MSCS Board Committee Meeting and Work Session 10-21-25

001All right. So, we are going to start the um board committee meetings today, Tuesday, October 21st. We're starting at 3:00. The first um committee that we have is policy, governance, and legislation committee. Do I have to do roll call? >> I'm ready to go, y'all. So, let's do I'm I'm infor I need to do roll call. Roll call, please. Oh, Abraua Garcia, District 8. >> Natalie McKenna, District 2. >> Rodrik Richmond, interim superintendent. >> Joyce Doris Coleman, District 9. Stephanie Love, District 3 >> staff as well. >> Terren Brynham, Regional Superintendent, Northwest. >> Kimberly Chandler, Regional Superintendent, Northeast. >> Alicia Ker, Deputy Chief of Academics. Shante Broadway, chief of student support services. >> G Hannah, chief of staff. >> Jermaine Johnson, chief communications. Check business operations. >> Crystal Oliver, chief human resources. >> Uh, Bill

002White, research. >> Michael Bass, director of discipline. >> Stacy Davis, director of enrollment and attendance. Monica Jordan, director in the office of the chief of staff. Sling Gordon, executive director of early childhood. >> Rachel Addison, executive director of performance and leadership development. >> Cedric Smith, director of school operations. Kevin Malone, operations director. >> Michelle Stewart, facilities, >> you here? >> Justin Bailey, general counsel. All right, we have everybody in the room. All right, so let's start this again. Let's start with the first committee, which is policy, governance, and um legislation. That is Chair Love and Cochair McKenna. Call to order is 1.01. Number two is policy, legislative affairs, policy updates, and then closing discussion. All right. I don't think we have do we have any opening discussion? Does anyone have anything around that they want

003to that's not on the the um agenda? >> No. Okay. Then could um Dr. Richman, could we ask or is that Mr. Bailey? Could we ask for the policy updates? >> Yes. I believe Miss Stewart or someone from the polic Stewart Miss Alicia is gonna walk us through some uh proposed policy revisions. Good afternoon everyone. Today we have for review of the board nine policies. All right, we'll start with our first policy data dashboard. Uh we are recommending temporary suspension of this policy. Uh we're recommending suspension until January the 27th to ensure that the development of the superintendent's evaluation targets as well as the district key performance indicators are aligned with the academic the current academic plan and focus. Uh also there are some areas that support this policy and feed into it that also

004uh warrant alignment. uh the superintendent's efforts around aligning contracts um to uh review the return on investments as well as the board's theory of action uh the business systems review policies and it's phase one of the facilities plan. Um Mr. Bill White's area is building out the data dashboard and his team is working on that. So, if there's any um uh specifics, uh that area can speak to those. The next policy is on red, page six, if people want to follow along. Um policy 20001, annual operating budget. We're also recommending the suspension of the annual operating budget policy until January 27th uh of next year. This is to ensure that the board has ample opportunity to establish and approve the district's priorities. Uh these priorities are included in the policy and they inform uh the

005budget development process. The next policy, it's on red page 16. This is a statutory revision policy 30007, student wellness. It increases the amount of physical activity required for elementary students from 130 minutes per school week to 40 minutes per school day. Uh this again is a statutory requirement that the district um is a mandate that the district must implement. Um the requirement says that the the the physical activity must be unstructured play outside. It cannot include physical education class or anytime where there's an electronic uh device use permitted. Our next policy is on red page 28. This is the policy on conflict of interest. The scope of this policy has been revised to um remove vendors and suppliers and limit the scope to all Memphis Shelby County Schools employees. Um in the past the policy

006included only key employees and senior management for certain um disclosure requirements. Now those requirements will be implemented for all employees. Now, senior level employees will file a disclosure statement annually and other employees um will complete the disclosure if a potential conflict arises and whenever possible before they begin to engage in that activity. So, in the past there had been uh senior employees and employees would have to fulfill that um disclosure annually. The next policy is on policy third, excuse me, on red page 32. And I would like to take policy 5014, grading system for grades preK K through 5, excuse me, preK through 5 and policy 5015, grading system for grades 612 together. They include that they include the same change in two different policies because it addresses students in grades K8. First, it aligns

007with the state law that requires local boards of education to develop and implement a policy to include on or with the KH students report card of the results or scores of their most recently administered universal reading screener or dyslexia screener. Um the revisions also include language allowing the superintendent to delegate responsibilities in the policy and of course that is that again is for both policies 5014 as well as 5015. The next policy is on page is on red page 50. This is policy 6051 intercolastic athletics. This is another um statutory requirement, a change in the law. It includes language allowing the superintendent to dele to um delegate responsibility in the policy. And the change in law, it aligns to the new state law that requires districts to allow virtual school students the opportunity to participate

008in intercolastic athletics. Those are the policy changes um that are included in your packet. Uh, I'd like before I go to our last policy change, I would like to note the uh point of information um which is on red page 58. This is student conduct 622. It aligns with the state uh a change in state law um that says districts that if districts report a credible threat to the state or local law enforcement, then the district must notify all of the parents in the particular school um that involves the threat. Revisions to the policy also include language around rights of due process for students when they are experiencing um exclusionary disciplinary practices. as well as language that talks about the authority of the principal to suspend from 1 to 10 days. Uh and there are

009two um um two stipulations that go along with that. That a behavior imple improvement plan for suspensions of more than 5 days uh is prepared as well as the suspension a sus the submission of a suspension notification report to the regional superintendent for a single suspension between five and 10 days. Also, um you u board members, there should be in the back of your packets another policy that we're adding on for this afternoon. This is policy 1015, board district general counsel. There are two revisions um proposed revisions to this policy. Um the first one, if you're looking at your document, it's going to be on the second page. It removes the Department of Labor and Employee Rights as well as the Department of N MWBE from under the general counsel. And the um the other

010revision clarifies language around settlement agreements. It clarifies that the general counsel can approve and sign settlement settlements requiring payments up to $100,000, including those settlements for a specific performance, as well as clarifies that any settlements requiring payment over the $100,000 must be approved and signed by the executive committee. So th those are the policies and the um points of information that we have for your review today. Are there any questions? >> Before we start with questions, I just like to recognize that two additional board members, board member Tana Murphy and board member Sable Otay arrived. So now any questions? Anyone? >> Thank you. Hold on for a second. Keith Williams, you >> read something in your regulations and rules that requiring the district to offer more time for students to do what in the classroom?

011It it was the opposite of teaching and learning. I know that. >> Yes, sir. >> Providing some structured play time or what is it? >> Yes, sir. the the new law um requires that districts now um that students now have 40 minutes per day of physical activity. In the past, it was 130 minutes per week. Um but there's a law there's a change in the law that now requires districts to have 40 minutes per day for physical activity for elementary students. >> Is that K6? K through six. I think it's K5, but >> K5. >> Yes, sir. >> So during that time, what will they do? Play? >> It's it's unstructured physical activity. Um, and >> so who's going to who's is it is that would that become the teacher's responsibility to find 60 minutes

012of the day to do that? Who will who who will do it? >> That's a great question as far as how implementation for that will occur and I'll have to divert to administration around the particulars of that. So if it takes away from the instructional time, if it takes away from instructional time and we do not show improvement and growth in that say heaven forbid we go down in it, why are you saying and what what measure are they using to determine that students need more physical activity in school during instructional time? >> Yes, sir. Those are questions that probably came up during the state's review of that particular change in law. Um, but once they went through all of those questions, they did determine that we have to do the 40 hours, which is

013a mandate for us. >> So, whose job will it be to do that? Would that be the teacher's responsibility as well? >> Um, I know it is the district's responsibility as far as how that's implemented and whether or not it flows down to how it's communicated to the individual teacher would be part of the administration's um implementation of it. >> Will it be structured time or will it be whatever they want to do? If I may interject for a moment, um, board member Williams, can we direct those to to to um, Dr. Richmond? She's okay. Okay. >> Okay. Who answer them? >> You can ask 130 a week now. >> No, cuz I'm not. >> Uh, board member Williams, thank you for for your question. Uh, as uh, Miss Green shared, uh, it doesn't have

014to be structured, but it is statute. So classroom teachers are pretty much charged with uh ensuring that there's uh unstructured uh 40 minutes for students to participate uh in physical activity. >> Will it have to be in one 40 minute block or can they be 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there? >> Uh I don't know if they're monitoring uh the implementation uh to that extent. Uh but we're just following it and ensuring that it's 40 minutes per day. So I guess my final question is this. Then what instruction will be lost? Because if you're going to consume 40 minutes of the day required to do activities, what will you lose instruction? What what subjects are you going to cut back on and not teach or not give the same dosage because you'll have to

015make some adjustments for that? >> Yes, sir. That's that's an excellent question. Again, what we're uh what we try to encourage all schools and classrooms to do is to uh ensure maximum time on task. But I will tell you, we must start looking at uh how to better uh extend our day because with all of the regulatory uh requirements that we're now uh being held to upholding, uh there's only so much you can do uh during a 7-hour day. That would be a very expensive feat if you extended today because you'd have to pay for another hour of employment. >> Yes, sir. But that's why we're also doing a lot of before and after school tutoring and support for our students even outside of the regular day because we know uh it's hard to compact

016uh all of the things that we're being required to do within the regular 7-hour day. state have a measure as they do for academics with the testing state testing to determine whether or not a student is doing well or learning or not will they have a measure for that >> at this at this time I'm not aware of any assessment uh that has been aligned with this policy >> but you do know that it will it will make we would have to hire more people to do it >> at this point we haven't had to hire additional people to do it we're just asking and teachers to do their best to implement it. >> So, the teacher is expected to give 40 minutes of their instructional time to play time and then go back and

017teach. >> Well, if you recall, uh, board member Williams, um, when you and I were probably in school, uh, you always looked forward to going outside for recess. Uh I can remember during the time when I was in school, we go outside for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour uh each day. Uh so I don't see this as being something that's uh out of the ordinary from how school used to be uh designed in the past. Uh what has perhaps made this uh something that look that people may look upon as being additional is that now we have most schools have a 90-minute block. We're being asked to have uh intervention for students. We we're being asked to pull students out for uh required tutoring uh and things like that. So, uh, I think

018physical education of our students, sometimes it's been through the physical education teacher, but I can recall being a student, particularly in elementary school, where I look forward to going outside every day uh for for PE and recreation and unstructured uh physical activity and recreation. And so, I think uh this is what it is. Now, I don't know what the impetus behind this was or is, uh, but some people may have gotten complaints that kids aren't getting outside enough and being physically active. And we know being physically active, uh, your your physical health as well as your mental health uh, are interconnected. And we know during co uh many of our students who may have had underlying conditions and who may not have been as physically active as they should have been those underlying conditions were

019exacerbated because students weren't being physically active. So I think it's important uh when we think of how uh they're interconnected for students. I want a more physically active student. When we look at our health indexes, we see a number of our students uh they have high BMIs. They're not being as active as they should. Uh so again, I know that the devil is in the details. Uh but it's a statute. We're required to implement it as best we can. Uh and just as much as I see uh a counterveailing narrative around it being negative, I can also see it being a positive for our students when it comes to uh physical health and physical activity. >> Will that be measured in any way through testing? Will they how will they measure the success or failure

020of that? Because I'm sure that our academics will go down >> because it's taken away from instruction. you're going to have this more time for constructive play or whatever you're going to call it. How will they measure the success of that? I I think it may be worth something uh maybe worth us looking into if there's a way for us to put a methodology in place for us to look at uh do our BMIs go down and is there uh some type of correlation between students uh BMIs and their health index is getting better and do we see a correlation of that through students doing better on their assessments because they're more active and they're more physically healthy which translates into them being more uh mentally healthy and resilient uh and engaged in physical activity.

021All right. Thank you. Let me get um Doc Thank you, Dr. Richmond. Thank you for those questions for member Williams. I have board member Huitt Garcia next. >> Thank you. Uh my question is about the policy we added 1015 under con the board district general counsel under contractual obligation authority we struck the general counsel shall be authorized to enter into professional service contracts up to $74,999 um and settle disputes in amount not to exceed 100,000. But in the the uh language that's added in red, we don't mention professional service contract. So, will that ability still remain? And where does that live? I don't I don't know if I need to be recognized because it's a committee meeting, but thank you. Uh you see my light is on. Uh I was actually So, Miss Green mentioned

022that there are two proposed changes. There actually three. uh one is uh administrative alignment in those two offices that uh Miss Green talked about. The second um is the uh settlement authority for the office of general counsel. The third actually is engagement of outside counsel specifically. Um and what uh the third proposed change would be is that the office of general counsel does have the authority to enter into professional services or engaging outside counsel um for an undefined amount. And the reason behind that, the problem that um as as a lawyer, the general counsel runs into an engage in outside counsel because we never know what that end cost will end up looking like. If it's a matter that if a litigation matter drags on for four or five, six years as we've seen in

023some cases, you're kind of in a hard place if the if if the bills start to get close to $70,000 and the question is what do you do um with your outside counsel? Um so that's what that that proposed change is um uh intended to remedy. >> So there's no limit on professional service contracts >> for legal services. But what I now that there are multiple things under your office. Do you have the ability to sign a professional service agreement not related to legal matters? that that that's that's a fair call out and we we could certainly add language that would limit it and and clarify that anything outside of legal services cap 74 or 75,000. >> Yeah, I think that's I mean even thinking about our executive services offices, right? Like the things that

024we we may need for that are actually board support, right? I think you ultimately will engage in those contracts. The second question is are the um settlements either above or below that threshold public. Are we are let me be more specific. Are we communicating how much we spend on legal fees to the public? >> So you'll see under the policy that those the the total spend has to be uh reported on a semiannual basis um to the board. Now some of those settlements um depending on what the the content of them we can't share publicly particularly if it comes to like settlements in IDEIDA cases that are student involved um where we have to provide some kind of compensatory service um to a student um certainly we we'd be bound by some level of confidentiality

025in those but others um certainly could be um subject to to public disclosure >> and I think that makes sense to me what I and even are we going is the public going to know the aggregate amount that we spent on legal fees without if we put all of our cases together how much do we pay out on legal can we put that as part of the budget process I understand the sensitivity around settlements uh and don't want to expose um students in particular but I do think it as we review what's going on want to make sure that we're strengthening systems that maybe result in lawsuits or gaps in services for students or whatever of those things are, but I know it's not uncommon to have a lot of issues come up. So, it's

026how do we evaluate what we're settling without knowing what we're we're paying out or what our risk is? Can can that the total aggregate amount be shared yearly? Can we codified that or in the budget process or does that need to live in policy? We that's something that we can we can discuss adding to the to the to the language of this policy. >> All right. Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> I think did you have anything else to say, general counsel? Cuz you did put your button on. Was that what what you were saying? >> Yes, ma'am. I just wanted to clarify there were actually three changes um or proposed changes to the policy and not just two. >> Okay. Um, next I think J. >> Um, I have one question about the free

027time. Um, this question is directed to the interim superintendent. Do all schools have enough room to um for the students to play? I know um that the elementary schools most of them have gyms. A few of them uh they do not have a gym. >> Yeah. Thank you. Uh board member love. I would need uh our facilities department to uh do an inventory. I just also want to add to that question uh right before you answer that that structured unstructured play is outdoor unstructured play. >> What if it's raining or cold >> unless there is a prohibition due to weather conditions? >> That's what I'm asking about. >> Yeah. So again, uh we would need to do an inventory in order for me to truthfully answer that question for you. I can't truthfully answer. >>

028Yeah. Um, thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Next question is related to employee conflict of interest. Um, how did this come about? We're doing a policy revision or laws changed or tell me more. This um this policy change is not a um um requirement from the state law. So, it's not a statutory uh policy change. Again, that policy is on page 28. It's just clarifying some of the um scope of the policy as far as who it who it actually applies to rather than including um persons such as vendors and suppliers. It would u be more specifically addressing um employees of the district to better align with the district. um policies around personnel. >> Yeah. The next question is the final question. Um if the board approves this, when it's approval time, can the district

029send that out and um to all employees and make them acknowledge it? um let's just say um the district sends out the student panbooks and you sign it to make um the parents aware of it and the system aware of it that you read it. Can the district do that? I'd like to defer to the superintendent uh to answer the specific question around um sending out the policy for um attestation for employees. >> Yes. Uh board member Love, again, thank you for for that question. Uh I think we have a number of policies uh that I'd like to see people sign off on because uh over the past decade or so I'm not sure if people are really uh going in and reading and evaluating and assessing and understanding policy and implementing it with the

030level of fidelity uh that we need to. So, uh, I welcome, uh, doing something around some of these policies that we know are important as we try to restore, uh, transparency and trust in our school district. So, thank you for that question. >> Um, that's all. >> Board member Murphy. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, first question. Um, when giving the 40 minutes to I'm I'm referring back to policy number 30007. When giving recess to the children, you said 40 minutes a day, correct? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Would that be broken up in two halves? 20 in the morning, 20 in the afternoon. >> The law does not provide stipulations on how it's implemented. That would be left up to the perview of the district as to how that actually is implemented per day. The

031next question um whi when it is increment weather will they still have that research uh recess inside the building or find something for them to do during that time? >> Um I want to defer back to the superintendent around his um answer for facilities question. >> Yes. Um again thank you. in anytime um legislators are writing statute or policy is written extremely broad. Uh with them not being practitioners, the devil is always in the details of the implementation. We're trying to not micromanage schools. We're trying to as much as teachers reach out and say allow us to teach, allow us to manage our own classrooms. We're not micromanaging how this is being implemented. We're just asking that students receive 40 minutes of unstructured physical education time. If a teacher wants to split it up into

03220 minutes, it's fine. If they want to do four 10 minutes periods is fine. If you want to do a 40minut block of implementation is fine. We're just trying to follow the statute that has been set by the law where we have no option but to implement it. Uh if it's raining, uh we would ask uh that schools find a way to implement it. But if they can't go outside, they have no other choice than to not do it for that day and maybe catch up on it another day. Uh but I don't think I don't want to sit on the desk and say that someone is doing something that they're not. life happens uh where we have no control over if it's raining or storming. Uh and so I don't want to sit here

033uh and patronize you all around the question and say that they're doing it when they're not doing it if it's inclement weather. >> Thank you, Dr. Richmond. I just wanted to go and piggyback off of um Commissioner Williams uh cuz he was specifying some things about uh the kids having more time to play, but I wanted to let him know and I looked it up too. I wanted you to know that exercise help children in school improving cognitive functions like focus, memory and it also make them improve in their uh studies. So when they're studying so we give them half and half on recess when they come back they're ready to learn they're more focused their memory is still there. So, it does help them cognitively >> and and it also you all you've heard

034me say a number of times, I want school to be fun and exciting for students. When students are just coming to school all day and all they're doing is prepping for a test, all they're doing is is sitting uh and receiving uh instruction and there's no downtime for students to enjoy themselves and to just be children. uh school uh becomes a place that they really don't want to come to and I don't want our schools to be like that for our students. I want it to be a place that they enjoy coming uh and while they're there uh they're learning. >> Thank you so much. And it also improves academic performance. Just wanted to add that. >> Thank you. Um I have a a couple of questions as we Does anyone have any more questions

035as we wrap this policy committee up? Okay. I I firmly believe that ex extra activities and those things help and stretch the imagination in the mind. But they're getting a whole lot of that at home and they're getting a whole lot of that everywhere but at school. School is not a place to come and play. It is a place to come and learn and grow and to to increase your cognitive skills, not your athleticisms and all of those things. It does contribute to that. But my point is I would never take away from instruction to play ball because you have to teach. You're still going to be measured by what you teach. They're not going to measure them by how well they can jump and how high they can run. They're not that's not measurable

036and they're not going to even consider that. And I am told from reading in the Nashville Daily that there are certain schools in East Tennessee who will not enforce this. They are fighting that. are challenging it as a matter of fact because they their kids get structured play at structured time at the house. So if we are to promote the culture and to to increase the learning and and all the cognitive ski levels, we don't have time to play. >> Thank you, board member Williams. A couple of comments on a couple of these that um I have a um question about the request for the suspensions. Are you all asking to suspend the entire policies or the or certain sections of them particularly around the annual operating budget? So are we more suspending dates or

037suspending the actual whole policy? >> So at this time we're requesting suspension of the entire policies until January the 27th of next year. Um this is to give um for the first policy to give staff ample opportunity and for this annual operating bud annual operating budget in particular to give board uh the board itself time to um approve those um district priorities that need to be in place for the budget process. >> Okay. Thank you for that clarification. The other observation that I have, I appreciate everyone's comments about um policy 30007. Um I think uh board member Williams brought up a good a good point. What this appears to be is and and Dr. Richmond, this appears to be that non-educators made decisions about what we need to to do um as it as it

038um pertains to um teaching and learning. And I do agree recess is is something that is needed. Um, but I think Dr. Richmond, if we set up some of those metrics, as you you proposed after some of the questions that Dr. that um, board member Williams said, if we set those up for ourselves to determine whether those are actually having the impact that we we need as part of our data dashboard or something to that effect, I would highly recommend we do that to see how effective it is. Because the other piece we talked about is the fiscal impact, the budgetary impact that we may need to do. It may work and we may need to do some more things around auditoriums, gyms, that sort of thing in terms of of um our facilities. So,

039I just want us to I want us to think about that broadly and think about how we measure these um because I feel like too this is going to result in a potentially unfunded mandate. >> And so, that's the other piece that we want to be able to to to talk about. So I have um share love >> Stephanie love. Yeah. Um this question is related to the student conduct. Um uh I forgot. Um um there are infractions that causes a student to be suspended. ISS what is the district going to do to remedy those experience? Um I know a student, several students that get suspended every year for the same thing. And um suspensions are not always a cure. What is the district going to do? Behavior specialists, um counselors, and parents and community,

040all of them working together to remedy those behaviors that the student exhibited time after time. >> Uh thank you for that question, board member love. This question is for uh Dr. Richmond. >> Thank you. I was going to defer. >> Thank Thank you, board member Love. Again, it's it's a it's a great question. The team and I spent several hours last week on Monday and Tuesday during our comet report outs. And on those days, uh specifically Mr. Bates, uh Miss Davis, uh as well as Dr. Broadway. Uh we spent time talking about our multi-tered system of support. Uh the ecosystem I don't know if the board is aware, but we've put in place this year uh we've asked that no principal suspend a student over 4 days without uh having permission from uh his or

041her supervisor. uh because we want to ensure that students are not receiving uh exclusionary uh disciplinary measures in excess. Uh we also spent a lot of time talking about any student who has cumulative been suspended over 5 days should have a behavior intervention plan in place. We also met yesterday. I met with Mr. debates and the team to start talking about how we incentivize schools around uh attendance, uh days of peace, uh behavioral infractions going down. Uh and and speaking with again all of the individuals who make up the ecosystem and all of them should have a scorecard related to the schools that they support. So if I'm a attendance liaison, my responsibility is to drive down chronic absenteeism to increase attendance. If I'm a behavior specialist, my role is to drive down exclusionary practices,

042suspensions of students being put out of school. All every person that's part of that ecosystem should have their own individual scorecard related to the schools that they are supporting so that we can help better address the needs of our students and not just use exclusionary practices which are out of school suspensions in school suspensions and expulsions. >> Thank you. Um, could you be so kind as um um there are several schools that I go into and on the bulletin board right when you walk in there is fight free days. >> Yes. >> And that um sends a negative connotation to people that are visiting the schools. >> Yes, ma'am. We we're looking at rebranding that as days of peace. Yeah. Uh but again, that's that's one of the incentives that we're putting in place because

043we do want to drive down uh students being involved in physical altercations. We want to talk to our students about uh alternative means to conflict. Uh that's one of the reasons we're rolling out seven mindsets. That's one of the reasons we're spending a lot of time on SEAL. And one of the components is uh responsible decision making along with uh relationship skills and self-management. Uh those things are things that we're trying to uh reinforce with students. But again, some schools are probably using fight free as opposed to using days of peace. But we want to track that because we want to um as in Maxwell who I'm asking all of our schools to read as part of our books book study. Every day we should be able to keep the score around if we're being

044successful. Every day we should be talking about at the end of the day what was our attendance rate. Every day at the end of the school day we should be talking about did we have any referrals to the office. Every day we should be talking about if it was a day of peace and no conflict. Every day we should be talking about how students did academically. Those are ways of us keeping score and keeping the main thing the main thing when it comes to creating the type of climate and culture within our schools that we want to be proud of. >> All right. Um board member Huitt Garcia and then board member Murphy and then we're going to adjourn the policy committee meeting. Yeah, I think all the questions have been good um related to

045the student wellness policy, but I want to um I heard what the superintendent said about not micromanaging implementation. I agree this is unfunded but is it accurate to say we do not have any consequences for not delivering this built in with the policy that this is a recommendation but there is no there isn't a punishment to teachers because we believe the autonomy to implement that in a way that they see fit there's no consequence to employees for not executing this based on the policy is that accurate >> yes ma'am that's that's accurate Okay, I think that's what what we're all say saying, but I do think uh to board member Love's question, can schools accommodate? I currently have schools that do PE in the in the hallway because every classroom is overflowing. Um they've been

046on a list for over a decade to get a gymnasium. So, if this is something the state wants, I think we do need to put together a comprehensive list of schools that need gymnasiums. Uh because I think that's if you want us to enforce a law, you have to add the space. That's a this is this is a great request of that. Um so our legislative agenda, >> excuse me, a legislative agenda should include implementation support. Thank you, >> superintendent, if I may. there may not be a consequence to the individual, but if you can recall, each year we as a school district, we're responsible for submitting to the state um something that's called an LEA compliance report, and it's generally due um at the end of November. In that LEA compliance report, they're looking

047for um our compliance with different all of the different laws that apply to us, all of the different state rules. So, if we know that we're not in compliance with um this particular provision, that could be something that we could be cited for and would have to have an action plan moving forward um when we submit our information to the state. >> Give us more money. That's the action plan. Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh this question is for Dr. Richmond. Uh what would a district do when our children are suspended and they are out of class for the four days? Are they or will they be allowed to make up their work, their school work and test? >> Yes, that's in policy that students have an opportunity to make up any

048missed work uh due to uh suspension. >> One more question then I'm done. Um I think you I heard you say they the amount of time they supposed to be suspended is 4 days. Correct? Some of the suspensions were supposed to be 4 days because I know that some ch some students are being suspended for 30 days, 40 days. So, how are we going to change that? >> I said any suspension over 4 days has to be reviewed by the principal's supervisor. That doesn't preclude students from being suspended over 4 days. What we're trying to monitor is that any student who is suspended over 4 days, it aligns with uh the code of conduct. If if you create a zero tolerance offense, you're going to receive an expulsion. But we're just speaking of just regular

049misbehaviors. We're trying to ensure that misbehaviors, the consequence align with uh the student breaking the rule. it aligns with the rule. >> Okay. I just wanted to make sure cuz I know that I've I've seen or saw um some children get expens have a 40-day suspension for just a fight which could have been just a 3-day suspension, but it was a 40-day suspension, 39 days, 38. So, we need to really push that. >> Well, it it depends on the severity of the fight. Uh again, these things are being reviewed by the principal supervisor as well as our hearing officials uh and Mr. Bates who is the director uh of of behavior and discipline. >> Thank you. All right. Thank you. Um are there any other questions? Just want to remind all board members that if

050you um have any more questions, please submit them to um the policy office. Is that right, GC Bailey? To the policy office directly. >> That's correct. >> Okay. And remember, are you all asking to suspend any um suspend rules to for us to approve this in one reading for any of these? >> No, ma'am. It can go through the regular cycle unless uh the general counsel has an >> All right. So, we basically have two months you all to take a look at this and deep dive. So, um no further business for the policy. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I received a clarification. The two suspensions, we do want them to move forward expeditiously. >> Okay. So you want us you want us to suspend the rules to approve this in the first reading? >> Yes,

051ma'am. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. So board members, that would be data dashboard and annual operating budget which will be on the um agenda for Tuesday. And you're asking us to suspend the rules to adopt it on Tuesday the 27th. All righty. All right. No further questions. This committee meeting is adjourned. Next committee is the community outreach and engagement committee meeting. That is board members Love and Murphy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um any open discussions concerning the community? >> Chair Love, any any open discussions? >> No. >> Thank you. So, we'll move on to the items. Item 2.01 is attendance insurance report. Good afternoon, uh, Superintendent Richmond, board chair McKenna, board members. Today I am Stacy Davis. My senior leader is Dr. Shante Broadway. Will be presenting on attendance and truency. Next slide. The

052purpose of the district's attendance framework is to implement a comprehensive three- tier model that promotes positive attendance habits, identifies and addresses emerging attendance concerns, and delivers targeted interventions for students experiencing chronic absenteeism or significant behavior challenges. Next slide, please. The next slide represents the district scorecard for attendance and truency. As Dr. Richmond pointed out last week, we shared this information with senior leaders and others across the district doing the comstat report. As you can see, we have um our key me metrics which by the end of the 202526 school year, we're going to increase attendance our intended attendance rate by 2%. by the end of and we're on track to do that. Uh our baseline data, our end of year data as it pertains uh to the goal and then where we currently are by

053the end of 2526 school year. Our goal is to reduce our chronic absenteeism by 5%. And again, it represents where we landed last year, what the goal is for this year, and where we currently stand. 8.2 2.3. By the end of the 2526 school year, we're going to increase parent participation by 5% of identified families who attend the attendance meetings. Uh last year, uh and I'll get more into that later in the the presentation, but our baseline data was 88.8. Our goal is 94%. Uh we're at 0% now because our first attendance meeting is upcoming for the year. And lastly, by the end of the 2526 school year, our goal is to reduce the overall truency rate by 2%. As you can see, what our baseline data is, what our goal is, and where we

054currently stand. So, we're on track um as to what the data is um being presented today. And I do have to give a shout out to Mr. Bill White, Dr. Eric Cosman and their entire team for being able to provide us with good data. Next slide, please. In August, we launched the show up for greatness attendance initiative. This initiative has changed in the way that it is a three- tier model, but in previous years, the focus was on those students who were coming to school every day in which we want to continue to focus on those students, but there was very little support for the tier 2 and especially the tier three. So, with the greatness with the show up for greatness attendance initiative, it is a district-wide initiative. It is designed to build a

055cultural culture of consistent attendance through the tiered levels of intervention and positive recognition for our students. So as you can see with tier one, tier 2 and tier three, those levels are referred to as gold, silver, and bronze. You see the banners that are on each side of the board platform. uh the district we are strengthening our collaboration among our attendance and truency liaison as well as our family liaison the RTIB specialists to create that ecosystem that Dr. Richmond referred to earlier by using datadriven information to accelerate progress in reducing chronic absenteeism and truency. Next slide please. This is a snapshot. Superintendent Richmond, board members, of what our attendance rate again, the baseline information, the actual information as it uh is identified in PowerBI, our chronic absenteeism rate, uh baseline information, where we are currently,

056and again our truency. And underneath there is uh again just the district scorecard on where we should be by the end of this school year. Let me annotate right here that this particular slide uh like much of these data were pulled on October 3rd. Uh so we do want you all to know that this is lag data. Whenever you're looking at uh enrollment and attendance data uh is fluid. It changes all the time. But as of October 3rd, these are the data for October 3rd closing out the first quarter. So I want to just give annotate that fact around the data. Thank you. >> Good evening uh board member, Superintendent Richmond. I also just wanted to add as we're looking at these data that you'll see that high risk of chronic absenteeism. That's what we

057call our internal estimates related to chronic absenteeism. And what that means is that 31.5 for example and of course the 24.2. But the 31.5 is our estimate for 2425. The final state data for 2425. um remain embargoed and so we're not really able to share those in a public forum yet. They will eventually be finalized and allowed for us to share. So I just didn't want any confusion with that aspect either. So thank you. >> Thank you Mr. White. Next slide please. Here, Superintendent Richmond board members, this is this slide represents our absentee rate by grade level. As you can see, I have the grades 9 through 12 highlighted because those are the grades with the highest rate uh of absentee and followed by kindergarten uh with a 6.4%. So, the absentee rate sharply increases

058starting at 9th grade. Grade 10 has the highest rate at 9.2 and all of the high school grades are higher than elementary and middle school. And again, this data reflects the first and second uh reporting periods. Next slide, please. This data is and and let me go back to the previous slide. This information captures um all schools including charter. Next slide. This information captures uh the absentee rate by regions. And as you can see, CSI uh has the highest number of when it comes to the absentee rate by grade level uh followed by Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and then rounding out with Southwest. Next slide, please. Um we don't have it. The board members don't have it. >> We don't have >> by region. >> I didn't My apologies. This particular slide represents uh those students

059within our special population, the homeless, our homeless students. And again, I want to highlight or call out those grades 9 through 12. They represent uh the highest levels of uh the lowest level, excuse me, here on this particular slide with the abs with the attendance rate as well as our English learners in grades 9 through 12. They represent uh having the lowest attendance rate in those in those areas. Next slide, please. our high risk of chronic absenteeism rate. As you can see again, grades 9 through 12 represent those grade levels with the highest risk of chronic absenteeism. That is then followed by our kindergarten students with 25.7% high risk of chronic absenteeism. Next slide. Our truency rate again highlighting grades 9 through 12. Those grade levels have the highest uh truency rate among all other

060grade levels followed by 8th grade with 12.7 and then our kindergarten students coming in at 12.1 for our truency rate. Next slide please. This slide represents the greatness at your door strategy. I want to highlight that when we started this particular strategy this summer, we identified those students who were chronically absent at the end of last school year who had not registered for this school year. What we did, we asked the go at the school, they're 12 months now, the attendance liaison before they left for the summer, they started making phone calls. So we identified all of the students who were chronically absent, start making those phone calls. As a result of those phone calls, 88 18 1,889 students were identified. By the end of the first reporting period, 1,042 students had registered. So I

061do want to highlight that we started with uh zip codes 38127. You can see the number there with their average attendance rate last year and what they currently are as of uh October 3rd. Then we move to the 3A 109 zip code 489 students identified. the average attendance rate 84.5 and then 38114 is who we identified uh after pulling the withdrawal list. So, I don't want to say that all of our efforts, these students enrolled or registered as a result of us knocking on every door, but we left these door hangers on each door that we um identified and parents would then start to call us and and ask the questions about somebody was here, somebody left a door hanger on my door. So, this is this is really good information. Number one is data

062that we can track and we have real time information on what number of students that we identified, how many again registered, and then the number that we're looking at now uh that we're still continuing to work on. What is not here is the last uh zip code that we targeted right before fall break, which was 38111. And we're still waiting on to pull that information and we'll have it to you in the next report. >> Excuse Excuse me, Miss Davis. It may be good for context before you get to it to tell them where 38114, 38109, and 38127 where those zip codes. Just a few schools. Thank you. 38114 was the Melrose and Sharp District. 38109 we targeted uh American Way. We did Riverview in the 3A 3109 is is kind of widespread, but the

063Riverview uh district, the uh White Haven district included 3A 109. 3A127 was the Tres High School area. Uh, Charisma High School and I want to say Grand View was the other one. >> And and 38114 is also like the the Ball Road uh Hamilton would be Hamilton South Memphis Ball Road. Ball Road Ball Road area. And then again the 38111 is we targeted Kingsbury High School, Burke Clair, that surrounding neighborhood. Next slide please. This slide represents those agencies, those external agencies that we are collaborating with. This is not an exhaustive list, but these are those agencies that have either reached out to us or we've reached out to for support that centers around attendance and truency. Uh Memphis Grizzlies, I want to call them out. They were out this morning recognizing our teachers who are

064doing some phenomenal work in terms of making sure that cuz it starts with our teachers taking accurate attendance every day. So, they visited four schools this morning, Downtown Elementary Medical District, Kirby High School and Ridgeway High School to recognize uh teachers who are are showing up for greatness and capturing attendance, accurate attendance for our students. Next slide. What's next? And I know the writing is kind of small, but in terms of truency, we have hired a new truency manager. The new truency manager is Mr. Kelly Henderson. He will lead that work. So we are looking to realign the truency roles under a centralized structure to give more accountability and use data uh to drive and support the work through the truency office. We want to expand student and school recognition programs. Dr. Richmond has spoken

065many times about spotlighting our students, spotlighting our schools, spotlighting our principles. We want to we want to to include more social media highlights uh and recognizing students and staff through local media features. We want to enhance collaboration with our community partners uh and making sure that our be present be great uh strategy which is our tier three that the families are receiving those muchneeded supports during the meetings and that we create uh parentmies with our face office and other community partners providing those full wraparound services such as transportation and and health services and counseling into each session. We also want to increase visibility through school and community campaigns. We want to relaunch our show up for greatness. We presented this again in August, but we want to brand it at every school, making sure the

066schools have the the banners, especially those CSI schools, so that we can build some positive momentum and unify messaging across all five regions. And finally, we want to use Power School and PowerBI dashboards to identify school needs with intensive support, tracking our intervention outcomes and spotlighting bright spot schools again where they are modeling uh what we can hopefully put across AC throughout the district. I do want to go back to a slide to the slide greatness at your door slide. Yolanda, what you don't see in the data, Superintendent Richmond, board members, is next slide. I think it is a couple slides open. What you don't see in the data, we we're recognizing our students who again, every student is not does not have 95 96% attendance rate. But those students who we identified that had

067challenges last year, but they're showing improvement, those are students who we really want to spotlight as well. This this young man, this was from I think a couple of weeks ago at Lucy E. Campbell and I have to give a shout out to Principal G and tell the story. We reached out to him, emailed him and said to him, "We want to recognize these students uh for the improvement in the attendance that they've made." Principal G made it an entire program. He had the entire school there. He invited the parents. He put the students and the parents on stage. And that positive recognition made those students, including this young man, so proud of what they've been doing. And our communication or our conversation with the students were, "We want you to come to school every

068day. Be sure to tell your mom that you you want to come to school every day." So, if we can acknowledge not just again our students that are in the 95 percentile, but those that are are really trying and then lend that support to those uh who who may have it may seem like they've given up. But that's what our our outreach has been about, making those phone calls, making those connections. And again, some of that is not in the data, but it's just a testament of what we're trying to um to put in place with the work that we're doing. That's all I have. Thank you. Uh I do have questions on the floor. I will start with uh Commissioner Pewitt and then Commissioner Love. >> Thank Before we start, I just want to

069recognize that board member Porter is here. Thank you. >> Uh thank you. My my question is around attendance and truency uh rates for special populations. Typically 18 days wouldn't worry me in a lag. Uh but particularly for English language learners, English learners, right grade level since this data has been verified, we've had the National Guard arrive in Memphis. Do we have any unofficial data about whether attendance rates have dramatically decreased since that arrival? Good question. Thank you for the question. Based on the data that I've been able to pull in collaboration with um the REE office, we have not seen a significant difference in the attendance since the National Guard arrived. I know that we've had some conversations with Director Richardson and I think I see her in the back. We've tried to increase our

070communication to families, our e families about around the importance of daily attendance. I know that doc the chief Richardson or director Richardson, they have parent meetings that my office also attends, but there's been no correlation between increased attendance since the National Guard arrived. >> Okay. anecdotally that teachers have said that they have students who are not showing up. So, could we get the official um report when that is available? Maybe in the next meeting. Um what do we do we have any safeguards in place for uh students or families who communicate uh concerns about ice being present in our city? Do is there anything that we can do to support them? Currently, we don't have anything other than encouraging them to come to school. Um, no one has told us that ICE has been on

071any of our campuses. Uh, so with ICE not being on our campus and with there not being uh an immigration issue at this time, uh, at this time we haven't. >> Okay. >> I think the concern is not necessarily on school campuses. is that transit outside of school zones. I didn't know if there's been any concerns or if there is anything that we can do or replicate. Um I've seen in other districts there are like parent volunteers who are watching like who are along the walking routes. Is there anything we have considered if we do start getting those sorts of concerns? It's it's my understanding that that many of uh those things that are in place uh are happening with grassroots uh agencies uh and not necessarily being coordinated through school districts. >> Okay. I

072I would be very interested to see our official rate because I am hearing different things from teachers about attendance rates. So >> yes ma'am the the question you uh asked board member Garcia uh is an excellent question. So uh I will give that's why I started off giving the caveat that this data is from the first quarter which is the data that we analyzed. Uh that quarter ended I want to say October 3rd it ended. Uh the National Guard came in on October 10th. Um, so we will look at those data post October 10th. >> Commissioner Love, >> um, excellent presentation, Stacy, but I didn't see where you uh got the district numbers of how many kids we have in school. I just pulled our enrollment numbers and as of yesterday all schools including charter

073all students 17,320 that includes charter school all students non-charter 86,700 I'm sorry 87,75 that's non-charter and that's slightly up from prior prior to um fall break but we typically see just a slight increase after fall break uh with our students coming in. So non-charter 87,75. >> Yeah. Um another question. How many of those students are truing year after year? >> That's a great question, Commissioner Love. And I don't have that data in front of me, but my colleague, Mr. Bates taking notes, so I'll definitely provide that information to you. Um and the final question um the kindergarteners that is um 6 uh 4. The kindergarteners don't get theirelves dressed for school. The parents have to get them get them dressed. And how many of those are bus riders or walkers? um do it for the

074elementary schools. Um I had principles uh tell me if it is cold and raining the students um they don't come to school right and that is correct and thankfully this year we have not experienced any really severe weather you know it's probably forthcoming I'm not going to speak it and then we haven't had issues of major lockdowns or anything like that So when those things happen and we pull the attendance the very next day or the the following week, we do see those declines in attendance and what we're saying to constantly and and and that's the good thing about the schools working with the attendance liaison cuz again attendance liaison now support all schools across the district. You're not just assigned to one school with 250 students. you support three in some in some cases

075four with a thousand students but they're working collaboratively to make those phone calls and I can say it's really been beneficial when you make those direct phone calls to families now not all of them answer not all the numbers are good but when we when we are able to connect with the parents to find out the why that's the other thing a lot of the coding is incorrect. So, that gives us an opportunity to go in and correct those attendance codes. You asked a question a couple of weeks ago about how can I be tardy and then be counted absent for the full day. Well, if I'm school starts at 7:30, I come in at 8:00. I'm tardy. I'm not absent. So, those are some of the things too that the liaison are addressing and

076correcting to improve our native. I said uh three tardies equal a absent. >> Right. So if I'm tardy on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, that does not equate to an absence. Now >> tardy means you're late. >> Tardy, you're correct. >> Absent means you don't come to school. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. But the the key thing is it starts with the teachers taking attendance. >> Yeah. >> First 10 minutes, 5 minutes of the period. And that will reduce a lot of then obviously the attendance leaison are reconciling the attendance by the end of the day but that helps us when the attendance is right on the front end going into powers school the information we're pulling from powerbi then Mr. White's office they're addressing that data because it's going to the state and that's obviously how we

077are are funded so it goes handinand I love the collaboration again with Mr. White in his office with Dr. Roslin Stevenson and the face team as well as uh Dr. Luster with student experiences. >> And the final question is how many uh service interventionists work with the parents not just with the students work with the parents? That's a great question. >> Yeah. Yeah. I get back to you. Yeah. Um um you don't know I'm sorry you said how many >> um how many of these work with parents? >> Those that are on the right hand side mostly work with parents. These are agencies also through juvenile court. That's the other thing. We have a really great presence at Juveninal Court and you've been involved in that work for many years now. We have on-site support.

078Our attendance, district attendance advisors, they're on they're in court on Wednesdays, but these agencies work through juvenile court, which we connect with them. >> Let me give you a little bit of advice. Um, >> yes, ma'am. I have been to juvenile court more times than I can remember. The judges, if the student is in school, the judges just dismiss the case. I have seen students be absent for a year or two. The judges just dismiss the case if those students are registered in school. They don't do followup and they don't hold the parents accountable for educational neglect. There is a law. All students have to be in school. Um we're um we get the bad end of that. We are not juvenile court. We are the Shelby County School System and we send those parents

079to juvenile court to make juvenile court assist us. um if a student don't come to school, we're penalized by the money and the academics. Um I would be very interested to know how many of these services work with the parents. Uh work with the parents. uh the students do exactly what the parents say. They don't uh the parents don't force them to come to school. They are not going to come and we can't be spending our money on services that don't work with the root cause. >> That's all. Thank you. >> If I may interject real quick. >> Sure. Thank you. One, I want to acknowledge board member McKisik. Just make sure everybody knows you're here. And um Yes. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We got a surprise. We got surprise. No. Anyway, um

080just FYI, I appreciate the board accommodating during the board meetings right before board work session. We have a few more things for our board committee meetings. I am going to recommend that we put those things on the heel of our board work session meeting so that we get through everything and we would have completed our board meeting work um and so that we have a smooth board meeting next week so you can get all your questions out on everything. And so I just wanted to let you know that that's something that I'm going to ask that we add to the agenda for board work session. So keep asking your questions. >> Thank you so much. Uh thank you Commissioner Love. Commissioner Elte. >> Thank you. Board member Kenny. My questions were answered uh actually board

081member Garcia asked those questions regarding absenteeism, but I did those one other part to that. I just want to know the correlation between the absentee absenteeism and grade bands. Do we have that um information? >> We can provide >> or we can get it. We can get it, you know, >> we can provide that information to Yeah, we we can we can provide. That's an excellent question. But I will also say that traditionally if you see kindergarten and first grade, parents are still babying their children. So if if I wake up and I have a a tummy ache, if I have a headache, uh a parent is going to be more inclined to allow their kindergarten and first grade. If you go back and look at any of the data around kindergarten, first grade, and

082ninth grade, normally that's where your spikes are in regards to absenteeism and chronic absenteeism. Um, mainly in kindergarten and first grade is because students are young. Parents still have a close attachment to them. Ninth grade is why most school districts have a ninth grade academy to transition those students because that's when you start to see a lot of students experience uh truency and delinquency in the ninth grade. So that's just kind of anecdotally. >> Thank you madam chair. >> Thank you. Um I have a couple of questions and observations. I looked at the um I don't know what slide number this is attendance and truency where you say key policies that guide our work. One of the things I would like to ask you to consider looking at is the correlation between student um is

083there any correlation between student conduct and attendance in truency particularly since I want to um acknowledge that in the policy the student conduct policy and administration rules and regs that you all are now going to do that um behavioral report so that with a behavior plan. So is there any way that we can sort of >> we we've done that uh we've looked at the correlation uh and we really believe that our chronic out of school rate what has uh helped it tremendously and you all will be able to see it when you look at our students with disabilities is that we've uh cut the number of students being uh suspended. So we looked at that data last week and there is a correlation >> and so I would appreciate if we include that in

084these kind of reports. That would be great for all of us to see cuz that will also help um determine how well your behavior the behavioral plan is working. Yeah. Um the other um question I have is around on page with your partners, your strategic partners. And I do remember we talked about um having a dashboard for our strategic partners to make sure I think um board member love said a great thing. We keep spending money on things but it's not actually working. So we need to make sure that we are um doing the same thing for our strategic partners to make sure that we're we're getting um the return on investment for what we actually need. >> Yes. I want to say that Mr. White's office and the team um specifically with contracts that

085we have, we're capturing that data. Now, I will have to look at those strategic partners to see if we have contracts with all them. For example, Grizzlies, I don't think we have a contract with them. Uh but we could look at how they're supporting us. So, everyone that's on that list is not supporting us contractually. Some of them are just supporting us as community agencies. >> I I I still think we should do that if we can because again, maybe that's something that we can um I don't know, continue that partnership, expand that partnership, but just make sure that we're looking at how well it's impacting. >> Yes, ma'am. The the next question that I have is um similar to board member Huitt Garcia around um the impact of ICE on our families and children.

086Um, I would love, you hear me say this all the time, free in our mind about thinking about how we can be supportive. And one of the things that I would like for us to consider is how we could be creative about transportation because what I'm getting from the constituency um that I I support is that um parents are afraid to leave their homes and therefore they're not taking their children to school. Um so that's that's the reality of the situation. I know there are some some efforts grassroots efforts where there are people who are volunteering to pick up children and take and carpool them. Um but I don't know how sustainable that is. So, um, can we just just think about some possibilities and and working with our Hispanic community, um, and coming up

087with some some ideas on how we can be supportive and and still comply with the law. >> Thank Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner Williams, >> turn your mic on, sir. in this school district where parents could not keep kids. The parent was punished if the child didn't come to school. There was a woman by the name and everybody would would know her. Uh she won't worked in the for the housing authority. But if your child did not come to school, you lost your benefits. >> Mhm. >> And they would it was easy to do and turn it her name was Cordelia Krenshaw. She and Sarah Lewis would roam these streets and if you were not coming to school, parents were punished and you would lose benefits. You could lose your housing, a plethora of things.

088So you just can't say that students we we deal with who come but those who are not coming are the ones creating the havoc, the problems, losing money on them and and the parents are condoning it. So if you are a parent and your child can stay at home because they want to, then you are an unfit parent. You have to bring the children to school. They have to come to school. And if they don't come, you should not be entitled to a life of luxury and public money that you are not using properly. And that's what it used to be. You just couldn't not you could just not stay at home and and where that was absent, it was documented and you could lose everything you had including where you were living. So there

089are no free rides around here. These folks who got kids stayed at home, it is not by choice. It is their choice. they are allowing it and there end the judge would say you are an unfit parent. You don't allow children not to come to school. That is a a obligation of this to this society to transmit the proper culture because if you don't come you're going to be a you will not be able to handle this culture. So there's a responsibility for parents as well. And we know who who who come to school and who does not come to school and we know who allows it. And as a teacher, you will see it clearly every day. If if if mama didn't want you to go and you didn't have you don't have to

090go, but you must go. And that's the that's been the fight forever. that we cannot condone parents who allow their children to stay at home and live off of the government and everybody else and but do not require them to get an education. >> Thank you, Commissioner Williams. Commissioner Coleman, >> thank you. I just have two quick questions. The first one is, do we once had truency officers in the district? Do we still have those? >> No. Thank you, uh, Vice Chair Coleman. We do not have truency officers, the the ones that existed back in the day. I've been around a long time. We have eight truency liaison uh, that work in collaboration with the attendance leaison, but no, we do not have the truency officers. >> So, if I see a child walking the

091streets or in the park, >> what do we as concerned citizens do to report that these children are? We do have a hotline that citizens can call to indicate that they see a group of students that should be in school. But again too to add to that, some of our students are homeschooled. Some of our students attend virtual school and I think there were some issues before that you know we would or not we but law enforcement would see a group of students assume that they belong to the district but in fact they were homeschooled students. So um right now we just have the hotline and if we they were to pick them up you know obviously during school hours we would take them to school but again they may not be enrolled in our

092district. >> Okay. My other quick question is that students that when you did the door knock, did we ask the question, what stopped you or why why did you drop or why are you not in school now? >> Absolutely. We we had the data at our fingertips uh and then too we used our phone to be able to pull up those students and there were various reasons why uh early on in the school year it was my child was suspended at the end of the year. I don't know what school he needs to enroll in. That was just one question. The other question was, "My child hasn't been in school in a couple of years. I don't know what grade uh he he should be in the ninth grade, but the last grade he completed

093was sixth grade." So, it was those types of questions that we were able to we had a team people that you see in this room out uh supporting our efforts. Uh now, the young man sitting in front of me, he you know, he couldn't keep up with us, but that's okay. Um but yes, they had lots of questions for us and we were able to either provide services on the spot or refer call our colleague uh Dr. Stevenson if there were issues of uniforms. We could call the homeless office if that was the case and be able to connect them with those services immediately. There there were so many the last one that we did maybe not the last one but the one before at Sharp Elementary. We walked into the school. We took a

094break. Um, and we walked into the school. The front office staff told us that there were two parents that had been there the week before with their kindergarten students, but they had not returned. That we were approaching the kindergarten cutoff. And they said they live in the apartment complex. We go over went over to the apartment complex and sure enough, one of the families uh was there and she said the reason she had not returned was because of shock. her her child did not have updated uh immunization. So, we were able to connect with Carisha Johnson in that department and just get those services right then and there scheduled and and provided for them. So, that lot of different questions throughout our visit. Thank you. >> Thank you, Vice Chair Commissioner Love. I want to

095piggyback off of Keith Williams comments. Um, um, not all parents are on state assistance and not all parents are purposely keeping their children from school, uh, homeless, uh, work. Um, I got a call um, two years ago and the parent was keeping their child from school. Um, the husband wouldn't beat on the child on the parent as long as kids were in the house. Um, you're absolutely correct. Kids need to be in school every day. But I don't want the narrative to be not all parents keep their kids at home because they are unfit. Thank you, Commissioner Love. I would like to thank Dr. Luster and Miss Roslin because they have been working diligently with me with families that are homeless that need uniforms and they have been working um around the clock with me.

096So everything that I send them, they have been taking care of it. So I want to say thank you and I appreciate you for all the help that you have given me with our homeless families. So thank you so much. Are there any other questions at this time? If there are no more questions, we'll move on. 2.02 community listening and session update. Good evening or good afternoon everyone. So, I'm just going to give an update on the um MSES board community listening sessions. Next slide. And so, the board has hosted uh they hosted their first community listening session uh on September 3rd at the MSCS East regional office. And so, this uh listening session was held in partnership with the Equity Alliance, Memphis for All, and Standing for Children. And so the purpose of these

097listening sessions were to bridge the gap between families, the district, um raise awareness around the state takeover, and gather community input. And so some of the highlights from the listening session is we had a presentation uh by interim superintendent Dr. Rodriman uh who provided historical context around the state takeover. Also, community partners discussed long-standing challenges faced by MS. Uh the meeting also concluded with questions and comments and concerns from the community and we had over 75 attendees as well as 21 questions raised or submitted. And so uh session two uh will be held on tomorrow, Wednesday, October 22nd at the North Frasier Community Center located at 2555 St. Elmo Avenue, uh Memphis, Tennessee 38127. The time is from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. And so, uh, the purpose of this session is to continue to

098provide an open platform for families and the community members to share their voices, express concerns, and collaborate with the district to shape uh with uh a path forward for Memphis Shelby County Schools. And so, our upcoming sessions, we have a virtual session scheduled for November 6. Uh, the link will be shared soon. Uh we have a session on November 12th which will be held at Guisman Community Center from 5 to 7:30 as well as White Haven Community Center December 3rd from 5 to 7:30. And I think at the back of your packet, you have the questions or the comments um that were raised during the uh the first session held in September. And so those questions will be answered on tomorrow. Any comments or concerns? >> Commissioner Love. >> Um, I think you answered my

099question. Um, can the questions be put on the district website? >> Um, yes. I don't see where's the problem. I can ask Dr. Richmond and um Mr. Johnson about the questions being added to the district website. >> Yeah. Uh the questions and responses >> the responses >> because number four I get that asked a lot and uh the name just changed. We still have some technical classrooms and standalone centers in our district. The name just changed. Uh looking forward to tomorrow. All right. >> Thank you, Commissioner Love. Commissioner Hwitt. >> Yeah. What was the criteria for community partners? And if we want to expand that, how do how does an organization show interest in co-branding something with the district since we will not be leading these? How is that decided? What criteria do we use?

100>> So, anybody who wants to be a community partner can just who should they send the logo to? Is that what we're saying? >> I'm not I'm not trying to be funny. I'm like, is there a process >> there? Currently, there isn't a process. If we'd like to entertain one, then we should have that discussion. But I think what it was is that we had some community partners that came came to came to us and said we wanted to do um the community engagement folks. We wanted to do um something with um well actually they invited us >> to to come to a community listening session. So um that was the first one in was it September? No, that one's a combined one. The first one we were invited to on their own. They did

101it on their own at Bridges. Okay. >> And as a result of that, they began to talk to us about can we collaborate and do these community sess community listening sessions and I think we brought it to the board committee meeting early in the summer sometime this summer and I think collectively we decided we wanted to do it. So the more the marrier if we have more community um >> Oh okay. >> Yeah. So, um I think but I don't know that we have formally said who to connect with in order to connect with the board and so I I don't know. I'm going to defer to the chair um and co-chair of the community engagement committee communications or partnerships office >> was sent out and we consulted uh the superintendent and we consulted each

102and every one of you in a comm uh community meeting, the community engagement committee and each one of you got the permission to go or choose not to. Uh we consulted uh the board chair and our uh interim superintendent in communications. Yeah, this explains what happened, but it still doesn't explain a criteria or process. And I do remember an email being printed erroneously saying that there was a vote in descent from a couple board members, but there was no vote on this. I'm thinking if I'm an organization that represents community members who have a a variety of perspectives, I would go how do I make sure that I am >> bringing my community in there? Like I have there's it's not a >> Yeah, >> there's no opposition to current organizations. It's about making sure

103we do have equity uh of who has access to 110,000 >> students and families, which is a a huge listening public to get input on what what they do and that we have transparency about how we select. And >> if I might um >> I thought I cleared that up. There was a misquote. Um the board didn't take a vote on it. We discussed it in committee. >> Yeah. No, I'm I recall >> um get with the chair. Um >> I think I I would just recommend that we set criteria when when we have >> partnerships that are are public. If this should be going through communications team or a partnerships team, I know we've >> talked about a partnerships plan or office. I I think if we're going to be hosting this as co-branded

104with organizations any we have a one of the largest nonprofit communities in the country there we could be reaching more families. So having a criteria or a process for somebody to be considered to reach our families should be considered. That's it >> is valid. Um, I would suggest you get with the chair and the superintendent and we can bring something to the board. >> Yeah. Yes. I think that's a great idea cuz I think one of the things that we're finding in um that we found in the two sessions is that this is what community would like for us to be more intentional and more often and responsive. So I think this might even be something that we want to think about baking into our DNA that this is a policy that we said this

105is how we do community engagement. So I think um one of the things we could do um as we sit here and talk about this is we could think about a resolution that we develop a policy and here are the things that we we want to see. >> Yeah. So um I'll be more than happy to work with you on doing that resolution so we can get the policy down. >> Thank you. >> That's Thank you for that question. >> I I just want to thank you chair. um point out that we have always had community listening sessions. It didn't just start with this um iteration of it and uh it was very systematic in terms of being quarterly and we held it where it was each district 1 2 and three and held at

106different schools uh throughout the district. So there's always been a process and it was for the last seven years plus now that I've served on it that trying to reach out. So, we've been the district has been I I think um very systematic in terms of trying to make let the community know what's there, but partnering with more people to reach more uh families is always a positive thing. Thank you. >> Thank you for that historical perspect um perspective. Um you bring up a great point that it's we it's institutional. We want to make sure it remains institutional as we get different iterations. So, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner uh Mckis and Madame Chair. Um just to reiterate what's going on here, I don't think it would be a problem with adding any uh other

107uh community uh investors to be part of this. The bigger it is, the better. And so that gives us more a bigger spectrum to see what we want to do and how we want to move and how we want to move the district forward. So I appreciate that. Are there any other questions? Any questions, concerns at this time? If not, then the community outreach and engagement committee meeting is adjourned. >> Thank you. Or member McKisik, did you have something or did you press it? >> Okay, gotcha. All right, we're going next to the procurement committee and that is board member um um vice chair Coleman. >> Thank you. Anybody opening discussion item? We'll move right on to 2.01 facilities report. Miss Stewart, thank you. Vice Chair Coleman, board superintendent Yolanda. So, I'll just jump right

108in. You know, we um discussed the proposed school closure names at last uh month's meetings. This is the preliminary impact report data. You have in front of you some word documents. So that's a preliminary impact report for every uh proposed closure. Um and it gives you the full details. There are five or six pages what this presentation is. It's just pulled straight out of that and it's the highle data. So we can just run through it and you can um ask any questions that you may have. Um so the first one is the consolidation of Chickasaw Middle into Westwood High School creating a 612 grade structure. The rationale rationale here is that Chicksaw uh and Westwood are one mile apart and both buildings are half utilized with Chickasaw at 54% and Westwood at 41%. This

109leaves about 400 available seats at Westwood uh making it a suitable receiver and these children are in the same same neighborhoods, general neighborhoods. Um, so combining the students resources of the two schools will create more opportunities for all the students and the new utilization at Westwood will be 75%. This is a list of the current um extracurricular and academic programming at Westwood High School. um you can read over those for yourself, but during the community meetings, we will be asking for feedback from families and um any participants at the meetings to inform any additional academic or extracurricular offerings that uh they would like to see for their students in Westwood. Next slide, please. I'm going to pass this to Bill White to explain the academic data. Good evening again board members uh interim superintendent Richmond.

110Uh what we did in both the impact report that you have and then subsequently in this presentation is some of the highlevel um data for each of these schools both the school that is proposed for consolidation uh and the receiving school. And um it's both from state and federal accountability. Um the most recent school letter grades which would come from 23 24 are presented. Um and then we've got the school performance scorecard data. Um you're most familiar with that when it comes to charter schools when you've had um charter school applications to approve or um amendments to charter applications or even a proposed closure of a charter school. Um, that's a locally developed metric that includes a way that we look at achievement, growth, college, and career data, and climate data where they get a

111scale score of 1 to five. Um, and then you've got the ELA and math proficiency rates, uh, from the most current TCAP. You've got the most concurrent from 2425 the overall composite and then by the subject areas for Tivos. Um the chronic absenteeism rate since we're using the official state numbers here um those are 2324 data like I said earlier the final 2425 are still embargoed and where you have a high school we will also show the 2324 graduation rate because the 2425 remains embargoed for graduation rate. So you'll see that for each of these um uh school consolidations where you'll see those particular data for um the school of consolidation but then the receiving building or receiving school and you can just kind of see where what their status looks like at this point.

112This slide is the school enrollment and facilities profile of both Chickasaw and Westwood. You see the the enrollment uh from 2122 until the current year 2526. Um you see it hasn't fluctuated a whole lot at either school. Um down at the bottom left that that table talks to you about the year built. So you see that uh Chickasaw is a little bit younger than Westwood. Westwood sits on more acreage and is a larger building with a larger uh tenure maintenance cost and higher FCI. I will speak to both of those and that we just recently the district just put in a new roof, windows and HVAC at Westwood and then you know we're in uh creating the scope of work with XAI right now at Westwood. So those uh maintenance numbers and FCIS will definitely

113go down and the students will benefit from all those building improvements. Um then the next columns are the enrollment, the capacity and the utilization which we spoke to earlier. Um this is you might do better looking at your presentation here because I can hardly see it. Um but the the overall summary you can see is the savings would be or the cost avoidance savings would be $954,12. The personnel impact is a net of seven positions and there will be a reduction of one bus because the Chickasaw students and Westwood students are in the same neighborhood so they would ride the bus together. This is the proposed attendance zone. The Chickasaw zone is not changing. This is the current zone and the proposed zone and it's simply the pink part is the Chickasaw current zone and

114it will just now the kids would go to Westwood um instead of Chickasaw. You see the Chickasaw school point is right there. It's really close to Westwood High School. Again, they're in the same same neighborhood. Um, and then the dots you see on the map, the gray dots are all the kids down there. The red dots are the kids that currently attend Chickasaw Middle. So, those are the kids we're actually talking about um reszoning to Westwood. We can We're now at the Frasier Corning Elementary School into Whitney and Westside Elementary School's plan. The recommendation here is to consolidate Frasier Corning Elementary into Whitney and Westside Elementary Schools. The rationale is that there are five elementary schools within five square miles of each other in the Frasier community on the west side of Rangeline Road. Uh

115two of those five schools are nearly full, but they're tiny little buildings. Uh the other three of those schools are about half utilized. So in that area that I'm speaking of, we have 1,335 K through5 students in those five schools with a capacity of 2,175. So those five schools together have a 61% utilization. Um, so we've got in excess of 840 seats in those five schools. So the proposal here is to close the two smaller buildings of those five and Frasier Corning is one of those. So Frasier Corning would be reszoned to Westside and Whitney elementaryaries. Um the students would go to the schools closest to their homes. The new utilization of Whitney would be 75% and the new utilization of Westside would be 87%. This is the list of the um programming and extracurriculars

116at the receiving schools. And again, we'll take feedback from the community meetings uh to determine new investments. We can just pause and let you look at these data. um unless you want me to go through each one but again it's a similar layout with Frasier Corning um their data um the most current that are publicly available in those categories same categories as earlier and then the receiving schools the proposed receiving schools Whitney and Westside setup here with the enrollment data at the top for Frasier Corning in the first column and then Whitney and then Westside. You see NA in the 21-22 school year for Frasier Corning and Whitney because they were in the ASD and we don't have that um accurate enrollment count. Um down in the bottom chart, I'll point out that Frasier Corning

117has the the highest FCI or if you recall FCI's facility condition index, the higher the number, the worst condition. So, it's in the worst condition of the three on the screen. Um and then on the end of the utilization you see that there's space at both west side and Whitney fiscal impact is a million66,93 in savings 11 positions and there will be a reduction of one bus because children can ride the same the routing works out that way. So, we're not decreasing buses from the neighborhood. We're just simply putting more students on the buses we have. This is the zone. The green uh would be the proposed Westside Elementary zone. Uh the pink would be the proposed Whitney Elementary zone. The dividing line there between them is Frasier Boulevard. Um so again those red the

118red dots represent the children that are currently at Frasier Corning students that we're talking about reszoning. This is the Georgian Hills scenario into Whitney and Hawkins Mill. The proposal here um is the same as the one I just discussed with Frasier Corning about the five elementary schools the two very small buildings going into the three larger buildings. Georgian Hills is one of the smaller buildings. Um would be going into Whitney Elementary and Hawkins Mill Elementary with the utilization proposed utilization of Whitney 75% and Hawkins Mill 72%. Just let you look at those the current programming remind you that we will seek input at community meetings. And once again, you've got the same data layout as you saw before. And um those are numbers that you can review and certainly let me know if you have

119any questions. And the enrollment slide again that you see here um in the bottom chart shows you that Georgian Hills you see where it's pink highlighted 10 year FCI 16% showing that that is the worst condition building um of these three and the space is available at both Hawkins Mill and and Whitney. [Music] fiscal impact 910,267 savings and the personnel impact of 11 positions with a reduction of one bus. And finally for this one, here's the attendance zone. Again, that dividing line is Frasier Boulevard with the students north of it going to Hawkins Mill Elementary and the students south of it going to the pink down to Whitney Elementary. This is Idabb Wells Academy consolidation. The recommendation here is to consolidate Idabb Wells. The students um are the all their by choice transfer now. So

120the students will continue to exercise their choice at any district school with available seats or they may attend their zone schools. If there are any alternative students at IDW Wells Academy, they will attend Norris Achievement Academy under this proposal. Um the rationale here is that the Adby Wells has a 10-year facility maintenance uh cost of $5.8 million and there are only 84 students in the school building. That's as of 20th day. Um that's across nine grades. So IDW Wells is a K8. So this is a 16% utilization. Um and that enrollment has been declining which you'll see in a minute over the last four years uh slightly. So the students will be better served in schools where there's more students and staff and programming. Um since ID Wells has no attendance zone, the students are

121attending by choice. Again, um I mentioned that, but 18 different school attendance zones are represented in in Idw Wells enrollment right now. So I'll show you the list of that in a minute. This is the school performance profile. Yeah, I mean obviously since um this is a different situation where there's not a zone and there's not like a single receiving or a couple of receiving schools. This just shows the data for ID Wells and there's the enrollment um from my high 150 and 22 23 to 84 uh currently. Um, and then the data about the facility below. The fiscal impact is 2,128,378 in savings with a net of 21 positions impacted. There are no buses at IW Wells. This map just shows you the location in the middle. The black dot is IDW Wells and

122the schools surrounding um the AB Hill, Riverview, Hamilton, Cummings, Larose, and BTW are the schools with the most students um who they're zoned to those schools. They attend IDB Wells. I did create a chart. It didn't doesn't look like it made it to the slide, but it shows you the 18 schools, but again, most of the students at ID Wells come from those schools represented. And finally, this is the Lucy Elementary Consolidation Plan. You may recall that in 2023, a new state law went into effect that uh prohibits school districts from operating schools within the geographic boundaries of a mun another municipal school district. So, right now, Lucy Elementary is in the Millington schools zone, and we have um until June 30, 2027 to deed that over to them and move our students. So, uh,

123the proposal here is just to transfer the building to Millington early and zone the students to Woodstock and we can then stop maintaining that building. Um, it has $2.5 million of needs over the next two years receiving school programming there. Again, we'll take feedback at community. And similarly, you have the current data for Lucy Elementary and then um the current data for Woodstock Middle. Um and as Miss Stewart has said, it would Woodstock would become a K8. And there you see the enrollment numbers um fluctuating kind of within the same ranges. the uh the FCIs of the schools are are fairly similar with 8% at Lucy and 10% at Woodstock. And we are currently um replacing the bleachers and painting the gym at Woodstock. So the Lucy students benefit from that. And we will also

124come with a list for all of these consolidation proposals, a list of facility improvements that we would like to make at every receiving school to be considered. Yes. Fiscal impact $931,000 net of seven positions impacted and an addition of one bus will be necessary here. And finally, there's the map um with the red dots again being the Lucy Elementary students that we are talking about reszoning to Woodstock K8. That's the end of the presentation. >> Thank you, Miss Stewart, Chair McKenna. Thank you. Thank you for this robust um report. I do have a a couple of observations. Um one of the things I would like to suggest that you all do is this basically the information you're going to provide during the community sessions, you know, sort of a a layman sort of so that

125everybody understands. Yes. I think one thing that would be helpful is for people to see what the current programming is in their schools and then what they're going to be going to and that that would be very very helpful for people to see I'm not losing anything. I'm gaining so you get them a little closer to understanding why we're doing what we're doing. Then um I'm sorry when you go to the school performance profiles the SPS they're they're numbers like growth level 3.1 I don't know what that means in terms of on a scale to one to five and so that would be helpful to have sort of a legend for us to understand what that those those really mean. >> Sure. >> And then um just a question for the Chickasaw one. I was

126looking at the numbers, school enrollment and facilities profiles, and I was looking at the numbers. They were sort of like correlated from Chickasaw Middle to Westside High. So, were those students already going to Westside High? >> No. >> West I'm sorry, Westwood. Were they already going to Westwood? >> No, the the We go to the next one. Next one. >> Chickasaw Middle and Westwood. >> Are you talking about this one or the data with the enrollment? The one the stu school enrollment and facilities profile. >> One more. So there's the enrollment and no the Chickasaw middle school kids go to Chickasaw. >> No, no, I'm saying is their middle school and I'm looking like were they already moving over to Westwood? >> Chickasaw is zoned to Westwood and Mitchell. >> I'm sorry. Go ahead. >>

127Chickasaw is zoned to Westwood and Mitchell, but more of the students are zoned to Westwood than they are to Mitchell. >> Okay. And so that's another highlight to sort of let people know as well that the students were already going to those buildings. So we're just putting them there a little early. >> Gotcha. >> And I think um yeah, that's that's all I I have right now. Thank you for for this very good report. >> Board member Love, >> my questions are to the superintendent. Um, get ready. Um, do the principles know about the proposal plans? >> Uh, at this point, we haven't uh gone over the proposal plans with the principles. Uh, in line with policy, first we had to get permission uh from the board to be able to bring this report to

128you all. on tomorrow. Um, we will move forward with meeting with the principles and the faculties to go over this report. Prior to us having the community meetings, I sent the board the dates, the proposed dates today for you all to agree if you want us to move forward with those dates and if they align with you all's calendars. But we're sharing all this the dates for the community meetings. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Uh you all should have an email that I sent you today. So tomorrow we'll meet with principles and staff to go over but per policy we had to share the information with you all first. Um, I am in charge of policy and I want to revisit that because the principles are in charge of the schools and this is a public

129meeting and we have news uh stations here and I don't want that to be I don't want uh no one not anyone uh hear it on the news first and then the principles um don't have nothing to say. >> Yeah. >> Yes, ma'am. Um however, the principles do know that their schools are possibly proposed uh to be consolidated, closed or merged. The only thing they do not have at this point are the specifics which we are sharing with you all first prior to going out and sharing it with uh faculty and staff. The next question, um, um, Michelle, uh, Stewart, thank you for this presentation, but if it's okay with the superintendent, I would like to take you and Tito on a ride of my district. Um, so that you can see what all is

130included. Um, the map is good. The map is good. But you can see what all is included in my district. The bus services, the transportation, the crossing guards, and the um going to school and coming home. Um, Whitney doesn't have uh um on one side there is uh a crosswalk, on the other side there is not a crosswalk and kids deserve to go to school safe and return school safe. Um I said last month what is the total number of investments that have been depleted from the schools year over year? Um you have that >> the services that's been depleted from the schools that we are proposing. >> Yes. Yeah. Um, we can we can look into it and get it. Um, I apologize if the team and I forgot to uh deliver that information

131to you. >> Um, two schools in my district, the principles um been complaining that they don't have buses. Um Michelle said one bus is going to be eliminated. >> Yes, ma'am. I think between the two there was a bus needed at Lucy Elementary, but the two that are in Frasier proper both have eliminated buses. Yes, ma'am. Um I would like to talk to you offline to see can we get the buses added back. Um those are elementary schools and the principles um year after year they've been complaining that the students who walk to school don't come if it's raining or it's cold. We need the students in school every day. Um, as far as Lucy, I understand what we're trying to do. I would just advise the interim superintendent to take a look at uh

132um the two schools um Woodstock Middle and Egypt Elementary because uh my district goes between Amber's district and my district and we have a chance to get that right. Uh, finally. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Because the neighborhood that I live in, uh, Bolton, Woodstock, and Baris Chapel, and, um, Woodstock Middle, they all go to school in my district. and Raleigh, Egypt is right up the street. >> I want to interrupt for just a moment and just remind by policy we have to stop and start board work session. >> That's it. That's >> no at 5:30. Um, I'm not that's not stopping anybody from their questions. I just wanted to remind board members that I'm going I would like to um request that we roll these last two committee items onto the the hill of the

133board work session agenda. So, um, excuse the interruption. Go right ahead. >> Yes, ma'am. Yes. I Yes, ma'am. Uh, I think it would be a great idea, uh, for staff to, uh, ride the community, um, as we do with any schools that are being proposed for consolidation and closure. I've ridden all of these communities. I've looked at the schools personally uh and I've encouraged the team uh to do it uh because it's an an extremely important decision that we're making in regards to uh sidewalks and buses and things like that. Uh prior to any consolidation, merge or repurpose, uh someone from transportation will be there. will be at the community meetings and we'll answer any questions that parents may have. At that time, parents as well as any other stakeholders can share any danger uh

134zones or walkways or paths that we need to uh look at and address uh during those times. And as we do every year before we open schools, we continue to evaluate uh those areas to ensure uh that all of the areas to and from school are safe for students. >> Thank you. >> Board member Murphy. Quick question. Um when will the construction start on Westwood, Mitchell, and Fairley? It is my understanding that some of the project management has begun with uh XAI. Uh I see Miss Stewart shaking her head. Miss Stewart, if you want to add some additional context, please do so. >> Yes, sir. That's right. Um so we I my construction team, I've assigned project managers and we are working with XAI and the principles on the project scopes. Um, as you know,

135our I think you know, but we we we require that they submit all and theou requires they submit all plans to us for review before they actually start any construction so that we're sure that they are in line with the district's construction guidelines, but they're actively uh planning right now. >> Follow-up question. Thank you. Follow-up question. Uh there is a building on Mitchell High School grounds that we're not using. Are we going to fix that up as well? Is that included in the con in the reconstruction of the buildings? >> I will look at it. >> Thank you. Can you please get that to me sooner than later? >> All right. Yes. Thank you. >> Board member Porter. >> Yes, I think my question is already answered a bit because I did I counted about

13650 vacancies that we can potentially have. And so I just want to go ahead and get the word out to those people who will be impacted as soon as possible. But I didn't know you guys hadn't talked to the principles and everything yet. So, yes, sir. That's scheduled for tomorrow. What I've instructed the team to do is to follow up to this meeting will be to go out to meet with those faculties. Um, someone from HR will be with the team as well as our uh teacher associations. uh and we'll talk to them about uh finishing out the year and the opportunities that will exist if the board chooses in February uh to merge, close or consolidate these schools. >> But but is this the a part of the overall facilities plan for long-term investments

137and strategic uh facilities plan we've been talking about? Is this part of it? Yes. >> Okay. >> Dr. Richmond, the students from Chickasaw Middle and Westwood High, will they be in this general population or they be in like two separate parts of the building if we approve this? >> U Miss Stewart, can you speak to how we've looked at that building? >> Yes, Miss Coleman, we will separate them as as well as we can, especially the older the oldest ones and the youngest ones. um you know there might be some cross- teaching between the teachers and the children but the students will be in separate classes and in separate um areas of the building. >> Yeah, we have some other 612 models uh in our district. For example, BTW uh is a 612 model. Uh

138so we'll be looking at some of the best practices uh that are occurring at BTW and some of our other 612 models to ensure uh that those things occur. Thank you. Any more questions? uh interim superintendent. Um three years ago or four years ago, Raleigh Egypt and Raleigh Egypt Middle were combined. I would um advise you to talk to Sheree Jones. She did an excellent job of keeping the students separated and she did an excellent job at keeping the school a level five. >> Yes, ma'am. Thank you. >> There being no further business, this means a journ. We're gonna take a 15 minute break, a 13 minute break so we can start on time. Thank you.