what we need to do so doing nothing is one of our options and so i'm going to make the motion that we do nothing and wait until we have a new board member who can vote i just don't think it's fair not to give a entire district an opportunity to have a voice in who the superintendent or the interim is going to be that substitute motion there mr bennett so let me let me get some clarification because there's a motion it's a distorted process to name an interim it's been seconded i guess motion to do nothing eric to table i guess i don't know you could either vote no or if your motion here is for the entire board to put this off until some later date
188that's more of a motion to take okay okay i make a motion that we put this off to a later date we have a representative for district 9. how do we have a second on that yeah so so that's a a motion to table is is that the motion scott that's what i understood this german a motion to put this this decision uh put this decision off until we have a representative for district 9. all right so what are they telling us i mean what's the commission what's their you mentioned today supposed to be august the 4th i think is the date they're supposed to vote from what i understand yeah i that scares me who knows what they'll do well we can have a call meeting and do it after then i mean all
189right we have a second to that or not all right so motion fails all right um mrs hill i think you were next um this is an interesting idea um so to make sure i understand you're saying anyone who currently works for hamilton county schools would be welcome to submit their name for consideration sure okay so with that and with almost you know we've got 6 000 adults in our system i think give or take i i think that opens us up to the possibility that we will have applicants we could have applicants that we don't even know like that i as jenny hill district six don't even know who they are um and um so i think i would need some consistent information from people and and perhaps that's kind of like the way
190that brian brought it you know um if we've got somebody that wants to do this and they want to they want to bring it then then they do that but i i need i'm going to need some information about that person to be able to make a decision and i feel like within our executive staff we have um some pretty terrific candidates and if they put their name in and say i i'm raising my my hand then i'll know their qualifications already but something to consider as we fine-tune whatever we ask them to provide by monday by monday the other thing marco made a really important and interesting point about the fact that it's undeniable that there are political opinions and ideas flying through the air at any given moment and that whoever puts their
191name in on this likely will come under scrutiny attack and this team has worked too hard for them to be sacrificed to the wolves um in that way so it's so crazy that rhonda was saying like let's extend it because at this when marco was talking i thought oh my gosh we need to do this sooner than that um like if if we're if we really feel like it is um in the best interest of the district to open it up to 6 000 give or take people to say hey i've i've got what it takes i would suggest that we actually meet on monday instead of on tuesday so that the wolves have no time to sharpen their knives but instead that we all know that if sherry's got to have them buy um
1928 a.m that we get them by 8 30 because if you want to run this district as the interim you're you're probably going to get it in on time or early yeah if not you're not the one for us so if we met then at five o'clock yeah knowing that it was our number one priority for monday to read through those ideas i would be more comfortable uh with this plan otherwise i i'm kind of concerned about the ambiguity of it and the um yeah the the our team our team that we have in place okay mrs robinson yeah um i i share uh similar concerns as jenny my primary concern is opening the position up to all six thousand employees and i mean this was zero disrespect but i feel like a much narrower
193field specifically from our leadership team is the only list of candidates i'm interested in looking at or considering uh for really all the reasons that jenny has shared and i also agree with the notion of not motion but notion uh of doing this meeting on monday versus tuesday to close the gap of time in which this could become a circus and also the fact that we could not be making a more important decision and important decisions with valid information are easy to make quite quickly so mr chairman mrs jones yes sir if i may interject um perhaps maybe uh mr mcclendon could amend his motion to say that an interim has to meet all the qualifications of the director of schools which by the way is spelled out in your board policy 5.802 and just
194so we're clear it's a professional educator's license a master's degree in education with a preference for a doctorate three years of successful experience in school administration and other qualifications as the board deems desirable um in this case it would be you understand you're not going to be a candidate for the superintendency yeah so i i would i would suggest that maybe you would mend your emotions and say you've got to meet the qualifications of 5 802. thank you for saying that i was going to wait till everybody had a chance to speak but point well taken mrs hill um i was i was as you were talking writing down um you know does uh uh does that narrow down just to administrative personnel but as mr bennett just pointed out i think the criteria is
195even a little tighter than that so we can um as i said earlier uh we can refer to the the policy so um yeah i'd be happy to do that um uh what if we because i do not know the background of everybody on the administrator or the leadership team but what if we don't have a candidate from the leadership team that meets all those qualifications that's willing to do the job well that's what we were saying you could narrow it not just to administrative but you could i mean uh leadership but you could go administrative and that's not going to get you into the realm of thousands of employees okay but it would be broader than leadership team okay is that i think we're we've already narrowed ourselves down by policy so anyone else
196anyone that applies that doesn't mean the standard is automatically disqualified right well if i understand what you just said mr mcclendon if they don't meet the criteria under um then they're not even eligible for the board's consideration i think i think maybe uh ms ford could share the names with ms murray's team and they could screen to be sure that they meet the criteria and that way it it keeps the board from being inundated with folks who maybe are facially even qualified to let's say hypothetically and this isn't going to happen let's say hypothetically you get 20 applicants and i mean i've frequently proven wrong when i make pronouncements like this but it's not going to happen here i can get 20. and let's say you don't know 15 of them you don't have to
197consider them they're going to be your one employee right and so you have to have the confidence of of that person him or her so if there's only one person whose name you recognize and you have confidence in him or her i would say you should probably hire him or her mrs jones well scott actually i had a question about referring back to what the requirements were so that answered that part um well not yet because there hasn't been an agreement to what the motion no no no i was going to ask you to to refresh us on what those were and then i was going to say could we not look at that so that that part of what i wanted is you got that um i i just want us to make sure
198that we are being mindful of in searching for this one interim employee that the process in which we're doing that is also we're taking into consideration the other 6 000 employees that we have um from tuesday afternoon until i was pulling in the parking lot trying to find me somewhere to park because the news took all the parking spaces um i was on the phone i've been on the phone with administrators teachers parents paraprofessionals everybody at the laundromat right but i've been on the phone with a lot i've received a lot of calls and messages and the one thing that people were asking of me and especially the administrators in district five which i'm pretty sure is administrators across the district as a whole system as a whole i meant to say is that um
199they have a lot of trust and faith in their executive leadership and they are like i've said this earlier but the morale is at a hall all-time high and the biggest thing that they they were asking of me and the calls they were making to me and i'm pretty sure they made them to other people they were saying the same thing they want consistency they want to know that they're secure in the work that they've devoted to for the past four and a half years they want to know that whoever is going to be leading them understands what that looks like supports the vision of what um our strategic plan or um has set forth and that this leadership has started um and that they will be able to continue on the momentum that they
200are on and so i just want us to whatever we do i don't want it to become a netflix next premiere you know everybody trying to tune in and watch because it's not a show these are people's lives these are children's lives and education no trajectories we're talking about here and these are people's lives jobs and the legacy that this board has worked really hard to to to to support and to implement here and our county has worked really hard to get our schools moving where they need to go and so whatever that looks like we have let's be very mindful of of making the best decision that we can and i unders i do understand what rhonda was saying about the the district 9 board member i i thought about that i did think
201about that um but i also know that i think while it is important to make sure all districts are represented for the interim i think it's more important that every district is represented when we're choosing the permanent superintendent and so i'm i'm kind of leaning on that i was i was leaning on that which is why i couldn't really support it because i feel like who's going to sit here and begin the next journey with us is more important than who's going to help keep us middle ground moving while we're in that transition i think we have to remember that we're in transition and so we're just needing someone and i don't mean like just needing but we need someone that understands what that looks like and it's not going to come in and as
202my grandmama say shake the ship and in the whole cookie crumble that's my grandma's just saying little stuff like that but we don't want that because now that i'm 40 i understand what that means and i would hate for this this cookie that we've baked that's very palatable to crumple and so i just want i'm asking my peers just let's just be mindful of that um so that it doesn't become a circus um because we've lived through several circuses together right and i mean yeah i kind of like just yeah so let's just be mindful of that because we do have a lot of children that are relying on us and we've come so far that we do not want to mess that up for the sake of being scrutinized and for a show and
203i'm not saying that people are i'm just saying you know a lot of outside forces can get involved in things and try to shake up a ship i like our ship just playing i don't want it to be like the titanic yeah i would agree wholeheartedly with you mr jones mrs thurman uh yeah we don't we don't have to hire an interim uh that's nowhere written in law there's no policy that says we have to do that it doesn't say we have to hire a search firm it doesn't say we have to do any of that uh famous words of gary waters with five votes we can make the front door the back door we can do anything we want to do so i just want everybody to understand that that there is no written
204that you have to do anything uh we can accept like i say the the policy for the qualification for the superintendent that's a different animal but as far as everything else there's no i mean there's no process that you have to appoint this and you have to do that and you have a protocol and all there's there's nothing like that this board has to do we do not have to hire a search firm uh like i say we still have a superintendent he still has to august the 17th and people say well it's not a big deal for district nine well you know what there's a lot of people in district or not think it's a big deal and i've heard from some of them it's a big deal may not be how would you
205like it if somebody said you know tiffany you can't vote because it's not a big deal your district doesn't need to be represented not a big deal i wouldn't do that to people district one say i'm sorry i'm not going to show up to vote because it's not a big deal it's a big deal and i don't i don't like not having people represented that's a large part of hamilton county and so uh they they need they need a voice and uh i just can't believe the people on this board think it's just not important i'm sorry but uh like i say they they deserve to be heard just like everyone else just like the people in my district those people in your district uh i say there's no hurry to do this i don't
206understand why the big hurry we just heard about this tuesday this is thursday and anytime you uh haste make ways there's another one your grandmother probably said and i just don't i just don't like rushing into things like this because when this board has to rush into things we mess it up every time and the contrast extension for one and uh like i said somebody's going to learn to listen to grandma thurman down here one of these days uh i tell you why you don't need to do these things you do them anyway and then it ends up costing the taxpayers money what's cost the taxpayers well no i'm talking about his contract extension and giving him a new four-year contract but i mean that's that's neither here or there i'm just saying he couldn't
207miss anybody i didn't kiss anybody well we gave him an increase in pay he got a three percent increase well it doesn't make any difference i don't care it didn't have to be anything that was my whole that's my whole point joe it doesn't really make any difference it don't matter well like i said what would you pay for his original contract would have been up july the 17th and if we were still on that we wouldn't be having this discussion we would have already been looking for a superintendent if he wanted to leave we couldn't do that and we've already we've already gone over that i said but we still have a superintendent and he's been paid through through august the 17th and so i just don't know why we can't wait and give
208representation to district nine maybe you'll hear from people from district nine i hope they blow your phone up yeah mr chairman uh yes sir please please pardon the interruption i um i wanna be careful i don't accidentally mislead the board your your policy says professional educators license master's degree in education three years of successful experience in school administration i need to mention that state law only requires a bachelor's degree and this board has for many many many years said that that under certain circumstances you might consider someone with another background and so i think under the circumstances since the original emotion is still on the floor i think it might be more appropriate to narrow the qualifications to say that that applicants must have experience as an administrator in hamilton county schools that still narrows
209it a good bit but but it opens up the fact that you have lots of administrators who are not simply equipped who are not educators there we go all right so go ahead mrs robinson i'm just going to simply state that i still feel like the most appropriate appropriate person is going to come from the leadership team and so and i agree with you on the on the narrowing um but do feel strongly that like i don't want a huge influx of resumes like that are going to be from people that have not been a part of the leadership team so i'm just putting that out there as my preference that's all it does not have to be voted on that way but just putting that out there mr mcclendon um i i wasn't going
210to speak on this but i will about district 9's representation i think it is important i don't think i've heard anyone up here say it's not important but i was elected by the people of district 8 to make sure this school system runs smoothly and to go into a school system or a school year the start of a school year i think august 17th is the fifth day of school and make our staff our teachers our students our parents kind of wait in the balance to what we're going to do just leaves me a little uneasy on that for the interim i think we'll have more discussion on um the more important question who's going to lead this district long term and we will have representation for that conversation uh started august 4th august 5th
211um so with that i guess i need to amend my motion you want to help me go through this because we've changed about three times now so it needs to be that all applicants need to submit a letter of intent or interest to ms ford limiting it to people that have served in leadership or administrative roles in hamilton county schools and it needs to be too much forward by 8 am on monday i don't know the date but by monday this coming monday by july 19th yeah and we will have a special called meeting on monday at 5 30. let me check my phone is it for sure let them record it and then we'll have it read back to us so that we're clear scott can you read that back so so the first
212part of your original motion was to accept the applicants yes to email me okay so all applicants will submit a letter of intent by 8 am monday morning july 19th to me by email and that's all i have and you have to have the ministry of experience administrative experiences so um the monday thought was that if they submit on monday we get them on like they become public on monday morning at 8 30 the same time that we get them the public gets them and and and we are limiting circus we are we are caging wolves we're trying to so i mean i would ask that if you if you submit that you keep it to yourself and that cheri you re keep those completely confidential until 8 30 when you send them to the
213board okay but wait a minute just because they've got to go to this very first to make sure they make the qualifications i think they can self-identify if they meet the qualifications so so can i just one caveat because i think it could help is are we going to do an internal publishing of this because there's people that aren't that could be interested in this position that are not probably watching this or they probably are but making sure other people are aware that it's open information yes this this feels like theater to me um it doesn't have to be you can't just send it out tonight that's what i'm saying just making sure no he said he didn't it didn't have to be and i was just thinking about that and thinking about thinking about
214things mr smith um yeah i i i tend to agree with jeannie it seems like there's a lot of drama around trying to name or not name a a uh an interim i guess one thing i would be concerned about scott correct me because i could really be wrong but i i think that that policy states as the board desires because it talks about things like professional license and and and all that thing uh all those things that are required to be in that role and then it goes on to say or as the board desires pretend the qualifications for yes it's those three things and such other qualifications as the board deems desirable so it's it's it's which is which is why i had made this suggestion that we would dial back that restriction
215of it and and apply it to administrators so again help me forgive me yes but so it might mean even people on our leadership team that might would be interested that don't have that professional license would they automatically be eliminated no sir no no not the way that but not the way that mr mr mcclendon has has amended his motion okay and by the way uh mr chairman we don't we don't have who the second is on that i don't know if it was mr smith or mr perez but does the second accept that that revision i i'm going second and i would but but i i do want to add the caveat because i think rhonda makes a good argument about uh uh district nine i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna second that motion uh
216but uh that that's a good argument about district nine but i just think man we we need we need to move uh we need to move quickly carefully and continue to build on the momentum that we have and uh my goodness i just remember how long it took last time and we eventually no question landed on the right guy uh that just a lot of concerns so has the message so he's all right are we ready for a vote is this the table tucker's vote this is this is mr mcclendon's promotion uh that the board will receive applicants for the position of interim director of schools who will not be a candidate for the permanent position applicants must have administrative experience in hamilton county schools must get their their applicant application into this board by
217email no later than 8 am monday morning ms murray's team will verify administrative experience and promptly notify the board of the appropriate candidates there will be a special called meeting monday afternoon at uh monday afternoon at 5 30 uh to select an interim all right so i think i think we're ready for the vote mrs ford mrs hill yes mrs jones abstain mr mcclendon yes mr perez yes mrs robinson yes mr smith yes this is sermon no chairman wingate yes all right motion carries um that gets us to the end of our agenda you'll see there events announcements just really more about the beginning of the school year so august the 5th would be an administrative in-service august the 6th the same which is also a registration date that friday for students of the following
218monday another in-service tuesday in service the wednesday is teacher professional development and then that thursday august the 12th will be the first full day of school and uh i would say that monday be the next time we'll see each other august 16th but it'll be this coming monday do we have any other events monday it's monday yes it's monday do we have any other events or announcements we need to make i just have a question go ahead post all this which is will we wait till the next board meeting or will we have a work session or special session or on tuesday will we establish a session to discuss some of the process we yeah we can discuss some of that process on monday evening if the board so wishes what's that monday yeah we
219can discuss that um after the interim vote monday if the board so wishes and then if that doesn't happen yes mr perez we would need to uh begin to schedule uh a meeting earlier than our next monthly meeting at 5 30 monday correct that's what that's what mr mcclendon added to us so when the work session after the special called to discuss the the process for superintendent search go ahead mrs jones scott yes can you um on monday come with some examples of what we did the last time or even possibly send that out before to refresh people's memories and educate those who may not have been here so that we don't have to sit a long time on monday to talk about that yes thanks so documents for review yeah cause i got something
220else to do on monday tuck on my calendar all right any other events announcements all right meeting adjourned