001welcome to the September 3rd work session of the Rutherford County school board I would like to call this meeting to order and the first item up for business is the Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge will be led by Dawn Williams granddaughter Lydia the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which is stand one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all before we have our moment of silence I just would like to say one small thing she did great by the way I'm honored and humbled to serve as chairman of the Rutherford County School Board and I promise to work hard to represent this board in the best way possible and be fair to all I ask for a bit of Grace in the coming weeks as I
002try and get my footing and as we as a board come together with the addition of two new board members together I know we can accomplish great things for our students and our district I'd like just to take a moment of silence please thank you first up we have the um incent agenda sorry approval of the agenda any questions all time to look it over Madam chairman if you don't mind um just since we have two new board members um first congratulations M Maxwell ralis and then Mr vau and Mr VA um for being elected and then also for Miss Maxwell and I think Mr Tidwell you were left off earlier so congratulations for being um reelected as well so look forward to serving with all of you when you are looking at the agenda
003for our staff they have to have items added to the agenda um at least two weeks before the meeting for a board member any board member can add any anything to the agenda that they wish to be added um so each district is a little bit different our policy for the agenda allows anything to be added we ask for those to be into Don Williams office is it a week before the meeting is that correct for board members it's a week before the meeting that way we can add it to the agenda um and have it published before the work session um but staff is a full two weeks so that we have time to get all the information we need so just wanted to Quick clarification on how things get added to the agenda
004can I ask question just about that uh the Retro U applications that show up on here do do we allow people to go ahead and do whatever they're they're planning on doing without the retro means that everything's not in yet uh does that I just wonder about how are we exposed from a liability standpoint if we allow them to go ahead and do things and thank you for the question so typically the um organizations that we approve retroactively are ones that we have worked with in the past um that we have already established relationships with um sometimes it happens that they are just not able to get us all the information that we need um before the deadline to publish for the board agendas so typically those are people that we've worked with we know
005they have the insurance um we know they have treated our facilities well and so that's when we do the retroactive review it just seems like to me that we're pretty well in a lious situation but if something were severe were to happen and we're in that transition and they don't have everything and they hadn't been really approved when you get into lawsuits and lawyers uh nothing against Mr Reid but you know it's just I don't know it just like we're exposed to me it seems like in those situations I I'd really like to see us just until they get everything approved in end just not be allowed to do it it would just I think help protect us from Li liability standpoint and we're happy to do that Mr V whatever the will of the
006board um and Dr Sullivan if that is the directive for our office no longer to approve retroactive reviews they all have to be in within the time allotted we are happy to do that you just let us know we'll discuss that like so would you like to move on to the yeah the agenda yes so then we we have the consent agenda portion um for fees as Mr Von just talked about most of them either have a fee or you have some that say fees are waved and that aligns with policy 3206 and so if fees are waved that goes with policy 3206 in the future we're going to ask to look at that policy during a policy um committee meeting to make sure that we're all in agreement on what needs to have fees
007and what doesn't need to have fees and then the next big portion you're always going to see are a large list of salary supplements so if we're looking at D salary supplements and contract payments these are all school system employees and for the most part or they have gone through a hiring process with background checks you'll see a not to exceed amount beside their name and then these are funded by the schools and their individual accounts so these are not at a cost to the school system ones that you will see as we get into if you'll flip over to page six that has name for non-faculty members you're going to notice throughout the year quite a few that say junior pro and they're all connected to Eagleville Eagleville runs our County Recreation program for
008junior pro the County Rec director um Joey Reid actually works at Eagleville so it's easier for all those funds to run through their books instead of splitting them up at each of the individual schools that host it so when you're looking at this Eagleville does not have a monopoly on all junior pro and who gets to get those stiens everything just happens to run through their books then you will notice non-faculty coaches and these are Under e these are volunteer coaches that again they have have to go through our vetting process they have to have a background check be fingerprinted all of those different types of things before they actually get added to the agenda to approve so can I ask another question just um I don't know I'm sure a lot of coaches and
009stuff like that football you know I know that the high-profile uh programs have quite a few Co coaches is any limit do we have any limitation or is it just depending on how much money they raise and how many they can for it is and it's up to all of those um several years ago it's probably been a decade at this point how much the funds were didn't always come before the school board and so now all funds given to the coaches come before the school board for you to see it won't be out of line for you to see and I don't notice any of them today but along with athletic coaches but some of our Fine Arts people have 20 and 20 $5,000 that they're paid for out of school funds for these
010things as well I just I guess I'm a little bit concerned about some of the schools that don't have the funds you know that's any questions regarding the moving on to the agenda itself okay um we don't have any no public comment no public comment uh guest speakers we have Shelby Smith is she here today I believe so Shelby Smith with yes Tennessee Electric right thank you so much for allowing us a few minutes of your time and thank you for your effort and energy on uh the ruford County school board so we are here to tonight um Bess and I are both former public Educators ourselves um and we have begun our talents at Middle Tennessee Electric which was founded in 1936 and I know many of you in this room are actually members
011of mte so we thank you for that but we were founded on seven principles and one of those is care for our community which is what brings us here tonight middle tenness electric offers many uh Outreach programs in the education field and and I just want to tell you a little bit about some early Elementary to start us off with so treewise is one of our popular programs that takes place in the Spring Middle Tennessee Electric and our vegetation Management Department um kind of take care of that for us but we have certified arborists that go out into the classroom teach about the importance of trees but how that aligns for us is planting those trees in the right places so they don't become problems for our energy grid down the road um every student
012takes home a sapling so there some parental involvement and they go home and they figure out where they want to plant their tree um in their yard the next one we have a couple of read alloud books um so we tie in some literacy skills but we have conversation style read alouds that explain how electricity works at a grade level appropriate way um students will see firsthand the equipment that linemen wear and how PPE comes into play to keep them safe in the workforce um moving on into Elementary we have a couple of programs that are standards based so our basic electricity hits third and fourth grade science standards uh we'll talk about electrons we'll talk about circuit circuits grounding and then they will see a hair raising demonstration using the vandag graph machine which
013everyone loves uh we also have an electric safety demonstration table that we'll bring into the classroom where we'll actually show live wires so they'll get tips on how to use electricity safely but then we'll also go into depth about how electricity is generated and then transmitted into their home so they'll really get kind of a a full understanding of how electricity works um in the middle school and high school level we have one program for sixth grade science standards and that's thermal energy so we'll use um infrared Imaging cameras and we'll also explain to them how that is used in the mte world where we take those into homes and that's where our energy audits are so we'll actually show them how we can save families money on their monthly electric bill using thermal energy
014we have stem grant opportunities through TVA which I brought a few handouts today that I will leave outside so if having teachers in the room that are interested in the stem stem Grant the deadline is September 15th so it's fastly approaching but I'll leave that outside for you to grab we'd love to be a part of career fairs that are happening at the middle and high school levels so please invite us out for those um Elementary they'll probably called Touch a Truck events so we'd love to bring a bucket truck out and then lastly um for me 4H electric Camp takes place every summer and Middle Tennessee Electric offers multiple scholarships for ruford County students to make that accessible to them I'm GNA hand it over to best and she's going to talk a little
015bit more about the Washington youth tourk thank you um I'm best snord gr and I've recently retired from over 30 years of teaching high school English and now I work with te and my job is to promote the Washington youth tour it starts as a um it's open to all Juniors and students are eligible to win an all expense paid trip including travel meals everything to Washington DC um it starts with 900 words or less we give you a prompt and we ask you to ask the students to write a creative short story and the teachers are always excited about who is the best because it's often not the best students because they get to come out with their cre creativity and so it's really really neat um next um every school each school that
016that participates will have two winners each school not the district but each school have two winners and those winners both receive $100 and then they are own entered into the next round and in addition we give all the participating teachers a gift after that we take all the essays from all the schools and we select the top 18 and those students go to um Washington DC for to meet students from All Over America and learn about our government I won this many years ago from my little small town in South Alabama many many years ago suffice to say Jimmy Carter was the president so if there's a wheelchair feel free to go get it for me I know but um I'm from a very small town and we didn't have networking and social media and
017so I graduated and went on to Auburn and when I got to Auburn I I saw these people that I had met up there so it's a really neat way to um network with people and to sight see and to see how our government works so after that we have more opportunities there are more scholarships Tennessee electorate will give a one two and $3,000 scholarship for the top essays in the state and then there are all these other additional things that we have for up to $10,000 scholarships now um let's brag on Rutherford County way to go seven of Rutherford County Schools participated um there were 14 School winners and of the 18 winners that we took to DC s were from your county so that is very impressive and the overall essay contest winner
018was also from your county for our area um I did get to go into several schools and had more scheduled but then the snow happened so next our my goal is to make sure that every student in this a junior at Rutherford County gets this opportunity and actually understands it because like last year the pr was Tennessee co-ops connect well you can imagine their first question was what's a co-op and their second question is what are they connected and so if I can go in and do my little you know like I teach like I used to teach with brainstorming and a little Post-it n notes up on the board and all that stuff and then I go hey y'all we just kind of wrote your thing for you here so I just want to
019make sure that I'm doing my job to get with all the um the high schools in the area Dr Selvin your PR your schools are to be commended thank them for responding to my emails I know how emails get we get too many and so I hope to get into all the schools soon and present I already have a few scheduled and they're all in Rutherford County is that it yes um so again I just like to thank you for your time our ask of the board tonight is if you can help encourage teachers to take advantage of the programs that Middle Tennessee Electric has to offer we would love the opportunity to get out educate our members and especially our students um so thank you so much our information is on the screen if
020anybody has questions that we can follow up with please let us know thank you both for coming those programs sound amazing thank you so much thank you number eight brother forood proud we will do this on Thursday but just so everyone knows this is in recognition of our grow your own teacher graduates in the spring of 2023 3 42 pair of professional apprentices were given the opportunity to gain lure and a master's degree through a partnership between RCS and lipom universities grow your own program over the past two years these apprentices transitioned from educational assistance to teachers of record helping RCS fill many of our special education and ESL positions and again we'll recognize them on Thursday number nine number nine is the Sullivan family scholarship um so I discussed this about a year and
021a half ago to honor one in his fight with leukemia of course that's taken on a different meaning now with loss of our son Asher and so I doubt my family will be here to give that it'll probably just be me discussing it but we have all three of our um honores coming to receive that and that is not from any funding gained through anything from raising money for Asher that's just personal something that I do out of my contract so one to just that will be Thursday this is very special very good thank you number 10 legal all right so these are something that we have just about every board meeting if not every board meeting um prior to 2022 the board would have at a County transfer students on the consent agenda and
022there wasn't a lot of discussion around whether or not students should be accepted or not accepted based on the offenses and so those have been pulled out since um Miss sharp and I at that time pulled those out and we started looking at each one of these individually making a recommendation so you're going to see two things every every time we have at a County transfer student you're going to see the director of school's recommendation but then as a board you have the option to do as always anything that you feel fit so you're not tied to my recommendation the other part is you have a manila folder in front of you that has all the information it Miss Ridley our general counsel will email you usually the Friday before the board meeting and the
023work session with all that information as well so you have a digital copy and then she's able to answer any questions we normally can't answer questions when these are being live streamed because it involves confidential information so if you have questions please check with Miss Ridley beforehand so that gets us to our first one at a County transfer student number one and it's notated by number one in your packet the board's been requested to admit a transfer student from another school system under discipline the student is remained for fighting and possession use of drugs according to policy 6. 318 the board may deny admissions of any student except those in state custody want a student transfers from another school system while under suspension or expulsion director of school's recommendations to deny in this one and
024again if you have any questions let Miss Ridley know number two the board's been requested to admit a transfer student from another school system under discipline student was expelled from making a mass threat on social media according to policy 6. 318 the board may deny missions of any student except those in state custody when a student transfers another school system while under suspension or expulsion and director of school's recommendation is to deny in this situation number three is board's been requested to admit a transfer student from another school system under discipl this student was expelled for participating in a group fight according to policy 6.38 the board may deny admissions of any student except those in state custody when a student transfers from another school system under suspension expulsion and again in this situation director
025of school's recommendations to deny usually it'll say deny accept or accept in place an alternative school number 11 Human Resources this is a yearly memorandum of agreement between retherford County Board of Education and stars Nashville 2425 Stars agree to provide Student Assistance Services sap and enhanced Student Assistance Program esap Services um I had all my notes in front of me let me see what I did with them I got so many papers give me just a second all right so here is where we are with stars and so I'll just read you a little bit of an update the Stars enhanced School assistance program is a school-based mental health treatment program it was created in 2016 to stir the needs of students seeking a higher level support than Stars typically have provided through traditional Student
026Assistance Program through esap students and grades K12 are able to access confidential Mental Health Therapy Services onsite in their own School environment during school hours um so who is eligible it's intended to meet the needs of students who are not eligible to access mental health treatment resources outside of the school eligibility is based primarily on the nature and intensity of the students uh presenting concern and whether there are barriers to accessing similar Services than community community how are referrals done typically they're initiated by school administrators school counselors School social workers or Stars sap counselors students and parents also request to initiate a referral so here are where our therapists and counselors are so for Our Stars therapists Smyrna high schools 5 days a week Rockville High Schools 5 days a week steuart's Creek high schools
0275 days a week seagull high schools four days a week and then Central magnets one day a week Stars counselors then are at Oakland High School 5 days a week Riverdale High School 5 days a week lever High School 5 days a week for funding Stars therapists were funded through Esser now they're part of a grant in Stars counselors or GP for consent because this is always one of the main questions parents have to give consent for people to be able to um participate uh as a school system we are not mental health providers that is not what our school psychologists school counselors any of those individuals do it is completely separate this service is in the school provided by an outside entity that parents have to give permission to be able to participate in
028um Christine is there anything that I missed on that I know you don't want to talk but how long Stars I'm sorry goad I'm sorry excuse me stars is a great program Ian they they do a great service really do and we've had some issues and when we've had issues with someone we they've addressed it and removed that individual so all you can ask for I'm I'm big proponent of stars myself so if Is this different from the wellness class but is includes the wellness class this would be different correct Christine tar she shaking her head yes okay that's where we had issues oh sorry I thought that were um can we get a contract of theou is it not on there it it should be in tab three a copy of it too if
029you need one y okay um is there a in the contract in theou is there language in there when we're dealing with some of the issues that we've encounter and how some of those things are to be addressed I'll go back and review do you know off the top of your head the issue we had at yes we've I'll go back and um print off everybody a copy for this as well that'll be great thank you madam chair yes Mr Arby I bear with me because I have several questions um some of the things that are listed on theou seem to be kind of a repeat of what our guidance counselors do so there's just some concern there too with as much as we're taking time up from their General Studies that we're not repeating
030the same like this says um they'll provide classroom education um to educate students about substance misuse safety and relationships Suicide Prevention mental health awareness healthy decision making and other relevant topics as Christine so eagerly goes to the podium I I'm sorry I will say really quickly this is um one thing we have discussed a lot is the Stars counselors really allow our school counselors to focus on College and Career advisement academic planning and so those don't overlap as much as you may think like we are not the mental health providing business but if you want to clarify some from your counselor lens for the um stars therapists they deal with more um one-on-one individual counseling so those are those students that we as high school counselors see in crisis over and over again so by
031having them in our buildings we are allowed to do more of our academic and college advisement where if we didn't have St therapist that would consume a big chunk of our time and we would not be able to help all the that we currently see um right now the high school counsel ratio is 1 to 41 and the state recommendation is 1 to I'm not so much concerned about the one-on-one um as much as I am because it does list in here more than one place that they can conduct group things which I know was one of the issues we had last year and I and I would like because I read through here and I didn't see anything that spoke specifically to who is kind of overseeing what they are and aren't allowed to
032teach in a group setting and that is an issue we had with one of them last year when we came um when that issue occurred um stars gave us their curriculum they admitted that that counselor um went off script and the principal dealt with it swiftly our board dealt with it and stars dealt with it so it wasn't it was easy just to move forward and the Stars therapist that we got my concern becomes more how do we prevent that from happening again because once a student sees things they can't unsee it so I I would like to see what steps have been put in place differently from the previous to prevent something like that from occurring again I have no reason to think that they wouldn't be opened I mean as she said we
033can put in there some about that we see curriculum administrators are actively involved in anything that goes before a group so I I I think they would be amable to that um another question in here Dr San you might be to speak to this um it it's giving them permission to um conduct student group evaluations and um staff satisfaction surveys and I'm just concerned about whether those evaluations fall under I know we have a policy it does it would all follow under policy of getting parent permission I'm sorry they'd have to get parent permission for any survey okay because it doesn't say that in theou either which is another thing that I if we can maybe even just add that verbiage that that has to be there because right now we're about to sign something
034that not once in here in that particular thing does it talk about needing parent permission so miss Maxwell go ahead Alis oh sorry can is it possible to get theou where it has that language in there where it talks where it does talk about how we're going to deal with issues when a counselor does does go off script and I think um as a parent I would feel better if we were to have preview to the curriculum that is been passed by the district by you guys and that is being approved because even though it was offset it still kind of left it a little bit questionable and so I do agree with Miss Derby that we do need to have some language on the mou and how we address those concerns um because we
035want to be hold them accountable somehow in that sense okay we can get with them I'm sorry I've worked with stars ever since they their Inception and I never had the first minute trouble with anything I mean it was such a phenomenal um they met such a phenomenal need and the thing about it is you know I think in things like this you know it's we need to support them everywh we can cuz I tell you without them there'd be a lot of kids that would just really really suffer and you know I think we need to do everything we can and and again we have to cover ourselves some liability standpoint but also on the other other hand to support organizations like stars that for years ever since 2016 they've been over backwards uh
036to help our kids and uh you know I I just I hate to say anything negative come up against Stars cuz uh I tell you the the service they give to our kids is just uh unmatched anywhere and without them we'd have a lot of kids that have a whole lot of problems seriously any other discussion yes Mr I have one last thing about I just want to get it all out now so we can address it all for Thursday um at the end of this it does say um that the agreement does not create an employer employee relationship or allow either party to exercise control or Direction Over the manner or method by which the other transacts its business Affairs or provides its usual Services that's also concerning to me cuz unless I'm misinterpreting
037it it's kind of saying that they're going to do their usual service and we don't have any authority over that given last year that just makes me really uncomfortable I appreciate what stars did nobody is trying to say it wasn't handled well when we did have an issue but we're also charged with making sure that our students are safe and not being exposed to things they shouldn't be so it seems like we're just nitpicking things you know that don't matter to Hill beans I mean I don't know why these things you mentioned why they're important I mean I I just don't we can discuss it after the meeting if you like because I'm sure Dr solman would rather me not speak publicly about what was shown well I can tell you from experience it's just
038you know I think they do a great job and since Co they've been invaluable to us I think if we can fix the uhou and get the language right and get where we have some we can see everything I think that that will be a good thing for everyone Dr Sullivan yeah okay so I have been in the classroom um everybody knows that I'm subtitute teacher and I've seen a kid in crisis and you're right we shouldn't put the burden on the teacher if they don't have the skill sets to deal with a kid and I'm not going to go into details about a situation that happened a year ago but there was I myself couldn't deal with that at all and I would feel like I would be held liable if I had to
039deal with that I think so if there's a person now inside the building that can handle a kid that's in a crisis and I'm not talking about a I'm talking about serious crisis um the concern is just because we did have that one incident how do we put it in writing where there is accountability if it and keep it from happening um and because there's concern there and um so it's how do we come in the middle somehow and figuring out whether it's that accountability piece in the M you that if there someone does go to right or really it should never happen so I think that's where I'm that's where I'm at but I understand about the whole we need people in there that can handle these crisis because there are crisis that can
040definitely put us in liability um and we need to have people that can handle that with the parental consent as well um because it's protecting the school protecting the child and protecting everyone involved there's got to be some protection there so I don't know what the situation was but it's my understanding it was taken care of and it was it was taken care yeah it was taken care while we be it dead I work to get with stars um I can tell you last year there was discussion um and this is where our previous board members we've discussed this the school system is stuck between a rock and a hard place because somehow mental health became political um our kids need services that our school system can't provide if a parent is not willing to
041give those Services outside of school they are going to continue to bring those issues to the school whatever the will of the majority of the board is of course what we will go with um I definitely understand the concerns that Mr Derby brought up um and I agree with the points that Mr vau discussed they are an invaluable partner there was enough negativity around this last year that there was discussion that our some of our own elected officials um at the County commission level um almost lost this Grant and so we almost lost these we lost two people through volunteer Behavioral Health last year and so if we continue down this road of of turning down potential help our kids are going to be the ones that suffer and that's my concern thank you I'm
042sorry sorry you're good you're totally good um all right so just to clarify I think I I think that uh Stars would be open to these small adjustments to adjust for mou for group activities what that looks like that was where we had the issue uh need to add parent consent to theou and then just making sure that we have the final say I think there those are all small things that I think they would be Dr chess do you think they would be open to something like that yeah not going to be I'm sorry I'm looking at the wrong person you're looking at you I work with them very closely and they are very open when we've had issues with therapists or concerns um they've been very adapt to meeting our needs and meeting
043with princi and counselors so they are very eager to work and want things to work well with their therapist and their counselors and I think that's what we're looking for is something to that works well so thank Youk all right let me get back to where we I'm just going to the agenda online because I don't follow that one all right number two request for two additional nursing staff due to the growing size of our district increase in number of medically fragile students requireing case management tracheostomy care ventilator care two feedings catherization diabetes management the Health Service Department is requesting two new school nurse positions um I will say these are not budgeted currently we hope to well we'll have to go through um they are necessary we have to have them we will should
044get or we will get direct outcome funding which last year is about 4 million that we'll use to shore up some of those uh things that we have to add throughout the year and fast growth funding we don't don't know anything about because of some other things we've discussed previously of what's included in our account but I don't know how we operate without these we just have students who have moved with extreme needs and we probably need more than this and so it may come back before you at a different time to add more but we have Shannon groom here if she she I mean she definitely um we initially went I said I can try to find funding for one and then I told her Friday after another day I said we have to
045have two we probably need more than that now but two I feel com with from a funding aspect yeah I like my comment about that you know you got a fragile student and so you got a large large high school you know that that student pretty much is going to tie up uh one of the nurses all the time just uh and you know gosh I just I feel for the kids and you know but again it really limits the nursing staff and uh you know this is something I feel like we need to support I absolutely agree and I will tell you just from when I was my time working in CDC our numbers are only increasing and in a perfect world I would like to give all the high schools one nurse to
046see just the average students that have CS whatever and then a nurse for the medical a grad funding isn't fair but in a perfect world that's where I think we need to be because our numbers of medically fragile students are only increasing and they're increasing as our population increasing as well I ma um Dr or maybe Shannon can speak to this um the two additional nursing staff are they um are they for acute nursing or is it LSN no it's Oh Ellen I think I mixed up the acronym but right now the two that we are are asking for one would go to Blackman Elementary um Blackman Elementary has so many medically fragile students that she's not able to see walk-in visits like um like you were mentioning her her whole day is consumed with
047scheduled appointments wow um we're having similar issues at Rockville High School and Riverdale High School just because of the number of students those nurses are also struggling to see walk-in visits because they're so busy with just the scheduled appointments for the the feedings the Cals the diabetic visits oh wow so that second one would split time between Rockell and Riverdale Rockell and Riverdale both each just have one registered nurse there okay wow it is an issue and that is where it is hard when the legislature passes laws just strictly on the number of kids like Blackman Elementary for example by a student population has dropped 147 kids since last year but their needs for medically fragile student have increased so it's not just a strict student nurse ratio I have one more question so do
048you do you think and in your opinion um I know with um with n with teachers because we had hard to fill spots and we open it up to retirees to come back do you think that should be an option on the table legislatively to ask retiring nurses that want to work part-time who have an active license that are cute to help with um with this type of issue as we continue to grow we we do have a couple of retired nurses that have come back to work as sub nurses for us that's what we are using right now to fill these gaps I um I have an allotted number of hours that I can use for sub nurses so we do have several sub or retired nurses they retire from Rutherford County Schools um
049School nursing is such a special specialized um niche of nursing you um need a lot of training to be the only healthc care professional in the building and be able to make very quick decisions so we're real hesitant to take people that have not had a lot of training just in school health to step into our schools but when you start having two nurses in a building then that second nurse um definitely could be want someone that's coming in okay I was just curious about your opinion on that M thank you what is Dr Sullivan what's the ratio the state law ratio for students one to 750 1 to 750 I think there was some talk before about going to 500 maybe I have no idea how we would fund it yes yes if they
050yeah they did that so is there a way um for you to without recreating the wheel without creating a bunch of paperwork for you to put together something that we could take to our legislators and see hey this is what we're seeing you know we are some of I mean we've talked about nurses before when the pay and everything came up these are some of the only medical professionals that our our students see um and some of our students if they're diabetic they may see that nurse three times a day to calculate their their meds um so is there something that you could give us that's not too much trouble and honorous on your part that we could take to our state reps and say Here's here's what what we're seeing um so we can
051move them off the needle to supply more nurses thank you thank you m shark that is very if don't you know people have to understand these fragile uh students uh one event could cost their life and I think that's what a lot of people don't realize is these kids are dramatically fragile I mean they have such severe uh problems that uh one event you know without proper care and it could be cost for life on I'll add one of ours is we are probably within one of being to that ratio one or two to being to that ratio of 7 1 to 750 our issue comes into we provide a nurse at each campus and so if you have a school like Daniel mcke or campus school or mcfaden or small schools rightfully so have
052to have a nurse there at all times but that lowers the ratio because then your big high schools may only have one and a half and they're well over the ratio but it's a district ratio yes do you know if um there's a way to get the percentage of the medically fragile students in each school I'm wondering if legis L that might be a good way to kind of tie it in schools that have x% or more of medically fragile students they would get a state funded extra nurse maybe so do you guys is there a way to kind of get those percentages yes I can get that yep they track everything y we have lots of data sounds sounds good any more discuss let's move to instruction all right so number 12 instruction ESL
053department so this is a little bit of sad news so this is last year we budgeted for a secretary Administrative Assistant for West Brooks Woods we don't anticipate opening that and so we would like to move this position to help with the ESL Department while we are trying to get that school open to deciding what we're doing with that so the ESL department does not currently have an administrative assistance serving the fastest growing student population rather for County Schools we've opened the 2425 school year with over 800 Els workloads become heavy in the areas of Skyward over 800 students needed to be coded individual learning plans and TN pulse over 400 transfers need to be completed today and facilitating over 1,000 families that need assistance with registration at our ESL welcoming Center in Smyrna a
054position for the administrative assistant was allocated and budgeted for Westbrooks Woods Academy that we would like to transfer to the ESL department for this school year this would not impact the budget because it be a transfer of a position and where this has become even more necessary is that TN pulse is what we use to enter all of the student information that has to have the individual learning plan for English as a second language students a student's learning English as a second language and this is directly tight to funding and so if we don't have this in by a certain period then we don't get funding for that student even though we've been serving them what has been frustrating for us two years in a row we've had it to where that information has not
055worked on time from the state department um luckily we have an an end with one of our finance director's wife who was over that portion so we were working with them to make sure that we we uh get that information and we did get an extension for how many was it 30 more days so we have an extension last year our legislators had to get involved to get us an extension so if we don't get another extension this year then we will reach out to you all to let you start ringing the phones off the hook um because that is to the tune of I believe it was $200,000 a day roughly was that sound right $200,000 a day in funding we would lose if this isn't input correctly it's a huge number with the
056number of Els we have any other discussion number 13 engineering and discuss construction request for stadium Press Box lettering at Blackman High School principal Justin Smith is requesting to provide an install lettering for the back of the Press Box at football stadium the cost for this project is $7,500 will be funded by Athletic Field rental funds this project is no cost to the board engineering constructions reviewed the request and has no objection any discussion 14 contract agreement between MTSU and RCS so this is continuing all of our schools going through this in dur different times and avenues but MTSU seeks to be an Oakland High School sponsor MTSU proposes a contract in which MTSU May sponsor activities and place advertising at Oakland High School MTSU requests permission to place signage which is detailed in the
057contract attachment a MTSU proposes to pay 5,000 per year for 5 years contract terms are July 1st 2024 through June 30th 2029 M Ridley are these the same for every school the contract terms I believe they are the amounts y I really like that MTSU does this very nice thing any discussion 15 library book review and I hope everyone is reading so final decisions due by September 19th 2024 for the following titles and again these were challenged under the obscenity law so decision needs to be policy to the board on what to do with these and any level of actions can be taken at that time any discussion comment 16 Ins Insurance so a couple things um we had our next meeting today and you Dr Anthony you can hit on this or Brian whoever
058wants to we had our meeting today we budgeted um with about $700,000 roughly of wiggle room this year to to be able to incorporate increased costes costs costs are much more than that it's a little bit over $3 million if we were to take all of that what we met with the insurance committee and I will tell you for employees we would love to be able to cover all of it um we've talked about this for the last couple years is that we have two really scales that we balance one is percentage raises and then one is benefits our benefits are over 55 million just for this uh Insurance alone that we budget about 54 million which is 10% of our budget which is astronomical for a size of our school system at the same
059time time we have to hit $50,000 for beginning teachers by 2026 and so our ability to put more towards insurance is limited by our requirement to hit that $50,000 thres threshold so I know our insurance committee is meeting right now and doesn't necessarily love the options we've given them um but we've started with this is the most as a district that we can afford uh we can afford about to take a 25% or so um portion of the whole 100% and we are still going to have to come back with a budget amendment towards the end of the year and figure out who took what plans and have to put money into it just like we did last year but that is about the highest we can cover from the school system while still being
060able to give that minimum we talked about last year of a 2% raise this coming school year sorry if I just stole yall slender is there was that cover it I'm not a member of the meeting but you have my Thunder so you're that's pretty much the whole thing yes you got it yes and Brian um see Brian ran for our new board members and I'll do it during director's update but um we have two Brian Brian ran is our Chief Financial Officer and behind him is our HR Director Brian Sears and then Dr Anthony's over HR so that's the team really working on that any questions next is the financial report uh financial report we'll do Thursday okay director's update I'll do Thursday as well okay uh Tennessee legislative Network update um you have
061to assign those people I'll have to assign I will I will get that done promptly 21 General discussion Miss Maxwell yes I just want to say um I just want to welcome personally um Mr s and uh Mr Butch Von to the board and um really excited to be working with you guys and I know we're going to do amazing great things alongside with the chair um CLA Maxwell I want to uh second what M Rosales said it's look forward to working with you both question yes Mr bot I want to Circle back um 15 one is the policy no read pieces specif policy and the director teach Library [Music] there is that change on August 8th because of a change in state law so Dr Chastain Mr re yall may have to help me
062on some of this help I will so there are it's the age appropriate materials Act of 2022 which put in place a way for certain individuals to challenge the appropriateness of a library book sure that put in place last year we had a District Library Review Committee that consisted of a board appointed members in August I believe is the way the policy set read and they met and I believe we had four or five challenges last year um through that at the same time there is another state law um for anything that involves education it's Tennessee code annotated and it's chapter 49 for education but but there's another one in Tennessee code annotated 39 which deals with public welfare and that is under the obscenity law and so we received challenges under the obscenity law
063that these books are not to be in school system and so it was a little bit both Avenues of is it age appropriate or is it obscene and so the policy has been changed this last year to they updated the age of appropriateness act and change some of the wording with TCA 39 which is the obscenity law and under that we have a policy that now if it is challenged under age appropriate instead of the district review it goes to the school level so the school has an ad hoc committee they have 30 days to make a decision recommendation to me and then the board ultimately has 60 days each school if it's challenged under that age appropriateness so they have a so it's got to go through these steps that's what I'm want you
064to walk me through unless something is challenged under absin which these were under obscenity it comes straight to the board does not go back correct does no okay thank you y Dr Chastain anything to clarify that anything else under General discussion make a motion we journ we have a second we're adjourned