001please oh yeah that mac and cheese because I knew I wouldn't be able to just go off like a live or something about a year that's what I'm doing I'm sorry good evening welcome to the Wednesday September 6 um meeting regular meeting of the board of public education [Music] um right now we will have our opening oh let me first ask if our board secretary has it is our our meeting has been posted uh and we will now have our opening exercises and for our national anthem today there they are good evening I am happy to present a subset of the Skylight Jazz fans this evening who will be performing the national anthem Skylight jazz band is the premiere performing jazz band at Savannah Arts Academy the group has a rich history and has traveled
002the globe representing Savannah and has won many awards and receive numerous accolades they have performed in China London and Washington DC and have released several CDs and recordings the band has been one of 12 selected to participate in swing Central one of the top two Jazz competitions in the country members of this band have gone on to attend prestigious Collegiate music programs such as Oberlin University and Indiana University their director Brian again is in his 26th year as a music educator in his third year at Savannah Arts Academy in addition to teaching five performing ensembles at the Academy he is active as an adjudicator clinician and conductor for regional and District honor bands he is sought out as a clinician nationally and internationally he is an active freelance musician performing at many of our local
003churches and venues including multiple performances with the Savannah still harmonic and Hilton Head symphony orchestras would you please join me in standing for the playing of the national anthem and remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign let's hear it again for the Skylight jazz band [Applause] I will now accept a motion to approve the agenda make a motion to approve the agenda with the following revisions deletion of item 6.04 board policy jfgb concussion for your review and item 7.14 m24088 Savannah Music Festival Soul Source edition of item 7.26 for E3 K-12 professional service agreement ls3p Associates change order number 32 and revision of item 9.13 bid 2405 EV charging Center gamble Road for funding source account line and I'll accept a second removed and seconded all in favor
004thank you now make a motion to approve the amended agenda that the board approved the motion to amend the agenda with the addition of item 9.13 budget transfer fund 308 EV charging Center gamble Road 9.14 budget transfer fund 100 EV charging Center gamble Road it's been seconded all in favor hey our announcements I do have one thing to announce the school district has reviewed the charter renewal application for Susie King Taylor Community School based on careful evaluation the renewal committee found the application required additional clarification and supplemental information before the committee could provide a recommendation the Susie King Taylor community school has received this information and subsequently issued a letter to the superintendent granting the district's 90 additional days beyond the initial 90-day review period to finalize the review of the renewal position our announcements
005uh superintendents professionals Senate meeting is uh Thursday September 14th at Hubert Middle School the okay I don't know what these did Tony thank you very much you guys got to get these anagrams to me teacher of the year flag raising ceremony will be Tuesday September 19th 2023 at the STEM Academy at Bartlett Middle School State superintendent Woods will visit September uh Friday September 22nd at a B Williams Elementary School and the board accountability committee's Equity subcommittee meeting is Tuesday September September 26 here at Whitney now we have some remembrances well we have one we have um Ms I don't know Mr Jamila morale uh parapro at Gadsden Elementary School date of passing August 26 2023 if we could all stand for a moment of silence and now we will have our superintendent's report thank you
006excited to be able to provide to our audience and our staff today my first recognition of student of the month our featured student of the month for August is fifth grader at White Bluff Elementary School she's no stranger to academic achievement with an impressive record of high honor roll for all four quarters from her fourth grade year she has been a media Festival winner at the local and state level for the last two years in a row her nominator says this student is the quote unquote total package she exemplifies the behavior characteristics we expect of all of our students she is responsible respectful trustworthy and caring and demonstrates excellent citizenship and confidence in herself she also demonstrates empathy for the students in her classroom and helps to create a welcoming and caring environment wherever she
007is this particular student excels in all subject areas though she will tell you her favorite subject is math she works very hard and is highly motivated to do well in school so you all must be wondering who this student is with such a strong profile unfortunately she is not able to be with us tonight but her name is Chloe Moss we I am proud to announce that Chloe is our August September 2023 um student of the month we like to congratulate her and her family and the faculty and staff at White Bluff special thanks to her nominator Miss Tara wood who is the lead gifted teacher and I'm not sure if that teacher is here to accept our tokens [Applause] thank you thank you so much so nice to meet you thank you very much
008nominated of course yeah thank you Chloe is taking home multiple gifts for many of our Community Partners tonight Members First Credit Union Union advertising Specialties Georgia United Credit Union J.E Dunn Construction Savannah State University gulstering plant Riverside District gelato Savannah Music Festival and Bahama Joe's Chloe and students in her English language arts class will also be receiving printed copies of her favorite book sponsored by E shaver books sellers lastly Chloe will take home a portrait by upscale photography provided by Savannah Chatham County Public Schools again congratulations Chloe secondly I would like to move on to our good news report for the month there are many causes for Applause first I'd like to say thank you to a new partnership between the district Loop it up Savannah and big green a national non-profit that works with
009our schools on gardening programs 20 Savannah Chatham County Public School System schools will receive supplies and funds for school Gardens the gardens serve many benefits including academics for stem applications health and nutrition social emotional well-being and much much more the community of Bloomingdale turned out despite weather on August the 15th to say a final farewell to their old Bloomingdale Elementary School as construction for the new facility is underway while the demolition of the facility began some time ago the final Wall came tumbling down and attendants were able to take a memorial brick home we continue to tell our story with great events just like this one that brings our staff and Community together to celebrate eastbloss progress thanks to all of your hard work in organizing this special event also kudos to our student filmmakers
010from Savannah Arts Academy who have been nominated for this year's All-American high school film festival in New York City it's the largest High School film festival in the world and a panel of Industry judges selecting the best films of the year our Savannah Arts Academy had many had more films accepted than any other school in the state and was one of the top programs for nominations in the nation you can find links to all of their films on our website also a big thank you to our friends at Chatham Parkway Subaru for Their donation of classroom supplies to Haven Elementary School Subaru partners with adopt a classroom.org for Subaru loves learning month and presented teachers with boxes of supplies and a cash award to purchase additional materials 25 students from five Savannah County Savannah Chatham
011County Public School System high schools including students at Jenkins Islands Woodville Tompkins New Hampstead and Windsor Forest have earned academic honors from the College Board National recognition programs these programs celebrate strong academic performance and provide an opportunity for our students to share their outstanding abilities with colleges and scholarship programs that are seeking to recruit diverse and talented students one final announcement and reason to celebrate we want to offer our congratulations and recognition to one of our very own Mr Raymond Ray so I'll ask him to stand Mr Ray received the coveted Jim Puckett outstanding educator award from the Georgia Association of educational leaders this award is in recognition of his service on the Gael board of directors and was presented on behalf of the Georgia Association of school Personnel administrators this certainly speaks volumes about
012the high level of respect He commands from his colleagues and fellow educational leaders throughout the state of Georgia these accomplishments truly highlight the extensive Talent we have here in our school system and the clear dedication our leaders have for our profession I'd like to extend on behalf of the board and staff congratulations to Mr Ray and would love to invite Mr Ray to the Horseshoe for a formal acknowledgment [Applause] thank you that concludes my good news and student of the month recognition thank you very much now have a report from professional Senate good evening um the report um is kind of short this month we have our first meeting next week we did sit down with Kurt and we fleshed it out and we're excited I've worked with um Sherry Goldman and Beth whale and
013they are wonderful to help and assist us so we can't wait to see all the wonderful work we're going to this year Dr Watts thank you for meeting with me and helping us plan it as we move forward pleasure thank you very much before we go any further I do have to make an announcement uh David bringman uh had a medical emergency and he sent this message he says he had a medical emergency no worries and have already been worked on by four Johnson two Beach and one Savannah High graduate all right uh next we have board matters moving along on your agenda thank you board president for Board of Education matters we do have a few policy reads for you item 6.01 6.02 and 6.03 are all part of our four-year policy review process
014board policy KN complaints under 6.01 we have some policy components that were updated and a recommendation to delete the regulation board policy Leba parental involvement item 6.02 also policy revisions to bring that policy in line with the intended use under title Title 1 schools and federal use of funds and the regulation recommendation to delete board policy abcda is board member unexpired term under the four-year review there are no recommendations for policy changes subject to the board's final review We would like to consider this one completed under the 4 for your review process so are these second readings these are all first readers okay thank you we do have someone here to speak on uh the Leba parental involvement Christina magana hello everyone thank you for having me speak today I wanted to speak in regards
015to parent involvement in regards to parent involvement especially concerning the lack of parent involvement related to the changes being made at Groves High School at this moment as the events of the past few weeks have played out in regards to Groves High School we have sensed a lot of unrest in the community and a huge lack of transparency from the school district the biggest concern we see is how quickly all of this change all these changes took place we're glad that there are more esol schools becoming available for these students however this process feels very rushed there was a meeting that was pushed forward and changed to Virtual because of the hurricane I understand it's short notice we need to make sure everyone's safe but at the same time it's a very major change and
016parents deserve more than 24-hour notice of this virtual meeting that is impacting their students many parents did not know about this updated meeting because they did not receive any information about it until the very last minute and my question is why is this all so rushed especially with the hurricane and Labor Day holiday affecting the time spent in the schools affect affecting time spent in school why does it seem that the parents were not included in this decision making the meetings for the opening K-12 School those happened over the summer the school has not yet opened yet here we are we have not discussed with the parents over the summer why these changes are happening so rapidly in the virtual meeting it was mentioned that this planning started over early last year so this should
017have been introduced at the beginning of the school year and a lot of parents feel very left out of the decision-making process um we need to be giving our students more time to prepare and making sure that there is Staff also prepared and trained and also enough esol staff I know that at least one of the the schools that the students have been moved to does not have an esol teacher yet at that location and then we are also dealing with students that do not have access to Chromebooks they were for some reason given back to the school we're also dealing with student students that do not have a math or science or history class that they need to be in because the classes are full why was this not worked out ahead of time
018so although we are glad that ESL students will have more options for high school this definitely needs to be reconsidered rushing so fast and we just approved more funding within the district to assist these students in having more resources so please consider parents and especially making sure that resources and information are available in Spanish when making such big decisions for these parents and students thank you so much thank you Mr hadaker thank you sir moving along in your agenda subject to any other comments on the policy actions of 6.01 6.02 and 6.03 which again are first readers hearing non-item 6.04 as a deletion we will plan to continue to work on the policies surrounding concussion and bring that back for the board's first reader in October item 6.05 is an action item for the board
019of public education as each year the Georgia Boards of Education across the state are required to submit an annual local board governance training plan the 2223 boards training plan has been revised and subject to completion with the verification of hours completed by our Board of public education will be submitted officially to the state for their records before that the board must officially adopt it at a public meeting thus be it resolved that the 2022-2023 revised local board governance training plan be adopted to coincide with the FY 2223 local board governance annual training plan report which will again be submitted to the State Department of Education by September 30th oh I miss asking Pharrell thank you I move that we accept the fiscal year 20 to 23 local board governance training report and revised 22-23 training
020plan as well as the fiscal year 23-24 local board governance training plan these are items 6.05 and 6.06 been moved and seconded any discussion all in favor thank you with the approval of those two action items in your board of public education matters that completes this section of your agenda turning the agenda back over to the board president for the consent agenda vote thank you uh I would entertain a motion to accept our consent agenda let's move by Miss Hall and seconded by Ms hoskins-brown any discussion all in favor of the consent agenda uh all opposed all I'm staining thank you very much okay I'll also accept a motion to approve uh the minutes for the meeting held on August 9th sorry let's focused amazing oh that's right I'm sorry it's in consent and we're
021moving on [Laughter] by the way it's so good to see so many people here tonight thank you um we are now going to have a report from uh academics on our gmas and academic strategies good evening so this report is on the Georgia Milestones assessment system and some of our subgroup data and all four core content areas I would remind you that there was an extensive executive summary that was shared with you that encompasses all of our scores to include that subgroup data some high points are that the district did show Improvement in ela across all three grade bands elementary middle and high school the same could be said for mathematics with the exception of high school where we saw a decrease in algebra 1. also we saw gains in elementary science middle school science
022high school biology and middle and high school social studies as well our next steps our tiered support structure for schools we have tiered schools based on the Content Mastery scores and we provide layered support based on their needs if a school is carrying a state designation and we currently have six schools that are then of course they are provided support from the state we also have increased academic Affairs support visits per month there's required professional learning there is actually focused monitoring of the school Improvement plan to include monitoring their 45-day action plans that lead them to accomplishing the goals in their school Improvement plan and there's a keen focus on leadership coaching with the leaders of the building the principals assistant principals academic coaches and Lead teachers also for those schools that may be in
023a different tier and they're maintaining their status and they're growing and excelling we require three-year teaching and learning Innovation plan to support how they will continue to grow and be more creative our increased school-based support for teaching and learning A literacy Effectiveness officer we are currently in the process of advertising for that position also providing district-wide leadership and our K-12 literacy curriculum and instruction that is aligned to the science of reading with a focus on K5 also we have added specialized instruction program managers who will have an instructional focus and push into class into schools to support our teachers and leaders as it relates to our students with disabilities and we've expanded our English language learner's support so additional next steps we have District data team meetings now our first was actually yesterday this is
024a collaboration with academic Affairs and the division of data and accountability where we're examining School level School level data and then we're making decisions to support those schools based on that current data we meet once a month and we work on different strategies and support structures to provide to those schools schools continue to have their internal data meetings bi-weekly and weekly we've also expanded our professional learning this year as it relates to the science of reading and pending board approval will be engaging in language Essentials for teachers of reading and spelling for our elementary schools known as letters we continue to roll out the new math curriculum with Hands-On problem solving task oriented professional learning and our social studies and science remains literacy focused we have mathematics focused and content focused questions any questions I
025don't have a question but um because this is such a high profile topic that a lot of people really look at what gmas means and where our district is I just want to reiterate that there's a lot of additional information that is available on board docs on our website if you want to read more detail about our scores and also point to our August informal board meeting we had an excellent in-depth presentation about gmas and in particular with the reading scores mean because there's two components and understanding the complexity behind those scores I think is really important especially as a parent so just want to make sure the community is aware that those resources are available thank you for the presentation thank you Miss Hall I just want to focus on the letters part of
026your predation because my understanding is that it's going to emphasize teacher training and a lot of the training that we wished our graduates from college would get before entering into the education field that's missing hopefully this is going to help so they will get intense training on this is that your understanding that is correct it is a two-year program it encompasses eight units and our teachers will spend the first year with the first four units and receive about 75 to 80 hours of training and that is professional learning as it relates to how to teach reading and so that's what they will receive and it also teaches them when children are not successful then how do I intervene and provide remediation and supports to help that student be successful thank you thank you uh Miss
027Howard Hall thank you could just share maybe just a few strategies how you intend to engage the parents with them regarding the science of reading since that's the buzzword and that's been mandated through the state so what strategies do you have in mind to engage our parents as well as the community the community so again we will continue with our literacy task force they become more of an Advisory Board now and as you know they have strategies that will reach out to parents as well in terms of working with our Communications Department who sits on a part of that advisor that literary Advisory Board we also will capitalize on using our parent facilitators at our schools and continue those meetings but you will see that when they have literacy nights now that Focus will shift
028and change so that it is rooted in the science of reading particularly around the strategies that our teachers will be receiving and we will continue to provide our parent workshops we started last year with our first and we're looking to continue you those Provisions the Saturday workshops so that parents can actually come in and learn strategies on how to work with your student at home and we will continue to encourage them bring your child so you can practice and receive real-time feedback before anyone else thank you very much thank you good evening so sorry uh now we will have a report from one of our charter schools good evening I'm Barry Lawless the executive director of Savannah Classical Academy and there's five charters in the in the district for our for our viewers out there
029I'm the one that got the short end the Short Straw and so that's why I'm presenting tonight but all the charters have things to report as well and they have strategies so this is not a in concert in all of the strategies that they have in their charter schools so really quickly you've heard about the the GMAT scores the Milestone assessments are back in um a couple of slides over grades three five and eight those are some transition areas that are very important to us we're K through 12 school so this is just kind of where we fell the blue bars are Savannah Classical Academy readings on the left Ela in the middle and math on the right compared to the overall County school as well as the state of Georgia scores on how students
030perform this past school year and then there's fifth grade reading 93.1 percent it's very important it's the north star of the district right now so we're very paying close attention to that and then reading for eighth grade eighth grade has multiple assessments these are the assessments across eighth grade reading social studies goes hand in hand you can see some have achievement in those Ela math science so eighth grade did really well high school we had one common assessment with the county school traditional schools and that's algebra and that's how our algebra students scored compared to the system in the state and then real quickly some trend lines this is how our students were progressing across the grade levels from third grade to eighth grade if you'll see that we have a dip in fifth grade
031in math but overall it's a positive trend line across the grade levels and then uh just a cheat sheet that kind of shows the difference between where we were from FY 23 and then the difference for this past school year across all the grade levels uh lots of green where we had some gains a lot of double digit gains some incremental incremental losses in third grade reading and eighth grade math and then some very significant losses in fourth grade and then a little bit in fifth grade as well we know we have to attack those things this year all right so um what are some things that helped us have those great outcomes and so I'm just going to talk about a few of those you're all welcome to come visit us anytime we like
032to host people we've had people in all week visiting with us so we like to have those those visitors come in and seeing what we're about but I would say one of the best things that we have looked at is getting and drilling down into teachers grade books and talking about grade disparity and great disparity exists when a child has a grade in a course that is not congruent with or supported by their summative assessment whether it's a teacher made summative assessment or a vendor made or state assessment and so we really had a goal last year of making sure that we didn't have great disparity so our belief at our school is If the child scores an 80 in the course they should be ready to go on to the next grade level and
033they should score proficient on whatever that summative assessment is our goal was to be less than 10 percent grade disparity last year after we got our results in and ran that for students that scored an 80 or above less than two percent of our students 1.7 percent of our students did not pass the state assessment if we bump that up to 85 less than half a percent of students did not score well did not score proficient on the state assessment so when we were talking with our parents we're really telling parents that 80 is enough content to master and be successful and go on for the next content grade level whatever it is but below an 80 there's some concerns and some holes you're passing at 70 but between 70 and 79 there are some
034concerns and things we need to work on to make sure you're supported at your next grade level and you may not be successful on those summative assessments when you're seeing all the content at once grade reporting for us we have a rolling average we do not average quarters or semesters and we do that because if you are uh not doing well in the course then you have an opportunity later in the course if we were through some remediation and different things you can bring that grade up because it's a constant average and that's a lot easier for parents to understand when you start trying to talk about averaging averages and students students understand it better that way when they know that the grade I make today can impact my average from a month ago up
035or down and so we like that and then the teaching and reporting of reading we started uh last year parsing out the reading grade and it's not part of ela and we report that specifically back to parents on reading this year our objective is to be a little bit more transparent or that and prescriptive with parents and we're fleshing that out with our instructional staff and our teachers right now they're doing a wonderful job but when we roll when we report out to parents instead of just a grade on reading we want to give them a descriptor that talks about right now we're looking at accuracy fluency and comprehension and giving a score at each one of those so when a parent says how do I help my child with reading because commonly we hear
036my child can read and they can but they may not be reading at grade level and fluency and comprehension as you know is two different things and so we want to be able to tell parents yes your child is reading that's awesome but they may not be at the grade level they need to be or they they have words they have the coding but they will need to work on their comprehension and so we're working on a way to try to report that out in a more descriptive manner versus just a grade to um to parents and then we start departmentalizing teachers starting in third grade so we don't have a third grade T third fourth and fifth do not teach all the content areas that only happens in K one and two and this
037year we've parsed that out even more in fourth and fifth grade those T they share teachers and so those teachers have one content area so both fourth grade and fifth grade see the same math teacher and so what that does it eliminates the teacher having to carry a workload and build lessons for multiple courses like high school you know High School teachers are very much departmentalized and they work on one element of curriculum one one academic area or one course such as science math and so we're doing the same thing in fourth and fifth grade and we're hoping that's going to help us with our fourth and fifth grade dips by having that specialization of those teachers um our course assessment development so we had all of our this is our second year of training
038where we had the university system of the University of Georgia's Assessment Center come in and train our teachers on how to build assessments and we start with assessment blueprints gmas has assessment blueprints that are released in the public domain our assessment blueprints are similar to those where teachers first have to determine what is it they want their children to know what standards are going to be on there what depth of knowledge that's the rigor of the questions and what there's if a selective response if it's a constructive response they have to build all of that in a blueprint before any instruction happens in the classroom and what that does it if you're a quality teacher which I don't think we don't have any non-quality teachers in our County everyone's here for the right reasons so
039if the teacher Builds an assessment blueprint and builds that road map lesson plans become less important because every teacher knows I want you to know this based off my blueprint it doesn't we're not checking lesson plans anymore because the teacher is going to instruct based on what they want them to know off the approved assessment assessment blueprint when we're building some of these assessments we have benchmarks I'll talk with those in just a minute teachers are on the part of that but they don't get to see those benchmarks until after they're built um again lesson plans are something that I know it's an Achilles heel for some for some teachers and we have given up on the lesson plan format and all of that assessments and assessment blueprints really Drive what we're looking at in
040in the school and I know this is a lot of numbers and boxes and all that stuff but this is an assessment blueprint this is what a teacher would build before they give a classroom assessment this is also the blueprint that we would build before we give our benchmark assessments and I'm going to talk about those so this tells us what standards how many questions what's the depth of knowledge how many depth of Knowledge Questions will be dok one two or three and then how many are selective response how many may be short short answer or an essay question and all of that drives what the teacher is going to do to get those children ready for what the teacher said they want them to be able to be proficient on so benchmarks this is
041our third year of our self-developed benchmarks so the first year we did our benchmarks we realized hey we need some training on building assessments and that's when we brought in the UGA to start training last year and now we're continuing with that so our blueprints last year our benchmarks last year were very good indicators throughout the year of how our children were going to track at the end of the year when they took those summative assessments whether it's an internal one or a state one and it's almost identical and we look at the trend line on those blueprints uh benchmark assessments teachers do not see benchmark assessments they do help build them they sit with our test Builder which is our chief academic officer and they talk about the questions and all those things that
042need to be on there but they do not get to see the questions until they're ministered because we don't want to have any bias in the in the test building process for those benchmarks because you know well maybe I didn't cover that as well but it's based off pacing and the teacher building the blueprint and then we have an extra hour in our school day where we have support and enrichment for students students are scheduled based off grade books remember we talk about how important grades are and grade books being current so parents and teachers students all have a current understanding of where a child is in the class so we do not go to teachers and say hey does Barry need enrichment because he's doing just well or does Barry need to be in
043support because he's not doing well in the class we don't go to teachers for that we go to the teacher's grade book whatever the grade book tells us if they're scoring less than a 75 they're going to earn to some sort of support if we have room we'll bump that up to 79 and pull more children into support if they're doing well then they're going to get to pick from some enrichment opportunities and that can be anything from you're going to work on some soccer skills or you're going to go into the kitchen and work with culinary arts and make cookies so there are some incentives to get out of support when you have these enrichment opportunities and great books again they have to be at current accurate and no grades are omitted in our
044grade books and we don't put anything in our Gradebook that have any that has anything to do with behavior we don't penalize children for Behavior or absences for grades if you're absent the penalty for doing the work is you still have to do the work for missing the work you still have to do it so it gives us a better picture and then student assessment stamina and familiarization so we use DRC Beacon that's the state tool that's developed to help schools prepare children for gmastiffs in the same format and they can see how that assessment is doing all of our materials that we bought for our teachers has some kind of online component and we load that into our online assessment so students are taking classroom assessments online so they're familiar with that process and
045it helps build stamina when they have to take those State tests or summative assessments all of our teachers have after school tutoring sessions at least one many of our teachers have more than that and we do that again part of our school day all students schools do this but it's worth mentioning protection of instructional time we really minimize our any kind of disruptions to instructional time all schools do that but it is so important that we don't interrupt those things and then if we have common classes we have two second grade teachers teaching social studies both of them have common pacing and common expectations and common assessments so it should be the same rigor expectations and outcomes no matter which teacher you have all right this is a new one we started last year and
046it's starting to pick up even more Varsity Tutors is a vendor that we've hired that's in the post-secondary world it's been out for a long time we stipulated in our contract with them they have to be U.S based uh certified teachers U.S certified teachers and it's 24 7 support for children for their classroom work so it's um if you're at home and you're working on something I know I have two children and some of the things that are taught now is different than the way I was taught and so the student can take a picture upload the homework assignment upload the problem the question the essay whatever it is they will give feedback on that 24 7 Live support that's U.S certified teacher will come on and help that children that help that child or
047the parent with whatever that assignment is so if they're doing an essay they're having to write something they will not rewrite it but they will get annotated and get feedback and then they'll help them through math problems and different things there's also enrichment opportunities in that same same contract we have with them so there's live sessions that students can log on to and see it's like Khan Academy I'm sure you're familiar with that where you have an instructor comes on live and they teach something and then there's some recorded things and there's enrichment as well as academic things in there and then technology we do have technology that we could deploy one to one we do not do it that way we monitor closely how much technology is used in the classroom and we typically
048do not like technology to be used more than twice a week in the classroom for instructional purposes however I do have a uh four fifth grade math teacher who has begged me to let me try this Mr Lawless with these centers and we're trying that where she has students working in Khan Academy and different things while she's putting them in Center so we're we're trying that and I think there's some positive outcomes for there I visited that classroom today instruction materials all students have hard copy and instructional materials for their courses we believe in having them giving those books and resources that they can take home and teachers have them as well all those are aligned to our content standards and our assessment banks are aligned to the Georgia content standards all of our hard
049copies also have some kind of online support to help teachers and students home so if there's additional things that teachers want to give to families to help them they can do that and they can also do those things in during instructional time and then this is a biggie one that we uh got a lot of feedback on when we were talking about with teachers is instructional materials that have not been authorized by the school so we've spent a lot of time money and effort implementing different instructional materials resources books vendors all of that and if it's not one of those things you want to use it has to be approved by Administration and that's me or one other person and so teacher pay teachers is not something that's prevalent in our classrooms because it's unvetted
050some of it looks cool some of it's great but it may not be the best resource for what the teacher is using for that particular concept there's many more instructional strategies all schools have in place I can't tell you all of those in this short amount of time but those are some biggies that we thought that we would share here when you you again trying to have teachers recalibrate the way they grade because I'm imagining what happened was they found like a test that I might give a kid a 90 score when they compared that to a formal assessment the formal assessment gave them a 80 or a 70 which showed that the rigor in mine was not the same as the rigor and the other was there a lot of I can imagine there
051might have been a lot of pushback for a while although this Benchmark cost assessment did change kind of change that but what was that like because to me that's what's at the bottom of all this that is an excellent question I'd like to call that uncomfortable growth there were some uncomfortable growth when we started that process especially when teachers were unable to see The Benchmark assessment so to help with uh teachers owning that process is when we brought them in and we allowed the teacher to sit with the chief academic officer when the assessment was being built to make sure the test rigor dok and all of those things were set appropriately but still can't see the questions until it's after it's administered but when uncomfortable growth happens initially when we started peering into teachers
052grade books often and started doing Gradebook Audits and having requirements in grade books with things being turned back in a timely manner and certain number of Assessments certain number of homework assignments certain number of classwork assignments that had to be mapped back to content standards that was that's that's about five years in the making well did their instruction improve because of all this yes ma'am um at this at this moment when we started Spartan hour uh there was pushback on us doing that now teachers please send me my children in Spartan hour and now when we're building these assessments and teachers can see this is really giving them information they can use to help their children improve they've been they're embracing it now we have some new staff this year and they're just going along
053with it because that's just the way it's been thank you yes ma'am Ms Grabowski thank you again for the presentation as Ms Hall said I thought the grade disparity grade disparity discussion was certainly very interesting and I'm curious how you account for you know student has a bad test day or the other side of that is when you discover grade disparity how do you get to the bottom of it I have a feeling it's very similar to what you just discussed with Miss Hall but I'd be curious about his friends that's right we still allow students to redo at the school now we did redo's for if we were the the state determines which gmas courses can be retaken in the summer we don't get to pick that and for K through five they tell
054us which ones that students are eligible so we do that we allow them to do that and then in within the course of the school of our our assessments we do allow them to retake if there's if we know that there's a problem that there's an issue that day we all have test anxiety at some level how many of us have unhealthy testing anxiety is very small and we just mitigate that with working with a child usually it's they have some kind of 504 or something like that that we will put them in a different setting when they're taking those assessments okay and then one one last question so you shared with us all the good news is there anything you're willing to share that you try that was not as successful um not to
055put you on the spot yeah yeah well I can I can tell you um going back to two years ago uh when we started the benchmarks it was a flop it was not it did not work the way we wanted it to and so we said we got to retool here and we have to have some training we tried to last year to do be more descriptive in uh prescriptive and descriptive in Reading in some of the lower grades and it's it was just too much for teachers to take on at one time when we started parsing out reading and so now that we've done that we had to back off of that last year so this year we've got to push it back forward I think we've gotten as a good amount of what
056we're going to get with our current practices and now we've got to push a little more this Howard Hall yes thank you for your presentation and you shared many many strategies but what really sets Savannah classical apart from other schools and what is your number one Innovative teaching method that you would um that you're very proud of so uh the easiest thing that sets us apart from you know all the other schools is we're K-12 so when you enroll your child with us they could stay with us from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade so that's the easy one um and then uh because we're so small that's another factor to it to think about when you're looking at our achievement we do not have you know 15 I've been a principal in this
057County where 1500 students it's very different when you have 1500 students versus 400. so that sets us apart that we are small we're K-12 and then our instructional overall our mission is and our belief is the teacher is the purveyor of knowledge and content and controls the classroom and so you control that classroom through management of students you control that classroom with what the content you're putting in front of the children and you're controlling it with what you plan to do that I tell my teachers planning for what you're going to do in the classroom is 50 of the job the other 50 percent is performance in the classroom Mr Johnson uh thank you for your report Mr Lawless um I just want to say that I remember you staying up here a few years
058ago and your scores didn't look like this um but one thing I can't say the what you've done over there um and how your scores have been consistently trending upwards um that's a good thing and I'm very happy to see that and please continue to go to work thank you thank you shout out to all our teachers they made it happen thank you very much okay um our next set the uh language Essentials for teachers yes Steve the next item is agenda item 8.03 um let's see our language Essentials for teachers of reading and spelling letters those sorts purchase for those that are viewing these items have been been presented to the board and they have been publicly posted on the board Docs staff is recommending award to Lexia letters professional Learning Suite as a
059sole source to be used for science of reading training for K-5 teachers administrators and District leaders for the FY 2324 and FY 2425 school year at a total cost of 2 million 726 thousand and fifty dollars funding source would be the use of fund balance in the journal fund thus be resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the one-time use of general fund fund balance and and sold Source purchase of let's hear letters science of reading professional Learning Suite for a total cost of 2 million seven hundred and twenty six thousand and fifty dollars thank you very much do I have a motion uh miss miss all you have a second it's been moved and seconded we do have a speaker to speak on this um it's Beth majoroni good evening
060I am speaking from the lens of a retired Virginia Beach Virginia reading specialist and reading recovery teacher and someone who well understands the evolving research captured as the science of reading from this lens I applaud the approval request before the board to purchase the professional Learning Suite as a sole source from Lexia language Essentials for teachers of reading and spelling known by the acronym of letters the letters Suite is comprehensive professional learning designed to provide Educators and administrators with deep knowledge in the science of reading it is state of the art Dr Watts has called literacy proficiency the North Star for the district and a civil right for all students president Moss has also strongly supported the importance of literacy not only with his words but when he voted against the proposed fiscal year 24
061budget because it didn't attain adequate spending for literacy training of teachers for example the May proposed budget allotted only 322 thousand dollars for Teacher literacy training out of an 800 million dollar budget thanks to the support of Dr Watts and Mr Moss this proposed expenditure today increases that literacy training allocation from 322 thousand dollars to 2.7 million dollars the number one influencer of improving reading literacy performance is the teacher's teaching ability this proposed investment will enhance K-5 teachers expertise in navigating the needs of all students this training investment could even be used as a selling point when recruiting elementary teachers technology isn't the only change over the past decades our understanding of how Neuroscience informs learning to read has increased also each student has an individual journey in learning how to read depending on the
062level of knowledge with which he or she enters school and each teacher needs to be nimble in assessing and coaching each student to success think about it why do we all believe in our schools as parents as Educators and as County taxpayers why are we all here it's a unifying belief across all stakeholders that schools are the passport to the Future for our students by providing Readiness to be self-sufficient productive contributing members of society as George Washington Carver said education is the key that unlocks the golden door to freedom I add to that literacy is the key that unlocks the door to education literacy is freedom and the underpinning and foundation for all other learning I ask the board to please support this wise purchase and investment into the successful futures of the students of
063Savannah Chatham County thank you thank you very much all right any other discussion Mr Cashmere I support the um the agenda item my questions are is this a one-time purchase are we going to be paying yearly licensing fees are we going to have to uh be budgeting for periodic upgrades Etc and then are we also by implementing this program are we going to go through the categories and and list of all the other things that we're doing in this area and eliminate those items and those budget expenditures as well so this purchase in this amount is a one-time expenditure we've also purchased with this amount of the ability for them to train trainers and to provide that support there could be some nominal amount not of course at this amount that we would actually buy
064some licenses so that they could continue to provide some training but the excuse me the majority of what we're doing is having trained the trainers as we move through the training all of the K-5 teachers in the district will be trained as well as all academic coaches and specialist learning Specialists content Specialists also our El teachers as well as our special education teachers and then to your second question yes we already started that work with principals they've had two sessions now one with a small group one with the total group and we are moving things off of the plate and coming out of additional um programs that they might be using they're coming out of those programs to focus their attentions to this so we've already started that one I appreciate that information and then
065one follow-up this is going to be the training program The District uses schools are not going to be able to individualize training sessions and add in their own modules that they might like is that accurate that is absolutely accurate thank you um Hoskins Brown then Miss Hall then uh okay uh thank you so I really appreciate this recommendation and I think that it it aligns with the way that we said we wanted to prioritize use of fund balance we know that our fund balance is significantly higher than the level that the state would recommend that we maintain it at and we said that let's not try to use fund balance on things that we'd have to pay repeatedly because that Surplus is not going to continue to be there so this is a really really
066wise choice for that use I'm fully supportive of the action I just do have a question and that is will we be able to see a plan or can I'd like to see a plan for the additional drawdowns on fund balance so that we're looking at how we're spending that and on the basis of priority and not chronology not we're just going to keep pinching it until it's gone but these are the really big important things that we want to invest in and certainly this Lexia language Essentials is that sort of thing yes is that something that we can see in future months um yes um but that's actually something that we need to work on as staff and a board to work together collaboratively to put something together as far as they plan but
067that's something we need to work on together okay thank you okay Miss Hall I stated earlier in the meeting what has sold me on this is the capacity for this program to really train our teachers so that they go into that classroom regardless of what they may not have gotten in their undergrad years that they can go into a reading instruction classroom and really be able to perform at their top rate also that we will have trainers that if I need help I all I have to do is pick up the phone and someone can come to me and my classroom this isn't someone coming from New York or Colorado somebody right here in the school system can come and address whatever gaps are in training I need am I correct in that assessment that
068this is an on Hands-On training module Yes actually our administrators and our coaches those that will be supporting will begin the training first and then our teachers will come online and begin in January okay so Dr Watt I'm hoping that maybe if not every board meeting maybe every other board meeting we could get an update and see and I'd like to hear from we have a teacher of the year right here get her perspective on how things are moving along with this because I agree with uh Mr Cashmore and Dr Hodgkins Brown that if we get this right it will be a tremendous um upgrade for us Miss Grabowski um I too certainly support the purchase of this program and the training for our teachers we've talked a lot about how we need to provide
069that additional training we've also talked about about a lot of different programs I think as Mr kachmar alluded to and so my question is our academic and planning calendars already set for the Year Ms Paul Oliver mentioned the amount of training the number of hours that are required I think she's smiling she anticipates my question do we I don't want to overburden our teachers and want to make sure that we're not impacting their instructional time so there's your setup I am going to because she is sitting in the audience I am going to acknowledge Miss Burkett because Miss Burkett had to deal with my head from a principal standpoint and rework this plan numerous times so kudos to her but we arranged a plan that took all of those factors into account we did not
070take all of the teacher planning days we also worked to eliminate some other meeting responsibilities based on feedback from principals so that teachers can be afforded the opportunity to do this during their planning time we avoided Saturdays I don't know how we did all of this we avoided Saturdays and so we were able to work through a plan that will allow them they may have to spend some outside hours but we tried to minimize that as much as possible and utilize time during the day as well as planning days and thank you very much I knew you had thought through it but it's great to hear it out loud and I hope that maybe through our teacher Senate it's an opportunity for that feedback to continue to come through so that we can hear firsthand
071from our teachers because this will be an ongoing training obviously so we've got new teachers on board to make sure that it's it's a balance where teachers can still be effective as they need to be in the classroom and get the train they need and not feel overburdened and overworked thank you uh Miss Albert Hall yes I'm also in support of this agenda item and I know that Title One funds are used to supplement so how will we be able to use those funds to supplement um science or reading with the letters so in this case because of the funding source we will not be using uh Title One funds to supplement because the funding source is coming from our general fund money we accounted for that in the in the budget item so we
072did account for that in that as well because traditionally the title One funds supplement by you know using other different programs and I know that's not allowed so I'm just trying to wonder what can we do to our Title One schools how can it receive additional assistance since they can't really supplement this but they do receive a tremendous amount of federal funding so how could could that take into action to sub to assist with this so we'll we'll look into that maybe from a coaching perspective but I will tell you that as we further explore this and looking at our teachers and thinking about what's been said about teaching train teacher training we did go ahead for every school and purchase the Platinum package so every school has all of the trainings and supports that
073will come with it all of our elementary schools uh Mr Johnson well I just want to say that I think we're all in agreement that we're all going to support this I think that's a incredible an amazing opportunity for our students and our staff and our district and our County as a whole to be able to take something that has been proven to work and and as long as we use it correctly and in the right way our students are the one our students are the ones who are going to be successful and benefit from this the most I do wish that this could have been in the budget originally however using fund balance as Ms Hall said is and I believe Dr Hoskins Brown said that this is what we need to be using
074that those extra funds for to be able to make sure that you know the sole source the one-time purchases that we're not having to do it time and time again like Mr Casper says in order to get what it be a need as a district to make sure that our students every single child no matter where they are today we can help them achieve to be successful tomorrow anyone else okay let's vote all in favor thank you very much and next we have um hand to mind math manipulatives yes sir that's item 8.04 if I'm not mistaken again this item has been posted on board docs and presented to the board prior to this meeting the division of academic Affairs is request and board approval to purchase the hand to manned and to mind math
075manipulative specialized kits utilizing Carriage 2 and ARP grant funding additional kits will be available for school purchase but will be funded through the school's general fund accounts thus build be it resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved a one-time purchase of the hand to mind Mass manipulative specialized kits for k through fifth grade so source for an estimated cost of 1.5 million dollars do I have a motion yes Miss Hall and second by Mr Johnson uh any discussion same question Matthew a million dollars in manipulatives do I just read the kit instructions or is there someone who's going to really make it worth my while and worth our wireless board to support this where is the training coming from so we have trainers in the district they actually are our coaches
076and our Specialists who actually help write the state curriculum for the new math standards and so the manipulatives will not just be given to schools they will actually do the professional learning at sites with teachers on how to use them aligned to the standards and using the State's new learning plans what if he would let us come to some of the training sessions we'll get that calendar shared we have the calendar we'll share it I think it's important to note that 1.14 of this 1.5 million dollars is coming from grant funding right so it's not coming out of our general fund and um what I'd like to hear when these types of agenda items come up is why this as opposed to the three billion other products out there that vendors are trying to sell
077us why why does our academic team think this is the right product for us and again my favorite question is if we're using this what are we not using anymore and are we making sure we're not paying for that contract anymore so to the first question they did examine other vendors and what they offered and cost was a factor as well as the actual supplies that would come in the kit and how they align to the standards and yes this is the same premise we believe in if we're going to actually focus in these areas then we cannot keep doing uh multiple little things we have to really have focus in the math the reading and we have to stay the course with those so again items come off the plate so that we can
078make sure that they're focusing on keeping the main thing the main thing okay I'm Miss Grabowski so I'm assuming that Miss Burkett also took this into account and her master scheduling of all the training yes math had to be looked at with new math standards as she was writing the letters training so it was a lot of drafts it's a lot on our elementary I mean these are all kk5 training platforms so it's it's a lot on our elementary teachers and they're already dealing with high energy little ones yes which is why they had the most removed from their plates okay good well and then my my real question is that so we have a certain number of kits identified for the K-5 schools and then additional kits have to be purchased by the schools
079so what percentage of the classrooms will be covered by the kits being purchased by the district do we have a general small group two to one kids so two to one two students for one kid for every Elementary Home Room okay thank you Miss Hall I'm sorry but this is so exciting but uh yeah I do I want to go home but Mr Lawless talked to us about departmentalization and the fact that you wouldn't need all of us up here to teach every subject there is so what we're talking about math and reading and the materials needed wouldn't it behoove the principle to have those persons who are most competent in math and most competent in Reading to be the forces behind this and if I'm over here and my real specialty is social studies
080or science that I'm not necessarily included in that Condrey of persons who's going to be trained for this so to me so much of this is how we use our personnel and I think he gave us a very a potent example of how you can train your staff in the way you need it so that I don't have to sit at home and prepare for five different subjects but I can spend all of my time on that subject that I do best so I just think for it it's a this might be a a place where we could learn and decide to do something a little different and I do I promise I that's Howard hall and then uh Dr Wolf you're sure no I I want him yeah I had that look on my
081face I didn't raise my hand but I do know that back on what you were saying with departmentalizing it typically starts in fourth and fifth grade K first and second they teach all subjects for the most part so that's the eating with certification you know the certification is K third and fourth through eighth so with the departmentalized and it's good but it basically starts in fourth grade maybe third but I do know that it'll be difficult to do it in the um the early grades initiative Fortune all day but um I do think that we need to start really thinking about competence and the fact that each of us is probably more talented as an instructor in one area than we are in all you don't want me in front of a math class or
082language arts saying as a principal I would think this might be an opportunity to really get your talent where it belongs that that's all that's all we do have some schools that do departmentalize three through five we have been working with schools on their schedules and it does my heart well to hear that as a high school teacher who truly understands the value of that content specialty in that classroom so we have been working with them on schedules and some schools are now doing three through five in departmentalization okay Dr Watts or oh Michael sorry I gotta go last I guess today um thank you for that um Mr Bernadette uh I I appreciate that because I was going to be my one of my questions because I agree with what Miss Hall was saying
083about the departmentalization because as a as a student when I was going when I was going through a while ago um I did it and I started we started doing that when I was in fifth grade and I didn't understand the purpose behind it but then now as a parent and seeing my my child go from one school to another school I as a parent I really do see the benefit of it because unlike Miss Hall over there you don't want me to teach in reading or or anything or English and I'm pretty sure Dr Hassan's Brown could teach science a lot better than I could um but put me in front of math or arrange and I'm I'm your man so I do appreciate you letting me letting us know that that it's starting
084in some schools but if there's any way we can spread that out a little bit that would be fantastic okay Dr Watts I'm thankful that you all have gotten excited about that that particular Staffing model you're about a year out in front of where my brain already is uh wasn't quite ready to introduce that as a formality I want to be clear that there are pros and cons to departmentalization specifically as you think about younger students they need the integration of all subject areas because it's just more developmentally appropriate however when you're looking at upper grades third fourth and fifth when you have a teacher who is highly skilled in an area you could even think about that teacher and a pay differential because if you think about a teacher who is in a school
085earning you all of your third grade math scores right it's that one teacher that's owning every third grader's math score you're putting a big bet on that teacher so it has to be a teacher who's very highly skilled with proven results and I believe there are ways I know there are ways that you can match that with commensurate pay so even looking at paid differentials but that's a few years down the road I'm going to take today's note down so I can remind you all of how like how excited you are all about this so when I introduce it later we can regenerate some of this excitement all right uh anymore okay great let's vote all in favor thank you very much Mr Jackson yes the next item is 9.01 of the financial statements for
086the month of July I'm going to be quick July is the first month of the physical year we don't normally have a lot of activity during the month of July the financial statements were presented to board members and if they're if you all don't have any questions we can move on to the next agenda item any questions uh I just had a comment that I I was looking in the ROTC fund and one of my questions was the raises that we typically ratify later or that we approve later in the year are they budgeted but then I see at the end of the at the end of the agenda we have some raises that we have to put in because they're not budgeted earlier in the year so it's more about observation and a comment
087than a question yes because even though the ROTC staff works for the district their pay is kind of driven by the federal government and we have to kind of get approval their pay raise approval done also was that when we adopted to the boys and an adjustment cost of living right for the ROTC correct okay so this is just an additional adjustment based on the federal correct okay the questions okay thank you oh yes so how does it look where are we how are we standing with the federal budget we know that the 30th of September it is the federal budget so are those schools really working towards expending those those title one dollars um we're pretty much on target we actually have a meeting I believe Tuesday with the compensatory staff to review all
088of the federal programs too include cares 3 and ARP but so far they're they're pretty much on target they're meeting that as you're familiar they're trying to get close to that 85 percent expenditure so that's where we're on target for that because usually this time of year is a lot of funding still left in the traveling account and there's not really much time left for travel so have you seen a influx of budget transfers coming in to transfer those things not this year not compared to previous years no ma'am thank you other questions okay let's move on Transportation stewardship of Transportation and we have Miss Taylor good evening as Miss Perkins come forward and load up the the presentation that she'll take you through um to our our Charter Schools I heard you're very loud
089and clear during your presentations absolutely just that like with our choice programs we're going to continue to work diligently to see how we can add additional priorities fortunately what you'll see what some of our strategies we've moved a significant number of drivers from five hour drivers to eight hour drivers to try to reduce the number of double backs and making sure that we can compensate our drivers for the work that they're doing for the good work for being out there willing to run multiple routes at any given time so we're going to talk a little bit about where we are as it relates to our on-time delivery we'll look at some of those strategies some of those areas that will be areas of focus for us look at the number of drivers that we have
090we're we're at we have all of the monitors that we actually need so we're going to start working to develop a program to have our Drive our monitors consider coming over to be drivers I was working to have a bench of monitors but at this point we have all of the monitors that we need so we'll continue those efforts as it relates to Bringing drivers on there's a lot of conversation around the country Believe It or Not ladies and gentlemen we're not the only District we have all of the equipment we need we just don't have the people I was shocked when I was in another state at a conference they only had 25 buses that had air conditioned and they had triple digit temperatures just as we did and had to delay School so
091we're going to continue to do the things we do to make sure that our transportation is safe and conducive for learning and getting our students to school on time and we're going to talk a little bit about our robust recruitment effort and retention some of our drivers who made the decision to separate from us guess what some of them are coming back home and we are embracing them the salaries that they left when they separated from the district was starting them at that same salary so that's an opportunity again for us to capitalize and bring as many of them back into the bowl we'll go ahead through the presentation I'll let Miss Perkins Scarborough I'll take you through it good afternoon thank you Dr Watts Mr Moss board members it is always exciting to tell
092you all about what it is we do each day in transportation we don't frequently get the opportunity to share our world so any opportunity to do that is exciting as Mrs Miller Kegler has said we're going to talk about some of the strategies we have in place to combat our driver shortages and when we look at our responsibilities with the district accountability system and recruiting drivers one of our main goals is to get additional drivers and to actually build what we call a bench or a pool of reserve drivers those are drivers that we have in excess of the required number of drivers to operate the routes that we have in place for students we want to eliminate those double backs that we have all become so familiar with and for those of you who
093may not be familiar with the term double back that is where we we Define a double back as when a one bus will go into a school multiple usually only twice but we are in a time where sometimes that is more than twice but that one bus will travel to a school on a particular route either in the morning or the afternoon at least two times where they'll take two loads of students in for one particular route so as we look at our performance measure and our on-time arrival for our buses this is both morning and afternoon getting kids to school as well as getting them home in a timely manner with a target of 75 percent of on-time arrival for the 23 school year our actual performance for that year was 52 percent so
094when we look at some of the reasons or causes for us to be a little below where we should be at this point primarily it is because of our driver shortages when we look at the number of routes we have this year which is 205 compared to last year we do see that we have been able to reduce our number of routes but we're also transporting more students last year around this time we had routed approximately 20 168 students this year the same time period we have already routed 20 507 students that number increases weekly every night our routing team receives a download of students and we are continuing to see an increase of students that we are actually putting on our buses each year or each day I apologize so as we see our
095number of students increasing you'll look as we look closer at our driver data that our number of drivers continues to decrease over the last five years with a higher number of drivers of 328 we have considerably less drivers this year compared to last year or in 2019 with 214 drivers that we actually have employed with us but when we look at the drivers we have available to operate our routes we are talking about drivers who may be on long-term leave whether that's on workman's compensation FMLA we look at our active drivers as our real number of what we have to work with each day so on a daily basis we have approximately 193 drivers available to actually operate those 205 routes that we talked about earlier in the previous slide we also have drivers who
096have to call out sometimes I on a daily basis on average we didn't start off pretty good this school year we have our driver numbers are about 8 to 12 drivers that may call out in a day and when that happens then we have to figure out how we're going to get those students to school so we're already starting at a deficit with a number of drivers then when we have our normal call out rate then our numbers go lower so one of the ways we're able to compensate with being able to transport students when we have our driver numbers are decreasing is by utilizing our credential Transportation staff that means we are pulling individuals from what their normal assigned jobs are having them actually operate buses as an example on a daily basis we're
097using six of our 11 mechanics to operate buses two of our three dispatchers operate buses we have four lot monitors three of them operate a bus one of them is actually a monitor on a bus um two of our four routers are actually on buses so those individuals who are operating or working in transportation who can actually operate who are credentialed they're driving a bus that is how we are able to get students to school each day and then some days we're still short which leads to our double backs and this year we're actually in some cases doing triple backs when you have a bus that is already doing a double back that driver is out then the driver who's at the school who also does a double back will sometimes have to figure out
098a way to go into a school three times to be able to get those students to school so we look at some things that we can do within the department with what we have available to work with and strategies to try and improve our performance and always we are looking at Route optimization that is something that occurs from the first time that we begin to build our routes in the summer our routing team and we have an awesome team of four routers that are always looking at where we can condense or consolidate routes where we can eliminate stops we are constantly looking at stops that may not be active where students are not actually routing writing those students maybe perhaps were routed but parents have made other decisions and so we're always looking at places
099where we can combine routes optimize routes each day to be able to reduce the number of drivers that we're actually going to need to operate our routes um we are always looking at adjustments to route times where we can have a bus that maybe can leave a little bit earlier to be able to capture more stops that is always an option when we're looking at Route optimization ridership verification is very important to us actually seeing who's on the bus we know who's supposed to be there and who said that they're going to ride but actually looking day to day who's actually on the bus and that is always something that we're doing consistently and constantly throughout the year and then execution of effective timely loading procedures gaining five to ten minutes each morning when we
100get to a school we have the students there it's important that we have the staff there to get the students off the bus so that that bus can unload and leave and then go on to their next route that always helps in our on-time arrival for the next tier the same thing in the afternoons we need buses loaded at the proper time so that the bus can get out especially with our double back buses those are typically the first buses out in the afternoons so that they can quickly drop off their first load get back and then be able to leave so it's important that we work with our school staff we have amazing teams at our schools our principals have picked great folks to work on the bus ramp with our drivers and our
101supervisors to be able to coordinate that so we always look for that to continue those efforts to work together to get those departures and unloading procedures down to a science of course recruitment is always key Recruitment and Retention we have done a lot of things throughout the last year or two to try and get more drivers in as Ms Miller Kegler has said we've seen an uptick and those drivers who initially elected to take other positions we're seeing them come back to us one of the recruitment tools that we're utilizing if you leave you decide that this really is where you should be and that's within a 12-month period the salary that you left with is the same salary that you can retain when you return back to us and we are using that as
102a recruitment effort having our monitors who are already employed with us they know what it's like to be on a bus they know what it's like to work with our students having them become drivers this time in our monitor to driver program we have three of our monitors who are actually being trained throughout the day in the middle of the day to actually become drivers we were actually supposed to test one of them but due to unforeseen circumstances last week we had to postpone that but we're going to get her tested really soon to get her behind the wheel as quickly as possible so that is very um a very good program and we're seeing a lot of response to that so we're using those staff that we already have with us to try and
103get them behind the wheel on buses we're also looking at our recruitment videos that we have trying to get a more personal testimony type recruitment videos out working with some of our drivers to get them to talk about their experiences and the gratification that they have for working with the district and being on our driving teams we've also formed some new Partnerships with different agencies around the county to have Career Fairs working with a new organ well it's not a new organization but it's a new partnership with us with the city of Savannah and WorkSource Coastal we've had our first career fair there with that organization where the district is the only entity there that day so that gives us exclusive contact with those individuals seeking employment they have a pool of individuals that need
104employment and we're there with jobs to provide for them they also have a very big veterans program and so we are connecting with them to be able to bring veterans into the district as well and that is something that we plan to expand to perhaps have monthly Career Fairs there and then looking at other agencies across the county or District where we can actually go and then recruit other individuals we've made a connection with our other military connected organizations here both on Fort Stewart and on Hunter Army Airfield to try and recruit those soldiers who may be preparing to retire looking for something to do we want to have them come on board and work with us if you're in the Oglethorpe Mall you may see the kiosk around the mall that are advertising some
105of the positions for the district those do certainly include with transportation for driver as well as our mechanic positions as Ms Miller pegler did also say one of our other recruitment efforts is increasing our number of eight hour positions technically being a driver at a five hour drive five hour classification is a full-time position but a lot of drivers do want to be able to have that classification what's considered a more traditional eight-hour position and so that is a recruitment effort that we can use to both keep our current drivers and entice other individuals to come on board and those eight hour positions we've also increased our professional development for our team we feel it's important for them to have those connections and get those resources and tools for their wheelbarrow to use that the
106district has available we have some upcoming trainings with the districts Wellness Center that will occur next week or next month we've had other trainings through our professional learning department and so that is always good for them to be able to receive those services that are very available through the district last year we came to you and we were excited to talk about the here comes the bus app this year we are very excited and jubilant about talking to you about the student Pass Program I think you've heard about that um that is a program that is a location-based notification that parents will receive when their students actually load and unload the bus and that is a tool or technology tool that's an addition to what we already have we're trying to do more with what
107we already have and actually adding on to the components of the packets that we have in that technology I'm also included in that is the turn-by-turn system that is also active on all of our buses in the fleet that is very helpful for our drivers who actually are doing those extra routes that are unplanned this provides them the opportunity when they're out in routes that they're unfamiliar with to receive the turn-by-turn directions when we used to do the old method they would have to get it printed out we called the left and rights and they would have to have someone kind of walk them through the routes now they do not have to go through that process the actual turn-by-turns are actually there for them and so we'll just show you a quick video of
108what the system looks like solution for over 20 years for parents and Guardians Peace of Mind Is Knowing exactly when your child's school bus is going to arrive and when it does that their child has safely made it on or off the bus with our award-winning here comes the bus mobile app parents and Guardians can get real-time notifications when the bus is approaching their stop and it allows for direct communication between dispatchers drivers and parents therefore everyone is updated instantly in the case of emergencies or delays student ridership leverages your planned route data to deliver important daily insights for parents drivers and administrators with a simple scan of a student's RFID tag or barcode you'll know anytime a child gets off at the wrong stop misses their stop entirely or even boards the wrong bus
109so you and your drivers can act quickly to correct the situation provide an extra layer of student safety and peace of mind for parents by ensuring students are always at the right place at the right time ridership data also helps you improve planning Decisions by giving insight into bus capacity opportunities for stop consolidation and other ridership Trends School so again this allows us to be more Forward Thinking and how we're actually collecting that information I talked earlier about our student ridership and how we would previously ask our drivers to collect that information but actually by actually counting students this is a system that will give us real time information on who's actually on the bus it's also a tool for parents to actually know working parents want to know did my child get on the
110bus well yes they will get that alert to let them know we started the system just about a week or two after school started with the students so some of you who are parents notice that your children are coming home with the barcodes that is what those are for they can also use their smart devices because even our little ones have smartphones so they can use their smart devices to actually scan off and on the bus so just taking the opportunity to use the technology that's available these seem like just opportunities that we can use to improve our abilities to be able to track data but it's also a recruitment tool as well because this helps our drivers as they're going throughout their day so we're trying to take advantage of that as well so
111we believe that with consistency in our optimization increasing our efficiencies where we can capture them as well as continued robust recruitment will be able to improve our numbers which will overall improve our on-time arrival and our performance throughout the district thank you Mr katzmar thank you Ms Perkins thank you for your presentation and I know there's other Transportation folks here I appreciate everyone's hard work I've been on the board for 12 years 11 years I've been through lots of iterations of our training well it's not just about money but if you go on indeed you know CDL jobs are starting about 20 22 24 dollars an hour or an annual salary I think we had a report a month or two ago where our average starting salary was 18 something it comes down to budget
112now it's easy for me to say we need to pay CDL Drivers more that has a roll-on effect of everybody else in the same job classifications so even if we pay CDL Drivers more what is that going to do to the other comparable roles that maybe don't require a CDL license but they're in the same job tiers so we need to put a lot of thought into that but I don't like our Trend over five years we've lost over one third of our drivers it's nice that some are coming back but we've lost one third of our drivers our on-time percentage is 52 percent today and it's not because we don't have a great Transportation team it's not because we don't have the technology we don't have the experience we don't have the good drivers
113out there it's because we don't have enough people and we've done everything that we have been told we should do to try to help with Recruitment and Retention we've changed the frequency of how drivers are paid they complain that they didn't like being paid on the same cycle that District staff were paid on so we changed the way we paid them we've moved many people from part-time to full-time positions and kept keep them busy during the day we've done lots of things to try to retain people but when the rest of the world is also short of CDL Drivers because everybody waits for that Amazon package and FedEx and UPS are paying recruiting and retention bonuses and 24 bucks an hour we're not going to compete that's as simple as it is so we're doing
114all this great stuff but we just need to decide hit we eliminated Charter and choice Transportation a few years ago now we're at 52 percent for our core Mission which is uh sped and zoned schools so on the trend we're heading now we're going to have to eliminate Zone School transportation in two or three years or limit it somehow and for the media I am not saying that's what we are doing I'm not saying we should do it what I'm saying is on our five-year trend of losing drivers I don't like where we're going to be in a few years so like I've argued I've argued this many times before I've made the same argument for our facilities and operations team if we are not getting the people we need within our current pay scale
115we need to deviate from our pay scale go to market figure out figure out a way to adjust that that's the only way in my mind we're going to get to where we need to be to have more drivers okay Miss Hall um a way to train like that it's that we have to realize we're no longer the only game in town we were for so long but other Industries have caught up to us and are competing with us I was just thinking about what Miss Tammy was saying I'm a mechanic and I come to work to work on an engine and I find out I'm gonna be driving a bunch of kids around to school am I getting compensated for that is do I get you know or am I just expected because I'm
116there and I have a CDL oh you need to get on the bus and you're not getting any more for that extra effort or that change in plan so um thank you Sean for bringing that up and um I know what to refrain you all are tired of hearing from me but we are not the only game in town anymore okay Miss Hoskins Brown what Mr kashmar said hey I like it just super quick um I don't disagree with what's been said but I think we fundamentally need to think about how we are providing transportation services um keep doing the thing I mean we have to transport our students but I think that there's some really innovative ways that we can think about doing that and superintendent I've had a little bit of a discussion
117I look forward to being able to have those more robust discussions but I think as a board we really have to start thinking about um you know are there more innovative solutions and I do believe that there are and then the other comment I wanted to make and I don't necessarily need this answer right now but the other part of transportation is our students who walk and Bike to School and anecdotally it seems that we are down some crossing guards so I would love to know from Mr Ray or chief Enoch how we stand on crossing guards um and you know I saw a student the other day walking literally in the road at Hodgson Memorial because there's no sidewalks and it broke my heart it was obviously a student from stem I could tell
118by the uniform so I think as a board the other thing that we need to do is Advocate with our city and county leaders that sidewalks bike trails are an essential part of transportation is not just about vehicles and be advocates for that for our students thank you very good anyone else is Howard oh wait I just want to also add that the um the caveat is with the school district they don't work during the Summers and Amazon of course cat buses and everybody else they do and it weekends aren't mandatory as well so we really have to be very creative on being competitive with the pay when you compare the amount of days that other entities are actually working and I do agree that that we do need that increase of course the pay
119but you have to look at the end the big picture of the entire picture to understand that weekends and Summers is not mandatory for the bus drivers and their pay is expanded through for 12 months as opposed to receiving a check every you know every week working to possibly um 45 Plus hours a week so it's just a lot to take into consideration just real quick sorry the other thing we've talked about a lot before is partnering with like Marta or not Marta cat for example I'm thinking Marta because there's discussions there's discussions in districts in Atlanta about that but we've had multi we've had many iterations of cat leadership I know we've got um some really forward-thinking cat leadership now they have the same problem we do shortage of drivers their buses aren't full
120there's got to be a solution there where we can share the other thing is many states many states let private people carpool they let moms and dads and older brothers drive people to school I think the big impediment here is insurance and liability and to the extent there are out of the box ideas that Transportation has and we need to go Lobby our general assembly to change the rules provide some liability coverage you know we have a screening process but there are there are creative ways to try to solve this problem if you bring them to us I will go Lobby I'm sure others here will as well let's not to use a tired phrase stay inside the Box Mr ketchmar you are correct I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge our other
121Transportation directors you saw their names at the beginning of the presentation our Fleet director Mr Charles Smith our regular education director Mr Timothy Burns and our operations director Keisha Annette Ling it takes a team to make Transportation work team [Applause] thank you 30 seconds about this Lane I've been talking with Dr Watts talking with Dr Lewis about growing our own um miss Lynn was actually the one that we grew our own she was a student worker from Savannah High School she was Mr Brock's Administrative Assistant secretary promoted worked with him when we outsourced Transportation Miss Lane is now a director she is CDL credentials can drive a bus and she was one of our own that we grew up and she is a director she manages the routers the dispatchers customer service in all areas
122under her so we're going to look at how we can maybe bring some more of our students on get them trained how we can start doing more of our CDL training inside to create more drivers so just 30 seconds plug for Miss Lane for sticking with us and certainly I appreciate the opportunity to think out of the boxes we talked about in January and February some of those initiatives that we brought forward previously to include hubs you'll see us start talking about and testing some of those and bringing some of those options back to your consideration because we want to be able to transport as many many students as we can unless you have any other questions we'll get ready for our next presentation I think it's going to be our East Splash update bill
123is going to come forward talk to you a little bit about some of the things we're doing in capital projects what you'll see the number of projects we have you'll see our schedule again on that particular front we're having that struggle with identifying that highly qualified Workforce we've advertised a couple of positions with absolutely zero response to them our senior project managers our executive project manager we've had absolutely no response to those so you'll see us looking at our schedule very closely even going to get started and I'm going to have to take a look at our schedule and figure out how we're going to continue to manage the number of projects how many of them will remain active how many of them can conceivably be paused just because of our staff shortage so it's
124Bill is bringing up the trying as he said trying to bring up the update okay okay so again you'll see those schedules those timelines projects and that's exactly what they are their schedules we work very closely with our contractors on those projects but just so you'll be aware um we'll be looking at our schedules very closely thank you are these last three budget first we're in the seventh year of our expenditures in East blast three and we project out one more year we expect to be pretty much substantially complete with East Blast 3 by the end of next year and of course what's always important to see on these is when the expenditures equal the proceeds and so our plan shows that our East Blast 3 program is and will finish on budget on the
125East plus 4 budget we're just uh beginning we're halfway through 2023. you see the expenditures in 2022 have not been a lot of dollars they've been mostly the front-end type projects a lot of the design but we are getting ready to take off in construction on most of these major projects and so we will see uh the expenditures increase as we go through 23-24 once again this allows us to plan our projects so that we be sure that our expenditures are always going to equal never exceed our proceeds and so again as far as this program for the five-year program that we have extended out here we do have and show this project on budget our new construction projects the K-12 complex the the K-12 building is in finishes soon to go into inspections and
126punch list uh however there's a lot of open area around that building where we have to do the athletic fields Field House Stadium all of that is going to get started in later this month you do have a contract to approve later on in the agenda for the CMR to begin that work Windsor Forest tie the temporary parking lot is in the area where the new building is going to go has been fenced off they've started to put in the utilities that are needed excavation work foundations will get started shortly so that project is moving along Bloomingdale demolition pretty much is completed you will have a component change order number two coming up in the agenda also that is for the Civil work for this project and again that's one of the Advan images that
127we have used in the construction manager we are still in design on this project however we have been able to award two component change orders one of them being the Demolition and that work is basically done a second one now being the Civil so that all of that work can get started as far as the excavation the utilities so that when we are ready to go with our footings and Foundations all that work will be done so again that's that's the advantage of using a cm and we have just been able to compress this schedule tremendously so that project is moving along well our EV charging Center it's a new new parking area over a gamble Road and again there is a contract coming up on the agenda for the general contractor for that important
128that we get that started right away in order to be ready when these charging stations are ready to get put in and the buses are are available we do have some issues with this one because we have some Wetland issues we have to get through so we're hoping that we can move that along quickly and get our contractor out there working Savannah Arts the cafeteria was completed and opened up ready for the first day of school majority of the ex of the rest of the renovations throughout the school was complete Auditorium however is has some final things to do yet and that part of the project is scheduled now to be ready on September 25. we still have some rigging to do the painting of the stage commissioning and training and the East parking lot
129also was not ready for school to begin the West Was opened up but the East were the demolition of the existing cafeteria of course they couldn't get started with that right away and that is scheduled now to be opened on October 2. so with that that project will be substantially complete Godly station and Pulaski both of these projects funded contractors in place both of them have their initial security fencing put up and starting with site excavation and the utility work that's needed so they are also into construct action J.G Smith we have a project as you know we have looked at a lot of different ways to um to to the best way to take care of this building we looked at doing an addition first and we found out through gdoe that that was
130not favorable we looked at doing a modification on it and then we looked at putting a new school on that site and we just could not get past the point of the site size and just the inability to have the building sit on that five acre site and allow room for parking allow room for cueing that's required for parent pick-off and drop-up drop-offs so it just did not work out well so what we are planning to do now and again you have a contract coming up on the agenda for the architect to look at doing a complete renovation modernization upgrading all the finishes putting in a new HVAC system taking care of the security enhancements that are required cleaning up the site as best we can to provide good parking and then also look at
131improving our playground areas the e-learning building we are we in fact just last month you awarded that design contract and we're doing a kickoff with our architect on that we're looking at taking the Mercer building the Mercer Middle School building and converting that to the e-learning and then there are a lot of other Renovations obviously we are taking the projects that have the highest FCI scores looking at how we can take care of the hvacs the finishes cleaning the buildings up and and just making improvements so we'll continue to go through these as of course as our cash flow allows us we're putting these projects out strategically so that we make sure that we have funding for them again a lot of more renovation the re-roofing projects Ellis and Largo Tibet had new roofs put
132on this summer and we have Southwest Middle School West Chatham middle school and Port Wentworth all under contract and all will get started in the next couple of months same thing with the hvac's Garden City Myers and durin had new HVAC systems put in this summer now this usually takes two summers in order to complete these of course we have such a short window in the summertime but they didn't work some in Garrison and Coastal also in Savannah high but next summer those buildings will have complete all new HVAC systems put in the practice fields of course we have been promoting those putting in the artificial turfs in those high school practice fields Beach Island Savannah high are all completed they're laying the turf at Johnson High School right now and we expect that they'll
133be able to start playing on that field on September 25th and as you know there has been major major soil remediation work required at New Hampstead for the past couple of weeks we've been looking at different ways of approaching that doing different test areas and we have found a way that we believe is economical and so that work will hopefully get started and again that that's very very weather dependent and last week obviously didn't help uh that we wanted to get started with that sooner but uh hopefully we can stay dry and get that remediation work done our schedule our projection right now shows the turf and the track remember this has a track around it so to be all new resurfacing of the track that all completed by December 11 and ready for turnover
134Woodville Tompkins we're going to be doing that one also that is still in design yet and then there are a number of other projects of course that interchange bus we've been talking bus restroom facilities we've been talking about that one for a while we um had some problems with with elevator inspections so we're hoping to get that work cleaned up in in that building other than the elevator is ready to go so we want to get that um operational as soon as possible and then a number of other projects as we have them listed Austin's Brown thank you for your report Mr huntingad just a question about the Jacob G Smith decision to go with renovation how does that affect the expiration date of buildings that we have to work with in terms of our
135being able to be remunerated by the state for use of that facility you know at some point they say you know what it's too old you're not getting support for that how is that affected by our decision to renovate and stay in that building will not have a problem with that our renovation work that we're going to do in there will be able to get all the gdoe approvals that we need to have we run into gdoe problems when we look at putting additions on or doing anything as far as any type of full renovation because then you have to bring the building up the core areas up to gdoe standard as long as we just do finishes we're going to have to do some things obviously with the entryways put some canopies on there
136just just do a nice cleanup on that on that building but gdoe those deadlines will not be affected so do we start back at Time Zero when we do those things or does it just extend the clock well I think what you're referencing may be capital outlay and we do have a capital outlay I believe it's fy21 or 22 I'm sorry but we do have time in order to get this work completed and still be able to finalize that Capital Outlet okay thank you okay any other questions and to answer that question um since Brown we had an opportunity to go back to the state for some revisions to the capital outlay application we actually did it back and I want to thank 2020 when we made the decision to go after modernization so we
137have the option and opportunities to go back make revisions modernization was a different opportunity for us when we realized that we couldn't build a new one on the site than with all of the other preliminary work that had to be done the number of Acres that were needed everything that was going to be required then we had to revert back to going in to renovation so yes we've been working on this since about this since 2020 with one of the consent agendas we wanted to be able to provide the community what their desire was they want to remain what they are and that's what we thought modernization was going to give us that opportunity but then once the state did not approve it based on our petition making sure that we could meet all of
138those requirements so then we had to Pivot and revert back to some Renovations for the building but certainly want to be able to upgrade it and be able to maintain it in its present location one correction to the presentation that was made relative to the Savannah Arts Academy Auditorium that is still under construction we've had some unfortunate weather delays that we've been having to deal with with that project so the actual completion date is December while we were hoping for a September date working very diligently with our contractor on that project but recognizing that the actual contract expiration a due date is December of this year certainly if they can accelerated then certainly we're making that request we're meeting with them but the date is December tall I just want to be sure that the
139public understands the stress that we are under when we do these construction activities on occupied campuses so Savannah art now we're getting ready to go with the Jacob T Smith and we have other um instances where the children actually Remain the school day and instruction goes on and yet we're reform you know redesigning the whole environment that they're in so that takes a lot of diligence and skill and I for one am very pleased with how the Savannah Arts Renovations and the cafeteria I know you still have some problems with the parking lot but this was done while those children were still able to go and I hope it will also be successful at Jacob P Smith that's going to really be a I'm Dinger yeah and getting that ridiculous methods it really would be
140in our best interest if we could swing those students we'll take a look at that what's available in regards to a swing site it is very challenging when you are working on an occupied campus because there are unforeseen conditions we had a couple of your concerns as related to Jenkins we were able to face that project as well there were a few occurrences the most desirable is to build on an unoccupied campus but oftentimes we don't have the space to swing them but we're going to work very diligently for that opportunity for JW Smith I'm Savannah Arts Academy was a phase project because we were on the campus and we have to make sure that instruction and academics is number one of times it takes us a little longer costs a little more but it's
141very difficult to swim in high school the forest also going to be an occupied it's going to be an occupied campus oh missed Howard Hall it's it's somewhat similar with the K-12 school because once we do open the school and their students are allowed to um enroll there we have still other projects going on as far as the field house and the stadium so are you do you have any concerns about those projects going on during the same time we'll be working on the on the exterior and certainly the contractor will continue to work with our contractors and make sure that they understand the importance of not being disruptive doing the academic period especially when we get down to testing we provide them with our testing schedule to work with them to modify their hours
142during that particular time frame very quickly um I was really excited to see September for the auditorium I understand the contract date is December those students have been without an auditorium going on a year and a half this is an Arts Academy it is literally the center of the school and anything that we can do to accelerate that Auditorium we owe it to those students and those teachers to be able to do that it's disappointing that it's taken this long I understand that there are things that happen there are circumstances beyond our control but um it's disappointing to see that it's taken this long and there's any way we can accelerate that schedule I hope we will do everything in our power to make that happen and that's exactly what we're doing we're at the
143point where we meet with the owner directly whenever we're on the project um those meetings are scheduled and when we develop a schedule it's just at a schedule and they have reminded us of their contract date but we are petitioning them to accelerate the project especially as it relates to that Auditorium certainly we're not going to be able to go into the auditorium until it meets all of the requirements and we're able to get that certificate of occupancy yeah anyone else any other questions thank you thank you very much I believe the next item is 9.04 budget transfer is plus Ray Shuman Elementary School again this this document has been presented to the board and is posted on board Docs does beard resides upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the budget
144transfer as noted again the amount is one million nine hundred and sixty seven thousand four hundred dollars um Hoskins Brown thank you because East plus four funds are available for renovations for Schumann Elementary school re-roofing is complete and bus purchases are complete that I move that from East plus three one million nine hundred and sixty seven thousand four hundred dollars formally allocated for Schumann one million five hundred and fifty thousand nine hundred and ten dollars for Islands Roofing and 944 816 dollars allocated for bus purchases be moved to E3 contingency for other use a second it's been moved and seconded discussion um yes as the maker of the motion my question is just Why We Are um saving the money in E3 for Schumann rather than spending it in E3 and saving the money in
145E4 I know there's probably a strategy or a plan yes ma'am and I've spoken with our chief strategist bill hudanga and I have them on standby to answer that question it uh mainly it's because of scheduling we do not have a project a project scope identified for Schumann yet and as I said we expect to be pretty much substantially complete with that E3 funding that that program by the end of next year we do not like to continue to have projects that drag out so that we can't close those programs as you know quickly as efficiently as we can so we do have the funding and we do have a project established in E4 for it uh so we just felt that that would be the best way to take care of this thank you
146and is there a plan for these funds that are moving to contingency there's a number of projects that they will be um used for some of those I believe are on the agenda but as we now look at remember with E3 if you remember we put a number of projects in suspension basically when we were going through covet we didn't know what our funding was going to be and we always want to be sure that we have funds for our projects so there were a number of projects that we just kind of held now we want to get those started so as we develop those final budgets the monies for those projects are going to be coming out of the unallocated so it won't be one specific project necessary okay thank you any other discussion
147in our discussion all in favor any opposed any abstentions okay all right um all right I believe that text from 9.09 yes and we're going to attempt to combine um agenda items 9.0 9.07 9.08 I'm sorry uh for the board's consideration this includes the Jacob G Smith budget transfer and the design services for Jacob G Smith these items have been previously presented to the board and posted on board docs and I'll now turn it over to the board presidents for action two second it's been moved and seconded any discussion being none all in favor thank you again the same thing with agenda items 9.09 9.10 9.11 and 9.12. um operating transfer JROTC operating transfer Pre-K fund Curry Ford funds oops and and 21st century Community Learning Center Grant again these items have been presented to
148the board for consideration these items are also posted publicly on board docs thereby I hear turn them over to the board president for Action absolutely uh all in favor I'm sorry discussion I'd just like to say something about the Pre-K funding it's a little alarming that uh we do not have all that we need in terms of the pre-k program so that we have to actually put this kind of money in it I think it would behoove us to some at some point meet with our state legislators to be sure that they understand everyone touts Pre-K for the wonderful thing it is but when we have to do this kind of thing it it needs to be known by our state officials that something really needs to be done anyone else this is Howard Hall
149this Community School District Court seeing that making sure that to ensure that there's Equity with all of our schools as far as Pre-K with what's great spans pre-k through 12th so I commend us as a school district and am thankful that we do have the money and contingency in our budget to be able to support Pre-K as we support the other grade levels anyone else smooth Brown so I um in the three items I I appreciate that we are um uh facilitating a transfer to reflect adjustments in jail JROTC salaries it's something that we have to do each year um I am looking at the in the Pre-K we are using fund balance is that what we are using or just general fund uh just Savings in the general fund okay thank you and for
150the 21st century Grant we are allocating the dividing what we've received by the 10 sites and just allocating it correct that's just a grand award correct thank you any more discussion all in favor thank you okay item 9.13 uh this is for in fund 308 EV charging Center uh budget transfer at the gamble Road facility and the amount of 938 thousand dollars that's been resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the budget transfer is noted seconded and it's all in favor okay thank you uh all opposed thank you um 9.14 similar to the previous item AV charging Center again at gamber Road staff recommends the this bid be awarded to the lowest and responsible bidder which was determined to be dabs Williams general contractor llc at a total cost of 2
151million four hundred thirty eight thousand uh again the funding source would be split between the general fund and each spouse about general fund and fund 308 that's been resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the award of bid c24-05 AV charging Center to dabs to Williams General Contractors LLC in the amount of 2 million 438 thousand dollars it's been moved and seconded any discussion all in favor thank you sir if I could make a note to the agenda Mr Jackson actually just handled bid c24-05 which on the postage agenda is actually item 9.15 so we will the board obviously has taken action on that but for the correct public record that is item 9.15 Mr Jackson still needs to handle item 9.14 which is budget transfer for fund 308 EV charging
152stations really combine those but we did the fun 308 item is the 938 000. okay let's go back yes okay so 9.14 well you read that again yeah and I think I may be missing an item I'm sorry I was going to move to reconsider the motion so the vote Could Happen could be redone 1.5 9.15 [Music] all right so sir for correcting the record yes uh Mr Jackson actually read 308. for the budget transfer he still needs to for the board's consideration the transfer of from fund 100 which is in the amount of 5.5 million dollars so we did 13. you did yesterday Miss Edwards of my tracking correct now on the fact right that's what I thought so we still need to manage fund 100 transfer and 308 so as a ridge as
153I originally thought it is fund 308 that still needs to be managed that one okay all righty uh I thought I read this EV charging Center Denver Road budget transfer in the amount of 938 thousand dollars budget transfer to a construction account thus be resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the budget transfer as noted any discussion no labor all opposed thank you we'll continue Mr Jackson 9.15 I did that's when I did right the we've not done 911.15 the the EB charging Center and the amount of the water the contract the award of the contract to dabs Williams we did that right all right no we did not do 15. right okay we've read it we just haven't done anything okay okay Williams there you go second move to the
154second any discussion all in favor all opposed okay continue 9.16 better detectors this is the first renewal for a annual contract thus be resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the first contract renewal of bed c a bid 23-12 Butler detectives annual contract to appoint security Incorporated for the purchase of 46 motor detectors at estimated cost of eight hundred and sixteen thousand one hundred seven seventy dollars and 86 cents and the future possible future purchases during this contract period at 192 000 and four dollars estimated purchases this contract period total one million eight thousand one hundred and eighty two dollars second moved and seconded all in favor I'm sorry uh discussion thank you all in favor all right okay continue okay item 9.17 CMR services for growth athletic fields and field
155house Construction after the committee's evaluation of the ROP responses and bafos it is recommended that rfpc 24-01 CMR services for growth athletic fields and field house construction be awarded to McKnight construction with a guaranteed maximum price of 29 million 769 which includes CMR overhead costs and expenses subconscious contractor costs General fee and a one million dollar CMR contingency thus be resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved the award Award of rfpc 24-01 CMR services for growth athletic fields and failed house construction to bank McKnight construction with a guaranteed maximum price of 29 million 951 769 dollars okay it's been moved and seconded um discussion Miss Hall um I'd like to give a gentle reminder to the construction Personnel the contractors um McKnight the 30 million dollars we all went out and
156did everything we could to get the East floss referendum passed and I'd like to make sure that the persons who we are turning these projects over to as well as the project managers Mr formi remembers that we have a commitment to our local women and minority Personnel across this County to make sure that they're involved in the construction of these buildings these are the people who went out and supported us to give us the biggest eastblast win that we've had thus far and I want to be sure I don't hear much about who these contractors are partnering with who they're hiring I want that to stay at the Forefront of our minds and I want us to continue to have the faith and trust of the people who voted for the East floss program that
157we are doing what we said and making sure that our women women owned businesses are black owned businesses and um other minority businesses are all involved in these multi-million dollar projects such as this one for 30 million dollars for the Groves athletic fields and field house construction thank you Miss Tanya Howard Hall the question is is Brownstone still a part of this process that's I think Mr for me is here to answer yeah correct um Brownstone will service the CMA on that project I'm sorry you want to go to the mic but yes Brownstone will serve as the construction manager um administrator on that particular project yes that is true that is one of the companies that we're uh aggressively including in our capabilities increase capabilities program not only will they uh be participating but
158they'll also meet with me regularly determine who we can continuously pull into the process as other subs not only them from stamp on the participation it's a 30 million dollar contract that's also true for the other larger schools that we're talking about yes TQ Constructors all of them yes and um I'd like them to be more vocal so that we hear about what's going on and it doesn't seem to be all under the radar what's going on well I don't know whether it's under the radar as much as it is having the the product ready to construct so that they can operators can participate in the process you haven't heard much because we hadn't had much going on same can be true with J.E Dunn TQ McKnight name of all the plan is to involve
159uh involved are the CMAs in this particular instance and the partners in giving them responsibility for bringing in more minority participation in addition to what I do on top of it so that's what we're doing all right thank you Mr farmer just quick you you know we often talk about don't want me at the microphone building capacity so is this is this precisely what we're doing exactly and I will be providing a report either at a uh oh see uh construction cic meeting or the board meeting in the in the future because we haven't had that much opportunity to detail the participation but that's what we're planning to do going forward thank you anyone else all right all in favor thank you very much and finally and the last item I believe 9.18 um which
160has actually changed order number two for Bloomingdale Elementary School replacement that's been resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent that the board approved change order number two and the amount of 5 million 759 dollars for the site work bid package for the construction of the Bloomingdale Elementary School replacement to TQ Constructors Incorporated moved and seconded uh any discussion I think um real quick for those of y'all who were not out there for the ceremony of knocking down the last wall of the old Bloomingdale Elementary you really missed out on how much that neighborhood and that Community loves that school that school is the heartbeat of Bloomingdale um same with Pooler Elementary this is the same kind of idea so I just want to say as the representative of Bloomingdale that thank you for giving them
161the school because it's a long time coming because that was a very old building thank you thank you Mr Jackson oh yes all in favor yes all right all right okay so uh next we have our appearances I'm going to ask those of you that are making appearances if you're with someone and you're going to be talking about the same thing will you please elect one of you it is now 8 35 uh I I just request that all right um first we have uh Mr Tran Harrison hello uh my name is Harrison Chen and I'm a High School junior in this District um rarely do we see students at these board meetings and when we do it's to perform the national anthem so I come to you today as a primary stakeholder in this
162community I've been a student in the system through all of my education I'd like to thank the board for holding this meeting at an accessible time so I as a student could attend I've been watching these school board meetings online for a while and have seen the very dangerous rhetoric used when talking about the Banning of books I wanted to make it very clear that our children are not being indoctrinated many of the books that some are trying to ban feature people of color and queer people and are written by and for people of color and queer people when we ban identity centered books we ship the existence of these marginalized groups who and people who have shared these lived experiences every child deserves to be seen and represented growing up I didn't see my
163family an Asian family and the spotlight of the books I read it was until yesterday and my AP Lane class that I read a passage that reflected my lived experience with my own parents representative books give folks who aren't in my shoes a perspective that isn't their own we brought in perspectives and create well-rounded citizens educated citizens when we open them up to new ideas and new people bending books where young people of color and create queer children find Solace as detrimental to the existence of an entire generation having these types of books in the classroom opens up our eyes to something new something we haven't personally experienced where we act where we actively are learning about the world we are building a reality for the younger generation that extends far beyond the Border far
164beyond the borders of Savannah let it be clear that the students of Savannah Chatham County do not want Books banned we want to be seen and we want to be us it's been the initiative of the superintendent that literacy is the North Star that that literacy means making sure our children can read that they know how to best exist in the truest cells with the knowledge they hold it means Making Connections asking questions and becoming an empowered learner for life this initiative is one that every civilian should get behind thank you again for allowing me the time after school and not during school hours to speak I hope this board will consider opening up more evenings so many students like myself before can speak before you again thank you thank you very much all right
165uh Mrs Cheryl gay good evening it's usually good afternoon isn't it yeah it was um both Savannah Chatham and Cobb County school systems were recently received a letter questioning the inclusion of books and media that contain obscene language as defined by Georgia ocga 16-12-103 Dr Watts you're brand new and these books were purchased and placed in the media centers under the watch of previous leadership and we know that you might not be aware fully aware of the content in these books but for the last year and a half a group of Chatham County Citizens myself included have been presenting titles and excerpts of obscene books to this board Georgia has robust anti-obscenity laws so how do these books get here and how are they allowed to remain Georgia ocga 1612-104 exempts libraries and schools from
166the state of Sanity law and this is a giant loophole in the state's code these books contained obscene material that is both written and drawn more often than not the descriptions of the female characters are demeaning and dehumanizing the authors use some of the most vile and offensive anti-woman language imaginable and our children have access to this literature and I'm just you know it's the c word the p word I'm not going to say it but you know what I'm referencing um Dr Watts is part of your 100-day plan to meet with the community we respectfully ask if you would meet with us at your convenience so we can discuss with you our concerns and share with you some of the examples of the material we find so disturbing I want to reiterate because I
167think this is going to be a theme in a little while we are not book Banners at all we support access to age-appropriate literature and school libraries but none should contain obscene language or drawings we look forward to having opportunity to discuss this with you more thoroughly thank you very much thank you okay [Music] um so Mrs Rojas and our Fernando Flores you're both speaking on the same thing could we have one of you speak we do have an interpreter we have an interpreter so who is speaking buenas noches Fernanda Flores High School good evening my name is Fernanda Hernandez I'm from Colombia and I I study at Groves High School programs soil at Jenkins High School I have been I have been transferred to the ESL programs from Jenkins High School [Music] program when
168I arrived to the school I was told the school was already packed and I um and most of all the students belong to this program esol Construction and this was a we didn't expect this news because we all belong to this program this was an unexpected and made us feel anxious because of all the changes foreign okay during the first day of school I'm still anxious as Latin students in our school district I would like to be taken into account um with enough time thank you okay um Keyshawn housie good afternoon my name is Keyshawn housing and I come before you today as a representative of deep Center a concerned Citizen and a little an Alum of this school district which by the way Salisbury Johnson High School is the best high school here in
169Savannah Georgia now tonight I want to uplift the voices of a few teachers regarding discourse surrounding book bands and overall literacy in this district and I quote books that represent all people are so important our immigrant families can see themselves in diverse representation and multilingual books can feel like home for lgbtq plus students one title alone can ease loneliness and provide courage to face another day for all historically marginalized families history can be retold with the Innovations and determination of their ancestors on the Forefront rather than in the background literacy is education Making Connections asking questions and becoming an empowered learner for life United doesn't mean we all do the same thing or read the same books it means we hold the same value that all have access to a high quality education for a
170diverse Nation end quote the second statement I would like to read is as follows again from an educator in this District I have a student who told me last week that I am the reason he has started to read again last year I encouraged him to check out one of my class library books I am not a serial killer by Dan Wells he told me that after reading the book he checked out every single book that the author wrote he is now reading other books it is essential for students to have access to a variety of books the third step I would like to read is as follows and I quote a multitude of novels graphic novels plays poetry short fiction flash fiction epics and stories of every genre are absolutely essential for the development
171of our students books unlike any other art form immerse the reader into the psyche emotions and experiences of another and it is through this immersion into another perspective that empathy is developed empathy is crucial for our students as they become citizens of the world on a final note I would be remiss if I did not Echo the concerns being raised by migrant Equity Southeast and the multilingual families in the district with how the recent move of ESL ol students was only communicating in English it is my hope that this body will work with the kids and students affected to resolve this issue thank you for allowing me the opportunity thank you very much [Applause] okay okay I will I will get to that I had asked that we have one of them speak but we
172will we will get to it okay Candice Harnett Candace Hartnell oh there you are I'm just sure no good evening Dr Watts Mr Moss the rest of the board my name is Pastor Candace hardnett I am the co-pastor and co-founder of Agape empowerment Ministries here in Savannah I'm also the chair of the proud Savannah task force here I am also a parent of a school-aged child and a concerned citizen of Savannah Chatham County I'm here to express my concern regarding the talk of books being banned within Savannah Chatham Public Schools I mean United States veteran I served in the United States Marine Corps in my 20s because I wanted to protect this country from those who would seek to take away our freedom America is a country of freedom freedom of speech freedom of ideas
173those freedoms end when elected and appointed officials start Banning books and censoring curriculum simply because some people find them uncomfortable what's next Banning books on the civil rights movement because we don't want to talk about racism Banning books on the Holocaust because we don't want to talk about Nazis skipping over things forbidding kids like my daughter from talking about her family Dynamics because she happens to have two mommies I think any reasonable person can agree that we want to see that Vision come to light that we prepare students to be successful in proactive citizens to face this world but how do we prepare them if we do not introduce them to the world that they will encounter the world that includes people like me people like you that may be different from them and so
174together we can put a stop once and for all to Banning books simply because a few extremists don't like them and make sure that our children get the honest and accurate education that they deserve so they can learn from our past be safe and happy in the present and help create a better future thank you so much for your time tonight thank you very much okay now we'll have a Mrs Lina Rojas and she will need an interpreter foreign good evening my name is Lena Rojas and I am fernanda's mother High School she was part of the Grove High School s when she went to James King she felt really welcome because she found some friends come from the other school s for me as a mother it was um it was not I wasn't
175that happy that my daughter has been transferred to another school name this was a surprise news I feel we are not being taken into account when decisions like this are being made foreign [Music] we would like to suggest that we will get informed in advance and that we can have a translation or Temptation form for us every time for everything that is happening for the education of our kids it is so interesting to come over to these meetings gracias thank you very much thank you okay uh Lavon newins hi everyone my name is Lavon ewins I'm a representative and secretary on the board of directors of book nation of dreamers um a local non-profit LLC 501c3 organization I am backed by my chair dream Smith what we do in the community is that we promote
176and that we work towards unlimited literacy access and underserved communities in our area um I looked at the list of titles that are trying to be banned I looked at them this afternoon I looked at all their synopsis right and I implore all of you to do so as well uh as I was looking at them except for maybe like two titles all of them are exclusively black and lgbtqia plus narratives told from the perspective of individuals who embody these identities um this is significant to us at our organization because um even though of course we all are inclusive we promote a strong emphasis of black narratives because those unfortunately are the most underserved in our communities I can talk about books and you know um how important that literacy is and yeah yeah but
177this issue isn't even about book content and I know the intelligent people that you are you guys know that this isn't even about that either um as I said I encourage all of you to do your research but I want you to also research the individuals who are introducing these bands they and their Associates are members of a group that are currently called No left turn but that name is rebranding you see back in the day they were actually called moms for Liberty you should check out their profile on the Southern Poverty Law Center website they're designated as an about hate group these individuals that have been wasting your time here are white supremacists I think that they themselves actually know that these bands are dead in the water anyway so personally I think that
178ultimately uh they're not even here about books what they're doing and what they have done since they started here for a few years now right they keep dipping their toes into our community over and over again with their rhetoric and their hate speech and they're not just a little bit more and more right and they see how far they can get away with their hate speech with impunity until maybe one day it actually sticks right and legitimizes in our spaces if they're playing in our faces like this wasn't enough of an insult they're trying to affect our kids now they're trying to suppress and Grace access to when you actually put Savannah's history into account their communal identity which a lot of these kids think body thank you all right Vicki Bradley hi good evening
179I'm a graduate of Jenkins High School and my children attended Savannah Chatham Public School Systems and referencing I would like to to show two different accounts from Cobb County and Chatham County in relation to the um obscene books in the media center Cobb County said thank you for alerting us to these books we weren't aware of the sexually explicit content in the books into your email any book video or lesson which contains sexually explicit content is entirely unacceptable has no place in our school we removed them over the weekends and at the direction our board and superintendent we are unapologetically holding our staff accountable only use content which is aligned to Georgia standards this is from John Floresta Chief strategy and accountability officer in Cobb County and in Savannah Mrs Sheila Blanco this was her
180response the goal of the Savannah Chatham County public school system is to empower and inspire all Learners to excel in Global Society the media center promotes intellectual Freedom within the school Community by providing access to a variety of information ideas and resource parents May request that their child not be permitted to check out the books a policy needs to be put in place if you're going to leave these books in here parents are not aware of them and unfortunately the people who have been speaking earlier are unaware of them I was going to read part of it but there are still a young girl in here I could be arrested for reading these and I'm going to leave one excerpt and it and it's and it's of all Races off sexual orientation it's when it's
181Paul did you feel up her my male you know what is now twice as big you know what church camp is a place best place to score some p word this is what we're talking about um you know it's a recent Retreat the board discussed the declining enrollment plaguing Chatham County and the fact that Chatham County has a disproportionate number of private schools for its size parents with options are choosing these Alternatives and whether you like it or not this is one of many issues that's a contributing factor um you know Dr Watts I'm looking forward you know you coming in and looking and you know making positive changes I'm a citizen I've lived here my entire life as I said I graduated from Jenkins High School I plan to live here the rest of
182my life I want what's best for the kids what's best for our community because people who graduate from the public school systems are the ones who are going to be taking care of me in my old age so we do care it's not about look at me it's because we care about the kids thank you for your time thank you very much okay um we have three people who have signed up for literature material or whatever if you're all here together can you choose one to speak okay I'm going to take that as a no um all right uh Christian mod Christian mod not here okay oh actually Christian oh Christy mod okay okay thank you and Andrew Rosen okay thank you good evening my name is Andrew Rosen I am not a product of
183the Chatham County School System so I cannot say what has been said as eloquently as has already been said but what I will add is that I am a product of a school system that had a lot of privilege I'm from a privileged family I went to a privileged School and it was an excellent school with many strengths but diversity was not one of them my exposure to minorities other ethnicities other orientations to other people primarily came through the books that were made available to me sometimes there are books that my family gifted to me for Christmas or birthdays and sometimes there were books that were found in the public library that was my exposure up until I went to college if I had not gone to college that would be the end of my
184exposure to other people to minorities that I live with and work with every day and I think that's important to know because while this is a very diverse school system and while there is a lot of diversity in this community there are some people who come into this community without that previous exposure and who might not want to participate in the community they might rely on literature in order to find that sort of information to find out what it's like to be around other people to learn what their experiences are there's more that I would have liked to have said but like I started with it's been said and it's been said better than I can do so thank you for your time and enjoy the rest of your evening thank you very much hey
185all right um I will I tell you I'm ready for this I will accept emotions I'm sorry you know no she left um well let me make sure is Jennifer Gerardo here nope is Valerie Serrano here oh no are you Valerie Serrano I'm sorry she's Jennifer no no oh you're Jennifer Dorado I'm sorry buenas noches good evening my name is Jennifer Jurado I'm from Colombia is with all the respect that you all deserve in this room I would like to tell you in this moment I'm feeling really sad sad and indignited for the unexpected changes of my niece being moved to another school Communications I am very sorry that the school doesn't have contact with parents with within a reasonable time so we can plan to trans to transport our kids to another school my
186niece when she found out she was being moved to another school was unable to sleep a change and change that change has definitely changed her state of mood As We Know her second house I would like you guys to take us into consideration because we do not speak English you set us aside I feel a lack of interest to us the immigrants oil we need more support from the esol program thank you very much thank you Valeria Serrano foreign good evening my name is Valeria Serrano I'm from Colombia and I have five months living in this country I am 10 years old and I'm taking um attending fifth grade the first time I went to school I was very scared because I didn't know they were going to understand my language [Music] as soon as
187I arrive home arrived home I told my mom I didn't want to go back to school participated because I couldn't participate in any of the school activities and and I couldn't communicate with anyone is all till today I have not received any esol classes Latinos I am very thankful of all of you for your support to the Latino communities and children gracias thank you thank you very much okay that is everyone that's on my list we're going to try this again I will accept a motion to adjourn even the audience is raising your hand okay I'm sorry oh Rick Roney no it's not on my list okay Rick normally it's three minutes you get two yeah three minutes before dinner okay yeah president Moss board members Dr Watts I'm speaking tonight on the behalf of
188the Chatham education Alliance I'm happy to announce to you tonight that Chatham education Alliance will be sponsoring literacy week in in Savannah Chatham County from November 13th through 19th the goal of this week is to build Broad and deep public support within our community for increasing literacy of our students we'll start the week on Monday November 13th with a showing of the documentary right to read at trustees theater this event will be open to the public with no charge right to read is a documentary produced by the NAACP the NAACP has declared literacy as the Civil Rights challenge of this generation the film has the main protagonist Kareem Weaver and also tells the story of the life of two families Chatham education Alliance is bringing Mr Weaver to Savannah and he's doing a q a
189following the film last week we filmed an introductory roll-in to write to read with interviews with Mayor Johnson president moss and superintendent Watts thank you Mr Boss and Dr Watts for that the film is excellent if you haven't seen it and would like to see it prior to November 13th contact me the next day Tuesday November 14th Mr Weaver will be speaking at a lunch audience sponsored by the Southeast Georgia leadership conference at the Kehoe Ironworks we're also working to build other events into Mr Weaver's schedule while he's in town we're meeting with Dr Watts and Mr Watson Mr Moss next week to see what needs and opportunities we can fill for the district we're currently reaching out to organizations in the community to ask for their sponsorship sponsorship has no Financial commitment we ask
190only that the organization promote literacy week events with their members their boards their subscribers their constituents whatever to date we've approached 20 different organizations and had a 100 percent yes response we have an equal number on our to-do list organization organizations approach are widely diverse everything from Arts Social Service Business Media educational and Civic organizations everyone we've spoken to sees literacy as critical to the success of our children and our community we expect capacity turnouts at both trustees theater and the Ironworks kilo Iron Works literacy week has been endorsed by the city of Savannah and Chatham County we respectfully request the endorsement of the school board as well thank you very much this has got to end okay I have the I have the final list and uh they are not signed up [Music] I'm
191sorry uh no guys no I I I'm looking at all of our lists from anyone who has signed up and she is not on that list it is 9 10. so in Okay so however you did manage to sign up all the other people you know I'm not going to have this conversation you know what it's fine bring her on up if you bring one up translator please thank you buenas noches good evening my name is Liliana Morenos I'm from Colombia sanos I've been living five months in this country and my daughter is 10 months you say is 10 years old I apologize my daughter is in fifth grade Wilson Forest is since the first week of in school my daughter has been frustrated for not having a teacher who can teach her teach her
192English [Music] classes as a mother I have seen my daughter very sad for not being able to actively participate in her classes because the teachers are not being patient and they cannot understand when my daughter asks questions it is very important that our schools provide with the esol programs for our kids for our children applications at the beginning of this meeting when I was trying to register for this meeting solos I had to ask for help because it was only in English in order for me to register for this meeting I can't ask you to please take take into concert consideration the Latino population reunion and I also ask for translators and interpreters during these meetings so we can understand clearly what's going on during the entire meeting thank you very much thank you Barbosa
193to adjourn still stands okay moved anyone set second all in favor aye aye thank you very much