001We will be opening the meeting with a brief moment of silence or prayer and the pledge of allegiance to the United States flag. No one is required to participate or be present for any of these and being in this portion of the meeting is completely voluntary. Miss Darby. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dear heavenly father, Lord, I just ask that you would be with us this evening. I would ask that you give us open ears, open eyes, open hearts, and I ask that you would just help us to do what is best for the district of Rutherford County Schools, for these students and staff and parents, and just be with us. In your name, I pray. Amen. I would like to welcome our house ambassadors from Rocky Fork Elementary to come forward and lead us in
002the pledge, please. [Applause] I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Next up, we have the agenda. I'll let everyone take a look at the agenda. Any questions or comments on the agenda? Next up, we have the consent agenda. Any questions or comments on the consent agenda? If not, we will move right into Rutherford Proud. And we've got two different uh entities that we're going to be recognized this evening. Dr. Halford first. Dr. Halford, please. There you are. Lost you. Blended. Good evening, everyone. and we are just trying to figure out exactly how many people can be in this building at one time. So, thanks for bearing with us on that. Uh it is a
003tradition in Rutherford County uh to celebrate youth art month which happened last month by displaying works of students from every school at the central office and it is a huge part of our c culture here at central office. You can tell when we take the artwork down, people just get upset and they wait until the artwork comes back up. And some of them try to bribe me for, you know, putting specific artworks near their office. Uh it it gets crazy, but it really um helps our morale here at the office to have reminders of the students that we work for every day. Um, in January we had a district art show at the Frist Art Museum along with Murphreey'sboro City Schools from Rutherford County. There were over 600 artworks shown. It's the largest show school
004show that they have at the Fris. So, they love having us there. Brings in lots of people. We have chosen one piece from every school from that show to come here and be displayed at the central office. So this one piece from every school is representing the thousands of students who take part in art instruction every day. So we want to thank all our student artists for sharing their artwork with us. Uh we'll recognize the students tonight who have artwork hanging in the building. Um I'll call their name out. Uh we will see their work on the screen and after that we will release all the students, parents, uh uh faculty members who are here to support to go into the hallways and look at the work. We have a clicker. Thank you so much.
005We would like to recognize Kaani Pziola, Barfield Elementary School. And you know what? While all of these are worthy of applause on their own, let's hold our applause to the end just so we can make sure we get through everyone and everyone has their moment at the end for all of us to applaud. Ellie Nigan, Blackman Elementary School. Isabelle Winters, Blackman High School. Jacob France, Blackman Middle School. Fasil Al- Nwami, Browns Chapel Elementary School. Rayan Row, Buchanan Elementary School. Maen, Cedar Grove Elementary School. Maline Parker, Central Magnet School. Joel Warner, Christiana Elementary School. Emma Robinson, Christianana Middle School. Jaden Bailey, David Yuri Elementary School. Casey Wilson, Eagleville School. Micah Young, Holloway High School. Belle Green, Homer Pitter Campus School. Oakley James, John Coleman Elementary School. Eden Roberson, Kitrol Elementary School. Ellie Beasley, Lascases Elementary School.
006Brad Misk and Tegan Madison, Leverne High School. Fourth grade class project from Leverne Lake Elementary School. Ronnie Ratzong, Leverne Middle School. Becket Reeves, McFaten School of Excellence. Khloe Ericson, Oakland High School. Allison Norbert, Oakland Middle School. Faith Richardson, Plain View Elementary School. Haley Settles, Riverdale High School. Oliver McCoy, Rock Springs Elementary School. Nicole Skates, Rock Springs Middle School. Jude Miller, Rockville Elementary School. Natalie Jones, Rockville High School. April Chin, Rockville Middle School. Lena White, Rocky Fork Elementary School. Olivia Christopher, Rocky Fork Middle School. Ariana Deserio, Roy Waldron School. Abby Howard, Ratherford County Virtual School. Lillian Bunny, Seagull High School. Olivia Festerind, Seagull Middle School. Jared Garcia Bonitez, Smyrna Elementary School. Amelia Johnson, Smyrna High School. Nester Corales, Nlesco, Smyrna Middle School. Hannah Agangaphor, Stewart's Creek Elementary School. Brianna Frell, Stewart's Creek High School. Taylor Gova,
007Stewart's Creek Middle School. Indie Surles, Stewartsboro Elementary School. Sylvia Jarnell, Thurman Francis Arts Academy. Camila Via Ugaldi, Walter Hill Elementary School. Jolie Mloud, Witworth Buchanan Middle School. Daniel Carvajalo, Wilson Elementary School. Let's all applaud these wonderful student artists. At this time, parents, administrators, teachers, and students who are here for the artwork, you can go out through these doors, go into the hallway, find your artwork, take pictures, and enjoy. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. [Applause] [Music] You got a nice Let's give the rest of the archery students time to come in here and try to find a seat if there is one. I think we'll go ahead and get started. Yes. Um I see we made a small dent in the crowd, I think, um as they start to fill in. Um the
008board members and Dr. Sullivan, it's an honor for me to be here as athletic director. Um, just to recognize the archery students and uh these young athletes. I want to let the parents know how I'm proud of them and uh sometimes you don't get recognized for the efforts that you do. I just want to let you know that we do recognize you. We're proud of you and uh just to have this opportunity to recognize you for the efforts that you do and for the accomplish accomplishments you've made this year. And this is just an opportunity for us to let you know that we're very proud of you and like to give you all a some applause right now for all your efforts this year. Sometimes a lot of the other sports get more recognition. Uh
009football, basketball, baseball, softball, some of the other sports, soccer, but I just want to let you know that we recognize what you do and we're very proud of you. What I'm going to do is uh I'm just going to tell you I have a basketball background. I'm not an expert on archery. So, I'm going to have uh each one of the uh coaches and the schools come up and let them talk about your team and the accomp accomplishments that you made this year. And uh I'm going to start with Cristiana. Coach Mingle, will you come up and talk about your team? [Applause] First off, thank you so much for um recognizing all of the archery um kids that are here uh today. Um for for for a lot of us, we start in August and
010we are still going when school's out in June if we go to the national championship um or national championship which is next month in May and then the world's championship which is in Myrtle Beach in June. So, we appreciate it because it's probably the longest season. Um cuz I start normally the second the second week of August and we're still going strong. Um but for the for Christian Elementary School, um we won the we won first place in the in the state for the elementary division for the second year in a row. So, great job you all. Um, we also had several individuals that won awards as well. And when I call your name, if you will go ahead and stand up, um, we would appreciate that as well. Um, for first place for bullseye,
011so there's two different, um, two different like areas. There's bullseye and then there's 3D, which bullseye you're shooting at a target. 3D you're shooting at at fake animals. Um so for the Bullseye Awards in first place um was Gideon and he shot a 283. Next up was Tabler Murray. He came in second place with a 282. And then in fourth place um was Aerys with a 259. [Applause] in in 3D. We in first place with a 269 was Tabler. In in second place with a 268 was Gideon. In fourth place with a 264 was Christian. And then in second place was Everly. Once again, we thank you so much for um your time. We appreciate it so much. Thank y'all. [Applause] Thank you, coach. Next, we'll have uh Coach Greg, Lucricia Greg, and the Blackman
012uh team. They're going to come up. So, I'll pretty much just say the same thing that uh Coach Mingle said. Um it is the longest season. We have devoted students, devoted parents. Um, most of our archers are academic archers and I would say that probably in all the teams. They're very focused academically and for their sport and they devote a lot of time, parents devote a lot of time. Um, as far as Blackman, this is our first year ever to win state. So, we were so proud of this team. Um, we had a lot of major firsts this year for us. Uh, they won at Mossio. They also won the Rollover County Championship. And again, things that we didn't really when we started this year off, we really didn't think was possible. Uh, and they've
013really, really worked hard this year and we're super proud of them and all they've accomplished. Uh, we had several individuals that meddled at um state. So, in Bullseye, Liam Walters, he meddled in he got second place. [Applause] Lamborghini took fifth place for males in bullseye. Also, Jazzy Belly took fifth place for females in Bullseye. And then our team also has a 3D team. We have currently 14 that are going to be competing at nationals. Uh and of course we're going to take this bullseye team to nationals and we are worldbound. We already know we're going. We've got it set in our mind. Um but the Bullseye team this year came in third at state which was a major accomplishment for them also. and then Boone Honey took third in 3D for state. So, so we
014do truly appreciate y'all recognizing the sport and um the amount of time that these kids and these parents devote to this this activity. Thank you. and Lricia and Tyler. I just want to say thank you guys because I noticed of course on your sleeves you have the Asher and where um Christian elementary is where Asher attended and Blackman Middle where I started my career and there may be other schools as well. So I just I noticed so thank you. Thank you. [Applause] And next we'll have uh Coach Eric Banano. I hope I'm saying that correctly. from Central High School. [Applause] Again, I want to reiterate the thanks that uh the other coaches have said because it is a long season and and we do appreciate that you all have recognized us u today. So, um
015this uh this team has uh won two back-to-back state champions. Um this this is Central's fourth state title um in my tenure there. So, uh, not only did we win the state title in bullseye, but we finished second in 3D. Um, we just missed first place by five points. So, we were that close to, uh, being a double champion in this year's state championship. So, um, but, uh, individually, Ethan, uh, was third place. Uh, E was F. Phillips was uh fifth place and Jesse Blanall was the first place female. Jesse was also the overall female champion. and she shot a 292 out of 300. [Applause] Um, she didn't do as well in 3D, but she still placed in 3D as well. She got fifth place in 3D. and Rachel Benfield. Rachel Benfield was our second
016place uh archer in 3D as well. So, thank you again. And next we'll have Coach Pitman from Buchanan. Thanks for having us up here. Um, we really appreciate it. Our, uh, archers work really hard all year long and, um, we missed third place by one point for Bullseye, but we did have two place. Um, Lillian Hayes shot a 269 and got first. and Haley Lton shot a 265 and [Applause] got I'd also like to just commend uh Principal Wit from Buchanan cuz she's the one who has a lot of passion for archery and she keeps after me about the supplements that she kept asking for the for the coach too. Yes, very high school staff members were getting elementary not and so we appreciate the board funding that so that there was equity among we
017appreci we're glad we were able to do that. So, now we'll have uh Coach Gray from Seagull [Applause] Middle. Yes. I just want to talk about the uh we had a great season at Seagull Middle this year. Uh, but I want to specifically talk about two young ladies on our team. They had an amazing season. Uh, not only are they good archers, but they're good students. Their work ethic is impeccable, and I'm so proud of them. So, I just want to acknowledge them tonight. I want to start with Millie Humphre. [Applause] She she placed uh first in every tournament we shot in individually for middle school girls except three. So phenomenal season. at the state tournament. She placed third overall for middle school girls with a 283. Second, I'd like to acknowledge Brent Hill. She
018placed she placed third individually overall in 3D with a 277. And she was the individual state champ for middle school girls with a bullseye score of [Applause] 284. Thank you very much. And the next one up is uh Oakland Middle School and Coach [Applause] Watts. Hi, good afternoon. and Raquel Vega representing Oakland Middle School. And we have first place James Staltz with a 285 in. from uh plane view. Coach Hopkins will introduce her uh team and champions. I just want a second, third, whatever it is. Um thank you for recognizing these kids. They work so hard day in and day out, not only with academics, but also on the range. And that's putting in practice time at home as well as practice at school. and some of these high school kids, they compete on multiple
019teams. So, um it's means a lot to the whole community that you are recognizing us. So, thank you. Um at Plain View, our uh motto is excellences in Plane View. And this is just a small sample of that excellence. Um they're an amazing amazing group of kiddos. I'm going to highlight a couple of our students who um placed at state in bullseye. Brooks Patterson placed third with a 277. He wasn't able to be with us tonight. Our team placed in fifth place. And then in 3D, Libby Hammond placed first place with a 263. Brooks placed third with a 263. And our team placed third in state. So again, thank you so [Applause] much. And our final recognition is to Eagle and it's uh Coach Jennifer Ricks. [Applause] [Laughter] Coach Jennifer is not a public speaker.
020So, um, so thank you guys. We struggle being K being the only K- through2 school at Eagle. We really struggle with our participation. And, uh, we're right here. I would say Rutherford County has probably the most competitive county in the country for archery. When we go to nationals, we see every one of these schools every time. Um, Harley Whisner, uh, stand up, please. There you go. First place overall. Thank you guys. [Applause] Yes, Mr. Short. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I I'm going to call somebody out because he started this back in the day and my memory is telling me that Mr. Banano uh started back when I was new to the board in 2018. Uh, I think we had two teams. How many do we have then? [Music] Christian 28. Yes. So, coach was
021saying I was leader to try to get the coaches, right? So, coaches, thank y'all so much because there's a lot of time put into this. Parents, thank y'all. I know how expensive the equipment is. It's very, very expensive. You wouldn't think that it's that expensive, but I'm thrilled to see this program grow. And thank thank the coaches. Thank y'all so much. Absolutely. Okay. I would I would like to ask all the uh students and winners to go out into the hallway. Uh James Evans would like to get a picture. [Music] Thank you. [Music] Yep. It will get quiet. [Music] They all going to sit in there. [Music] My I was like [Music] Hallelujah. [Music] Mr. McCann, you cleared out the room. Yes. They must have read what was next on the agenda. How's your time
022doing? Okay, now that I think we we're ready to go, next up we have Dr. Jeff McCann to present the Charter Applications Review Committee's Recommendation Report. Take it away. Here we go. Ready to roll. All right. Good evening everybody. Thanks for your time today and and for the opportunity to present the findings of the charter application review committee for 2025. It's been a very busy 90 days and I can assure you we did not take our responsibilities lightly and thoroughly analyze both of the uh um the applications presented. Um you have received the full written report. My job tonight is to present a summary of that report to you and for the public uh and to get on record with that and to answer any questions that you may have over the the report or
023the the the scoring rubrics that I've I have sent to you already. So, we'll get started with that. Um tonight, we're going to look at the initial um applications presented from Nova Smart Academy K8 and Rocket Ship Tennessee number four. I'd like to start out with just a reminder of that Tennessee code annotated has outlined the six purposes for charter schools. We've been over this before, but I think it's important that we look at these because um to be eligible to be approved, a charter must be deemed as meeting at least three of those six purposes. And we have seen with both applications that both did a great job of addressing all six purposes in their application. And just as a reminder, I think it's important to review this information that what is a charter
024school? Just a couple of things to draw your attention to um is that um local boards of education, that's you ensure that only those charter schools that meet the needs of students shall be open to begin with and remain open throughout their 10-year charter term. In Tennessee, charters are granted a term of 10 years. It's not the same in every state. Most states are five. In Tennessee, it's a 10-year term. And you do this as a board through a rigorous authorization process starting with what we're doing tonight. Um reviewing and analyzing the submitted applications and continuing that for approved charters with ongoing monitoring. Okay. And when necessary, sometimes we have to proceed through the revocation or non-renewal process. That does happen from time to time. So here we are in the timeline. We're within that
02590-day window um to vote on the initial applications. If we don't vote within 90 days, remember they're automatically deemed approved. And that 90-day deadline is May the 1st, but this is the f last meeting we have before that deadline. So, um well, that's why we're talking about it this week. And just remember, if you do um whether you approve or deny, if you do deny, um they can come back and submit an amended application within 30 days. And then we have another 60 days to review those amendments and then you will vote again. and that will get us approximately to July 25th. So, just kind of thinking ahead. Um um if that happens, we'll we'll be revisiting this in in July. And then if again, you can approve or if you deny, they can then
026appeal to the charter commission for approval. Uh here's an overview of the process that we've gone through. We've trained the committee. We've met in several several times to review different components of the application. uh they submitted initial scoring rubrics to me in March and then we met to review those and determine and to narrow down our chief concerns to address during the capacity interviews. On March 19th and 27th we had capacity interviews with representatives from both charter schools that were here present for an in-person interview to answer some of those questions for us. Then after that the committee had to submit their final rubrics to me. I compiled them into a summary report which you have. Um, and then we met um to determine our consensus recommendation to present to you, which is what I'm
027doing here tonight. Remember, our deadline to vote is February is May the 1st. Okay, here's the the a review of just who's on the application team. You'll notice we had two parents, two local principles, a board member, Miss Rosales, was a great member of the team, um, and multiple central office staff of various areas of expertise. We have finance people, facilities people, transportations, federal programs, special populations, um, all kinds of expertise on that particular review team. And we got together to review our two submitted applications from Nova Smart Academy K8. Those of you that were on the board last year remember them. They um, applied last year as well, were ultimately denied by us and appealed to the charter commission who denied them as well, but they're back this year with a revamped application. And
028then a new application for us this year came from Rocket Ship Public Schools, which which is a current operator of of of other charter schools in Tennessee and nationwide. So let's start with a review of that Nova Smart application. Again, the full name of that school is Nova Smart Academy K through8. They have no sponsor, no charter management organization. They are a true New Start charter school that and they're their own sole entity. Their proposed location is Smyrna Lever, the north end of the county. Number of schools currently in operation, again, none. They have no other schools in operation. This will be their only school if we approve it. What are they all about? Well, their mission says that they are focused on preparing kids for colleges and careers and they start that in kindergarten
029at an early age and where they emphasize early intervention and equitable education for all of their students. Here's a look at what their proposed enrollment looks like. It's a little different than last year. When they submitted last year, they only plan to start with kindergarten, which caused some concerns with the budget margins with the state charter commission. So this year they came back and are um proposing to start with kindergarten and first grade 192 students in their first in their first year adding a grade level at a time until they hit 8th grade in year 8 where their full capacity will be students. The summary of the evaluation from the committee was that we recommend denial of the initial application because we determined that they failed to meet or exceed the criteria in all three
030of their areas, academics, operations, and finance. You can see that we rated them as only partially meeting the standard, which is good. But requirements from the state of Tennessee say for us to recommend them to you, we have to deem that they either meet or exceed the standards in all three areas, not just one or two. They have to meet or exceed in all three before we can recommend them for approval. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't approve them. All that simply means is that we can't recommend them to be approved unless we determine that they meet or exceed all three of those areas. Okay. So, let's talk about what our concerns are and what the what their strengths are in their AC in their submitted application. Starting with section one, the academic plan
031and design. Our concerns are number one that they do indicate a use of culturally sensitive materials as part of their curriculum. We felt like there was an insufficient description of what those materials were and what that truly meant, what materials they were going to use, how they were to determine what is culturally sensitive and what is not. And the concern there is that will it comply with TCA 4961019, which is the state law that talks about concepts that are prohibited from inclusion or promotion in the course of instruction. uh penalties for which would be the withholding of state funding. Another concern we had was the instructional time allotted to science and social studies. Uh their current plan only calls for teaching those subjects two times per week each for a total of 30 minutes which
032adds up to about 12 minutes a day. Now, we realize that in the early grades, elementary, science and social studies are not accountable subjects. They're not assessed, but they do begin to be assessed in fifth grade for science and sixth grade for social studies. Uh, but if you don't address those standards in the lower grades, there are definitely going to be some learning gaps for those students, then when it comes time for testing, we're concerned that there will be enough gaps that they will not be able to to test successfully. Uh, another thought on that is if they do start at the school and then they leave and return to Rutherford County, um, there will be some significant gaps in science and social studies, we feel like, because we address those standards uh, in a
033lot more depth um, than just 12 minutes a day. Okay? And feel free to stop me if you have questions along the way, by the way. All right. Their plan for special populations is a concern. Um, if you remember last year's submitted plan, they had some some uh some significant errors in their ELLL plan with outdated terminology. Um, they revised that in their amended application and it was better and this year it's even better than it was with their initial submission last year, but still there's a lot of inaccurate and incorrect terminology in their plan. For instance, the term pushin for ELLL services that is no longer allowed in Tennessee. Their plan calls for pushin services. detailed specifically as that also they indicate that students that enter their school will be screened within the first
03430 days. Well, that's only accurate for the beginning of the year brand new students. Once students start the school or once the school year starts, if an ELLL student um enters um the school, they only have 10 days and the and before they screen them and the plan does not allow for that. Okay. students with disabilities. Um they're plan they do plan to utilize a service provider which we've seen that model in our two operating current charter schools. They plan to utilize that same company, Project Play Therapy, which is a great company. But as we have seen, they can't always provide the necessary support personnel that the school might think they are going to get from that service provider, which could result in services not being provided by someone licensed and certified in special ed,
035which we have run into already. And their plan for gifted services does not meet near the standards for Rutherford County School gifted services to to the same level. Um, it's it's very um lacking in that area as well. and they don't plan to hire a school psychologist. We do realize that um with a small population, you may not need a full-time school psychologist and I think they do plan to utilize their service provider for that. But we feel like um a school psychologist is important enough that the school needs to pursue hiring their own at least on a part-time basis to begin with moving into full-time. Not only do school psychologists have to to oversee the evaluation process for services, but they also participate um in in in those uh um uh what's the word
036just popped out of my head. Those threat assessments. There we go. The threat assessments that have to be conducted on a regular basis at our schools. They are a key person in that process. And then lastly, their use of a school counselor as an MTSS coordinator. MTSS stands for multi-tiered system of supports. You might know that as RTI. That's what we call it in Rutherford County, RTI. Um, yes, our counselors are used for RTI support for behavior in our district, but their plan calls for them to oversee the entire instructional RTI program and system of supports. School counselors are not necessarily trained in instructional techniques. Most of them are not licensed teachers. they're just licensed to be counselors. So that kind of steps beyond the boundaries we think of a school counselor role. And then
037finally, um, with that academic plan and design, there appears to be a lack of community support and demand for the school. Our survey this year went out, um, midFebruary, ran through April. Um, we received f 532 respondents, which is about double what we got last year. Um, which is good. But you'll notice that um 82% of the respondents um said no to the question, do you fully support the approval of the new charter school application submitted by Nova Smart Academy. 82% said no. But their academic plan and design does have some strengths to it. And here they are. Their mission and vision that we looked at at the very beginning drives everything that they do. And everything in their plan is tied closely to that mission and vision. We've always been a fan of their
038two educator model that they that they brought out last year. They changed the term. Last year was called a two-teer model, which was a bit um misleading. They've renamed it two educator model, but basically what it does is it guarantees two adults in every classroom. One adult being a licensed certified teacher, the other adult being basically a pair professional who ideally we would be working towards their own lure similar to our teach now program or or our grow your own programs that we have for some of our personnel in this district. Okay. But it does guarantee two adults in every classroom. Their whole climate is driven by their identified set of values. They call them noble core values, but it really does a good job of setting a tone for a positive climate at the
039school. The passion and vision of the governing board. We've always been a fan of the Novas board. Their hearts in the right place. They're in it for the right reasons. Um they're in it for students and students in Rutherford County. And they've done a great job of improving their board composition this year over last year. They've increased the number of people with significant educational expertise particularly in special areas. Okay. It does address all six charter school purposes like we said and they do plan to provide an extended school day 8 hours. There will be a 7:30 to 3:30 school which is an hour long than hour longer than our schools are right now. Um 4 days a week. On Wednesdays, they plan early release days uh to to devote time for their staff to analyze
040data, collaborate, and and receive professional development, which we think is a great plan. Okay, let's go on to section two, the operations plan and capacity. Our concerns there are the executive director and principal is one person. We are fans of Dr. Jeremy Sager. We really are. and we do not doubt his abilities. But we have seen firsthand what happens when you have one person who's responsible for all of these things. That's a great deal of responsibility and action placed on one man's shoulders. It's not a sustainable model as we have seen with our two operating charters. Now, that facilities improvement budget right now they have budgeted $500,000 for upgrades to the to to a facility. Um, we don't think that's enough. Although I will say this that they did indicate to us in the capacity
041interview that uh the building hope group has committed to funding all of their startup costs, but that has not been verified. We don't know that that's a fact. The letter from them that was included in the application does not say that. Another concern for that facilities improvement budget is the new required storm shelter. You may be aware of this, you may not, but the state now requires that any charter school that's converting a facility to an educational facility constructs an adequate storm shelter that will house the entire population of the school in the event of a storm emergency. Um, in their plan, Novas indicates that they plan to uh um request a three-year variance for that, which you can do. You can request a three-year variance, but our fear there is what if something happens
042during those initial three years and they have nowhere to evacuate to? They do not have a safe place in those three years. And after those three years, will they just keep requesting a variance? Again, that's a concern that we have. Another a big concern of ours is there even though we like their board, we like their director, they have no track record. They have no experience of operating charter schools or opening charter schools. So that's a concern for us. I don't know in Rutherford County schools, do we want to take that risk? And then finally, their transportation budget and their forecast. While transportation is a hallmark of their plan, we think it's great to provide transportation for the kids. They're forecasting wrership at 35% in their plan. They're budgeting for only 25%. But if you
043if you know the the ridership patterns for the north end of the county, we're looking at more of a 70% ridership number for that area of the county. So we're feared we fear that if they don't budget sufficient funds for that, all their kids will not be able to take advantage of it. We're not sure that's not an equity issue. So what are the strengths of the or operations planning capacity? First of all, like we mentioned, the board is very strong, a lot of expertise. They have a plan for ongoing recruitment of local people to be on that board. That transportation possibility, even though the budget is a concern, we do think that is a key recruiting factor for the school is that they can provide transportation. Staff demographics. The plan calls for the demographics
044of the staff to match the demographics of the community, which we think is important in a charter school setting. And they've already located possible facilities. One of which is a church on Ridley Street in Smyrna, which they have had extensive negotiations with really for over a year now. They've identified this facility. They've already engaged with architects and engineers um to explore the renovations needed to bring that facility up to up to capacity. So, in that sense, they're really a bit ahead of the game for most from from where most charter schools would be at this point in time. All right, let's take a look at the third part for them. The financial planning capacity. Our concerns is their contingency model for enrollment deficits. Their their plan says that they can operate fiscally sound with enrollment
045deficits of up to 25%. Which means it if they only hit 75% of their projected enrollment, they feel like they can still operate fiscally soundly. Um, however, both of the charter schools that that that opened in Rutherford County this year faced deficits that were higher than that. Anywhere from 27 to 35% deficits in enrollment for both of those schools. You add a third charter to that same area. And then the fourth charter that we're going to look at in a minute also intends to locate in that area. Four charter schools in that area we were afraid will have a definite negative impact on their potential to hit their enrollment targets. especially if it if it matches what our current charter schools have done so far. So that is a major concern for us. Their budget
046for teacher compensation, their starting salary of 55,000, which is very competitive. It's more than what starting teachers make right now and other districts around here, including ours. But according to their budget, every teacher will get paid that much. And as a result, they they they did admit in the ch in the capacity interview that their budget is going to force them to look for level one teachers to be hired. So in essence, you're going to have a building full of brand new teachers with no experienced teachers as support there. So that's a concern. Uh and the performance incentives they call for to retain their most effective staff year after year plan calls for it. The budget does not. It's not in the budget. And we all know if it doesn't get in the budget, it's
047not going to get funded. So that's a concern. You can plan that, but if you don't budget it, it's it's not going to happen. Strengths in the financial plan, and there are some the budget allotss for full staffing necessary, including all special populations, classrooms, needs that is in the budget, which is great. And their financial monitoring plan is stronger than what our current charter schools have. They have a monthly analyses planned with a finance committee and a treasurer. Every month they're going to sit down and look at the books, which we like a lot. So ultimately, here's our consensus that we reached. We recommend that you deny this initial application. And here are the main reasons why. lack of community support, possible oversaturation of charter schools in the north end of the county, their facilities
048budget, the all the responsibilities that lay on one man's shoulders to get the school open and running. Again, they have no track record. They're a brand new organization. That's quite a leap of faith for us to take. those budget contingency models, what if they don't hit their enrollment targets and their enrollment ends up deficits end up larger than 25%. Can they still make a go of it? And just an FYI for you, their year one fiscal impact, if you'll take note, is almost $2 million in state and local funds that will go their way. Charter schools, as you know, are in their first year are funded on what their projected enrollment is. So that's the budgeted number that we would have to um plan for almost $2 million in the first year. Year six, it
049could be as high as $9 million. That's with current levels of TISA funding, which is bound to change between now and then, but that's based on current levels of teacher of of TISA funding. Okay. Questions about the NOVA Smart Academy application or do you want to go on to the next one? Okay. Yes. Yes, Mr. Tidwell. I got a question about the building hope that you mentioned earlier. Could you explain a little bit about that? That is an organization they're partnering with for the that that new hope. Yes. That is a that is an independent organization that supports charter schools. Okay. They provide support to charter schools. That's all they do. And you mentioned that they had talked about a partnership of helping fund that. But you didn't see that in writing per se. We've
050not gotten that verified in writing. They just mentioned it in the capacity interview that hey building hope says they're willing to fund whatever we need to start and I have no reason to doubt them but it's just not been validated or verified. The letter that they submitted did said up to 250,000. Okay. And and you mentioned the oversaturation as well. Do did they choose the north end or are we recommending the north end? No, this was their choice. They choose the location they they wish to and it's part of their application. So they are bound to locate in that area. Okay. Yes, Mr. Y. Um, okay. So, if my memory serves me correct, last year it was just kindergarten and yes, that is correct. We conditionally approved them and they came back and met the
051conditions. Correct. Okay, they did. So, tell me what the difference is. That's a great question, Michelle. between last year and I was ready for that too. Great. Great. Their their plan is somewhat different. Uh the main thing there's a couple of things that influenced this year. Number one, it's a totally different committee who looked at it with different eyes and saw different things than the committee last year saw, including me. Um the feedback that we got from the state charter commission on why they denied them opened our eyes to a few things that we missed quite honestly. Um can you elaborate on that? The budget margins. We didn't notice how short the budget margins were going to be and and and that the the amount of responsibilities that fell on the director's shoulders on one
052person or a small group of people's shoulders that was indicated by the the charter commission as well. And we didn't know what we didn't know. We had never opened a charter school. We didn't know. Well, now we know because we've opened two and we see what that model looks like where one person um is responsible for so many things. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. B. Follow that up. The budget margin. What What did the state say? What what is the what is the rule of thumb? I don't know that there's a rule of thumb. They just felt like the the margins were too slim and in other words, they didn't they didn't list a percentage. They really didn't. And they don't indicate that. Did the committee not you did the committee
053our committee have an opinion about the about the amount? Yeah, they felt like it was a little a little slim, too. But, uh, it's it's better than it was last year. How much is it? I'd have to look that up. I have to pull their budget up. It's If you come across, send it to me. I I will look that up. I don't remember off the top of my head, though. That's a great question. But I will say this that that last year uh in their their overall budget by the end of I by the end of that first I I guess it's six years when they get or five years they have to submit a budget for the first five years um the amount of money that they had budgeted to have in on
054hand I think it was over $2 million last year dropped significantly this year. Their budget is a lot more conservative. So they're they they're not for forecasting to have near that amount of money at the end of five years. Any other questions? I'd just like to make a statement. Uh that committee did about as thorough a job as I think you could ever do in evaluating potential charter schools using this model. And uh I'd just like to thank Dr. McCann and committee because they really worked hard. I mean they really uh evaluated uh this charter school with uh you know a lot of effort, a lot of expertise and I will say that honestly this year the committee took a much keener eye in looking at the the applications just because we have a greater
055knowledge base now um at this point uh in time. So that they did take a very keen eye and very were scrutinized every piece of that um that application thoroughly. Yes. Mr. T, did you have something? Yeah, I just want to ask another question about the the 500,000 in facilities you mentioned probably wasn't enough. Uh are you basing that on including the storm shelter or is that separate from the storm shelter as well? A little bit of both. I mean the that storm shelter could cost anywhere in and talking to one of our schools that is trying to put one in now. It could be a million dollars. could be a million dollars just to put in a storm shelter. And that's a significant struggle for a charter school to to fund that kind of
056construction. Gota thank you, Mr. Rosales. And that that and the fact I will say I'm sorry that and the fact that the facility they have chosen is a rather older facility church and they've indicated some issues with um how to secure the school part of it separate from the church part of it. Um, so it does appear that it's going to need some pretty significant um, security upgrades. I was just going to say that, um, I think that having charters, we want them to be set up for success. And so having gone through two that already started, I think the the board the committee, sorry, not the board, the committee that was there had that experience and brought into it as we were talking through all of the questions and and having a a dialogue
057that was more rounded, robust, more scrutinized. Um, I mean it and I learned a lot going through it cuz I'm not an educator so I don't know the ins and outs of things. And so I think I think we want our these charter schools to be set up for success. And I just want to remind the board members that whatever is signed on the contract that is the binding agreement and so um I particularly want them to be successful. Great point. Thank you. Me too. Because we are fans honestly of Dr. Sager and his committee. He's a good man. He's a good man and his committee is it's a good committee, too. It's a great committee. We are fans of theirs, but we want them to be successful as well. And there's a lot writing
058on that. All right. So, let's take a look at the summary of the application for Rocket Ship TN4. School name. Right now, they're known as Rocket Ship TN4 because they've not picked a name. Their process typically is upon approval they form a committee of parents um community members, staff and sometimes students to develop a name. For instance, in Metro one of the schools is named um Rocket Ship Dream Community Prep. They came up with that name on their own and Rocket Ship North Noutheast Nashville I think North something like that. But they created those names on their own. They they do have a sponsor a charter management organization. This is the first one we've had under a charter management organization and that's Rocket Ship Education Tennessee which is a branch of the National Rocket Ship
059Education Group. Their proposed location again they also wish to locate in Smyrna and Leverne. Right now they have three schools that are currently in operation. Um there are all three in Metro Nashville public schools. They have applied to open a fourth one in Metro Nashville in that same school year, 2627, which if we're are if you approve this one and Metro approves that one, they will be up to five schools in operations in Tennessee, but they also operate in several other states under the national umbrella. But Rocket Ship Education Tennessee is kind of their own governing body. They do work with under the support and umbrella of Rocket Chip Education National, but Tennessee has their own group. What are they all about? Well, um, their mission statement says that, you know, their goal is to
060transform change in lowincome communities. That's probably why they picked where they picked um and create a world with equal access to opportunity for all. Their goal is to close opportunity gaps that students sometimes, not saying that's the case in Rutherford County, but sometimes face um in in lowincome communities. Okay, here's their proposed enrollment, what it looks like. They are only going to be kindergarten through fifth grade. They're not going any higher than elementary. They're going to start though with K4 uh with 240 students in year 1. When they hit full capacity in year six, they should be they forecast to be at 576 students and don't plan to grow above that. Okay, here's the summary of the evaluation from the committee. Again, we recommend denial and found that they only partially met the standard and
061in their case in four areas. As an existing charter management organization run school, they do have a track record and performance record. So they have to complete the fourth section of that application, the portfolio review and performance record. And again, we rated them as partially meets in all four. State says they have to meet or exceed in all four for us to recommend them to you. So what are our concerns for the academic plan and design? Right now they operate under what they call a four content block schedule. Even as low as kindergarten, they departmentalize. students rotate through four blocks during the day. A humanities block, a STEM block, um an intervention block, and a related arts block. That humanities block is basically ELA, um and social studies. STEM block is math and science and
062technology and some other things. And then they have a full block for intervention time of which enrichment is a part and a full block of related arts time. But the result is once again reduced time for science and social studies. If you look at the way they've written the plan, there's only 9 to 18 minutes, no more a day for science and social studies. Only 9 to 18 minutes. And they are integrated within those blocks. Like we said, science is integrated into STEM. Social studies is integrated into humanities. And they do not have a curriculum for social studies. They plan to use the ELA curriculum to teach social studies standards. Again, we're concerned about the gaps in learning that that might create once the student leaves their school and goes to middle school where they
063become accountable for those social studies and science scores. Same thing here with the plan for ELLL services. It contains errors like the term pushin, some inaccurate criteria for those ELLL students and how they're measured. uh we would expect that a school that's already operating u under a charter management organization would have a a flawless application without these type of errors. Now granted the ELLL terminology changes a lot and the requirements for ELLL change a lot but we would expect our schools for us to approve them to have it right from the get-go and they don't. And we did, and one thing that we did do, she was not a part of the committee, but I had a member of the the ELLL team, the ESL department, comb through the plan for ELLL services, um, and
064and and to to let us know, hey, are they compliant? And she identified several errors and inconsistencies and inaccuracies in both of the plans. So, that is a concern for us is especially on that end of the county, the high number of ELLL students that they are going to have. You might be interested or concerned to know that they plan to focus on social emotional learning SEAL and you know we're concerned that that may not align with uh your our board's goals um and policies. They do have their own curriculum for that that Rocket Ship Schools developed. It's called um the shortest distance um that basically aims to integrate storytelling with pro-social skill building to help students understand their lives and share their personal stories. This curriculum is designed to be culturally responsive and aligned
065with Rocket Ship's core values. Again, you've got some culturally responsive uh materials just to think about, but there is a large focus on that social emotional learning in their plan. their success rates for their schools. While they may comp they may be comparable with the district that they're in right now, they do not match RCS data. They're not as high as our success rates typically are. I'll give you an example or two. Um uh according to the state report card, success rates for for rocket ship schools um in ELA um last year was approximately 21 to 26% depending on which school you're at of their students that met or exceeded um the standards in ELA. 21 to 26%. Compare that to RCS schools in the Smyrna Lever area. not across the district but just in
066the Smyrna Lever area where they intend to locate are approximately 38%. So that's that's 12 to 16 12 to 17% higher than what um rocket ship schools are reporting. And in math um rocket ship schools uh they had schools as low as 10% proficient. Um but it they did have a school that was 40% proficient. Um, Ruther County schools in math in that same area, Smyrna and Leverne are typically average 40% uh meets or exceeds. And then just an example of a subgroup, the black, Hispanic, and Native American subgroup um for um their success rate for all subjects from rocket ship um was 25%. Our schools in the last two year in in 22 and 23 were at 34 and 36% meets or exceeds social emotional learning. Well, basically it you spend time addressing students
067emotional needs and their so not a better way to explain it I don't think that their social and needs and um you know who they are coming to terms with who they are. Yes, we're concerned that that would take time away from instruction. Any other questions? Okay. I I think historically, especially recently, we we have um tried to turn our focus away from social emotional learning in our schools. That's why that's why I'm mentioning that to the board. Okay. Again, this school has a lack of community support as evidenced by our survey that you'll see. um only 80% of respondents support the approval of rocket ships application and I'll give you some more details on that survey as we as we as we get to the end of this but there are a lot of
068strengths in their academic plan and design and they are their whole mission takes a very whole child approach they want to address the needs of the whole child and they incorporate STEM positive behavior supports again those multi-tered system of supports inclusion services for all of their special populations. Enrichment is a key part of that intervention block and they really focus on parent engagement to try to meet the needs of all their children. They do indicate the use of best practice instructional strategies in their plan uh including those scientific principles of reading. Uh their goal is to to build fluent, accurate readers that read on grade level, which is what you have to do to pass third grade. We all know they do have a a a pretty rigorous plan how they're going to track and
069analyze student data. And data is going to drive everything in that school. It'll be a highly data-driven school. And because they have a um a a charter management group to support them, their recruiting and marketing plan is is strong. It's very strong. And it's continual. It doesn't stop once the doors open on day one. They continue to recruit and market throughout the community and and get students and they're really focusing right now on students that have left Rocket Ship Schools in Metro and moved to Rutherford County. They have they they have reached out to many of those. Okay. So, operations plan and capacity. What are our concerns there? Leadership qualifications. They've not named the principal, which which is is not surprising because they've not even been approved yet. And they already have a management group
070to run things. They have a team set aside to to run the opening process. They plan to hire a principal probably in December, but the qualifications uh for that um that person that they've listed in their application really lacks some significant educational leadership experience, um training, and administrative lure. Matter of fact, what they're requiring now is three years of teaching experience, two years as an AP or similar leadership role, uh a bachelor's degree, and Tennessee teaching credential, no administrative lure. That's significantly less than what we require in Rutherford County for a principal to have significantly less that safety and security of the intended facility. Um if if you looked at the application initi initially it appeared to be written towards the construction of a new facility on land that they were looking at. Well they
071have changed that um to pursuing a facility that they can lease and they have located a facility in the Smyrna Lever area that they think would be a suitable one. It's one Mr. Mr. Lee and I have have both toured uh at one time um and we it could be turned into an educational facility. is not large. Um, but their plan does not address the needs of renovating an existing facility and what doesn't say what they're going to do to make sure it's set up for a school, it's safe, and it's secure. So, we have concerns there. Throughout their application, they indicate aligning with Common Core standards. As you know, in Tennessee, we don't teach Common Core standards. we teach Tennessee state standards. And they admitted in the uh um in the capacity interview that,
072hey, that's just an obvious oversight on our part. Sorry we missed that. But what that tells me is number one, they probably just copied and pasted an existing application from another state if they're going to use Common Core and submitted it or at least portions of it without revising it and addressing the need specific to Rutherford County. So that has us concerned that their application was not written to meet the needs of up Rutherford County. And remember, if you approve this charter school, whatever you approve in the application, you have approved. So in essence, you would be approving Common Core standards being taught in Rutherford County, at least with the initial application that they submitted. Okay. We're also concerned about recent denials of two schools in in in MNS. Last year, they had a new
073start application that was denied by Metro Nashville. And they had one charter school that was reaching the end of its 10-year agreement that Metro denied the renewal of. Now, both of those went on to appeal to the state charter commission and the charter commission approved them. But the fact that Metro Nashville denied them to begin with is a concern of ours. And as in my discussion um with Metro Nashville that um um the non nonrenewal of that one charter school they felt like was due to some low performance issues due to some changing leadership. But we'll talk about what Metro Nashville had to say in a little bit because it was by and large positive. So what are the strengths of that operations plan of capacity? Well obviously they have a history of operating charter
074schools some quite well. The charter management organization comes they're bringing in a wealth of experience where we've not had that in a charter school so far. Their staffing plans are very robust just like the last group. They plan to fill every position that they need and they're only going to hire licensed certified teachers which that's what state law says you have to do. But they don't plan to even seek permits and waiverss. and they already have recruited several staff members that are within their organization that they feel like are are interested in coming and really want to come to Rutherford County. Their transportation provision is definitely a bonus. Again, they're going to offer transportation and they've done it before, so they know what they're doing. They already have a transportation company, Grey Line, um that
075they work with um for their for their schools in Metro Nashville, um successfully. Um, there is some concern that it's different in a rural county like ours than it is in an urban setting like Metro Nashville. That there's some considerations there that they need to think about and the distance some kids will need to travel and how far they'll have to go to pick them up. But they've done it and they have a company already in their back pocket that has done this. They're strong in the procurement of facilities. Um, and like I say, they've located a suitable facility and will not need to construct as originally intended. And that's going to save a ton of money because the properties they were looking at were all commercially zoned which was going to cost a fortune
076but they have you know luckily located a suitable facility. Okay. Part three the financial plan. What are our concerns with that? Well, the budgeted staff numbers, they did promise in the capacity interview even and in the if you look at their application that their uh uh pupil toteer ratios will be 25 to1 and no higher. But when you look at the budget, the number of teachers that they have for their full-time equivalent budget and the number of students that they are forecasting in year one, you do the math and it comes out to 30 to1 and in year two 31 to1. So that's higher than what they're saying 25 to1. Um my guess and this is what I believe they're doing is they're counting their related arts teachers and support teachers in their in their
077teacher ratios to bring it down to 25 to1 where we don't do that. We we base it on home room teachers, the general core classroom teachers to reach those ratios. Uh this is rather minor. They're questionable revenue numbers. I think um their initial budget um allotted for TISA budgeted funds of $10,522 a student. Um current TISA funds are only 10,27453 right now. That's today. Um now that can be easily fixed by adjusting the budget as needed. Um and we think they can do that pretty easily. Uh but the concern there is um that's $60,000 in in revenue that they budgeted that they would not be receiving. That's a teacher. That's a teacher. And they're also forecasting ESSA an idea funding of $1,000 per student. We think that's pretty uh pretty robust. We don't think their
078uh their number of IDEIDA students will will be high enough um to generate that kind of income. It's not in either one of our current charter schools and we don't feel like it will be that way here. So the strengths again and there are many for this group in finances. They have strong network support who who indicate at least $7 million cash on hand for their network. The result is there's going to be no debt. They don't need to borrow money. They weren't going to borrow money when they were going to build the school, but they've they're they're promising that there will be no debt, no debt services. Uh the national organization and the Tennessee organization um have a lot of experience opening and operating new charter schools. We see that as a positive. They
079have a history of sound fiscal performance. None of their schools have had audit findings and no noted negative or questionable financial practices have been noted in their authorizer annual reports. Definitely some strengths there. Finally, the last section that portfolio review and performance record. This is an area of concern for us in that number one, if you look at their authorizer annual reports, there are some concerns over performance from their current schools. They have fluctuating success rates for ELA, math, and science. Up and down, up and down. Um, chronic absenteeism appears to be a concern for many of their schools. Credentiing is a concern. And what that tells me is that there have been instances where they've had to hire non-licensed, non-certified personnel and put them in positions where that is needed. That's what credentiing stands
080for. Their student suspension rates are high, higher than Rutherford County. And then there were concerns over other obligations in isolated settings like food service, transportation, health services, things like that. Uh I will say this though and and we'll look at that on the next page that um overall the feedback from their um um annual authorizer reports was generally positive. It was generally positive. But when we see isolated concerns like this um that raises a red flag for us. And then finally the ownership of underperformance. A couple of schools that have been closed we asked them specifically about or they notated in their in their application. And in both instances, they tended to point to the community as the cause for that. That's not what we'd like to see. We'd like to see some ownership of
081that of that underperformance matter. Now, I'll give you a specific example in the capacity interview when we ask about why one of their um why their charter schools had been denied this past year. They felt like it was the it was a charter school climate of of MNPS. That was what they they they they put that finger on. and then another school in another state was closed and they in their application says that um it was a challenging community to operate in. Well, ideally that's where charter schools are set up to operate and should operate as in challenging communities. Okay. Okay. But strengths of the portfolio record and performance review their annual authorizer reports like I said indicated overall positive rankings and that's supported by the due diligence that we did. I interviewed the uh
082um um representatives from the authorizing office of both MNPS and the state public charter school commission. Both of them had positive things to say about Rocket Ship. Matter of fact, both said that Rocket Ship schools are some of our better charter schools. Both groups said that and their growth rates. We saw their success rates not being comparable to our uh to to RC RCS schools, but they do have some generally positive growth rates for most of their school. They offer that their schools are all fours and fives. That's not the case everywhere and it's not the case in every subject. They do have a few ones or twos here, but generally they're positive growth rates um across the board for the for for their schools. Now, Rocket Ship United has earned reward status from TDOE
083several times and they're a relatively new school and uh there's a a report on charter school effectiveness um done by Stanford in university in 23 called the Credo report um and it gave them the label of gapbuster which which they give to schools who who have shown the propensity to close achievement gaps for groups of students. So, a lot of positive things there as well. But ultimately, we do recommend you deny their initial application. And here's the reasons why. Their success rates are not on par with RCS. Lack of community support, possible oversaturation in that end of the county, which could affect recruitment and enrollment for all of the charter schools in that area. The qualifications that they require of a leader, we don't feel like they're very strong. those recent denials by MNPS, those
084staff numbers that result in a 30 to1 ratio, the underperformance of some schools and their lack of ownership for that, that focus on Common Core and SEAL. And just FYI, their fiscal impact for year one would need to be budgeted at almost 2.5 million and year five it will reach $6 million. questions about rocket ship before we wrap it all up. Any questions? I want to thank you. It's very thorough. Let me wrap it up. Let me let me give you leave you with some final thoughts. The the visiting I'm sorry. Revisiting the public opinion survey. Um uh just wanted you to know that these were the respondents. 71% were parents or guardians of the RCS students. 20% were community stakeholders. 7% were other and then there were a few isolated parents of current charter
085school students and even a couple of students that responded to the survey. But just a reminder, 82% from Novvice did not support and 80% do not support rocket ship. And I did ask a final question. What do you think about charter schools as a viable school choice option for families in Rutherford County in general? And to this question, 76 um% responded that they do not support charter schools as a viable option. 19% said yes. 5% maybe. Okay, just uh some more on the fiscal impact because you need this is something that you need to know um um in that um if you'll look at the the the column on the left, current schools for 2526, that's for next year, what we need to budget. That first number is the number um that we need to
086budget for the first couple of months. It is based on in your second year starting in your second year of operation, your funding is based on prior year enrollment which comes from that June ADM pull from the state plus your forecasted numbers for any added grades. And all three Ru County charter schools are adding a grade next year. So for AAR we need to budget 2.64 64 million, Springs 2.1 million, and according to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, who authorizes RCP Rutherford Collegiate Prep, we'll need to budget $7.8 million. Now, keep in mind that that will be all this will be tred up with the October ADM pool. And if you go on what both our charter schools, our authorized charter schools are forecasting as their enrollment, total enrollment, AAR's number could go up
087to, oh, sorry, 3.7 million springs up to 2.57 million. It's it's impossible to predict what their impact is going to be in 2627 when we if we approve these two new schools. Um, but if you go on those current levels of funds, add the two new schools in with Novvice at 1.97, Rocket Ship at 2.47, that's a possible total budget impact of 18.5 million in state and local funding beginning in the 2627 school year. I just think that's important for you to know. Finally, reminders for you. Like I said before, the committee was very scrutinous with the submitted applications. RCS wants wants applications with no major concerns. I do not think we want to go down that road of opening a charter school that has major concerns in their application. If denied, again, we must
088indicate specific reasons why we're denying that. And then they would have 30 days if they choose to submit an amended application. And but remember, if approved, the Rutherford County Board of Education is legally liable for anything in that agreement. it becomes part the application becomes part of the agreement. So anything in the application we we are liable for we're also liable for whatever practices the charter schools engage in which is why monitoring is so important. Finally, quality authorizer makes decisions to approve or deny based on what's best for students, families, and the local education association regardless of political or other external pressures and ideals. We've got to do what's best for the students and families and the board. So, what are your next steps? You don't have much time, I know, but you got to
089carefully consider the application submitted and the reports that I've provided you. You will need to vote by resolution on Thursday night's meeting. Approve or deny. And whatever that resolution says, we need we have to provide it immediately to the charter school applicant. I think we have 10 days to do that. We're pretty good about providing it I think quicker than that. Again, if denied, you have to give specific reasons and they can submit it an amended application within 30 days and then we have 60 more days to review and vote again. But if you approve, we simply begin the agreement negotiation process. We carefully write an agreement with the charter schools and we begin we begin the negotiation process. questions, Miss Max. Miss Mr. Ros, I thought there was three options. I I thought Well,
090there's that. Last year I did I did and and yes, it's still an option is that you can you can vote to deny with stipulations for resubmission. You don't have to do that, but you can give them specific stipulations that they have to meet to submit an amended application. And that's what we did last year. What? Yeah. What what was the mot what what did the board I know we voted to deny with some kind based on stipulations. You voted to deny with stipulations for resubmission which you can do but you have to provide those stipulations specific stipulations. what we said last year. There were several things basically uh and again I I don't think this is typical to do but we did it last year um because we really like Novas um and we're
091hoping they could be successful. So I gave I outlined specifically what they needed to change in the application this year. I don't intend to do that this year. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. What Jeff? It kind of and help bring me up speed just a little bit about this, but looking looking at numbers, you've got a parent response rate of roughly 20% that says this kind of works. Yep. All right. We we've got three schools operating already, right? Is there enough demand if you go off that number? Is there enough demand in the north end of the county? Let's say you had a 10% participation rate. Could could we could we ever fill up all five? And what my concern here where I'm getting around to saying this is, you
092know, approving both of these, are we going to hurt the other three that are already in business and put them subject to failure? That sounds cruel, but but that's the that's a reality for me. I don't want that is an accurate that is an accurate uh assumption. Yes, I because if you go off the the enrollment patterns of the three charter schools that opened this year, not none of them met their target. None of them. And like I like I showed before that they had anywhere they had up to a 37 35% enrollment deficit. And that's my fear is if we add two additional charter schools to that end of the county, not only are they going to struggle to meet their enrollment projections, but how is that going to affect the two that we're
093trying to get up and running correctly now? who who are struggling to to make budget and who are struggling to receive enough funds to to hire sufficient personnel and operate. And you know there's a national movement you know for more parent choice do whatever you know for whatever reason you know whatever leads a parent to do that but I I just that is a great concern right there. I don't I don't want to limit parents choices obviously you know private school they got the vouchers now we've got three do we need two more those are critical questions that are entering my mind right now and I you can't answer that for me but I they are definitely legitimate questions they are I show that same concern okay so I'm not off bait because you know
094I don't want to deny like I said I don't want to deny a parent being able to do what they think is in their best needs needs. But obviously with a voucher being in play now versus last year, that kind of changes things, doesn't it? I mean, doesn't that open up a lot of options for a lot of families to go to other schools now? It does. It does. And like you said, options are great. We do want We want parents to have a lot of options. Um, but when you start affecting the enrollment of a school that is funded based on their enrollment numbers and and they rely on that funding to come in to be able to hire special ed teachers and ESL teachers um to to be compliant with state regulations, um,
095it becomes difficult. Did you have an indication of either one of them? And I the only way I know how to say this, is there a sweet spot they're looking for? You know, is there a demographic? Is there a type of child, type of family that that they're marketing to that that would they they market typically to to what are known as historically underserved populations. Um economically disadvantaged kids um um multiple language families um um you know very diverse populations. If you look at the populations of our two charter schools now, they're very diverse, which which they really love. Um, both of them and the one in Leverne um was was really surprised by the high number of English language learners they have enrolled and they do they have a large number there. Miss Maxwell,
096just a moment. Mr. Yeah, actually uh Stan touched on what I was going to touch on too, which another question I'd asked at the previous uh for Novas was that oversaturation. If if we come back with something that has a denial with stipulations, is there any interest in these charters looking at other areas rather than building on top of the same areas where charters already exist and and are going to be fighting over the same students? They have not indicated that. Matter of fact, I recommended to Novvice last year that they consider applying to Murphersboro City because there are some inner city needs in the Murphy'sboro City system which to me fit their profile very well for what the kind of community and kids they wanted to serve, but they were not interested in that.
097They were dead set on Smyrna Lever. Both of them are. And I do think Rocket Ship um really and they kind of indicated this in the capacity interview um knows that there are a large number of students who have have migrated from um Metro Nashville Davidson County to the north end of the county. Um many of which had gone previously to charter schools, namely Rocket Ship Schools. Um that they're hoping to capitalize on that to to get some of those kids back into their fold. Yeah. And that that makes sense from a marketing standpoint. Um, I guess we'll this would be a maybe a question down the road, but my next my continuing question is going to be what is the likelihood of the state approving it? Because as we've seen with RCP, if we
098feel that the state's going to improve it, then we we are basically cut off and lose control. Um, but also there is a lot of red flags here. This was I've talked to both of these charters um multiple times. rocket ship and there are some things in here that was presented differently. Sure. We felt that way too. Miss Mr. Zeales, I just want to make a distinction, Mr. Vine, because you weren't here. One of the charter schools we didn't the board did not approve. So, we didn't have control of a say so of how many enrolles we were going to approve. And so, the bulk of the funding comes from a approved state. And honestly, I feel like if the state is going to approve the charter school, just like they have a money pot
099that's separate for the charter schools, I mean for the vouchers, they should also have a separate pot for the um the charter schools because where it really gets us and hits us the local funding and um they have to receive the same dollars that come out of our local funding. And we only have just enough local funding that is based on a maintenance of effort and we will have to if we approve all these schools, we will have to it will obligate us to ask for more funding and raise the maintenance of effort just from that alone. So I am from pro-choice and I'm for school choice for parents to receive whatever. But um the financing aspect of it plays a important role in the decision-m on how we're going to operate on this and
100and whatever is on this contract is what we're seeing that is okay and there's just some things right now that need to be changed in my opinion. We want it to be perfect. I know. Well, nothing is going to be perfect. Nothing's ever perfect, but we want it free of the oversight that we're going to be held responsible for. If I'm if we're asking the board to vote on something and Rutherford County is gonna have the name on it and the face of it, it has to be in a mutual agreement and understanding on what's on the contract and right now it's just not there in my opinion. Mr. Ver, you know, the u I don't know. First of all, I think we got the best school system anywhere in the state of Tennessee. And
101I just it's beyond me why any parent would want to leave and take a chance on these charter schools. I'm just going to have a real hard time proving anything that you know we were all elected to do what's best for the kids of Rutherford County. And uh until somebody shows me that they can do something better than what we're doing, uh it's going to be hard for me to ever approve them. And uh uh you know the uh they have an option letting the state do it and you know I just I don't know I just uh I don't I just uh we take if we take approval of it we're responsible for them and I'm not sure that's the road we want to go down But we can vote on that Thursday night.
102So, we all need to do what we think is right on Thursday and vote with our heart. Um, and I don't know what the state's going to do. Uh, I I'm confounded. Uh, we have voted down a school and the state has confirmed and also voted down the school. We have voted down a school and the state has charter has said, "Nope, nope, nope. We want them. We want them right here." So I I really don't know what what they're looking at sometimes the same data that we are but you just all we can do is do what we think is the right thing to do. Miss Mr. Zalis I will say that out of the two school well actually I don't know about RCP so I can't speak for RCP but out of the
103two charter schools and compared to this one the one positive thing is that they will be providing transportation. So even if they're located in a specific location, there's potential for kids to come from various parts of the county. I don't know where the bill is at. There is a bill that's right now circulating in the legisl and I think legislation closed today. So I don't know if it came out of committee that will allow charter schools to be able to find location in a different spot of county. So that could be a potential option for one of them or both of them to be in a different location. So that changes the game a little bit. I have to go back and see if that bill passed or not. But um so there's a little
104bit of a plus just to I want I don't want to be too much of a doubt. Back to the transportation thing. I just thought of something. I know they want to be in the Smyrna Lever area. Okay. Next. Okay. Promise. Are they prepared to go all over the county to take they are okay? Both of them indicate the possibility of having to create hubs, so to speak, where kids have to travel to a hub, okay, for the bus to come pick them up. But but yes, they're well aware that they would have to serve uh the entire district. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Miss Sharp. Thank you. Um I'm sorry. Um Dr. McCann, do my memory telling me that there was a law last year, maybe this year. I'm not sure if it passed or
105not, but after the initial year that the funding was going to go straight to the charter school that it was not going to come through the LEA. It wouldn't be a pass through. That passed. It passed. Okay. So, that that money it does, but it's deducted from Artisa funding, but we don't have the students, right? But it's still deducted. Is that correct? Do you get because you get the true up every month, correct? Yes, it's they send out a whenever they send out the true up, it shows what's being deducted from every every month that um of course we get 10 payments from from the state for Tesus. So when they do the true up, it's either I if the charter school loses or or their ADMs are not correct, we get that money back
106to an extent. Um, but if we don't, if they have more, then we lose that money in our TISA payment in the next upcoming months until they true up again. Thank you. I've got one more question. If it's Go ahead. Um, Dr. McCann, are we asking them to use our same systems because I know that that's been an issue that we've had with some of the charter school. Yes, we actually approach that subject with with um with Novvice because their application specifically says P school. um if they were will if they would be willing to to utilize our same SIS um Skyward and that their response was a bit reluctant in that it said well if if it's in the best interest of our school we would consider that but I think what our goal
107would be to make it a part of the written charter agreement um and that would be a negotiable thing obviously but that's what we would put in our agreement where they have to use our same I know that's what they do in MNS um which uses powers school So I understand why a lot of charter schools use power schools well but we saw how that work. Are we staying with Skyward for one more year? One more year and it's your request. It's on the policy committee. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Whatever system we're using if we approve they need to be using it as well. I think it's less work on everybody. It's on the policy meeting Tuesday. Thank you. You know we that's what I was talking. Okay. Yeah. Yes sir. You know, we can't
108control what the state does, but thing about it is we got to if we approve the these uh I'm not going to approve a charter school unless they can show me that their performance is equal to what we do in Rother County. And so far, um I haven't seen it from any any of the schools that have come in, even the the ones in Nashville. Um, so you know, I may be wrong, but I just hadn't seen any charter school performance that's equal to Ro County schools. So, and you know if the kids if the school doesn't make it or the kid comes back and they haven't had the performance level that we do, then those kids are going to be behind and we're going to be charged with catching them up. So, that's an
109issue that I guess we all need to consider. Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. McCann. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have summer literacy and math camp materials. So, this is with an emphasis on science and reading and math best practices. literacy camp and math camp curriculum combines high-quality literacy math instruction and foundational skills development with an engaging summer camp format. The instruction department is requesting to purchase these kits that include a leader guide, lit camp or notebook, highquality connected text sets, family guides, and access to additional resources available online. The cost to provide this in the math camp curriculum will be $165,876.20 and training will be $7,992 which will come from the summer camp fund funds from the Tennessee Department of Education. We haven't received an allocation
110for that yet, have we? Because it comes after the expecting it soon, but not yet. Just curious, how many weeks would this be? Four weeks. Four weeks. Okay. Okay. Next weekend legal. Yeah. I'm sorry, Mr. Darby. No, I was just asking. I know we had Uh you had touched on speakers for tonight. Do we have public speakers this evening? At the end after we get through our agenda, they're going to be all the way at the end. Yes. Next we have legal. So first we have disciplinary hearing appeal 2550401. The board's been requested to review decision of disciplinary hearing authority DHA and the director of schools to uphold their amendment of a student from Rockville Middle School. Based on the review of the DHA's record, the board may affirm the decision of the DHA, overturn
111the decision of the DHA, or grant a hearing before the board. Um, and just for the board's reference, um, I affirmed the decision of the DHA when it was appealed to me. Okay. Number two, this is a transfer student under discipline. Number one, the board's been requested to admit a transfer student from another school system under discipline. The student was expelled for Title 9 finding. According to policy 6.318, the board may deny admissions of any student except those in state custody when a student transfers from another school system while under suspension or expulsion. Director of school's recommendation is to deny. Questions? Dr. Sullivan, this is the one that was continued or postponed from the last meeting. There is new information that we received both from the school district and from the parent and that's in
112the front of your packet, probably the first six, seven, eight pages. Thank you. Mr. Reed, do you want to hit on the next part? Uh, the next item is um engagement of ACLJ. The board of education has received a demand letter to cease the implementation of prayer at the commencement of its meetings. The ACLJ has off the ACLJ has offered to provide labor at no cost to the board to assist in the defense of any challenges to the implementation of prayer. The ACLJ will not be responsible for any cost or awards against the board, but would provide legal labor support at no cost to the board. Their engagement letter was attached to your materials. So a possible motion is appro is to approve the board of education engaging the ACLJ to defend the board of
113education in regards to any challenges to the practice of prayer at board meetings. As you know the ACLJ is a nonprofit organization that um provides basically free legal labor services for legal matters u with respect to certain constitutional issues. Um they offer if there's a judgment rendered in against the board of education that will still be an obligation of the board to pay. But the ACLJ would provide basically free legal labor to defend any challenges to the practice of prayer. Any questions, Miss Maxwell? Yes, Mr. Solves. Okay. So, I read the I read the letter and um I I know we went into executive session with them and we had the conversation, but this was not brought up because I guess it wasn't thought of. So, there is there is there I don't know if
114we were able to can we talk about this out in you talk about the ACLJ engagement letter? Yes, it is part of the engagement. So can we be specific about what's in the engagement letter or is that something we have to go through executive meeting executive it's a legal matter we need to deal with if there's a legal question we need to deal with it with an executive session executive session question about engagement I don't know what your question is yeah so I know because I don't know whether I can ask it because I don't know if it's a legal question what is your question it's it's is okay so it's specifically to something that was said in the letter that to me I feel like we should know understand what that means if we
115desire the board desires to and what is your question about what's in the letter okay so in the letter it stated that they have the right to withdraw from representing based upon a disagreement so I just want to understand what could possibly be a disagreement between ACLJ and the board that we are at risk of losing representation um at some point with as is the case with any lawyer if you dec if the board decides that they have in disagreement with their lawyer or don't like how they're handling the case or maybe if they on their end don't like how the board is directing them to to push the matter either side could withdraw from the engagement letter and go your separate ways and get other counsel to represent you in regards to the matter.
116Yeah, I guess we should I feel like because they have that clause in there, I feel like we should have discussed a little bit more more about what that understanding of a disagreement could be that we could walk away and I feel like I feel I feel like we need to discuss that. Is there a possibility that we can have executive session to talk about that? Yes, that'll be great. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Vault. I have two. Um, I mean, I'm assuming you've researched them. How How much experience do they have related to this? Well, they've I I did check. I think they do have some six circuit cases that they've worked on because we're in the federal the court system we're in is in the sixth circuit of the federal court
117system and they have had cases in the sixth circuit before that they've handled in regards to constitutional issues. Um, so were they were they lead counsel or Yes, they were. Okay. Um, second question, and this is a monetary question. How much money do we have budgeted for uh extra legal services? Is that finger? Wait a minute. You're not going to ask um all the above. Give me just a second. And and the reason I bring this up, just briefly talk about if you're going if you're going to court, you you you need to take the best that you can get. And I and I'm not denying I I I just don't know them. I don't know anything about them. Hadn't researched them. And I just know if you're going to court, you better have the
118best people on your side that you can get. We only have 400,000 extra budgeted for next year. Okay. that includes our overall legal services for everything. So we would should I almost believe I'm gonna make this statement right now. I think that number needs to be increased significantly for the next I know you haven't planned on that because our budget is extremely tight but wait till I give you an update when we get to the coating. Okay. All right. I mean, if you since we've gotten slapped in the face with a case, I mean, we know we're going to court, you you got a budget for it, right? I mean, I'm looking to you and I don't know, you can't wave a magic wand and find a million dollars or something like that, but I
119mean, it Yeah. No, I mean, to be prudent, right? I mean, we've got to set it aside or it's got to be accounted for. We're going forward with this. That that's only just an observation. I mean, I do feel good about the ACLJ. I think the the um attorney we talked to seemed very capable and and competent and I think yes I I did too. So I did feel good about her representing the school board in regards to this matter. This is the area they specialize in because they are there to kind of handle these type of constitutional issues as they come up. That's kind of their forte. So I think um and they are a national organization. They have other other offices as well. So right um so I do I so I do
120feel like we would get competent repres representation from this group and they are providing it at no cost to the board. So I think which is great a good thing for the board in that case but if they did withdraw should we have money set aside for other legal counsel. I mean we my office would end up defending it at that point if we they withdraw. So I don't anticipate that happening but um you know I guess anything could happen. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. City. Just be clear, this is for uh this is kind of getting out in front the cart in front of the horse here and the fact that we have not entered into any kind of litigation revol resolve or revolving around prayer opening up prayer. This is simply
121to get in front because we had a demand letter. Correct. They would help helped us in the event we do get sued about it and also to address any kind of demand letters we receive which we have received one. Yes. All right. Thank you. Okay, next we have engineering and construction. Several items here. First, Rockville High School synthetic turf request. Principal Steve Lucer requesting to have synthetic turf installed adjacent to the wait room. The request is being donated by Warner's Athletics with an estimated value of 25,000. Engineering construction review the request and has no objection. Any questions? Next, we have number two in engineering construction. This is a request to increase RG Anderson's contract for Smyrna High School. Engineering Construction is requesting to increase the contract for R.G. Anderson in the amount of 200,171,000 $2,17120.
122These funds will be utilized to replace the remaining corridor, ceiling, tile, and grid in the existing building. These funds will be shifted from remaining balances in the overall pro project. No additional funds are needed. So, this is just a shift within our funding that we have already received um within the project. Once we get closer finished with Riverdale and Oakland, you'll probably see something similar as well if there's additional funds, but those are a lot tighter because of the items you all know about in within the city limits. Okay. Number three, smart and middle. Wait, I got a question back on that other um you said we're going to probably do the same thing for Riverdale and Oakland. There'll be a lot less money available for Riverdale and Oakland. So this this money is taken
123out of the smart account, not correct. Yes. Which was already how many million less? 20 million le 20 25 million less. Yes, sir. But our budget is what we get. So So we can only it is what we get and we try to use it as best we can. And I guess what I'm saying is we came in under budget but we only have the money that we actually requested to utilize. So, we do have a few of those funds and and and if you look, and I'm going kind of off the path, but if you look when we always when we've asked for funds, we've asked for the money that the contractor's bid was, the architect's fees, FF, and then we have other contracts and responsibilities. That's a good educated guess from history on
124what those things cost. that covers Middle Tennessee electric tap fees, transformers, cud meter fees, all these kind of things. And sometimes we don't have to do all of those. So there's a little bit of money left and we do have a little bit of that money left at Smyrna and we're trying to get a few other things accomplished that what is not in the original scope of work. So that's where the funds come from. Thank you. Yes. And connected to that um on the IT budget and then at the commission we asked for a full 70 roughly $5 million for the middle school. It was approved for 67 million instead utilizing some of the funds that we know that are going to be left over for some of our projects. So I appreciate the effort
125in trying and trying to get those funds back that we paid up front. Uh but they do have an arbitrage issue that so we've borrowed so much money and we haven't paid down enough of those because we have so many projects going at once. So just an update. Thank you. Next we have the Lee Road property. I think we got Smyrna Middle gym first. You can go ahead and middle gym. Yeah, Mr. Reed, you can go ahead and come up. This will be quick. The Smyrna Middle Gym scoreboard request. Dr. Tesha Ferguson requesting to enter a contract with Wilson Bank and Trust to fund the installation of a new scoreboard in the gym. The donation cost is 8,695 and will be at no cost to the board. Miss Ridley has reviewed the agreement and has
126no objection. Engineering construction has reviewed the request and has no objection. Any questions? Okay. Now, Mr. Reed, I'm so sorry. Now, Lee Road property. The Lee Road property we have that we put in our contract, the appraisal come in. Um, as you may remember, we offered in the contract we have is to buy the land at $80,000 an acre. The appraisal came in at 8 over 88,000 an acre for pri from a price standpoint. So the appraisal justifies the purchase price we have in the contract. So we want to move forward with the next stage. The next thing would be to approve testing for the property to see if it's suitable for a school. So that would be your geotech testing, too testing, environmental testing, surveys, all the things you would typically do to make
127sure that the property is suitable for a school site. So that is um the item that's on the agenda for Thursday. Any questions? Thank you. That is good news. Next we have the bus contract. So next we have bus contract. So tab five. First um and these are just kind of all the the options to consider as we look at uh the financial aspect but also the transportation aspect. First one is a consideration of a parent responsibility zone. And so just so the board has some ideas, we looked at this last year. Um looking at this kind of this year as well, Mr. Lee, do you want to go over the the numbers? You you ran it could probably talk to it better and this is just running it looking at it from a business
128perspective. Um nothing more. Um when we were requested to look at the parent responsibility zone, we looked at two different um requests. One was a half a mile radius, one was a onem radius, and then we were asked to look at a 1 and a half mile radius. as a district uh and as um part of my oversight, I do not recommend the third option being a full-blown one and a half mile across the district. There's no districts of our size that attempting to do what we do or if they run their own buses does a across the board mile and a half. What is typically done is one mile for K6, a mile and a half for 612. They don't do a they don't jump from a one to a one and a half
129for everybody. That there are districts that do a onem radius for all grades. The ones that go beyond that do one mile for K5 and one and a half for 612. So that's the way we've looked at our numbers. Um when we ran this in March of 24 that was that would have been based on num the contract at that time for 2324. I've taken the same numbers of buses. Um it it's still fairly close and similar. We've looked at it in an average route rate for this year 24 25. I'm not speculating for next year. So if you look at a onem radius for all grades without title schools, meaning the title schools still have complete bus service, that would be 15 buses, a little over a million dollars. It's a million50 if you
130were to Will you email this to everybody as soon as we're done tonight? Yes, sir. be glad to. If you were to include the title schools, that would be 23 bus routes. Million6, ma'am, 23. And what was the 15 buses? How what was the amount? A million. Uh for 15 is a million50. Million50. And for 20 for the 23 is 20 is 6 1,610. And I will email this to y'all soon as the meeting's over. Did you run I'm sorry, Madam Chair. Go ahead. Did you run a half a mile? I did. A half a mile is three buses without title. Four buses with title. It's not much. you and give those amounts. Uh, I forgot it. If you don't 210,000 for three miles, 280,000 for four buses. I said miles, buses. Three buses or
131four buses. That's the half mile. So, go ahead and start. may uh I'm not going to name the school, but you know the school that I'm talking about that has an apartment complex on the premises and they're busing the children across the parking lot. They would be out. So that's not a title school. In one scenario they are. In one scenario they are a title school. Yes. So in one scenario with three buses they still get full busing. With four buses they do not. [Music] I think the kids need to walk across the parking lot. The the next the third option is the one mile for K5, a mile and a half for 612. Without title schools, it's 33 buses, 2,310. If we include the title, it's 44 buses and it's 3,80,000. Now, I don't
132want to muddy the water, so so I'm just telling you we didn't do it. There is a reasonzoning next year for all elementary. I do believe these numbers are still fairly close, but we have not we've built a few of the routes. We don't typically build all those routes till we get closer to the end of the year because we have one basically two people. One does regular buses and one does sped. So, we'll be building those routes, but I don't expect these numbers to be like huge swings. Instead of being, you know, if the number is 15 buses, I don't expect it to become 25. It'll be two or three one way or the other. So, I'm pretty comfortable that with the number of buses that would no longer be needed for the parent
133responsibility zones. Okay. Any other questions, comments? Okay. Want to go to the second part? Actually, sorry, Madam Chair. Yes, Mr. Lee, would it be terribly difficult to see what the numbers would look like if you did a half mile K through five and then a mile for 6 through 12, it would be somewhere between 3 and 15. So, it's going to be somewhere in that 8 to 10 range. And it would be somewhere between 4 and 23. Sure. Go ahead. The of course y'all know I've talked with the bus drivers off and on three or four times. Trey's been very helpful to me when I dove off in this two months ago I guess trying to educate myself about how this all operates and how it works. Um and and and Trey and I have
134talked about this back and forth. you know what what does this look like? What does this look like? Where can we save some money? Can we save some money? When when Miss Darby, when you brought that up and you know, I thought, you know, we got to we've got to pursue everything before we wait off in this too far cuz we got a lot of people that not only students, but we got a lot of contractors that are dependent on this. And so, you know, this is their livelihood. So, this is not something, you know, I thought I can't be flipping about. I've got to really know what's going on. Where are these routes? How do they operate? Um, been very gracious to meet with or the bus committee's been very gracious. Outside of that,
135I have talked to probably 25 or 30 what I would say group different contractors that are not part of the group. So, I've tried to get an overall feeling of this. Um, on top of that, uh, I have had five meetings with different commissioners, the budget office uptown, um, trying to figure out where the pain tolerance is going to land. That's the only way I know how to explain this. Uh, you've got several commissioners that say they're not going to do any type of tax increase. You got several commissioners that say they support the bus drivers. We know what our budget looks like. Dr. Svin has been very upfront with that. We've known that since the retreat and and depending on where this thing lands. So, I realize this is more than, you know, Stan's
136decision. It's not my It's not my place to make this. So, as I've gone through this methodically, I want y'all to know I've really done the best job I knew how to both educate myself to understand the bus uh contractors and their drivers, what their concerns was, also the transportation department, also budget finance, what we're getting into here. And what this really came down to, I think they've been real good to work with us to cut out. There were some in the initial contract that Jeff had sent over, there were some concerns about a lot of stuff. Uh, and we've worked through most of what I would call the they're all a little they've all got a little issue to them. You know, they're in there for a reason, but I think we have they've
137been very good that we've worked through it. Transportation's worked through it. It comes down to these three topics here. It really does. And the the insurance first and foremost, and that's still I don't want to say up in the air, but I think there's still some confusion over the insurance. I felt very very strongly um that since the we you know they cannot be included on our on the county insurance that they you know that's a big burden for them to take on by theirel and so that's how this has kind of all come about is to look at you know can we save some money by cutting a few routes out we know uh Dr. Southern not put you on spot or or Trey I think we discussed there's probably eight or 10 new
138routes with the new school maybe either reassignment or reconfiguration or something. So, um, that's kind of how we've gotten to and and so what I what I have proposed with everybody or on the agenda, that's the reason it's in this kind of order cuz I think it's, you know, if if you answer the first question, then we answer the second question, then it leads us to the third question. And it and it comes down to money. It really does. But it's not going to do any good to answer the question about money if the first two questions aren't answered. I I guess to give y'all an explanation about how we got to this point tonight. So, if you got any questions, I'll try to field them right now. If not, we'll move on. But but
139Trey, I just want to thank him and his staff for running these numbers and us trying to figure out where where is there an opening here to make this as palatable as we can to take care of the kids to to be, you know, as equitable to the drivers and contractors as we can and to and and to you know be respectful of the taxpayers of the county. So that was kind of the angle. Thank you, Mr. V. Anybody got any questions? Miss um when you send us the spreadsheet with the routes and stuff and can you put the students the number of students or the seats that are going to be impacted? Is it okay? Not by Thursday. No. Yeah. Not by Thursday night. Okay. You're just able to give us just the money
140aspect of it. I we can I can attempt to. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. I can tell you the schools that'll be most impacted would be Barfield, Blackman, Leverne, Smyrna. Those are going to be your like zone. Anywhere you have higher density is going to be the bigger impact. So, it's going to be Barfield, Blackman, Smyrna, Lever, Lever, like Lever, Lake Roy. Well, and of course if you do if you continue to have tidal transportation then that pretty much Lever and Smyrna would still have transportation and then would be more of your Blackman Barfield or your most dense areas where we have transportation in the county. So the four areas are going to be impacted the most are going to be Barfield, Blackmiss Mona and Leverne. Thank you Madam Chair. Okay, just a moment
141Mr. Uh Stan, I got a question about the insurance. I know you kind of mentioned it's kind of still up in the air, but where where are we at in that? The best that we Let me update you on insurance. Yeah, I'm going to let Jeff We've had some recent developments here just as as of yesterday, in fact. But um as you know, the law got changed a couple years ago that said that said basically contractors would have to get their own insurance. The county could no longer provide insurance for the bus um contractors. There was a and that has been the that has been the law this year so far. There was new legislation introduced this year to with basically effectively would change that would allow the language of it would allow it to
142go back to the way it was with the county providing being able to provide in insurance for uh bus contractors. That has passed the Senate as of just a week ago and um I'm not sure what happened in the legislature today. You guys may know. So yeah, it was scheduled to go through the the House and get passed today. So I think everyone's thinking the new law will allow will change the language of the statute to make it feasible again for counties to provide insurance coverage for bus contractors. Now that's one aspect of this. So that's what that's the how the legislation has happened has changed this year. Each year, our county risk management department, which is in charge of obtaining the insurance for the county, they do it for the countywide, including the school
143board's insurance. They have they by law, they have to issue a RFP for insurance every year. They did that several weeks ago as they normally do. And they did that based on the current law which says basically which which did not provide coverage for buses because that's what the law was at the time that they issued the RFP not knowing whether this legislation is going to be passed or not or what would happen here. So the RFP was issued not including the coverage for buses. That RFP came in. Um there was only one responder to that RFP which is Princeton. They're the current insurance provider for the county. Now, uh we are a very large county. So, it's hard for a lot of companies to even write the insurance for the county because we have
144we're very we're a large county that has pretty demanding insurance requirements. Um not u just because we're a large entity. So, we had the one Princeton was the one um responder to the RFP. We have I asked the risk management department to go back to them and ask them to provide coverage for bus contractors and they are not willing to do that. I've asked them to go back a second time again to see if they tell them we need them to require to provide coverage for the bus contractors. They are not willing to do that under any terms. So they basically told us they are not willing to write coverage for the bus contractors. They said the last year they did it was going to be the last year they've done it which is this
145year and they're not they're not willing to continue it anymore. So the county does not we have so we have one responder to the RFP and that one responder um is not willing to provide insurance for the contractors. So basically that leaves us in position of of still even if this legislation has gotten a change of having to provide have the bus contractors get their own insurance for this upcoming year. And in the event we're able to get it in next year's package or try to see what other options are available in the coming years of the bus contract, go out then and see if we get can get insurance through the county that's feasible. That's something that's that is a number that we can pay for at that point. But given um the stance
146that Princeton has taken with respect to the buses this year, um really we don't have any choice but to go with the um the $4,000 stipen and the bus contractors getting their own insurance this this coming year. So the bus so the the latest iteration of this bus contract which I sent to their council and I talked to their council yesterday about this because risk management their entire leadership team from risk management came to see me about this yesterday and they're basically were somewhat you know saying we're just unable to we have tried we have tried we've tried to get insurance for the bus contractors but we're not able to get coverage for the bus contractors. So, so given where we are with respect to where the budgetary time, we need to have this in
147this whole policy in place by July the contract in place by July 1. We've got summer school buses. We have insurance coverage for to have coverage for the school buses in the summer as well. from a timing standpoint, from a practical matter, we need to let this if we if we're going to do the bus um insurance thing with the contractors and provide them with a stipen, we need to give them time to be able to get their insurance in place before July 1 and get the contract figured out to allow them to do that. So, um, so the last version of contract that you've got that that's in the package with the agenda this week provides for the school board to basically pay each bus contractor $4,000 per bus for insurance for that bus.
148And we made I've also included language for substitute buses in there. I did put a cap on it that we would have to have some kind of limit on the number of substitute buses that we have in the school system that the transportation department would approve. But I would envision basically us providing insurance coverage for all the people who have existing subst substitute buses now in the system. So that would get us through this next two 256 school year and then we have to go out and go fishing in the insurance markets out there to see what kind of coverage if any we can find for the best contractors in the 26 27 school year we can find. That's that's quite unfortunate because I think there was it's certainly better for both groups when the
149county was covering it. But just under the circumstances you're saying that there's not really an option for that to happen this year. I think you know I think the the RFP was based on what the law was at the time. So and that's how they have to issue the RFPs and insurance companies of course they go through a very extensive study to quote these insurance packages to counties. They look at what the law is at the time that they quote these packages. Just miss Mr. Arby first and then I've got you. Mr. Vot, Mr. Lee, on the PRZ, did you just do that AC? Am I understanding correctly? You did it across all schools, right? The non-title and the title, but it's all it's the whole district. But there was no identifying some that the
150PRZ would be better suited for versus one. I'm sorry, I couldn't I'm couldn't hear part of that question. There was no like identifying certain schools that were better suited for a PRZ than No, ma'am. There was not. It's a blanket across. Mr. Bot and go back and and I left this out of the first iteration. Um, I've actually had three meetings with risk management. In fact, I just came from there. I've been up there for an hour and a half this afternoon trying to strategize, trying to figure out is there an angle to this? You know, those of you that know me personally know I I'm a negotiator. I I'm just trying to figure out an opening. Is there an opening somewhere where we could get this done? And we even talked about us creating
151just an RFP for the school district, you know, and put it out on bids. But the likelihood of being able to even formulate that to get it out for bids, even if somebody did respond to it, the insurance probably would couldn't be in place by July 1. And that would put the board in a very very pre precarious situation of trying to fund something we don't even know what it is uh at this point in time. And I don't know that legally we could even do it. You know that that would drag him into the you know can we even do an RFP separate you know from the county because it's actually the county's insurance. It's not school board's insurance, right? You know, but could we stand alone on our own policy? And that that
152brings in a whole another set of circumstances as far as tort liabilities concerned and and several factors there. And I don't want to bore everybody in the room with that. But that this this keeps getting, you know, one thing leads to another. Where we have gotten to um in in my opinion, and this is my opinion only, is that the the the fairest thing to do was to put a line item in the contract and and compensate them for this cost of insurance. That that's bottom line. That's where I got to and that's the reason it's in there. Uh so hang me for it if you want to, but I do know this. you know, we we we can't ask contractors. We can't ask students. We can't ask anybody to get on a bus that
153doesn't have insurance. That's just not I mean, we're asking for trouble. That's and and by law, we couldn't do it anyway. Uh so then anyway, that's that's I wanted y'all to know I have sat down with risk management. Jeff's talked to him. Trey's t everybody's talked to everybody in this thing for the last two months and we've tried to figure every angle and I bring up some hypotheticals and they look at me and think I'm absolutely crazy but I from my experience being in the real estate business there's and farm and you know there's always another way to skin the cat so to speak and that's what I've tried to do here but this is this is where we're going to I think this is where we're going to land. I just think this is
154where we're going to land. So, methodically working through the PRZ, then the insurance, then the pay raise. Thank you, Stan. You can add one more thing about the insurance thing because I know there was some emails going around today by bus contractors, maybe not from the association, but some um saying, well, they were concerned about having personal liability in the event that they have to get their own insurance on buses. um which um obviously if they have their own insurance they're going to be insured in their insurance policies but there are things like limited liability company compan companies LLC's corporations can be done to own buses that limits people's ability to get to their personal assets. So, if there bus contractors out there operating without the benefit of an LLC or corporation, that's something they
155should probably seek legal counsel about and discuss because there are options out there that will limit their personal exposure for liabilities when they operate their bus for school purposes. Miss, I just say that for the benefit of anybody's watching this on TV who may not be here tonight and just know there are things out there that can be done to limit their personal exposures. Miss Maxwell, Mr. Zos. Oh, okay. Sorry. Go ahead. You had a hand up before I did. Sorry. Are y'all able to get insurance? I mean, if we give $4,000 to you, you know, is that going to be Are you going to be able to get insurance on your buses? Well, good evening. Good to see everybody again. the ability to get insurance is tied up with the liability concerns that my
156clients are concerned about. I believe that each of these contractors are in different positions when it comes to, you know, the coverages they may they may be able to get to get and we're talking about many many different contractors. And if you know, one of the primary insurers for the county is having trouble getting this type of insurance, I'm not sure how much better luck that my clients are going to have getting dozens, if not hundreds of policies across however many insurers. And so it just is going to create, you know, a web of liability that, you know, is going to be really hard to decipher in the event that there is an incident and there's a claim. I think that it is possible but with respect to how this contract is proposed even with
157you know what the what I think is a generous consideration of the stipen to cover that cost you know the contractors will be in you know seat number one when it comes to responsibility for uh managing a claim and inclusion of the the indimnification claim brings up the question of you know the contractors are now required to indimnify the board for anything beyond what you know a jury verdict would be that's beyond the policy limits. And so it's it's a huge burden that is separate entirely from compensation. It you know it ties into you know their livelihood and their ability to you know operate safely. So I mean not safely operate without this cloud of you know a potential uh financial ruining event on top of them for a small business and one that is
158an independent contractor after all. You know I'm sure that I'm sure they checked with uh insurance carriers to find out what's the response been from the carriers that you checked out. I I'm not sure. I know that they've gotten quotes. Yeah. Yeah. liability on the bus. It's covering a liability on the Well, I think it's the the comprehensive uh it's the the it's not liability and comprehensive. It's just the comprehensive it's as as proposed in the current contract at the the 3 million and 1 million $1 million figures. Gotcha. Missales. Okay. So I just want to understand this whole insurance thing. So thank you Stan for all the work you've done. I know you put a lot of time into invested. So right now as the way it stands, we threw out an RFP even
159though the state law has changed and we don't have a carrier currently that is willing to take this out. Correct. Correct. Okay. So I haven't seen the law and have you seen the law that's been passed? I've seen the bills. I have not seen what got passed today. the same as the bills I've seen. Okay. And I do agree the language in in the bill does appear to allow the county to provide insurance coverage for buses. Okay. So I don't know h I haven't so the contract as it seems if it's hypothetically I'm only saying hypothetically. So hypothetically it was voted the way it is with the current insurance. Is there any wiggle room to make a a amendment to the contract to say that this year we're going to go this route but we
160the board can re-evaluate the insurance based upon the new year. So that mean that there is potential hypothetically that they could give they could have to they're given the sipen but then the following year they may not be given a sip because the county is able to carry the insurance. how that's how I've written the contract now. Okay, great. So, I left the contract in there with the stipen for now, but provided in there that in the event we are able to get insurance coverage through the county for the buses that that can be changed um later on. So there is flexibility in this where we can come back as a board to say let's change it for make sure and then if that's the case how soon does the board need to or what
161action is needed to be done or taken so that the board can direct Dr. Sullivan or Trey Lee to start the process of the RFP like if we go this if if there's no time to do that I think before July 1. We need to have insurance in place by July 1. Our current policies expire June 30th. Okay. But we will have no insurance coverage starting July 1, right, with the existing county policies. What's this? I'm not done. State law requires insurance to have buses buses to have insurance. So you don't have an option of not having insurance for buses. No, I I'm not disagreeing that. What I'm trying to understand is how does Tley and Dr. yourself and know that we're think about the contract to say can we re I don't even know
162who's going to do it and I'm just throwing your name out there and it may not even be you. It'd be the county. Huh? It would be the county. It's risk management. It's risk management. It's not us. Yeah. Okay. So, they will do that automatically. We have to go to them and ask them to do that. Okay. Under whatever standards we want and direction we want to give them, we would need to direct them to do that. So, is that something that the board has to Let me let me follow up with that. Let me Maybe I wasn't clear earlier. No, let me follow up with that. That That's the reason I was up there this afternoon. As a f as a favor to me, risk management is already writing the RFP. Okay. But realistically,
163it is not going to get in place, right? There's no way to get it in place. Yeah. And and that's the reason I said earlier I didn't want to even if by a small miracle they could get it written, get it out for bids, one bid comes back, it would put this board and the county commission in a very very precarious situation because we would have to accept that one bid, right? If we box oursel so it's they're already working toward that in case we want to do that. Okay. I guess I'm I Okay, so let me clarify. If they decide if they because of the issue that we are with the the the count with the way because of where we're at, they have to take this type. But when will the their policy
164expire? Is it a year term limit or two year term limit? I guess I just understand how long these policies all these are generally written for a year term. Okay. But then if you cast them early, you got a refund of certain your premium that's for the un unearned portion of the year, right? So if it expires in July of 20 26, the following year before it expires, how will will risk mass management automatically just go out for bid for RFP to see if we can if they can carry the bid for the carry the insurance for the 2026 2027 school year. I I think we my personal opinion is we would have to instruct them to do that. As I said, as a personal favor to me, they're already pulling it together. A lot
165of work for next year for the Well, there, you know, we looked at each other a while ago and and and came to the conclusion there's no way to get it enforced by July 1. There's just no way to do it. And and and a couple of ladies up there, I said, "Thank you for your time." And and I've got a stack of emails here with with that that and I'll be glad to forward all this to y'all if you want to read it. It's pretty it kind of chronologically builds this case of how we've ended up at this point. But realistically, there's there's no way to to to get it this year. No, I Yeah, and that's I said that. But but I think we would have to take some kind of action, you
166know, this summer or this fall or something like that to include it. You know, if they could do it by itself, include it next year's policy. As they've said, the the insurer that is carrying the county, and I forgive me, I think it's $2.8 billion in coverage, 900 vehicles. I mean, it's a huge policy plus their 350 odd buses. It's a huge policy. and and nobody cover no you know they didn't they didn't want to come back so I I want everybody to understand we have tried every angle possible to get this and I know there's a lot of the contractors have told me and I hate this for them that they're not willing to risk their personal liability to continue doing this and some of these people are you know lifelong drivers contractors for
167the county and and I can't say as I blame them I understand as a small business owner if it's cost prohibitive it's cost prohibitive I hate it but that's this is where we are yeah no and I get that and understand I'm not can I take question in that just a moment I have been asked that we've been up here it is a little after 8 and I've been asked to take a 5m minute break please and then we'll come back and we'll finish this I promise okay five minutes Hey, how are you? Good to see you. Very good to see you. seat, please. We want to finish this up. I think we're all back now. Okay. I think uh did you say you needed something? Yes. Mr. Vaughn had a question. We got What
168is the solution? What's the recommendation? You know, cuz I mean we're getting down to where the rubber meets the road and we're going to have to do something. We're going to have to get on the stick. I I don't know what the solution is. I'll be honest with you. I'm not smart enough to know cuz they might have a recommendation. Yes, please. No, we had to get Oh, we can't get the insurance. Yeah, let me just You go. Uh do you really want to know what it is the solution? Yes. Well, you got to understand within reason. Well, in reason for a hundred years, Rutherford County has had the insurance and so that's what we think the solution will be for y'all to take it back. Now, schools don't start till August the 7th. If
169we do another RFP, that'll give us three months. I'm I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not. So, that's right. I I I think that a possible solution that I would hope we can run through risk management. I understand that the difficulty in having this done in a rush and having it in place by July 1 may not be feasible, but we're talking about extending insurance coverage to private individuals and contractors who my understanding is don't operate in July. Does summer school end in June or are they operating in July? Okay. So, if there is a lapse in coverage for extension of private insurance, risk management might be able to weigh in on that. Do we have a little extra time to get a contract in place? I'm sorry, a standalone RFP in place
170and then a contract in place through the county for this specific p purpose. Uh the the risk being to the board and as Mr. Reed has pointed out, you know, the board has to budget for that now and we don't know what the bid response to a standalone RFP for bus insurance might be, but at this point, you know, on behalf of 70% of the driver or the contractors, you know, we just can't agree to taking that on. And I understand we're trying to build flexibility into it and cover the insurance through the stipen, but the added potential personal liability on top of that as proposed is really too great for us to agree to at this time. Mr. Tidwell, uh, yes. Uh, speaking on the personal liability, so an LLC, would that protect individuals?
171M. Maxwell, I'm sorry. Go. I'm sorry. Let Mr. Tidwell finish speaking, please. Would that would that protect I mean that that is isn't that the limited liability corporation. That's kind of how it's described. Yes, that would be a route that a contractor can pursue to protect themselves personally, you know, for liability. Sure. Um there's all sorts of uh techniques you can play in the litigation field. One of which in this circumstance would be bail piercing. So if you are a contractor that doesn't follow certain formalities, you can try to go over the personal assets. Happens all the time. LLC's don't necessarily have assets. They could come and take the buses as an asset, but that may be the only asset that the LLC owns. And if that doesn't satisfy the judgment, you can pursue the
172principles of the LLC for the remaining sum of a claim against them or a verdict against them. So it does provide protection to be to be clear but you know sure if it if it doesn't satisfy a judgment then plaintiffs may not stop there. So right and I don't think there's any hey hey please please please uh Mr. Ragdale is also going to be speaking during public comment and so if you have any questions that you want to give to Mr. Ragdale he can but for right now the conversation should be between Mr. Tidville and Mr. Gradale. Thank you. Uh it seems like there's not going to be any perfect solutions. So it it sounds like to me that what I'm hearing from from Stan and Mr. Reid is that we're not going to be
173able to get this RFP in time and Dr. Sullivan, can you speak to the timeline of like is Thursday the day? From a budgetary standpoint, we have to have a budget passed by May 15th to the county commission. And so our next board meeting, we have a work session on May 6th. Um we can of course add a meeting at any time that we need to add a meeting. We have one scheduled for um I believe we moved that meeting to May 15th at 3:30 instead, but I have to get it to to the county commission before the end of that day from a June or summer school ends. We do have bus transportation that occurs with athletics and that type of thing that I know that's extra but that is from an operational standpoint.
174We do have um field trips, extracurriculars, athletics that do occur in July. Um that would be my concern. My other concern about waiting till July would just be not knowing and then all of a sudden we don't get an RFP back and then we have which I know is a potential anyways. We have no transportation option at all for our parents right now. If bus contractors choose not to sign, we at least have a couple months to decide what our next best option is um with our contract to where right now you have somebody has to drive under somebody else for 2 years. We have other options um with the contract if we can't fill our routes July we don't. Okay. come. So, I'm trying to put all the the pieces of the puzzle together
175to see what options are really on the table. I know this is a 4-year contract. I'm just wondering if there is uh potential in which if the RFP does come back in time if this can be potentially even looked at again in the very very short term um to make a decision that would better reflect what we had before because I mean essentially if it was better for the county and there was a uh due to the size of the county's insurance the addition was better for the county financially and it was better for the contractors than the law that was written last year or passed last year and then it's being last year and then amended this year to revert back to what was before just wasted all this time in the middle of
176this contract made things a lot more difficult for us. Um now I again I guess there's a question and Stan may know more to this than than I would. I have no idea but Mr. You're telling us that our current insurance company uh with the county I say the county's company is not interested in doing this this bus thing. So this RFP's chances have decreased out of the gate as to what our options are. U so I I don't know if you can speak to that if there's a if that's going to be a limiting factor. It will be a limiting factor. Yeah, it will be a limiting factor for sure. Okay. I mean go ahead. Go ahead, Mr. Dr. S, you also have and just I have to mention it because it's I hear
177a lot of noise sitting in this position. So there's a lot of things that I just hear chatter of. There's there's definitely chatter in the political realm of you're offering insurance to private contractors that not make them employees. And so that's something that gets mentioned that we've we've make sure that employees and contractors because of IRS requirements, we keep that line very clear. Um that's being mentioned. So we just we have to make sure we are very careful and I wish those conversations didn't occur, but we have people doing that. Sure. And I'm just thinking trying to think about any options. It just I wish the law was never passed. Wish we weren't sitting here right now. Now, I think we wouldn't be spending so much time on this particular item. Madam Chair, yes, Mr.
178Harvey. Um, I have a question that's kind of off of that specific topic, but if with the insurance renewing, we do have some buses that we own. If those are covered under the policy, I believe, if I'm understanding correct, those are usually operated by our contractors. Our buses are operated by our employees. on some extents like our coaches, those type of things. So, let's just say it's 50/50 just for argument sake. Does the insurance cover a non-emp employee operating one of our buses? Because that would be another thing we would have to think about and would be a concern moving forward as well. I know it's maybe not part of the contract per se, but it is a question I' I'd like to get an answer to because that's a very good point that that
179can create challenges for us transporting our students in other capacities as well. Insurance coverage coverage follows the bus. So the for the buses which are owned by the school system, they are under the li the county liability policy. So those and the coverages we have there follow the bus. So, um, are you saying it doesn't matter who drives it? Um, it really does. I mean, so long as they're a licensed driver with a CDL license with a a legal ability to drive the bus. Yes. Okay. Yes, Mr. Sharp. So, can we just not rent the buses from the contractors? Put them all under our buses. The buses that we that we have coverage for are owned by Ru County. So if you rent buses from I mean we our insurance the we've asked for insurance
180coverage for the contractor's buses I think trying to ask if we rent them is not going to work with the insurance carrier because they're going to see that's a runaround on their unwillingness to provide coverage on it. So I don't think you're going to be able to rent those and get insurance on that basis. Okay. Yes. So if in a perfect world Mr. Ragdale. Um, the bus drivers did want to set up an LLC. How long does that take to set up and how much does it cost to file those? Doesn't take that much time, but there are, you know, there are legal fees associated with it and you'll have individualized, you know, parameters for each one. Some people have one bus, some people have more than 10. Um, and with the added uh question
181of, you know, who is responsible for the drivers, you know, it would it would cost some money. I don't know exactly how much it would cost, but it would be an added expense that they would have to take on. Yeah. Filing fee for L to to file for LLC is $300 with Secretary of State. That's the filing fee with Secretary of State or an LLC for and that's an annual fee you have to pay every year. But to follow you know other formalities it would it's always helpful to have an operating agreement that sets forth the you know the the rules by which the LLC operates. They can be standardized but you know they each take some individual attention. So it's not only the filing fee you would have some legal expenses beyond that but
182yes that's the administrative fee associated with it. Thank you. Okay Mr. [Music] I guess I'm not smart enough to figure it out, but sounds like to me we're not going to insurance companies want to insure buses the way it is now. The $4,000 is not good enough. U I really don't know what the solution is. I mean there there are insurance agents we talked to who said they would write insurance coverage on an individual basis for contractors each indiv we we got a number of quotes together to determine what a fair amount of a stipen would be that would be more than adequate to pay for insurance coverage with the limits that we proposed in the contract we were proposing limits of $1 million for primary coverage and $2 million umbrella. So you have what
183So each bus will have a $3 million coverage amount for insurance total. The cost of the umbrella policies are not much because most of your premiums associated with the primary policy you buy. So and looking at those quotes, $4,000 was an ample amount to pay for insurance coverage from the the agents we talked to with respect to for comp. Is it comprehensive and liability or just comprehensive? Comprehensive. Comprehensive. Yes. Okay. And I can understand the concerns from a liability standpoint. You know that u I got an insurance company. Mr. V. You want to start an insurance company? Well, you got this in I don't want I know we're late here at night. So you have this insurance issue. So you not you the board knows kind of where we stand I think with respect to
184the insurance. Um so we the county will not be able to provide insurance coverage on the buses under the current policy we have that the county is looking at renewing. So we have to look at doing something here starting July 1. And that's for you you can talk about your options or discuss that as you want to tonight or Thursday night but that will be an issue you've got to deal with here coming up soon. Beyond that, we also have the remaining issue with a big which the big issue here about the compensation rates in the bus contract and you needed probably start considering what you want to do as far as an increase um or with respect to the bus contractors. Um obviously costs no doubt have increased for them what they were four
185years ago as we've talked about. Um there's been a lot of discussion what would be fair, what you're able to pay, the budgetary constraints the school systems under this year. Uh the proposed number I threw in the bus contract just to get put a placeholder on it was a $10,000 increase for um this year with two and a half% annual increases thereafter. Um that's not anything I binding on the board. You can as a board decide what you think the number should be. Uh, but that will be a determination the board needs to make because that is a may be the ma the largest issue. 10% or 10,000 10% I mean 10%. Yeah. So I'm sorry 10% was the increas I proposed in the in the contract with annual increases of two and a half%
186per year. Um the um but ultimately that's a decision you're going to have to make and kind of discuss and talk about because that is the big bear in the room. Um that's probably the largest issue that the bus contractors have. understand. And I guess let me go back and reframe this a little bit. I think I hope all of you understand this or the other six of you kind of see why it's laid out in a three-part issue. you know, the parent responsibility zone. If if if that's a possibility or some combination of it, that affects the number of routes, the insurance that affects everything. Then the compensation, can you, you know, can you drop a few routes and increase the compensation that way? Do you, you know, put pressure on the county commission?
187And I, and I may have told y'all this, I don't know if I've said this or not. You know, I one of my meetings with a couple of the commissioners, I tried everything. I asked for a nickel. I asked for 4 cents. I said, "Give me a penny. At least a penny." Because a penny is $1.3 million. That's the insurance. You know, at $4,000 on 350 buses. You see where I got that number? It's really 1.4 million, but just a penny. And there was no budget. And I said, you know, that is not the county commission's fault. That's not the school board's fault. That's definitely not these people's fault. We lay that flat on at the foot of the state legislature. And there was no budget. And I even got so creative, and I'm sure
188the people listening online are going to hate me for this. I said, "Hell, put $10 on the wheel tax sticker. There's 330,000 vehicles in the county. That's $3.3 million. That goes a long way in this deal, you know, and it's for transportation. But it I'm just trying to be as creative and think outside the box to get everybody where they can maybe sleep sleep halfway good at night. You know, I know everybody's, you know, the the the bus drivers realize they're not going to get everything they want. We know we can't keep asking them to drive for no increase. I don't think the taxpayers believe that either. I I I think they understand that that incrementally taxes have to go up. I I don't like it. uh you know my brother and I mean we
189pay anyway. I don't want to get into that but I mean it's going to hurt us all but it's just part of being in this society. We've got to do what is in the best interest for the education of our 52,000 kids in this county. Period. So we'll figure it out Thursday night. I'm sure we'll come up with something and it'll get sent to budget and you know that's where we'll go, right? That's the only thing I know how to do. I hadn't played this game on this side. I've been on the other side for 12 years, but I had been on this side. Which one's more fun? I told my wife the other night, this is the hardest job I've ever had cuz I have really educated myself in this. Being a county commissioner
190was easy. I don't mean to take it away from 21. This is a budget meeting. This is a tough rout cuz there is a lot of moving parts out here, guys. There's a lot of moving parts. Anyway, said that all in good humor. I hope nobody gets mad about that. Miss Maxwell, so Mr. Stan said something about the will tax. Williamson County has a will tax and they pay like well I don't know how much that is now but four years ago it was about $79 um per person cuz I paid it once when I had to get my license plate cuz I bought a car in Mosman County and so $10 and you have 300,000 people that that can definitely raise the coffers but wasn't there a wheel tacking the sting is back in
1911972 they built Riverdale down in Oakland and they put on a wheel tax. What was it? $24, I think. Okay. And it it was supposed to retire the bond and they moved it to something else. That's not that's not on the school system. That just happened. So, every time old-timers every time and I'm an old-timer, every time you say wheel tax because it makes a lot of sense to me, too. Makes Well, some people see red. I I would love to see them call it like a transportation tax or something like that. I think the citizens of Rutherford County know the budgetary restraints that we the school system are under and $10 I've even consulted with people. I don't think $10 is going to keep people from getting tags in Rutherford County on their cars.
192So, this is for local taxes. So, it'll help with the maintenance of effort. So, um, the other thing I was going to say is that there was a bill that was passed last year as they were trying to get more drops into the B bucket and they were wanting to do the, um, the impact fee, but something else was passed and we're supposed to be getting extra funding for that when and it was with new houses. So, adequate schools facility tax going to 177 and that can that funding be used? No, that's only for construction only school. Nope. Okay. So, we really need something that can fund education purposes beyond property taxes. Yeah. Well, not just I mean the whole county needs money. There's a forensic center. There is a uh a uh transfer station
193that's coming. There's a lot of things coming. So, you want to Miss Maxwell? Yes, Mr. Table. So just to be clear as we're considering these different options um and looking through all the different options we have here that a consideration at this point a consideration of the insurance is what 1.2 million 1.3 million 1.4 4 million 1.3 in round dollars. So is that what would that be percentage-wise? Any you work numbers more than anybody else? Um what I came up with 5.65%. If you do it and and that is an option we could do it in the pay raise. One one thing they were gracious enough to agree to is is I looked at the mileage rate and the seat rate and we all kind of came to the conclusion the mileage rate was okay.
194You know, if you if you buy into the fact of they drive x amount of miles a day and they're going to burn so much fuel cuz most of them are diesel, you know, and they burn, we determine uh $1,200 a month roughly in in fuel cost. The mileage rate kind of takes care of that. So then the the the seat rate needs to take care of labor, the cost of the bus, and return to profit, I think, is how I kind of we broke it down. They were good as gold. This bunch sitting on the front row, they disclosed everything to me. I I know I know a whole lot more about their operations probably than I should, but they were very forthcoming in in in helping me understand their what their plight is
195and what the thing is. So that's they were I back up and say this. So that's the reason I've got it down to just dealing with the seat rate increase. So we've got I've tried to get it as simple as I could for the seven of us to to make some type of proposal to the county commission. And again, I'll go back to that. Hey, we're not the funding body. They've got to do it. You know, we've got to advocate for schools. They've got to fund it somehow. We're going to meet somewhere wherever that is. Don't know yet. We'll find out July 1st, right? Okay. That good? That was good. I know y'all are tired of having me talk about the buses. I'm sorry. No, you've done tremendous. Okay. Do you want to move on
196to number 11? More discussion. So number 11, you have the 2526 um COLA increase salary table. So we have built in a 2.5% increase um to the table. We are under the governor's mandate to get to 50,000 by the 2627 school year. Um working on some numbers. So if and you have a copy of this as well. It's on the tab. The 2526 starting teacher salary would be $49,564.80 in the 2627 school year. So here are the numbers to get to where we need cuz we're trying to hit that 2627 target if we did another 2.5% raise next year. Um 50,8003 would be the total. So 50,83 that's 2 and 1/2 and 2 and 1/2. Um, and I don't see any way we do more than that across our salary increases. If we did 2
197and a half and then 2% next year, that's 50,556. If we did 2 and 1/2 then 1 and a2 next year, it's 50,308. And then 2 1/2 and 1 gets us to 50,60. So somehow we've got to get to roughly four 3 and 1 half to 4% over the next um two years. And that's why the recommendation this is 2 and a half for this year. Um because I seems like until we have an increase in funding to our operational budget, this is going to get worse and worse and worse every year. Um I just I hate to say that but it it will. Okay. Do you have a dollar amount for that 2 and a half% what that equates to as far as total budget for? You've probably got close. How much is 2
198and a half%? Rough idea. 2 and a2% is $ 8.7 million. Thank you. That's on. Yes. Yeah. That's classified and certified. That's everything. Correct. Correct. Yes. And then for classified staff, it goes from the R101, which is our starting level. Um 1699 currently is our starting salary, and it would move to 1741 with 2.5%. Um Brian and I are going to meet tomorrow. I've got some concerns about our just overall looking at our numbers. Um we're going to look at a 2% this year um as well. So I hate to just throw that into the world, but looking at where we are financially, I may have to propose 2% instead or potentially move number 11 to the May 13th 15th. Um, so we're going to look and run quite a bit of numbers tomorrow and
199Thursday as well. So I'm just more concerned about even what next year looks like after that. So we're going to run that too though. But I'm also trying to make sure we match our sister districts who some of them are already at that $50,000 threshold. So, we want to make sure that we're competitive and don't start having teacher openings to where right now we No, no. Y I want to stay where we are. Um, number 12 and 13, Tennessee legislative and federal. I know there's one thing in Tennessee that I think is ridiculous and I'm going to call all of my legislature dissolving the TWSAA. It's the stupidest thing that I have ever ever heard. Please stay in your lane. Thank you. That's my PSA. Uh general discussion. I've got just one thing real quick.
200Yes. Um Tuesday next week, we have a policy meeting at 5. We also have health and education. And so we've got a couple items on there that um cell phone policy example that we'll need to discuss. I have a we asked TSBA today for a like it's hot for a sample of their model policy with the law change. They don't have it yet and so we're going to talk to principles tomorrow about cell phone policy to just kind of get input with the law change. Our policy covers a lot of it but we we need to make some tweaks to it. I'll probably request next week that we kind of table that go ahead and start discussion but also start looking at what that looks like once we get TSBA's model discussion. There'll be anytime
201you discuss cell phones that gets everybody riled up. Um but as soon as we're done with policy either Dr. Martin or myself and we both are on policy one of us is going to have to fly to health and ed because we have our textbook amendment on that. Okay. So Miss Maxwell Miss Rosales. Okay. So to on Thursday we're supposed to be voting in and engaging with ACLJ. Will it be possible that we can have an executive session before we vote? We can have it on the same day on Thursday with ACLJ. We can do that. Are you wanting the attorney from ACLJ to be here? Yes, we can probably do that. I don't know their availability, but I can check and see. Yeah, I think that for me, I would like to ask questions
202what that means as far as if there's a parting of ways. Okay, I'll check. Thank you. Yep, that'll be great. Anything? Yes, Miss Sharp. Jazz Fest. Jazzfest. Jazzfest Friday and Saturday. And and we're gonna pray the rain away. We're not having any rain. All these people talking about rain. We're not having any rain. Uh and also uh would like to extend happy birthday wishes to Miss Darby. Yes. Yes. I have a little I have a little something for you and Miss Darby. So, after this is over with, uh, but next we go to public comment. And I'm sorry we put you all at the end, but there was several things on our agenda that we needed to get to. Say thank you everybody. Go ahead. Just once I meant to hit it, that was an
203appropriate time because this really will be the end of our public comment. Thank you to the board and everyone else for thoughts, prayers, gifts, all that kind of stuff, meals during the last guess 12 days since I had surgery. So, thank you. I hope to be You're welcome. out of this at some point, but you guys can tell as the night goes on, my voice goes away. So, it's just part of it. Okay. Thank you. First up, we have Tosh. I'm not going to say the Tasha. Tasha Brooks. Sorry. My name is Tasha Brooks and I've served Rutherford County as a driver for the past eight years. I'm here to bring truth about bus contractors and their devotion to the care and keeping of Rutherford County. They often portray they're often portrayed as greedy and
204moneyhungry, but that couldn't be further from the truth. They've served this county for a hundred years faithfully. These contractors are loyal, dedicated, and committed to our children and their families. Let's talk about what that means. Loyalty is being faithful and devoted to someone or something even when times are challenging. Dedication means being committed to a cause or devoting yourself to a purpose that matters. And commitment is being dedicated. Commitment is being both dedicated and loyal or showing up every day wholeheartedly without fail. Rutherford counties have Rutherford County contractors have a deep history with our county. 1924 uh WR Frasier Rockville was the first contract. 1963 Paulie Paulie Sweder was the first African-American woman contractor in Rutherford County and her son Henry still drives to this day. 1973, James Campbell, Roy Dice, Senior, was recently honored
205in the Hall of Fame for 60 years of service. Linda Ingram, 47, her granddaughter drives. Doug Stevens, 45. His granddaughter drove his grandfather drove um back, I don't have the date. Jackie Espie, 43 years. Janet Johnson, over 40 years. Her daughter is a contractor. Betsy Jernigan, 40 years. Kathy Lane, 40 years, and her uncle has driven for 16. Renee Dean, 30 years. Her mother, Marlene Marryman, drove before her. Sally Brown, 36 years now. Her children hold contracts as well. The list goes on. Cheryl Benfield, Audrey Oip, Ben uh Brenda Blancet, Sandra Davis, Brenda Hall, Brian and Melody Fischer, Joanne White, Philip um Aloise, Tyler Black, Gary Carter, Carrie Irwin, Patty Riggsby, Don Lamb, Roy Gosset, Mike and Cindy Deumbreum and their Sun Drive, Carrie Bobby Boyce, Thurman Williams, Tara Harris. These names reveal and there's
206many others that I don't even have. This is not even half. Their names reveal the passion of the contractors. This is a legacy. This is a family heritage. We aren't just drivers. We are the first people that see your children every morning and the last to make sure that they make it home. In 1970, Rutherford County decided that they could do it on their own and purchase five buses, 66 passengers along with the m a place to maintenance. And within two years, you found out that didn't boast well. This is not about money. It's about praying. It's about paying your people what they're worth. Respect and consideration on their knowledge. These contractors are invaluable. Let's not end this legacy. Let's protect it, invest it, and carry it forward. Pay your contractors what they're worth, not
207just for them, but for our community and our children. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our next our next speaker is Robert Brooks Jr. Thank you, board. Um, first I just want to give honor to my wife who this is her first time speaking and she absolutely blew it out the water. Madame Chair, esteemed board, you know, I'm not here with pitchfork and fire today. I'm here to do something real simple. I just want to read you a couple things. Okay? I notice you notice here, this is my school bus. Well, first, let me do this. I am Robert Brooks and I am a proud school bus driver for Rutherford County. This school bus represents my bus. I have a ton of students who get on my bus. They listen. They do what they're asked
208to do and on Friday they get to reach in the treasure box and they get to pull out whatever they want and they get to go home and that's fully funded by the community that I have just what it is. Um, this week I was gifted by a parent um a a basket and um, God, I said I wasn't going to do that. And she ran to the bus and she said, "Mr. Robert, Mr. Robert, here, happy Easter. I just didn't want this day to go by without you getting this basket." And this bunny was in it, right? And I read the card when I got home and it says this. Hello, Mr. Robert. We don't want to miss the opport the opportunity to let you know that we are very grateful for your responsibility
209and the love you give my daughter every moment. Your patience, your sensitivity, and the security that we feel to know that she is accompanied by someone who cares about her. Thank you very much for taking care of E. A student left me a note the other day. She stuffed it in the pouch at the front of my bus and I didn't know. I found it today. Dear Mr. Robert, you're the best bus driver I ever had because I love when you help me when I have a problem and cheer me on. You always give me a good mood when I'm down. I really love when you let me help you out and make me laugh. Also love when we talk. One of my favorite things is when you tell me what you did in your
210day and I feel like I'm special because you care about me and it makes me happy when you buy us things with your own money. By the way, I was told I was rich the other day. I said, "Girl, please stop." She said, "You are so kind and a good baddie. I don't even know what that means, but I don't, you know, you just go with it. Thank you for everything." And then she said, "I'm sorry that I didn't get you a gift." Cuz she was on the bus when I received the basket. But she said, "I don't have any money." And I said, "Girl, please stop." But then she drew me these pictures, right? Something was said tonight, okay? I appreciate you and the work you've done for this, but you said this, too.
211We have to do what's in the best interest of our kids. And if we say we're going to do what's in the best interest of the kids, listen to their voices. Talk to them. Go see them. Approve this. It's not about the money. It's about the babies. Thank you. Hey, Miss Miss Darby. It's been a long night. U been a very Oh, yes. Did you still need to talk? I'm sorry. I thought Can we reach in the basket? Okay, we've reached in the bus. I got you. Okay, go ahead. I'm so sorry. Go ahead. I'm going to make this pretty quick because we spent a lot of time on the bus contract and I just want to kind of let the board know kind of where the organization is at this point with the proposed
212contract just so that we're all on the same page going into Thursday. I want to thank Mr. Reid and the board and particularly Mr. involved with and all the attentive questions and their you know attention to this ongoing process as we've been in for the last several months. Um but obviously the two primary issues or you know three as we discussed but two uh that have been the focal point of our negotiations are the compensation rate and insurance. Spent a lot of time on insurance. I appreciate that we're trying to work towards a solution, but right now our response to the proposed, you know, $4,000 stipend is it is still not agreeable. We want to continue that discussion to find a way to make it work, but right now the concern on our side by
213imposing these uh you know private contractors with this burden is just disagreeable at this time. The second the second thing is the compensation rates uh as Mr. Reed uh mentioned the board is not tied to the 10% and 2.5% in the subsequent years that he's proposed, but you are tied in by the budgetary constraints of the board. For our purposes, we brought the original number we started with at 35% down to 30. We're happy to keep negotiating over what a agreeable compromise is, but it is not 10% and 2.5. All that to be said is as proposed at this point, the contract uh provided to the board, the contractors will not sign it. They will not sign it this month. They will not sign it in July. We want to stay open to dialogue and
214I understand that there are budgetary issues involved with getting the budget approved, getting it sent to the commission and having it in place in accordance with the laws you have to, you know, abide by. But on behalf of my clients, which are 70% of the contractors as proposed, we are not going to sign this contract. Full stop. We want to continue the discussions to the extent that we have time allowed. If the board decides it is their prerogative to find another solution, but if this is the final contract and there are buses running in August of this year, these contractors won't be driving them. happy to answer further questions and continue the dialogue, but I just wanted the board to be in no uncertain terms where at least the organization's drivers and contractors stand. So,
215thank you for your time and I hope that we continue the discussion. Mr. Darby, move to adjourn. Move to adjourn.